Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Doubt Only Makes Us Stronger

A friend of mine, one I am fairly certain would like it more if we were more...intimate, has told me that holding onto a love that I've had for a while, one greatly unreciprocated for the most part, is folly. I am foolish to hold onto this feeling that I have, that I should give up. Stubborn thing that I am, I refuse.

Unbeknownst to him, my doubts are always present. I have ran through every scenario in my head on how this plays out, and I understand the risks. Yet, doubt lingers. I was sitting in class today, and for the first time in a long time, I wrote a poem that I can actually call good. I'd like to share it with you now.

Leaving Something to be Desired

Summer gave a bounty of fruit
- apples and raspberry kisses and wine and
new cheese at the corner of your mouth, creamy and soft -
and nights spilled forth with moonshine and starlight,
dancing in your muddled irises like fairies exchanging wings for fins.
Skin and teeth and tongue and dark folds in the
sheets that conceal darker deeds with angelic exploits.

Autumn - a depression left when good-byes take our love
and stretches it over mountains and rivers and borders -
is reaching, reaching for a hand still reaching for you,
and while fingers graze each other, desire's razor,
there is not skin enough to take hold, to keep strong,
and thus we break.
We turn.
We fall. We sleep in the hibernating misery as we learn to cope
with the searing light and the snatching winds that once
you and I guarded the other against.

Winter brushes my skin, and I stand alone, once a half, now a shadow.
I ache for you like a mare whickering at a fence, which she heeds as a barrier
between her and some virile stallion, all hot blood and swollen flesh and
my heart panics, my eyes dull in the late wanting, and while
all wishes and songs yearn to tempt your ears to me, I am too far,
I run. I bolt. I dream of days and nights of walking back,
of your arms around me.
And I do return to a charred house at last, where love's mark is burned with despair.

Spring calls, and we kiss the earth where once we lay laughing
- prayers for a new dawn, like a child's hope.
Your perfect eyes bore a shiver into mine, and a flame,
somewhere, bursts into new truth, in an ether no man has touched.
Your rough, callused, gentle hand takes mine - my fence, my fury, is sated,
soothed as I remember, as sweet tasting memory returns.
The bridge is rebuilt, and our love is reborn into something bright.
The light no longer stings my eyes.

Friday, October 18, 2013

You Know Who You Are...

Oh, my psychoanalyst friend is really trying to get me in trouble...I don't know how to say the words I need to. I wish I could be brave, let you see my vulnerable side, and tell you...everything. God knows I am a coward when it comes to you. God knows you scare me shitless. I want to be so perfect for you, so wonderful that you can't possibly ever say no to me. Here it goes, and I hope, like I think you do, that you read this, because I am too afraid to text you or email you. I don't have Erik this time to pep talk me into sending you another email,  who is so sure that you want me too. Good kid, he is. I am too afraid to say it to your face, and I am sorry for that. You deserve better, a brazen beauty that I have only ever written about. Please forgive me if this isn't what you want to hear. I only think you should know...


A quarter after one in the morning, like the song, and I toss in my bed,
pacing from my covers to my computer, to write about love that other people have,
thinking about the one I want to have.
It hurts, being so far from you.
My mornings starts with thoughts of you.
My slumber starts with your face teasing me,
but it is never a perfect likeness, though I know the face I see
is meant to be yours.
I strain to remember how you inflect the words you say,
elusive syllables that I once mocked mercilessly.

I miss your smell, clean and male and subtle enough to draw me in.
I miss your voice, mellow and strong.
I miss your eyes, two storms on the edge of the sea.
I miss hearing your singular footsteps behind me, the knowing of precisely who approaches.
I miss your laugh, my reward, my cookie, for being witty.
Most of all, I miss the way you look at me,
as if I was the only woman you'd ever seen before.
Maybe it was a lie, a figment of my imagination, but others saw it too.
They saw the light in your heart for me
and sang your praises to me, furthering my admiration.

I tried, I promise. I tried so hard not to love you.
From the beginning, it was a losing war I fought desperately.
I cried endlessly, for fear that I was walking into a trap,
and I would have to forsake my heart again in order to walk away.
But, for every doubt, you countered me,
setting my weary, restless mind at ease.
You saw through me, like a glass rose ready to shatter, and you saw that too.
So you withheld from me, fearing just as much as I.

No words can express my gratitude
for how well you have guarded my heart from yourself.
I ask, no more. Let me say the words I need to tell you.
Let me, please, tell you how I miss you,
and how much I need to see your face again
Please, please, let me tell you that I need you,
that every day away from you is a sin and a mistake.
Every day is a countdown to the joy of return.
I miss you, son of the earth.
Let me come back to you.
Let me find a love in you.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Advocacy: Stop Trying to be Who You Aren't

Life is hard. When we are young and naive, we don't need to put up walls. Our only defenses are our parents and our teachers who look after our own well-being. We are immune to the effects of tragedy far away, and we are too young to understand tragedy close to home. then we grow up, and we begin to comprehend the world around us.

That is when we start building our fortresses.

A friend of mine thought it prudent to psychoanalyze me one night. I wonder if it was just because he saw my pain and wanted me to know it is okay. I haven't felt pain in a while - just numbness and refusal to register the lack of emotion I feel for most anyone at this point in time. I will be the first to admit that I read like an open book. I am not hard to figure out. I am, for the most part, as transparent as anyone can get. For this reason, I make a very terrible liar.

I stood at the counter of the desk that he works, downstairs in our residence hall, and he sat at the desk, watching me as he listed off so many things I didn't believe were obvious. It scared the shit out of me. For all my armor against the world, it does me no good when people can see me for what I truly am: a romantic, a girl who desires love and who desires to give love tantamount to that which she receives, a girl who is afraid of making connections, but doesn't want to be...how did he know all this?

I kept my brave face on as he continued, but I knew in my heart that once I was alone, I would break down. So I did. All that effort, all those prickly barbs I had grown to shield myself, they were all for nothing. They were nothing more than a waste of time. I still am the naive little girl with rose-tinted glasses, praying for someday to meet someone to share a life with, and despite trying to groom myself to be otherwise, it has all been in vain.

The point in all this? You can't change who you are. However, you can learn to do with that person what is best for you. God knows how I am going to make this work for me, but I will try...

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

At Least Derek Kilmer Has Vowed to Refuse His Pay

To the crackpots in Congress: thanks, guys. Now I can't do my Earth System Science lab because you couldn't get it together. Now the NOAA, NASA, USGS, and all those other websites we use for our work book are down. Don't worry. My teacher is scrambling to figure something out for us. And, hey, once you get your rears in gear, you can send my dad a big bonus for being cool about you cutting his employment. Oh, and I didn't need that government money for school anyways, so its cool if you lay off all those people who would be taking care of my application. You guys are stellar.

WTF?!?!?!?

Come on, guys! How hard is it to be real human beings for once? How hard is it to look for a good compromise? Stop sticking to your party lines, stop worrying about getting re-elected next year, because at this rate, I don't think it will happen anyways. People cannot live off of their savings for long. People cannot just stop using money. For one thing, we just got out of the Great Recession. We don't need a new one. For another thing, it will come, one way or another, to bite you in the ass.

Good luck getting re-elected. The only one of you who will is Derek Kilmer, and that is because he is giving up his pay until Congress gets back on track. Meanwhile, I am going to continue fuming and wait for everything to cool off while I look for a new job...something that has absolutely nothing to do with the government shutdown.

Opposites Attract...And Then the Relationship Commits Seppuku

As I gradually make more friends here in Bozeman, and my view of the people here goes from rose-tinted to dark and angry, and gradually lightens again, my world rocks once more with drama. DRAMA, DRAMA, DRAMA.

I will be the first to admit that I am not very emotionally available. There is one person of non-blood relation to me who has ever gotten past my walls, and he is two states away and doing his best to forget me, which is fine...because I need less people to count on, I guess. This leads to a very flighty, flaky individual who gets nervous when the progression of a relationship takes off at speeds that move too fast for her to examine the person she is interacting with appropriately. My latest realization: not only does my new friend attract drama, but she creates it as well, and it is annoying as shit. The best part: the more she makes, the more inclined I am to retreat into myself.

As much as I appreciate how welcome she made me feel, I do not need a rerun of my last "great" friendship - a big cluster of "I love you"s and a whole vat of passive aggressive remarks from one party to the other (me) to result in me feeling like I am insignificant, like my feelings are insignificant, and like the whole world of details that I forwent in the process of going with the flow are greater than the sum of the whole. Does that logic seem a little unsound to you too? It does to me. And I am female, last I checked, so, despite crazy coming with the territory, I am left feeling like the calmer, less unsettled party.

Sometimes, Letting Go is Best

Rush of water - you get caught up.
You get caught up in flows and flux that you don't know the end to.
You think it is fun. You think that it's a game to play.
But when we hit the wall, and the water falls from beneath us,
you will cry for help.
How can I help you
when I'm drowning just the same as you.?
Why do you shout at me, looking for attention,
when I am swept up in currents too strong
to swim against, to catch you and save you from yourself?

You wanted this - you yearned for the thrill of new faces,
new experiences, someone to give you vent.
Now we're headed to the cannery,
and you claim I held the gun, safety off, trigger loose.
Did you look at the fingerprints? They look like yours,
but they could be mine.
Still, I wasn't drunk enough to forget.
I wasn't the one who wanted to chase white rabbits down black holes.
I wasn't the one who pushed the boat into white waters.

Monday, September 23, 2013

So That's Why I Don't Like You

So now that I have the whole "I hate stupid people" rant out of the way, I will say this.

God loves people who laugh at themselves.

Okay, maybe I'm making God in my own image. That being said, I'm pretty sure he does anyways. For all those times I've been shunned or spurned or cast an evil glare, behind it is someone who doesn't know how to live life to the fullest. They can't learn to just let it go.

Life is spreading sunshine to each other. Life is like love. It dies if you don't give it away. It shrivels up inside you, and it makes you gross and mean and hateful. You then pass that on, and people around you start looking at life through gray-tinted shades. You really do reap what you sow.

I may be a little shy. I am the new girl, after all. I am not exactly comfortable going into a new environment and proclaiming to the world, "Hey, look at me! I'm new!" But isn't that even better of a reason to reach out and say, "Hey, I'm Mary! Let's talk about you!"? (FYI, that really happened, and I adore this lady now.) I am not demanding a maid of honor for that wedding that I may or may not have someday, nor am I looking for some handsome stranger to make babies with. I just want to be able to go to work and not feel like an outcast.

Which leads me to my main point: I have an old coworker back home who I adore. She is like my second mother. I made a great game out of scaring the bajeezus out of her constantly. I would sass and prank and snark with all my buddies back home. I can't do that here. I am fairly certain I would get stabbed if I made so much as a move to make someone look like a fool. They take themselves way, way too damn seriously. Even the girl who best resembles a best friend here takes herself way too seriously, and I cannot, for the life of me, find it in my heart to so much as put her foolishness on display, because I know she'd be offended. Back home, this simply would not be true.

I try to set a good example. I am hoping to make it so that my charming, devil-may-care ways rub off on them. My ways might not be so devil-may-care back home, granted, but here, I am finding myself in dire need of someone to play with, and really play with in a comforting and free manner in which I don't have to worry about what is about to come out of my mouth. I don't have anyone here like that. I hope for someday, but for now...I guess I will have to do for now.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

For The People at Home, and the People Who Won't let Me Feel at Home

It is always great being the one inside looking out, mocking all the people who wish they were you, who wish they could be friends with you, or who think they are as good as you.

Bullshit. Whoever you are, if you have that attitude, you are a jerk and a half, and I loathe everything you stand for.

I am in the process of getting a huge, HUGE reality check. All that stuff about Montana being God's country? I feared I would take it too far, but here it is: totally romanticized bullshit.

It is, to a degree, God's country, for the people who refer to themselves as "natives". It is a wonderful place where you can go have conversations with random people in bars and spend the night with them (I did this once with an interior designer named Lori, and we went bar hopping after talking for an hour) or going out with your buddies and getting drunk off your you-know-whats, or even going to the football game and cozying up with strangers as you all cheer on the home team.

I was born in Great Falls. I hoped that this fact would lend itself to my admittance into the "in" crowd. The very plain and simple (and very painful) truth of it is that being a native is knowing the right people, knowing the culture, knowing the ins and outs of the place you are from. If you are an outsider, no one likes you, you are instantly judged, and people start a crap load of gossip about you, even though they haven't bothered to ask you what or who you are. Apparently I am a lesbian, sleeping with the girl who was brave enough and kind enough to be my friend. No one has asked me if this is true or not. In fact, the most I get out of ninety percent of my coworkers on a regular basis is silence and a turned-up nose. If I say hello, fifty percent say hello back and casually ask me how I am doing, the other fifty are broken into a ten percent of "hey, I want to know more about you: let's talk!" and forty percent, "oh my God, it's talking to me."

And I though Gig Harbor was snotty.

While the money and uptight air that presented itself to me back home was stifling and made me feel constantly judged, I feel like an exile here. I have done NOTHING to make you people think that I am a bad person. I have done NOTHING to give you the idea that I want to take all your secrets and sell them to the government to spy on you. I have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to allow you the right to look down on me like a second-class citizen. I am not here because I am trying to steal your land or your guns. I am not here to bastardize your culture by playing Hollywood's version of cowgirl. I am here to get back to my roots, to learn, to broaden my horizons. And all you can do is snub me? You all are some pieces of work.

You are not better than me. You are not more cultured than me. You are not tougher or smarter or kinder than me. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME. So what the hell gives you the right to walk on past me without so much as a kind smile and a hello to make me feel human? How would you like it? How would you like to be thrown in a strange place and treated like a bug on the floor? I am working my ass off to make this world a better place by exhibiting some compassion, and all you can do is ignore me when I greet you?! And here I thought the Seattle Freeze was bad! Jesus, people, are you so uncaring that you can't take in a young woman, miles away from home, with no family or friends nearby to speak of, under your wing? I'm not asking for dinner and a movie or anything! I just want a human connection so I don't feel so damn alienated! Is that too much to ask?!?!?!?!

Obviously, I feel a little passionate about this. Obviously, I am feeling a little crazed. But why shouldn't I? I spend most of my day crammed in my dorm room, hiding from the leering eyes that condemn my every move as "outsider". I spend nights awake, crying, wishing I could go home because everyone here is too stubborn and pig-headed to let me in. I haven't done anything wrong! I will not let you punish me for simply living! Get over your self-obsessive ideals that outsiders are not welcome. If that were true, you would have a serious issue with inbreeding, and I don't mean your cats. Stop acting like the rest of the world thinks you are : a bunch of crazy hicks. I know you aren't. I know that you are becoming engineers, or that you've been sign-makers, or that you love the Body Exhibit, or that you secretly want to marry Audrey Tautou. I listen. I hear you. I understand. If I am willing to look beyond your stereotype and appreciate you for the human you are, I don't think it would be that much trouble to take a moment and ask me, "So, what brings you to Bozeman?" You will probably make my day, especially if you really listen. Stop treating me like a leper. Start treating me like a peer. Don't be the haters that you are making yourselves out to be.