Days 0619 & 0620

Ahhhh … Another glimpse of that feeling that is so totally liberating: seeing that bag of shit (appropriately dressed brown) known as Halfman and thinking: ‘What the hell were you thinking?!’ to myself.
Much joy. Very loser.
ICK ICK ICK and all that.
Plus, though I’m pretty sure he didn’t see the middle finger I proffered him as I drove by his middle ageing body, I believe he will one day. I just need to be disciplined and consistent and I will bring the joy of a deserved flipped bird into his life.
The quiet satisfactions of the angry introvert.

Days 0617 & 0618

What is sharing?
Some people seem to think it is a perfect half; that if each person involved gets the same amount, that is sharing.
I have always thought it was about each getting as close to what they need as possible while allowing the others involved to do the same.
I met a woman with twin girls in grade 2. She told me how she had to get the builder to change their house plans when she realised one of the girls’ bedrooms was 3.2cm wider than the other.
“You know how twins need everything exactly the same – to be fair.”
But I would say that isn’t ‘fair’, that’s just silliness.
And what about The Ex whose idea of sharing out pasta at dinner is to count out each piece, each noodle, so that every plate has the same amount? There isn’t more for those who are hungriest or less for those who won’t eat it all; it seems to me to be ridiculous.
Are people really so detached from life that they think ‘half’ is fair?
Half is rarely fair; all it really is is even.
And that’s just math, not justice.

Days 0615 & 0616

Everybody remembers things differently – from the subtle detail to the important bits, we all see it through our own prism. I have the ability to see myself – the physical me – through two very different prisms: when I am well I see my mirrored face as ok. I look my age. I’m not frightening, just pleasant enough with that darn scar on my chin (thanks, coffee table and poor stitching). When I’m not well I can look at the exact same face and feel totally grossed out. I am disgusting and so ugly. God, how did I live life so long when I’m so terribly hideous. Seriously, that is the difference the (im)balance of chemicals in my brain paints onto the same physical vision. And I’m not being faux modest either – I SEE the hideousness that is me when I am unwell; I don’t just feel it there. On a less deep subject, is my different gaze an indication of the different ways people different of different genders look at the same thing but see it totally differently? A woman’s laughter is flirtatious to a male, nerdy to the woman herself. A man’s actions are strong and protective to a woman, awkward to the man? A man hears his words as short and Hemingwayesque: a woman hears them as eloquent and emotional. A woman sees her clothing as dowdy: a man sees them as deliberately sexy. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? To think we see things so differently and yet share memories that build lives together?

Day 0614

Are perfect love and perfect eroticism totally different things or the same thing?
I have a feeling they may be the same, but that love is (hopefully) long and eroticism is more momentary – so intense and specific, it can’t last.
To me, being looked at – being seen by someone and wanted, that is erotic.
But these are also the ingredients of love.
Not having to speak. Talking with eyes and touch and sound that does not contain words – that is erotic.
Being comfortable in shared silence is love.
Being vulnerable and yet utterly safe; that is erotic.
And it is my definition of love.
So are they the same thing?
Is that perfect erotic moment the rabbit that the greyhound of love is chasing?
Wouldn’t that make it clear why people mistake erotic moments for love? Why a lover’s eyes staring into you, taking in your core, your liquid, skin covered being can look and feel like love. Even when it is just a moment’s happenstance? A moment stolen – literally – from another that feels magically connected and connecting?

Days 0611, 0612 & 0613

There is great symbolism in departure today.
Four years ago almost exactly I ripped my throat from the claws of my marriage. And I started a new job five days later.
I managed not to move house right away or I would have made the trifecta of life’s Hard to Do List all at once.
I had a period of that weirded-out elation that protects you right after a traumatic decision.
Work was a doddle – no deadlines – not real ones anyway. No scrutiny and an office mate who was even more introverted and detached than me.
Well that initial elation became a hard, long road which I can now drive without breaking my axles over and over again.
That office mate became Halfman, who scoured what was left of my gentle nature with his special patented Shitwash.
And today I say good bye to the workplace that accompanied me through all of that.
And as much as I’m just changing jobs, I’ve reached the point where it also feels like a line drawn around all that soul destroying crap – the brown, stinky hills of crap which have choked me, covered me, stuck to my heels etc.
Shall I go on? Cos it’s been pretty hard going.
I feel poised now though. And I’ve got that semi-scary, totally excited sense of anticipation: that thing that was my favorite part of the Happy Halfman time. The wanting. The looking forward to.
There can’t be any other Halfman experiences waiting out there for me, can there?
My luck can’t be that bad?
I hope.

Days 0609 & 0610

Still thinking about gentleness.
And how I tend to be attracted to a ‘stiff upper lip and a punch in the shoulder’ when I know I want so much to have some of the weight of dealing with stuff lifted away from me.
When I was in my blackest hole of depression, that was what I wanted so badly: to be locked up somewhere and told I didn’t have to do anything or deal with anything. That was my fantasy: disablement.
Not because that would stop me from thinking or caring but so that the burden of HAVING to do it was gone.
I just didn’t want to do it in my own anymore.
And it’s always felt like I’m doing it on my own.
My One True Love had his heart totally in the right place but came from a similarly stiff upper lip, deal with it type of family.
When we uprooted and moved to the other side of the world in our early 20s, I had to get a job within the first few months or we wouldn’t be able to afford to both be there: he would stay and I’d have to go.
So, I felt a bit of pressure to get a job. And I put a lot of that on myself.
I spent the first two weeks in this antipodean odd spot poring over papers, dropping off resumes, walking kilometers in my thrift shop work clothes in the amazingly blazing sunshine.
And then I’d sit in our shitty flat on my own and worry that i’d never get something.
I took to writing those anxieties out so I could try to expel them slightly. ‘I’ll never get a job. I’m too stupid.’ I would write over and over and over.
I did get a job, of course: I stuck out, I was naive, I was willing.
So, within six weeks I was working at my first full time salaried job, learning what COB, FYI and ‘client meetings’ meant.
About a year later, My Love found my notebook one day while I was home sick with the flu.
At this point he had stopped going outside and refusing to do anything with me. He was unwell.
He started reading those anxiety ridden pages out to me.
And then he laughed and made fun of me.
I can only think this was his way of telling me he couldn’t believe I’d been so stressed and hard on myself.
But it came out as this taunting ‘you’re such an idiot’ speech.
It hurt me
Like I cannot explain: like someone you love leaving you to be eaten by wolves.
And laughing while they did it.
It is in imagining a gentle version of someone reacting to that, that I can see how hurtful that was; how unnecessary.
I’m the sort who always eventually gets back up when I’m knocked down, but imagining the feeling of being treated gently in that situation brings me to my knees.

Days 0606, 0607 & 0608

If you asked me to describe the most marked difference between men and women in terms of character, this is what I would say: as a group women seem more able to pair gentleness with decisiveness, softness with assertiveness.
As a group, the men I’ve met are not so successful at this. There tends to be one or the other; not an imbalance so much as an absence.

Halfman and my current boss in particular show gentleness, softness and an utter lack of decisiveness. When decisions are made, they are entirely passive and so not decisions at all, but life getting fed up with waiting for them to make up their minds.

The Love of My Life was decisive, and thoughtful in many ways but not gentle. Not gentle in touch. Not gentle in treatment. I love a rough and tumble tackle into a. Snowdrift more than the Next Girl but I also like to be caught and held above the hard bottom of life once in a while. I want to be saved from knowing I can feel the pea under the mattress.

Because I already know it’s there.

There must be men out there – beyond the Prince Charmings I conjure in my head – who can combine the two things.

Maybe?

Days 0604 & 0605

Are dreams the mind’s detritus or do they reveal your deepest thoughts?

This question posed by a great podcast (Wiretap – find it here) got me thinking about all the silliness and decidedly *not* silliness of the dreams that ooze and zip around my brain.

For years and years I had recurring dreams that I was being bitten by vampires and couldn’t scream.

Then, when my first long-term relationship was going all to shite, I had recurring dreams that I was being buried alive.

I still have recurring dreams that I can’t open my eyes and look directly at people.

When I change antidepressants (which has happened a few times), I get extremely violent dreams where I am crushing people’s heads with jagged rocks and bricks. I have woken up from these horrific dreams with the smell of blood in my nose.

And, of course, I have those dreams that lead to total embarrassment where somehow I end up having sex with someone who I am totally not attracted to but who I inevitably bump into early the next morning in real life.

In some ways I am hoping all that is detritus and yet …

Day 0603

Apparently there are all these obscure ‘rules’ men are aware of that women (or me anyway) have no clue about.

But apparently that doesn’t make them any less true: I know because I chose to differ and was corrected.

Number 1
If a woman agrees to go out for a drink with you after 6pm on a Friday, she is interested in you as more than a friend.
Yup. Okee dokee. Did not know that one when I accepted an invite from A Friend and colleague. I had zero intentions but he later told me he wasn’t sure I liked him (as in like liked him) until I gave him The Sign by accepting his 6:30pm invitation.

Number 2
If a woman looks a man in the eyes, she is interested in him sexually.
Wow. I meet absolutely everyone in the eye the first time I meet them, if not every time.
I am one hell of an undiscerning nympho.

Number 3 (all the better for being delivered by a counsellor)
You should suspect your partners and double check their stories or you’re letting yourself down. Hmmmm. I’m sure that advice had nothing at all to do with Ms Counsellor turning out to be a friend of Halfman’s poor, mistreated wife.

Day 0602

How do you celebrate yourself? I don’t know how. I always feel like I’m not just being happy, but that I’m forcing myself onto someone and being selfish if I ask them to celebrate with me. And by ‘celebrate’ I mean share my good news with them.

Three nights ago, I got some great news – and some high praise – from someone I respect and which will lead to something great. It was an achievement, I guess. And a personal one.

So I went and spent the evening drinking a bit of sparkling wine with my farting dog. At least I didn’t have to share any of the bubbles. But I would have preferred to. As tired out as I was by the process that led to the good news, I could have used some reflected happiness around me.

If only so I didn’t hit the: ‘but will I actually be able to do this thing they think I can do?’ stage quite so quickly.

And then I started thinking.

I always did really well in school — not because I was excessively smart but because I worked hard and found it interesting. I’d come home with report cards that noted zero absences and where my lowest mark was an 89. My parents would lovingly praise me. And then ask me not to talk about it ‘too much’ because it would make my sister (whose absences were higher than her percentages) feel bad.

And of course I did that. Because I didn’t want to make her feel bad. And I didn’t want to be selfish.

One of the moments I remember most from the blossoming of my time with He Who Shall Not Be Named was how he would tell people when I achieved something and congratulate me.

That ended eventually, of course. Every achievement (and there were less and less of them) became something I did to him. Something selfish and thoughtless.

But in the beginning it wasn’t like that. And it was new and different for me.

To be celebrated.

So. Do I just take the plunge and make it happen in future? Do I invite friends out for a drink when there is good news?

Or do I sit at home looking at my beautiful view of the river, letting the dog’s farts mix with the scent of the sparkling?