Hear What They See

Sunday, August 22, 2004

postcard from the edge

Michael sent me a postcard from his vacation [tangent...from his vacation, like vacation is a specific place, which is is, but it's different for everyone, even when you're in the same space, on the same cruise ship, the same beach - everyone's vacation is a different, but specific place. But the idea of vacation as a physical place on a map, sounds so Vonnegut. I imagine this red star on a map where people would go and once you walked in, you'd go to whichever place in Vacation that you wanted to visit, kind of like Disneyland, only not. end tangent]

So Michael is on vacation and he's visiting family, people who have kids. He went with a nephew and got up the gumption to leap from a 20 foot high rock, leap over the edge and kaboom into the water below. Wow! How liberating. Standing on the edge of all that air and just going for it. Would I do it? Ya, I probably would too. Always so fearful, I've been, afraid to look stupid, what people would think of me. Always that innate sense of being watched and looked at, people tittering about me behind their fanning hands. Why? I mean, why would I think people care that much about me or what I'm doing? It's both totally insecure and self-involved at the same time. I suppose, however, that's what insecurity is all about. One's own self-involvement. So focused on yourself, you can't see anyone else. So dumb. I'm so over it. Blah.

Andrea and I went to Adobe Net and watched this Beatles show, a bunch of locals taking turns singing Beatles song. I'm not a Beatles fan, so I of course knew none of the songs except "Twist and Shout." Yes, I know, I'm so not cool. Anyway, I walked up and she and Brandon (visiting relative) were standing there. She exclaimed, "Oh my gosh! You are so beautiful! You look like Catherine Zeta Jones." I almost fell off my feet. Catherine Zeta Jones is not the first person that comes to my mind when I look in the mirror - she weighs about a million pounds less than me for one thing. Yes, I know, I've gabbled on about my poor self-image before in this cyber-realm more than my fair share, but I am just now realizing how vast is the disconnect between my Anea Reality and the majority of the world's Anea Reality. The image in my head of what I look like makes me physically react when I think about it. My belly does nauseous flips and my head bows forward as though I could hide. From what? The image itself, the one that resides within my head? I caught myself doing it the day before yesterday. It made me mad.

It made me mad because I know until I can get that physical reaction to recede and take a permanent Vacation, I will probably continue to let people come around in my life who reinforce that shitty feeling. People who tell me of my inadequacies and new ones to boot. I let these pieces of me get taken away, bit by bit. I let people define and redefine who I should be. So tired. It is so, so tiring. And pointless. We have parents or siblings or friends or spouses - all these people in our lives to whom we can give ourselves up. I mastered the art. It's time to unlearn what I know and master something new.

I will send a postcard from the edge. Like Michael, I will stand on the edge of all that fear.

And
.
.
.
Just
.
.
.
Leap
.
.
.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 9:25 AM

Saturday, August 21, 2004

Falling Into Place

I met my friends Andrea and Amanda at the Coffee Garden in town this morning. I decided at the last minute to walk since it's only about 10 minutes away, so I was late. We sat and gabbed, the three of us drinking java out on the garden patio. I forget how important it is to spend time with girls. Just like I think boys need to spend time with each other. Something about the hormones needing to recognize kindred or something, a sense of place, I dunno.

-------------------

I walked home and was met with this:

Basically, my parents, after years of having a built-in plastic liner pool have opted to spend $30-some-odd grand to get a built-in fiberglass-something-or-other pool. Today it was getting dropped into place by a giant crane, the likes of which this street has probably never seen before. It's right outside of my studio. A big hole and a big pile of dirt. It ought to be pretty neat when it's done, but summer will mostly be over. But it will still be neat.

-------------------

I wrote to Andrew a week or so ago. I found his blog a while back and was immediately reminded of my all-time favorite college Lit professor, Bob Coleman. I told Andrew so when I wrote to him. I also told him because he'd reminded me of him, now I wanted to get in touch with Bob. So I did. Today. He has the same phone number he had over 10 years ago when I was his student. And his voice hasn't changed either. So we're going to try and have lunch together in the next few weeks. I wonder sometimes, what it must be like to be a teacher and see one of your students again after years, after they've lived some Life. He asked about my mom, her health. He asked about me.

Bob was the first person to hold up a mirror in front of me and ask me who I was. As I was becoming an adult, shaping into the person I would be for the rest of my life. He was the first person to ask me my identity. He meant it, I think, from the perspective of one who recognizes in another an attempt to subvert a part of their existence, a person who only associates with bits and pieces of who they are. Bob is black. With the most facile mind I've ever encountered. In class, he'd intimated on more than one occassion that the color of one's skin could have very little to do with the color of one's mind. He wasn't passing judgement on it, not overtly anyway. He was asking us to look at that, ask ourselves why Toni Morrison's character, Pecola, in The Bluest Eye wanted to look like Shirley Temple. He was the first person who asked me what color skin my mind had. I didn't know. I'd never thought about it. He was the first person who asked me what I was trying to hide.

I went to Italy because of Bob. He somehow convinced my mom that I needed to go there on a year-long college program. So I went. And he was right. I did need to go there. I did need to see all that whizzing-past color and clamor and clarity. This Hawaiian girl went off to Italy for 3 years and found a part of herself she didn't even know she'd had. The part she'd been trying to hide. Maybe if I'd stayed there longer, the lesson could have stuck a little better and I wouldn't have forgotten. I would have remembered where I was, the place I inhabited. Maybe then I wouldn't have left to go looking for the bluest eye. Maybe I would have looked in the mirror at the girl with the almond eyes and believed, unshakably, that she was beautiful, brown eyes and all.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 3:48 PM

Thursday, August 19, 2004

treasure

Alone, I sit here at night, reading or watching a movie or listening to music or writing. I am spending a lot of time alone. Strange for someone as extraverted as I am. But it has been necessary. My walks, more surprisingly, are most enjoyable experienced alone. Always I have assumed that I didn't like exercising alone. But I do. I actually do. I don't have to worry about another person. I can walk faster or slower or go up inclines or sprint. I can take as long as I want or speed it up. I can push myself. I can walk until my lungs burn from the effort. And when I reach the point, after Ravenswood Winery and up the hill, where the road ambles between the vineyards, the sun is balanced atop the northwest hills of the valley, there I can stop, stretch my calves, and drink the water I've carried for 2 miles.

I stood there tonight, at that point, breathing hard and drinking. I was filled with a sort of awe, a secret pleasure. I was totally caught in that moment, in that sunlit moment when the quality of light hints toward October and the autumnal bite of the air. Tonight that sunlight suggested the kind of light I remember in Italy, in Florence, sitting in the piazza near my school, on the green bench with the black ironwork arms, the ATAF city buses galumphing past with their diesel clouds and stuttering brakes. Sitting there studying my Italian lesson, mothers in heels and children and scrawny dogs with red collars, the baked-rosemary smell from the bakery down the viale. And overhead the bats came in a smoky line, out from the eaves of the centuries-old buildings, their metallic voices chirping above the city commotion. Looking up, the drop-rise flight of the bats, the black inverted scallop of their wings crosscut by the last light of the setting sun. Over a decade later, that memory pitched itself forward and grounded me.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 9:06 PM

Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Incidente!

There's something about a nice, crunchy collision to sort of bring things home to you in a paradoxically sped-up, slow-motion stop action film kind of way. I know that doesn't seem like it could possibly make sense, but that was what it was like. I can think back and see each second right before the impact so clearly, like every moment was stretched to the limits of its time.

I was in Stockton, I drove there for a meeting this morning. A 2-hour drive. The intersection was weird, but I think more than that, I just felt discombobulated. My head is half off my neck these days. The accident didn't really surprise me. It was almost as if I expected it to happen. And it was totally my fault. Me, the insurance woman. The company wheels have a big crunch on the driver's side rear door. Thank goodness we were only going about 5 mph. No injuries other than my pride. I haven't had an accident since I was in high school. Cripes.

I'm thankful no one was hurt. I'm thankful we were at a stoplight and not driving on the freeway. I'm thankful it was mundane. I'm thankful the car is still driveable. I'm just thankful.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 6:47 PM

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

Created in Thine Image

As a kid, I had these ideas about what God was. These ideas were based on a very obscure sort of understanding I had of the Bible, heard in Catholic sermons and peeked between the cover of the Bible itself. I had a very small Bible that an aunt had given me, a nubbed leather cover with tissue-paper pages. It was hard to read, there were lots of thous and thees and thines and thousts and old words that sounded like antiques. But I'd read through it and I had these weird ideas about who and what God was. Mostly based on the Old Testament. God seemed like he was mad all the time. And then He decided He needed to send a Son to earth and I thought that meant that God could now stop being mad all the time. Because now he had a kid. That was my own kid-brain trying to reason and figure this all out. I had no guidance from my parents on that count, and Catholic school was a lot of memorizing of Scripture versus really understanding what all that Scripture was telling me.

I was relating all this last night to Tim, my pastor (do I get to still call him "my pastor" if I have been absent from church, if I am contemplating divorce? What are the rules? How does this work?). He was kind of silent on the other end as he listened to me. "Hmm. Well, see, it's dangerous when we start to give God human attributes like what you've just described. Its dangerous because it leaves us open to being disappointed by a God that is not God but who is an equal." That made sense to me. And I also can think back and remember why it was I did that as a kid, where I got it from.

See, you read things like "Created in His image" and you make these leaps. You wonder, "Do I look like God? Am I mentally kinda like God? How am I created in his image?" It's confusing. And without ballast, you patchwork your understanding and hope for the best. I told Tim I used to have this view of faith as casting out a large net and whatever I caught for the day was what God intended for me to have. He told me that was fatalism[n : a philosophical doctrine holding that all events are predetermined in advance for all time and human beings are powerless to change them]. Since I don't know anything about fatalism, I wasn't going to deny that.

He said, "The boat is there, you just need to step aboard.
I replied, "I don't even know where the boat is.
Apparently I haven't asked for directions.

Faith.
Belief.
Trust.
Acceptance.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:44 PM

Monday, August 16, 2004

Could Be Hazardous to Your Health

So I cleaned like a dervish yesterday. Crazy cleaning. I mean, the manaical kind. I spent 3 hours on the bathroom. Took out everything that wasn't bolted down and sprayed the sucker down. Ceiling, walls, floor, window. I used this stuff called Kaboom on the shower and some other Scrubbing Bubbles stuff on the walls. I inhaled so many chemicals, I think my lungs have perma-chem lesions. I had the ladder halfway in the shower and halfway out and managed to ding up my very lovely-though-now-chipped pedicure. I never get pedicures. So the one I got I managed to remove with Scrubbing Bubbles and stub-o-the-toes. I'm assuming no fungus will ever find a friendly home on the bottom of my feet now. I also ripped off 2 fingernails at the quick, bonked my head on the ceiling a few times, took out a lamp while carrying the double sized mattress out the door, scratched the hardwood while dragging a 3-door 6 foot tall armoire across the floor, and lost the TV remote.

I finally bought the 2 curtain rods I've wanted for 3 years.
I finally bought baskets to organize all the bathroom junk.
I finally got the art piece from my birthday 2 years ago framed.
I finally vacuumed behind the bookshelves and chased away the spiders.
I finally, I finally, I finally did these things I've been putting off for years.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 2:09 PM

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Tearin' It Up

This studio looks like it got ransacked. Well, I guess it did. I'm on the rampage. Clearing things out, throwing things away. I've had so much of this stuff for years, it seems silly to keep hanging on. Clothes and furniture and pens and papers and files and CRAP. The dirt is everywhere, the ceiling, the floors, the walls, the air. I want a space that it light - both with color and a lack of heaviness. It is both symbolic and necessary.

I'm listening to my music again, music I have kept silent for years. I'm singing out loud, smiling at the lyrics of old songs I'd forgotten could make me feel so goofy and silly and giggly. Marvin Gaye, The Fixx, INXS, Aretha, Dusty Springfield, Kikki Dee, Heart, AC/DC, Seal, Shania Twain, The Go Gos, KD Lang, Johnny Lang, Madonna, Dwight Yoakim, Pat Benetar, Live, U2, Van Halen, Duran Duran, Bonnie Raitt, Irene Grandi, Jovanotti, etc. etc. All that music, both sublime and mainstream, that is so much a part of my history. Dave introduced me to other great music - Dead Can Dance, Damien Jurado, Magnetic Fields, Lamb, Red House Painters, The Chameleons. He reintroduced me to music I'd never paid much attention to like Joy Division, Morrisey, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey. But all those Anea standards, they got brushed under the carpet because I knew he didn't like any of it. I mean, I just couldn't understand how you could not sing a rousing shower rendition of Raitt's Something to Talk About? But I stopped. Stopped the shower songs and the stereo-sing-alongs. I had to memorize the things Dave liked so I could keep him lifted. Why? Why always this need to please, so strong, I forget who I am? Another question to be answered.

So in the midst of my rippin' and tearin' yesterday, I stopped long enough to go with a friend to Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues at the Napa Valley Opera House. I really didn't know what to expect. I'd heard of the book, but not anything about the play. The 3 artists who performed the monologues were Jill Eikenberry, Victoria Tennant, and Lisa De Bruin. I was a little leary because, well, the word vagina was in the title. Yipe! But it really was quite brilliant. Eikenberry did a piece called The Flood that was funny and poignant and wonderful with her New Yawk accent and character. I did not expect Tennant's ability to perform, her quiet British accent and unassuming looks. But she did the Bosnian refugee piece with such a complete transformation of self into character, I was breathless. Her accent was an echo back into the Albanian womens' voices I remembered from my years in Italy.

Now, I am back within my rampage. Time to cut into the space I have spent so long ignoring.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 10:08 AM

Friday, August 13, 2004

Rememory

I'm in Ft. Bragg at the Surf & Sand Lodge. For any not familiar with California geography, it's right on the coast, right about where the top quarter of the state would begin. It neighbors Mendocino to the south and if you continue driving along the 1 (which currently sails right past my hotel room window - so much for the corporate rate; I do really like this hotel, though...), you wend your way through the old growth redwoods commixed with the new growth redwoods until you get to the 101. From there, through the low-hanging cloud cover, you'll pass by towns with names like Redway and Myers Flat and Weott and Fortuna and Eureka and Crescent City until you can eventually drive yourself right into another state, namely Oregon (or something more Zen, perhaps).

It's beautiful country; to use an overly-done clichè, it truly is majestic. The fog can drag you down if you are accustomed to sunshine and tank tops. But when the sun does pop out from behind the cumulus heap in the sky, oh my Lord. There is a clarity in the air that is like a gift, really, like a blessing, that's how you feel - blessed. You can see into the distance so far, you feel as though your vision has improved! The colors are intense and precious - redwoods, mountains, sky, beach, ocean. Emerald and obsidian and lapis lazuli and amber and sapphire, all in this vast treasure chest that surrounds you. It is lovely and rare, so when you do witness these sunlit days, the memory is rendered indelible.

I've been here on business. I have 2 agents here who are usually ignored because of their location. It takes about 3 hours to drive here from Sonoma. But I came and I'm glad I did though I could barely get myself out of bed on Wednesday when I left. I have walked along the beach path both days I've been here. Five miles to the slatted wood bridge and back, fog chugging in off the Pacific, wind in your face on the walk back. Being away from home has been necessary, more than I knew. Dave's things are all gone from our studio except for one bookshelf he left with a post-it note: For your books. USE IT. Two book collecting fools, there never was enough room for all the books.

I think it's easy, reading my words, to think I am feeling sorry for myself. But I realize this medium is deceptive. I made this choice, and the feeling is one of being laid bare, not of having something taken away from me, other than my defenses. It is strange, like the new skin that forms after a burn. Pink and tender, new skin growing right beside and into the skin you've had forever. Memories, the memories that have welled up. How are we able to forget so much over time? The physical memories of gemstone redwood mornings always supplant the emotional memories of babygirls who shield themselves from not understanding why something hurts so much. We all have it. We do. The skin, of the body and heart, it is so tender.

Thoughts of what once was mingle and tangle with thoughts of what will be. There is sadness and loss. There is surprise and hope. There is, right now, a sense of keeping track of the days by planting my feet firmly in the particular day within which I find myself. Today is Friday. That's where I am.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 8:50 AM

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

that's the breaks

Funny thing about writing your life into words on this forum - people have no qualms telling you exactly how they feel! Whee. Oh well. The comment by Xen Monk is richly deserved upon my head from his perspective. I can't and won't argue with him about it. I did send him an email. Which was probably stupid. But I got upset. I mean, he called me a "slef" absorbed and a bonehead and a cliche. Oh, rue the day I was ever born upon this earth! ::gasp:: (<--sarcasm)

But really, I did get upset because the truth in his statement is that YES I should have done all this soul-searching before I married Dave. I really should have. And I thought I had. I mean, I really thought I "knew what I was doing." But I also expected the truth. From him. Before I married him. And that, perhaps, can be attributed to being overly naive on my part. And maybe I should have also booted his rear gone when our pastor told me to the first time. Wouldn't he know? I mean, he's the one who married us after all. But I didn't listen.

Oh, what does it matter? Really. Where I stand is right here. And Dave's actually seriously looking for a job for the first time in over a year. This could be the best thing that ever happened for him, who knows. Boost his sense of being able to do things without his wife doing it for him. Give him some self-respect. Everything I have written here has been with counsel from our pastor, from Christian & non-Christian friends, from family. The consensus is that it really IS time for Dave to do some of this life on his own. There is not, however, any consensus on a divorce being the answer.

This is the dirty laundry, folks. This is what life comes down to in the nitty gritty time. We are none of us without "sin," however you choose to define that in human terms.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 10:50 PM

Monday, August 09, 2004

strip

I have been without words for days. Perhaps because emotions have been turning inside for so long. Not just these last weeks since Dave has been in Mexico, but for years, perhaps the lifetime of this woman, of me.

Soul-searching, I think that's what it's called. It's funny because I have this picture in my head of what soul-searching looks like. It's a big halogen flashlight gripped in the hands, held by both hands, one of those big emergency lights of neon yellow. It's held in your hands and it's heavy but it has to be because it has to illuminate all that darkness. And if you're on the soul-search by choice, you cast the lamp, side to side, into the void, into all the blackness. And it's not the darkness of caves even, where sounds are echoed back, where when you shine the light you will at least see the stalagmites and dripping walls. This is a void, where the light shines and shows nothing, just more darkness. You cast the light and hope and pray and hold that you will have enough faith. This is the soul-search of one whose faith in God is minimal and derelict. Whose entire life has been shaped by secular ideas and belief systems and has found those things lacking and without substance. Who has always been disappointed in & by the world.

I told Dave before he came home that things had changed, that I had changed and that nothing was the same. I told him in an email and I was as cryptic in my email as I have been here, in this cyberspace. I told him what I had to say needed to be said in person. I told him I would be coming to the airport with our pastor, Tim, and his wife Jan to pick him up. His email back to me was all anguish and raw emotion. It was obvious in his words that he knew. That he knew more than I even had to say. I feared, at first, that he would not be on the plane, but the family that he lived with in Mexico gave him good counsel, they were good people. They held him in ways of which I do not think they are even aware. My timing couldn't have been worse. I did not want to say anything to him upon homecoming. But there was no other way. No more pretending. No more.

We have been together 3 years. And for 3 years I have been the glue, I have been the force that has held us both together, as individuals and as a couple. He has been shamefully unworthy of everything I have given. He has been selfish to degrees that narcissists find comforting. He has not upheld his vows to me as a wife. And in it all I, the wife, have let him. A diseased thing, we've had. Self-serving, I guess. I think we always find that by which we need to faced. He has thrown in my face my unworthiness as a wife. My physical lacks, my unattractiveness to him. I knew it was there from the beginning, but I thought losing weight would "fix it" because he told me it would. I thought that was what the problem was. Then I thought working out with a trainer would "fix it" because he told me it would. I thought that was what the problem was. And we got married. Me under the illusion that I needed to have to feel properly loved. And come to find out weight and fitness were not the issues and it was something else entirely that could not be "fixed" unless I was willing to undergo surgery. Wow. Whoa. Wham.

Gee willikers, Beav. Why'dja go and marry me?
Better yet, why'd I go and marry you?

But I am a stubborn lady. I was going to make it work, but gosh or by golly. I'd taken a vow and I would lead by example. I would show what I good wife could be. So I did. I did everything I knew to show he was the man I had chosen to be with. Again and again, to the utter disbelief and amazement of my friends and family, I stuck by this man who knew nothing of joy and only of misery and selfish introspection. I stayed there. Every time he embarrassed me by not talking to anyone at parties or by disappearing into a dark corner, I would just shrug it off, chalk it up as, "Oh, that's just Dave." Every time he would talk about that thing that made him lustful (not me), I would close my eyes and ask God to please let him see what he had in me, all of my good qualities, all of my smarts and creativity and humor. I know I can't stop the lust, but please, God, just don't let him talk about it anymore or show me in other ways.

And things got really bad this last December. And I thought he would leave. And I wasn't sure that I wanted that. But he didn't and I didn't and he seemed to really be trying. Not as depressed, not as self-absorbed. And he actually seemed happier and he said he was. But I was still working 12-16 hour days. I was still ignoring my health, my body. I gained back almost every pound of the 50 I had lost. Nothing mattered having to do with me. I had to carry Dave so he could have a better life. I was still hearing odds & ends about his lust and how it didn't relate to me. And the lengths to which I would go to make him want me. Oh, the disregard for my own honor, my own respect, to save his.

It is a sickness, this thing I have. This need I have. To be adored and cherished as I am. By a man. To be seen as beautiful and perfect exactly as I am. My husband has never seen me fully nude. I will not allow it. I do not want to be touched in certain places. I hate my body with such loathing and anger, it is difficult to describe. It has never gotten me anything but hurt. I have never let it give me anything but pain. But while Dave was gone, I started losing weight again. I started exercising and eating what I wanted when I wanted. I felt like a scab was finally forming on that part of my heart, if that's in fact where all this pain resides. And I was relieved, relieved even as I missed him that I didn't have to deal with him. With his unemployment (it is a choice, it is), his depression, his heaviness. The closer the time drew for Dave's return, the anxiety built and I knew I would have my scab picked clean off so the blood could once again flow and I would lose more of me. All over again.

And that was it. I just couldn't do it. Love can stunt us when we abuse it. I abused my love for him. So did he. Mutually beneficial. So I asked for help from our pastor, from friends from Church. I needed some groundwork, needed to understand. And everyone agreed and still agrees that Dave will have to forge a new way for himself, without Anea rescuing him, so he can be a man and not a little boy. So he can earn himself the respect he craves. His faith in God, in Christ, has been forged in the fire of my refusal of him. Often the case, when we are faced with loss, that we turn to faith. My own faith, my nebulous and untempered faith, is weak and pulled upon from every corner right now.

I am not nor was I raised a strong Christian. I had a Catholic school upbringing that I thought was majorly flawed, but it did at least set a foundation for an understanding of faith in something bigger than myself. But it was not nurtured. Neither of my parents ever practiced faith though they practiced religion, sort of, and only on Sundays. My understanding was self-taught and faulty. God the Father was much clearer to me than the Son Jesus and you might as well forget the whole thing about the Holy Spirit because I didn't get that part at all. And I sure as shootin' didn't understand how all three were one.

But I am understanding how one's faith in God, when it is real, can help one rise above their own trauma and pain and hurt and anger. I don't have this faith. But I am understanding it. Dave it being forced to rely on it. Perhaps this will make him what is referred to by Christians as a Believer. He has not been. And I know I am not. I have tried to walk a Christ-like path in the hopes of being a better person, to just give freely of myself. But I have not done a very good job. And now, at this crossroads, I stand at a juncture that can go any number of ways. The signpost above my head is a jumble of arrows pointing all over the place. If I had strong faith I would be able to give myself over to God. But I don't. I am faithless.

Dave was going to leave for Bakersfield. Today. But he has been talking to people from Church. Really good people, caring and kind and loving people. They have prayed for him and held him and counseled him. They are not like the people I knew as a kid growing up going to Catholic school. Nor are they like the TV evangelists I used to see sometimes as a kid with spit and sweat flying all over and wives with big, clumpy eyelashes, holding the hands of their philandering husbands. These people really do have a "personal relationship with Jesus." They feel Him in their lives so strongly that nothing anyone can say could every sway their Belief. It is so foreign because it's not fake. Which is rare. I respect and am amazed by that power in their lives. It isn't trite or tired. It isn't hokey or stupid. Even for me, as jaded as I feel and as faithless as I am, some of these people amaze me. They are convicted by and within their faith, differentiating between the secular and the spiritual. And able to walk a path, simply, one foot in front of the next.

These folks have been with Dave since he came home on Friday. And as a result he has decided to stay in Sonoma, separate from me, and do what he needs to do. He wants the guidance and friendship and help of these people. He wants to show me he can be the man and the husband that he should have been 3 years ago, from the beginning. He is agitated and fervent. He is convinced he can make a difference.

And perhaps he can. Perhaps it's possible. I don't know if things will change in my heart, if I can be forgiving or faithful to want to be a part of that with him. My family knows, my friends know what has gone on for 3 years because I told them, I finally said something. No surprise to them. They have seen Dave's ways and wondered why I stayed. So I just don't know. I don't know which sign I am going to follow. I don't know where I will go. I don't think it's time for me to make that decision now, but all I am sure of is that I just don't know.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 11:00 AM

Thursday, August 05, 2004

run

broken
deep cuts and twisted limbs
all broken
i am both assailant and victim

my heart breaks, inside, everything i have ever been struggles against the desire to make it all better again, to take it all back. i stand, alone, and he is broken upon my hand, my words, my true aim.
i have unraveled his heart.
i have come undone.
he bleeds on the tile, on the Mexican tile, lays there bleeding and i look through the window, watching. i plunge the knife and twist into my own heart, my own heart stilled upon the blade.
1
2
3
life & blood rush hot and warm over my hand.
it is done
all done
undone

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 12:26 PM

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

misery

I finally talked to my mom today. About everything that has been going on in my head and heart. I am in such a state of misery, I wonder how people live through these feelings. When you make a conscious decision that will have ramifications and aftereffects, the heaviness is extreme. She told me everyone has been worried about me for weeks. I let go of the load and told her everything.

I am changed.
I do not know why it takes so long to understand what you must do.
I do not know why we become what we are.
I fall with no guarantee of a net.
I plunge with no knowledge of living or dying.
I know only I must face what lies before me.
The world as I know it will soon end.

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 8:12 PM

Sunday, August 01, 2004

brink

Standing on the edge of something you do not want to face is the hardest thing you must do in this life. Fear? I suppose it is always fear. We are enslaved by these deep-seated things that lurk in our hearts because we let them.

I am not sure what has happened to me. Six weeks alone, and something has been split open. I cannot stuff it all back in, it's too late. The split is wide and the gush forth is stronger than my own will. If I stop it again, if I try to control that which is bent on opening me wide, I will not survive it. Not this time. I have spent my entire life trying to out-maneuver the consequences.

There is nothing written anywhere that says we must not suffer, that in this life we are meant to be comfortable. There is no hard & fast rule that states we are entitled to anything other than the suffering we find. There is nothing that will ever make that any different. I wish my heart was stronger. But I have heard it said that courage is continuing to step forward, one foot at a time, even when you would rather turn back. Courage, I have heard, is being scared shitless and still running through the fire even if it means the burn will peel back your skin.

In a month from now, where will I be? In a month from today, what will have happened? In a month from now, will everything have been turned upside down?

| Mrs. Botton was at it again @ 8:29 PM