choose your own adventure

eating turkey repeatedly with all of them only further intensified the urgency of my desires to have things move ahead in the coming year. just made me want so much more to be his wife. i seem to lack a ceiling in this realm.

they are perfect. i want to be a consistent extension of their world. the time spent with them was so comfortable. i was so at home...although i'd never hope to live there, their universe is a slice of the paradise i'm after. my peers would laugh at me.

i don't know why he continues to check on her. it stresses me out. especially that he does so eagerly as soon as we've returned. as if he's been itching for it for the past few days, desperately needing to know how she's doing, what she's doing. he's said it's just about his ego. i don't know where that ends or begins. voyeurism is definitely a comfortably snug glove for him, but the potential results of that sort of need to peripherally peer on others, especially her, bothers me. the other sorts of situations that could derive from this same ego issue frankly frighten me. perhaps this should stifle my inklings towards marriage, but it honestly only heightens them. this love shit is such a transparent game. and i am such a transparent pawn that i often cringe at my own idiocy and the ways i allow myself to get caught up in the web. i have a chronic second-order desire not to care about his tendency/interest. i can never fulfill this desire for myself. i am too panicky and crazy when it comes to him. i wish i could tell the difference between a raging red flag and a really good thing.

two assignments i've yet to complete.

his first:
reasons i am loveable:
*spontaneity
*flexibility
*intelligence
*devotion
*eccentricity
*intensity
*maintenance
*resilience
*passion
*humor
*interest
*expression
*empathy
*perspective
*authenticity
*satire
*independence
*strength
*connection
*bootleggedness
*sincerity
*tenacity
*creativity
*courage
*desire
*generosity
*insight
*levity

i am not supposed to undermine any of the items on my list, although i've been inclined, following each addition, to do exactly that, which means that i'm not where he wants me to be. i need to recognize that i can possess attributes in general terms without allowing discrete instances of their absence to undermine their entire existence.

hers:

the expectations i had were not the problem, but the hopes. the expectations were incredibly consistent with reality. maybe because they became a self-fulfilling prophecy that i established for myself. maybe because i expected them to bail i pushed them away. he called on thursday to wish us happy thanksgiving and tell us that they're thinking of us. i haven't seen him in more than a month, any of them in nearly a month. i am pushing them away. because i don't feel like i can have a voice with them, but i'm not sure how much is them not wanting me and how much is me not wanting them. she wrote me desperately, begging, and i ignored her. i'm sure it drives her crazy because i know she's eager to be in control...she shouldn't say "when you're ready" if what she means is now because i need it. but i'm passiveaggressive in my response (or lack thereof) to her. i am touting my own power, knowing that i'm iring her and loving it more than anything. there's something sick in that. some fucked up revenge for not being exactly what i wanted during the nine months and after. for fucking me over with the times situation. my hopes were that i would no longer feel at all indebted (fucked up, yes, but true), that i would feel i had given a beautiful gift (i do, but not freely, because it doesn't feel entirely appreciated...because, i think, the process of its giving was so intensely threatening for her), that i would manage to let go (liam's continued presence in the back of my conscious and subconscious suggests this is not the case...i haven't even begun to let go...i just keep sublimating), that it would further unite us (ha. what a chasm. the origin of which may be only partially related to his gestation and arrival, but which definitely solidified in direct proportion to the expansion of my waistline), that it would further unite us (ha. it makes me cling desperately for what he gave me, for how he held me, for what i'm terribly afraid to lose, makes me anxious for an experience we can personally claim, and seems only to push him further away), that, in the end, i would feel good about having done something tremendous (the only thing i feel about the situation is tinnily hollow and somewhat acrid). my hopes and the reality couldn't mesh less. how to reconcile at this point, i'm not sure. i doubt, in this case, that shiny red shoes would do the trick.

my new password reflects my preoccupation with my fantasy quantum leap. i keep hoping we'll go there. the year is almost over. i don't know how i can spend another year anxiously hoping, hoping, hoping. i know i would persist. but, god, what torment.

i need more work, more money. do i quit everything when it begins to get a little rough? maybe a number of the terms on my list are total fabrication. i could have kept at it, but it would have mired me in more misery. for nothing. it was a deadend for not enough money or satisfaction. but it was semi-security. so. does it make me fickle and weak to have abandoned my responsibilities to seek others? or. does it make me acutely aware of my own limitations and intelligent for having reacted appropriately to something i knew would negatively impact all arenas of my life? does it make me daring, confident and resourceful to have begun throwing fresh bricks down for a new yellow path? this is how everything goes...two or more possible directions....and the signs are too rusted for me to tell which route is right.

quarter

he is 25 today. happy birthday if you read this. i did think of you. i thought of you weeks ago. and today. i'm just broke and too self-absorbed to materialistically manifest the thought. i will call sometime soon. i hope you celebrated something fierce. thinking of you being a quarter-century old today almost makes me cry (like everything else). i think of my favorite picture of us, me in the center soaking up all the attention with my gap-toothed beaming smile and my lopsided unraveling braids, you on my right, under the crook of my arm, not daring to stare directly into the lens, your heavy cokebottles slipping off your nose despite their ribbed red elastic band, your shirt dotted with spiderman pins, your hands preoccupied below the border with some entrancing action figure, him on my left, under the crook of my arm, gazing shyly toward the camera, the deep dimples indenting his speckled cheeks, the tousled mop of thick, blonde hair falling nearly to his eyes. we were so happy and naughty and little and innocent then. fifteen years later you're about to embark on an incredibly adult life that i can only hope doesn't utterly consume all remnants of the comic-obsessed little boy you once were, i'm still struggling to play mama with a straight face and he's isolated, sleeping in a tank somewhere in the desert. happy birthday. i wonder if this day still makes you think of crab legs.
seeing her today was helpful. she reiterated a lot of what he's been telling me all along, but it was particularly useful to have her mostly objective perspective. i need to force myself to use this space better. she thinks it would be helpful to write, and i agree. it will just involve a little more tenacity that i'm currently accustomed to employing. she ended with identification of my pattern and the underlying problem: i still think i need to earn affection/appreciation, which ties directly into his request that i think seriously about why i deserve to be loved. tomorrow, the list. tomorrow, the reasoning. i love blue collar. basic accomplishment suits me well.