I can't reconcile these things

I needed some juice last night so naturally I stopped quickly at the grocery store while driving home. I have been mostly vegan-ish for nearly three-ish years now and during that time every grocery store I enter I immediately gravitate toward the organic/healthy/nutty aisle or aisles depending on how progressive said grocer is. This allows me to bypass all of the synthetic, all of the treated and all of the lesser (read: affordable) fare and feel good about myself or at least about the things that will soon be absorbed into the make up of my biology.

I stood before the cage-free eggs and tofurky deli slices contemplating if three dollars for juice is still worth it. In this section you get your full range of nutrients and you pay dearly for each and every one.

I had been craving some R.N. Knudsen apple or pomegranate cocktail but I was halted at the Odwalla/Naked case. There was among those usual brands a juice I knew from a previous time. Bolthouse Farms juice. I remembered when I had first come upon these Bolthouse Farms drinks. My college roommate "turned me on" to them because he was insanely, possibly artificially fit. (I never found real evidence to corroborate my hunches about how he attained such an inhumanly perfect set of abs). On one trip to the grocery store together around 2 possibly 3 a.m. he picked up this small, green plastic bottle that had an unappetizing mixture of baby poop and Missouri River in it. I asked him why he was examining something so indisputably putrid. He spun the bottle around and showed me the Nutrition Facts label and I had never seen so many items listed beneath the second bold line, you know, where the vitamins and other actually healthy components are listed. I also had never seen so many three-hundred percents and four-hundred percents concerning food contents.

So I waxed nostalgic to the point of exhaustion and while still in this state of mind I glanced upon something that swelled my heart three-hundred percent. And it broke me utterly. Granola. Bear Naked brand granola cereal. I had bought some the last time Melissa and I went to Ohio and my parents' lake house in Indiana. I ate it as a snack the eleven hour trip home. For months after Melissa and I talked and laughed and felt good about how that was one of, if not the most pleasant trip we had ever taken together. This granola symbolized for me everything good and perfect about Melissa’s gift-likeness to me and our marriage to each other. I nearly fell on the floor.

This was an involuntary association and it should have been a rapturous one but even this random granola treat grabbed me by my unusually stretchy cheeks and shook me vigorously as it recounted details of what had been lost, what has left me and what will probably never be again.

I didn't ask to be reminded of all this. I am no glutton for punishment. I have felt more than my fair share of pain. Like I said, this glimpse at the minute losses I am suffering was strictly involuntary and quite unwelcome as it interrupted an otherwise pleasant evening.

These are the things that tell me I have not attained resolution and I have not "gotten over" her. Even at my most focused times of resolute "I'm moving on" mindfulness some lightening always strikes my brain and reminds me I cannot forget. Or perhaps that I can't not remember. This is the madness that breaks my heart because if this continues for the rest of my life I will never have a healthy relationship again. I fear I will wake up in the middle of the night craving Melissa and I will see my new lover next to me and I will feel even more despair than I do now. I fear this is a possibility because these unsought recollections have not remotely lessened. I know it has only been four months but how fucking long does it take? I hate being a slave to Melissa or the memory of our happiness. I hate it so, so much. Am I so weak that I cannot achieve peace and freedom? Is that even correct to say? Is it achievable or is it granted? If it is granted then how should I ask for it? I want peace. I want freedom. I want peace.

absence and fondness

This has astounding purpose. There is a reason for this as opposed to other ways to communicate as opposed to other ways to process as opposed to other ways to fulfill a need as opposed to other ways to survive something heinously unrecognizable as surmountable. This is necessary.

Onward, certainly. Because this is about me but in being so it most assuredly is about infinitely more or at least contains that inexhaustible nature and its characters and narrative in an infinitesimal corner of the internet. All that to say, there is a lot going on here and pretty much no one notices which is almost beside the point.

As much as I wanted this to exist less as a working out of things and more of a way to showcase projects I am working on it has evolved into a public display of my eagerness to know myself and be known and the journey.

This is the dynamic human spirit, no?

onward

In order to start channeling this blog in a more positive direction and to be more consistent with my proclamations of being more concerned about others than myself I want to make everyone aware of this cause Change.org is pushing:

With the phenomenal support of 107,053 people from 163 countries -- the most popular campaign ever launched on Change.org -- a tiny group of lesbian activists in South Africa just scored a major victory, taking "corrective rape" from an unspoken epidemic to a national discussion. Now we need your signature to reach 150,000 and crank up the heat on the South African government.

Reblogged from Supergrrrl

This petition is incredibly close to meeting the aforementioned goal of 150,000 signatures. This is grievous and I hadn't heard a thing about it until today. Pass this new knowledge along to anyone you can.

on loving love (love love love love love love love)

I was deadly serious when I had previously mentioned with great conviction I was no longer going to write about Melissa, our division or anything pertaining to those things. That declaration seemed like a fine idea and a terrific way to move on. It wasn't a bad idea but it certainly wasn't a good way to move on in any respect. Despair set in even more vehemently after deciding to "be over her." Voluntary repression hardly ever engenders relief. Any therapist worth their salt will tell you that.

My apartment, which I often still refer to as "our" apartment, is full to bursting with relics of our truest love. There is scarcely an item in this place that does not have Melissa's literal and phantasmic fingerprints layered upon them. I put on a bandanna yesterday and it smelled just like her. It smelled the way she smelled when we crawled in the grass next to the pond at my school when we had known each other only a matter of hours. And it smelled the way she smelled when she came over after Thanksgiving to gather her belongings from our bedroom. Needless to say, I donned the bandanna and cried into the linguini I made to eat alone. JennyAnyDots, our cat, ran under the table to hide because I began to stumble from sobbing so vigorously.

If I deny these things I am doing myself a grave injustice and I am lying to Melissa. In truth, I do not want her to think I am doing well. I am not. I do not want her to think that everything is copacetic and I will endure. Because most of the time I am not sure I will. I want to fully know what has been lost here and I want Melissa to know the same and be able to grieve it. By pretending I am healing, stable and sane I rob her of the chance to feel sad about what is taking place. That seems dangerous to me because it could shrink her heart. I believe in her heart and the immense possibilities of it. I love her dearly and to deprive her this opportunity to grow as a human with the mighty capacity to feel deep loss and love and fully understand these things no matter how much of it comes out in pain is not a loving thing for me to do. And I desperately love love. Nothing gives me more anguish than when I see love being put aside or disrespected. By myself especially because then I have to deal with the fact of my hypocrisy which is always bound to appear but is always so terrifying to face.

"Don't beat yourself up"

I have heard this from a great number of my friends in the past few months. Usually it is followed by some form of an encouragement telling me I should focus on myself or get to know who I truly am.

I have always been introspective to a fault. I have always been well aware of my blunders and even more aware of my achievements. I know my limits, my destructive tendencies and the extent of my abilities and traits at least in relation to the people I measure these things against. I am brutally self aware and have been so as long as I can remember.

I know what part my actions have played in my misery. And I am dreadfully remorseful for these things. I am not beating myself up. I am taking responsibility and attempting to amend what my foolishness has broken. For my part I apologize.

As far as what is left now that my marriage is dissolving I am attempting to sit in the middle of the floor of my bedroom and pull all the pieces toward me and then chase other things. The way I saw it I didn't need any of the other shit because I had someone to live for. Perhaps the Christian perspective (which is the one I wholeheartedly attempt to ascribe to) would tell me I should have lived for Christ and all these things would be added unto me. Perhaps but it was my solemn act of worship to God for what was given to me in a loving, beautiful, intelligent woman. And I truly thought that nothing but death would separate us. I was content. I was alive. But it's going to be a smooth death and my heart has a million miles to go.

"We are the sun, we are the sun, we are the sun, we are the sun" goddammit

because of my friend's phone call

What the hell is happening to our humanity? I am and always will be entirely convinced a crucial aspect of what makes us alive is our living in communion with others like us and unlike us and the ability to act in a manner that is more supportive and useful to the group than to the individual even if that community consists of only two people (even especially if the community is two people). That differential is what sets us apart from a stone that has no relationship to the craggy hillside it finds itself on other than the fact that they both exist in the same general space. But they can do nothing for one another. The stone cannot decide to humble itself and not roll down into the grassy knoll where it will surely be more cushioned and possibly more safe from corrosive elements but instead remain with the craggy, windy, practically barren hilltop because this stone adds a beauty and uniqueness to something otherwise incomplete without its presence. This will not happen. Perhaps an earthquake (or as I heard on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me this morning: a dreaded hurriquake) could shift the stone to a new location but this sadness would not be so severe because this is the way of things. Anyway, none of that would be sad at all. Stones and hills don't feel. And that is it exactly.

We do feel and we have a choice to live to create unity and share and cooperate and refuse to participate in anything or with anyone desiring division and selfishness and exclusion and destruction. Remain angry so you do not inadvertently allow evil but stay in love so you may intentionally create life and bring what is separate together.

unavoidable obviousness

I finally saw 127 Hours tonight. Good God that movie was relentlessly enthralling. My wonderful friend, Rachel, joined me. Immediately, once the movie ended, I turned to her and told her I have not felt such a affinity for other movie viewers I have been in a theater with in a very, very long time.

Terrific feeling. Terrific to feel at all. I must admit my time in Ohio was not the most sensational as far as being emotional tactile. My family and friends did a mighty job attempting to draw me out and provide me with a great deal of experiences to help me cope, grieve and progress. But, and this is no fault of theirs, all this effort was sadly not a suitable rival for the unparalleled numbness the unavoidable obviousness of the void my lover's absence created. I certainly collected memories I will cherish for eternity on end but my hopeful intent of relaxing away my anxieties and coming to grips with some internal demons was not realized. I did return with an incredibly valuable revelation, however. I understand more fully and unmistakably that Omaha is my home. I came out here to build one and now I see that I accomplished just that. At this point it looks and feels a far cry from what I thought I set out to establish but it is here and it is sound.

In an almost identical manner to the way Aron Ralston gingerly/greedily sucked water from his nalgene while he was lodged in the crevice with his boulder I am lapping up the times I am sharing with my friends. They are affording me such life giving moments that feel so perpetually sustaining. When I leave their presence I no longer feel so parched or chapped. When I depart I know I can last until the next time I get a chance to take in great gulps or even shallow slurps of this incredible cloud of friends I have been granted. Luckily I have more than a 150 ml supply of friendship beverage unlike Mr. Franco/Ralston.

re:

"I never went back... The longer I was away, the less I wanted to return and see how small the place must have grown, how sparse the stars, how perfectly ordinary the tract houses, how trim that mysterious house, the jungle of a yard. And even if I managed to come at just the right time of year, and the neighbor's pear tree still stood, and I managed to find a late-season pear in an early snow - would the voices of my friends come wandering down the dark road, calling my name as I bent down to claim it?" - Elizabeth Gonzales (from Half Beat from The Greensboro Review)

I certainly reconnected but I cannot say for sure it made much difference. I think what I know now is that I do not care to waste time re-ing anything. Reconnecting, remembering, rehashing, redoing. Except for reconciling. If it is broken then there is true necessity for healing, redemption, reconstitution. But otherwise forward motion is all that counts. Recognizing the state of these relationships with my family and oldest friends (and newest friends that feel old) and taking them into new realms and to new heights of honesty and integrity and intensity and fruitfulness.

I have felt what I feared I would feel returning to Cincinnati. Every time I have pulled into the neighborhood of my adolescence I have felt the same thing I felt in high school. There is a pull and a voice telling me to leave. "You should not be here. There is nothing ultimately good for you here and you cannot grow. Leave not as an escape but as actual movement. To stay is to stagnate and you must go on." I believe that voice because the longer I am here the more I feel as though my passions are evaporating and my heart is regressing.

Not that it is bad for me to be here for short stints nor that my parents have not attempted to build a home that would foster an environment of great and mighty achievement for us four boys. For this moment, however, when I am most confused, lonely and in need of solidarity encompassing me the unsettled commotion this place offers is unmooring in ways I don't need right now. But steps had to be taken over these last few days and difficult things needed to be said and heard. This winter has been my time to live uncomfortably because for the time being there is no consistent comfort for me.

I am very unsure of what is reliable right now and what will not crumble under my weight when I try to use it to support myself. It seems most everything is slipping away extraordinarily quickly, especially my trust in constants and anything or anyone who claims to be thus. I am more skeptical than ever and therefore even more alone because I don't trust myself to any greater extent than anything or anyone else. Perhaps I am about to embark on a stage of life involving imminent commitment issues. This has never been the case for me since everyone I have tried to commit to has abandoned me when I asked something of them that seemed reasonable to me at the time and as I consider each circumstance now, still rings very justified and menial in certain respects. I was never the one who had to be convinced commitment and persistence were possible and positive. There have only been three people I have sustained what in my young life could be considered long term relationships and none of them stuck around when I had wishes of my own that would cost them something that I always assumed was slight compared to what I thought they should be willing to offer in a relationship such as ours. Anyway, I am having a hard time seeing myself as lovely or lovable and this trip has not done much to quell these feelings. I hoped it would. On some level. I just feel more motivated to "go out and get mine" but this is mostly spurred on by anger and self inflicted indignity. I want to conquer my corner of the world but only to make noise and be noticed and that is never satisfying. If I am truly honest with myself I actually just want it all to come to me. I was talking with my youngest brother, Jarrod, and I realized I have never been pursued by anyone. No one has ever taken such an interest in me without my initiation that they began doing things to secure my affection. I have done that for multiple people abundant amounts of times to no avail. I am alone and I am partnerless. I am learning to wait without expectation or bated breath. I am learning to breathe and exhale prayers. I will be heard and I will be found.