No, I have no idea what\’s going on. But thanks for asking.
Whoa is for surfer dudes, but the similarities between wipe outs make me forgive you.
Other long-term relationships among my friends that have bitten the dust in the past six months: R+A in DC, E+E in C, E+C in R, A+G in P, M+H in M, K+J in V… the list goes on. J+M in E, E+J in V, and L+O are the only people I can think of who are still together.
Life and love devolve, evolve, devolve again. Doesn\’t make it any easier.
So how do I feel about it? Detached, mostly. I\’ve got 98 e-mails and comments to reply to, a week\’s worth of homework to catch up on, phone calls to the case manager and doctors to make, a portfolio to rehash, errands to run, and I just don\’t feel like I have the time to get into it right now.
I\’m back in the apartment in upper-Caucasia out of necessity and am facing all the troubles that pushed me into living with Dr Maude in the first place a few years ago: the utter impossibility of finding available low-income housing in this area. You know, a place where my rent is only going to be $250 a month with no cats, mold, mildew, dust, or other allergens toxic to my system. I\’d have a better chance at Bush being sober than at finding housing like that around here. But I\’m trying anyway, because that\’s what I do: fight; struggle; battle. It\’s in my nature.
Next Tuesday I\’m headed to Denver to try and gain some sanity. There\’s a dog to play with and a Gogol Bordello show, among other things. I\’ll be gone a week and will probably return more confused than before, but at least I\’ll have had a \’vacation\’ — the first in I don\’t know how long.
Running away is so easy, but then, moving forward properly can be, too. How do you know which one you\’re doing when you\’re doing it? Or is it only in retrospect that we can truly tell?
I did break up with Maude on Sunday night. Walked out: finito. But he\’s in some kind of weird denial about it. I know it doesn\’t help that I returned to physically being in the apartment, but having no other place to go for the long-term (the short-term is always easy), what other choice do I really have? In a week, in a month, I\’ll have no other options and he\’ll still be in this apartment, the only place I have. Out of defeat? resignation? fear? cowardliness? weakness? I returned, just to have a place to call home.
When he leaves for Brisbane in January, I don\’t know what\’s going to happen. That\’s a great deal behind what has caused the break-up. It\’s not lack of love. No, that would be too easy. This is far more complex.
I need a healer. (Heal thyself.) I need a manager. (Manage thyself.) I need a lover. (Love thyself.) Masturbation is so over-rated at this point.
I wish I had whatever has that makes her so damn venerable among our shared friends. I\’ve never met her, but she has my name. Seeing it pop on everyone\’s dialogues makes my head spin, \’cos at first I didn\’t know there was this other Cassandra with this godlike presence. Apparently she has a swagger that would knock a ninja out cold. She\’s 19; I can\’t help but wonder how much of her bravado is a facade. Frankly, though, I really don\’t care if it is a show. I admit it, I don\’t know her, but for months I have envied her. I want (to be) whatever it is she\’s got. Life seems a hell of a lot easier on Grove Street. Greener grass for the green-eyed monster of jealousy, and all that jazz. Then again, I really wasn\’t so different at 19. Guess reality has faded my shiny facade. My oomph is gone, and I never gave it the proper Nawlins send-off.
Yeah, right now, Denver seems nice. A mitten-wearing paradise. After a few days of pissing my pants from the cold, though, I\’m going to be wanting to be back in Brisneyland like nobody\’s business.
