i can take it

it's not that i can't take the punches.

but really, i am tired of listening to you.

home

i woke up pissed. i hardly slept last night because i was so sick to my stomach i wanted to shoot myself in the face. now this is just an expression. but really if you could do one thing for me, one thing, i wouldn't even ask you to save my leg. fuck. i would just ask you to fix my belly. and these things go.

yeah i woke up pissed. just because. just because.

my respite it over. i am tired. there are belongings to be divided. i will miss the things i am giving up for real happiness. things like having someone who will do it for it no matter what. or someone to kick when you are down.

'cause i want to kick something. i want to hit something. i want to fuck it up and leave it broken.

or i already did. or i don't care what you think about me.

or how about some days, some mornings, some times i am sick of my body and the ways it reminds me of that day. or how about some mornings i want you to fix me and when you don't i hate you too. or how about some days i just don't care how i sound to you.

chi-town

i love this city, this chicago. the deep dish pizzas, the 2 dollar drafts, the pretty parks, the jazz, lake michigan. i passed a night with an old college friend and we had so much fun we were mistaken for a couple. it's nice to have those kinds of laughs with that kind of person who gets who you are and where you have been. someone who speaks the language of ethnography and diane arbus and who knows who you mean when you refer to a girl named "manatee".

i have spent even more of my trip alone though. because i want to. because i remembered how much i need solitude sometimes. my second night here i found an indian restaurant in a new part of town. the spread was impressive. delicious. beautiful. i realized that at that moment not one person knew where i was and something about that made me feel lighter than i have felt in years. and i like to eat out alone. to people watch and to not share and to not care what anyone else is saying. and i like drinking coffee again. going to the gym each night (12 miles is pretty good for someone who was once not sure if she would ever walk without a cane again).

and i remembered things about myself again. like that my fear of athlete's foot is stronger than my love for steam rooms. and that i am not afraid of city streets and i'm not afraid of sleeping alone and i am not afraid to tell the truth and sometimes you have to learn to love even the worst you.

i leave for kazakhstan in less than a month. i leave for kazakhstan in 27 days. i leave for kazakhstan in 4 weekends and three days. and sometimes i can hardly breath to think about it. i haven't taken a chance, i haven't reached for a star, i haven't believed in these things in so so long. and i could use an adventure. and i could use a dream. and i want to be brave and i am becoming these things.

i am becoming the person i have always meant to be.

i can't hide

i remember the first time we looked at rings. i had a broken heart (literally - it was a virus that effed up my sinus node and walking to the bathroom made my heart pound so hard my head would flutter. i passed time in mass general, rhode island hospital, newton-wellesley. i had ekg's and iv's and blow up leg cuffs to keep me from getting blood clots. i used a bed pan and watched my heart rate on a monitor shoot up to 200 just laying in bed then go all the way down to 30. in the end they told me there was nothing they could do. in the end they said they didn't know why it was happening and that they didn't know that it would ever stop now that it was mine. they mentioned pace makers and life spans and potasium levels patted my back and said they were sorry. i left rhode island hospital with a prescription for weekly blood tests, three bottles of pills and orders to lay flat on my back if my heart rate went over 150. i carried a stop watch to calculate my pulse. i became afraid to even take a shower if i was home alone). i had my questions. i had my doubts. there were so many parts of me that weren't fufilled. but hell. it was nice to have something that i could say for sure. because that month, those years, in the moments when i layed flat on my back on the floor waiting for my breath to come, my pulse to slow, i wasn't sure i had anything.

punches

i have a good swing but a bad land. i never protect my knuckles right. i don't know the right way to stand. i won't drink raw eggs but i feel very rocky these nights lifting weights and listening to my ipod in the angriest/most-triumphant way.

i mean he's right. i mean i am a bitch. i mean i do get angry every time i walk into the living room and hear the tv and see the lethargy and the dirty dishes and the dirty towels and the dirty past and the ways he doesn't even care if any of this/us/it succeeds.

so i quarentine myself to the back corner of the house. spend hours in my bedroom reading, drawing maps of where i have been, look for a light. i answer calls, i write letters, i close my eyes and visualize white light and pink sheilds and let my head feel heavy on the floor. i exercise, i fantasize, i hypothesize. its all very 2003 post-accident for me. waiting for the fog to lift. waiting for the horn to sound. the one that starts things.

because really i am not a bitch. really i am not rocky. really i am ready for the me i will be when i can finally put to rest all of this.

blogging

some people use blogs for inspiration. they write the things they want to be. some for motivation. a call to arms. a call to harms. some people blog to share information. salutations. to keep up family relations like everyone is dying to know what you wore on halloween. maybe its a kids thing. i have none so i know no one cares. or a me thing. the things i have to say might not make my nana and papa feel all that warm and fuzzy inside. i don't even have much to share. just that it's a monday night. i got a little drunk at a central square bar with a colleague after work. and i closed my eyes on the subway ride home and almost forgot where i was going and even better, where i was coming from.

divorce

sometimes things don't work the ways they were supposed to. or maybe they do. but not the ways we planned. sometimes it takes years to listen to that voice that is inside you. i like to write it this way. to make it universal. to make it yours too. because it feels worse to say i am 31 years old and i realized too late the mistake i had made. so i am 31 and i am getting a divorce and i have not even been married a full calendar year and i know what you are thinking so you don't need to say it and i know what you are imagining so you don't need to draw it but the truth is i want to get out before the scars form. i want to fix it before we break each other so badly it takes years to recover the things we had been. i want you to know i know how this sounds. i want you to know i know how this sounds. i want you to know i know how this sounds.