the history that sticks to your feet.

leftovers.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:18:47 GMT

i have a lot of exes going through marital/relationship issues right now. they tell me about them, ask my advice, and invariably during the course of things admit that i was the best lover/girlfriend/connection/most loyal/etc and so forth they ever had.

i hate this.

why did you all walk away then? why are you married to your frigid/cheating/stupid/repressed/sucks in bed/dramatastic wife and i'm here alone? why the holy fuck am i sitting here letting you all cry cry cry on my shoulder when i know damn well the favor wouldn't be returned? you left. you all left. this is not my fucking job anymore. you HAVE a wife/girlfriend/whatever to hold you in the middle of the night when you're scared and sad and i've got a fucking pillow and a few meaningless platitudes about how i'm supposedly so very awesome but still, apparently, not good enough.

so i feel like really, the only thing i'm quite good for is for a good lay, but then when i try to capitalize on that, kink dot com never calls me back but then feature amateur girls who are not anywhere as cute as me.

so i guess i'm just good as an emotional dumping ground.

as pete put it recently, when i tried to tell him that what i really needed from a relationship was a safe place, to be able to put my worries down and have someone help me shoulder them, he said "but i thought you were always going to be the strong one, because you already are."

i'm not. i'm weak. i'm tired. i'm scared. i want to be held. i want to not be taken advantage of. i want my love to not be wasted and gobbled up by people who just assume that i'm strong enough to not need love and care in return. i want someone to notice that, sometimes, i need others to hold me up, too.

assholes.

new meme!

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:10:52 GMT

do you have an amazon.com account? I bet you do. Have you heard about the new payphrase thing, where you create a 2 to however-many-words-you-want phrase that links directly to your default payment method and shipping address so you can pay for stuff quickly without having to log in?

Well, when you log in and go to set up this service, Amazon helpfully suggests a payphrase for you, and the suggestions are hilarious. You can refresh or reopen the page to get new varieties...

Mackenzie's Partial Integrity
Mackenzie's Tentative Breath
Mackenzie's Best Aim
Mackenzie's Personal Positions

and one very suited to this medium...

Mackenzie's Mellow Murmurs

stream of consciousness

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:35:11 GMT

i've been spending my time
cleaning house
pulling down cobwebs
sweeping the dust from the corners
returning borrowed metaphors
sorting it all into boxes
and locking them up
lifting them onto dark shelves
knowing full well nothing good ever came from having their contents on display
finally found a way to be orderly
and trying to find fulfillment
in that smug satisfaction
and trying to pretend
that it really doesn't hurt
to know that no one cares to look

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

so much silence

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:27:21 GMT

I haven't felt like I've had too much to say, but I really ought to post if I'm going to bother with an lj.

I moved into my apartment and really enjoy not being homeless, but much to my very introverted, gets-exhausted-quickly-by-social-interaction, needs-tons-of-time-alone self's surprise, I've been having a really hard time adjusting from two months of being constantly in the presence of friends or family to going to being alone or only with one small child 90% of the time. I miss people terribly, and even tho in the first three weeks I've had 6 people over for significant periods of time, and spent several evenings with friends, plus stitch n bitch, I feel socially neglected. How weird is that?

Of course, I think part of that is remaining hurt from someone I was really falling for suddenly going from "i feel so connected to you" to "no, i can't handle us being more than friends right now, but we'll be the best of friends" to "i don't want to have anything to do with you so i'm not even going to acknowledge your attempts to communicate with me." I feel sort of weird and guilty that this sort of non-relationship caused me much more emotional strife than the dissolution of my marriage, but life is weird like that.

I have been missing Pete lately a lot, although I realize what I miss is not the reality of us together but the person I thought he was during the months and months of our long-distance romance. I miss a fantasy I guess, although I thought it was plenty real at the time. Talking to him and encountering how douchey, self-centered, and one-dimensional he is yet again usually fixes it though.

I have been steering away from the fetish world since returning because a) I don't think there's too many people I want to play with that are available to play with me for whatever reason b) a scathing email sent upon my leaving because i didn't think i'd have to encounter this person again might make several club nights awkward, or it might not and c) my attentions were elsewhere. Now i'm rethinking all that. It might be that I've gone without adult touch in a few weeks, but suddenly I'm craving it again. I do realize it's cyclical for me though, craving it vs. being tired of it. I should find a way to not overload myself during cravings, maybe.

I think my mother is developing dementia or some kind of psychosis related to her depression and illness or SOMETHING that is causing her to re-write memories of my and my oldest sister's childhoods to fit in her current, very paranoid worldview. When we contradict her about something even fairly harmless (ie .. I was a latchkey kid in 4th and 5th grade, but she now insists I went to a daycare through the end of 6th grade because she would NEVER leave a 10 year old unsupervised for two hours) she gets inappropriately enraged and accuses whoever's disagreeing with her of having a skewed memory and trying to intentionally upset her. She actually stopped speaking to my grandma over one of these incidents, which was about dining room chairs. She also got it in her head during an incident where Matthew got put into time out and was screaming and yelling cause he was pissed that I abuse him. For the record, during the screaming part I wasn't even on the same floor of the house. So I guess she believes I can batter him with telekinesis or the force or something. The whole idea is ludicrous. The topper is that their house is out of control dirty. Dog excrement on the floor from a beagle they never bothered to housebreak. A cat box that you can't even get to to clean that's been overflowing for weeks. Laundry piled almost to the ceiling. 6 huge bags of trash in the kitchen, buying paper plates to eat off since all their dishes are dirty, a living room strewn with mcdonald's wrappers and tv dinner trays and sticky glasses and half-eaten candy, rooms in the basement you can't walk in because they are piled 4 feet high with miscellaneous crap that no one needs.

I'm at a loss as to how to help her because I have no legal authority to do anything for her medically. My step-dad is theoretically of sound mind even if he believes that supporting her and helping her means telling her she's perfect and always right even when she's alienating her family and her memories are clearly messed up with hard evidence that she's wrong. (ex: she was trying to tell me my dad abused me and hit us with a car when i was five. my dad died when i was three, and by all accounts from other people, worshiped the ground i walked on. she also insists my sister was born on superbowl sunday when a quick calendar check shows she was born on a saturday a week before the superbowl) he's paranoid himself and she feeds off that. they live in the country so i don't think I can call municipal police or fire marshalls about the state of the house for violating city codes. the only thing i can think to do (beyond signing them up to be on the show hoarders, which i have done - clean house only does LA area) is call CPS because the health of my 13 and 14 year old sisters is at risk. (the 14 year old is already developing severe allergies to dust and mold that can't be managed with drugs because the house is just so dirty. ) I don't want to rip apart my family tho... I just want my mom to get help and for them to get their house in order. She was a NEAT FREAK of the highest order when I was a child and our house was never, ever dirty. she was also relaxed and fun and open and spent most of her free time outside. now she almost never gets out of bed. she's 52.

it has spurred me to make sure i offer matthew the same kind of home i had growing up. we've kept the house neat as a pin so far. i have plans for a garden next summer and i've started making sure he has daily chores and does them. i took him to a classical concert, i let him stoke a fire, and stop walking with him a block sooner when i drop him off at school every day, so he doesn't end up like my sister... 14 and afraid to even walk out the front door on her own.

......

I really should write about something other than what's going on in my head.

And I love Madison.

no one you know

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:50:36 GMT

your voice spins me questions from the webs of existence itself
and your arms linger, a fortress of calm, around me a little too long
and you tell me you should be a therapist
and i scream at myself because the point
is that i want to hold your heart for safekeeping
quiet in my palms
and i wish i knew how not to love you.

life is so confusing

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:59:51 GMT

and today i really don't know how to make heads or tails of it.

i know matthew is apparently also a pretty good amateur photographer, along with the poetry:

i know my heart's been broken enough times now that i've become able, when it's minor, to just shake it off.

i know i need to work harder at getting a different job.

i know i need to work harder, period.

i know i know resonance when i feel it, but i don't often know what to do with that.

i know i still don't like children as a general thing, although there are individual children i absolutely adore. especially ones who make me robot frogs out of legos and those who surprise me with their awesomeness every day.

i know that it's hard but beneficial to be confronted with a person who is your mirror.

i know i'm beyond ready to have my own space again, but because my child support is so far behind i don't know if i'll be able to pay for it when the time comes.

i know i'm happy escape has blueberry crumb cake back. now when the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins reappear i'll be all set.

i know i love my friends.

note to self.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:17:16 GMT

it's very difficult to pretend that you are not wildly in love with someone when indeed, you are.

such situations are best avoided, really.

If I got any happier, I might just burst.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:23:43 GMT

I have an apology to make.

A couple of years ago I seriously derided a very polyamorous ex for describing his life pattern as becoming a net, an intertwined set of people who would hold him up instead of clinging to a single rope - a sole significant other. While I am still quite certain the form of polyamory he chooses is not the right thing for me, I suddenly understand completely what he meant. The recent events in my life defnitely had the potential to end up tragic, but I have such an amazing net of friends who all reached out to catch me that I find myself deliriously happy,loved, and cradled instead. So, Gray, I'm sorry for being so nasty about this whole concept because you were absolutely right.

The kind of gratitude I've been feeling lately has been almost overwhelming. I can't think of what I ever did to deserve so much love and care, and regardless, find myself excited to be able to someday return it or love it forward. I wake up in strange beds in different houses and feel how lucky I am to be there and whisper out thank you to the universe in the middle of the night. I curl up next to my cuddle friends and breathe their scents and understand the difference between being fortunate in one's affairs and being truly blessed with love and joy and challenge and understand how much I have to be thankful for, every little bit of it.

Things are going well. I'm still looking for additional work and I have some logistical things I really need to get on top of ... I get distracted by wonderful friends and lovely touches of skin and incredibly comfy beds and captivating conversation and I know I need to be a little more vigilant because I'm not totally out of the woods yet. I know, though, that this time I did the right thing, and I feel like I can meet any challenge that presents itself and that everything is going to work out and be wonderful for a long, long while.

So, Mack*, how do you really feel?

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:03:07 GMT

I have another friend who is separating from his spouse at the moment. Unlike me, he's devastated by this turn of events, and whenever he talks to me he projects all this tragedy onto my situation, like he needs me to be as torn up about the idea of leaving my marriage as he is about his. (I think to validate his worldview, often negated by his wife's actions, that marriages are always worth trying to save.) So when I post things here and there that make it obvious how much happier I've been in the past week than I have in the past 6 months, he sends me all these emails asking me to tell him how I “really” feel.

So this is how I really feel.

The whole time I was in CA I was in a state of mental and emotional bemuddlement. Mostly I just felt stuck, an immense sense of inertia. I had no idea how I really felt about my marriage as a whole or california otherwise, and I wasn't sure how or if that would change upon my leaving. When I said goodbye and pulled away, I was a little sad, and hearing Pete's old music on my ipod during the drive back made me nostalgic for the person that I once-upon-a-time deeply loved and thought I knew. I have been telling myself to not have any plan or expectations right now, to let things become clear and resolve as they will, to let myself flow where the universe takes me.

Clarity came the minute I walked into my mom's house, and even more so when I got to Madison for a day on Friday. I felt so overwhelmed with love and care in a way I'd been starving for for months. Walking about in Madison gave me a feeling of belonging I'd been missing, something I'd known I wasn't going to find in a seminary community, but I didn't know I wouldn't find it at all in the bay area due to monetary/asocial spouse situations. The hugs, cuddles, smiles of my friends, hokey as it sounds, filled me with joy. My interview went really well, my new apartment is wonderful (CLAW FOOT TUB), and I feel optimistic and happy and excited and not at all like I've lost all my momentum. I feel like my soul, my identity, stopped sleeping and came out to shine again.

I know if things had worked out differently – if we'd lived in Berkeley or SF proper, if I'd had a job at somewhere interesting, if I'd made more of an effort to get into the kink community even without knowing anyone, I may have loved it just as much there. However, I know that the elements that would have allowed me to have the same kind of happy, vibrant life in the bay area have nothing to do with Pete, and probably would have been hampered by him. We talked about this; so often he blamed my lack of a job/money for our problems, but I pointed out that my having an external social life might have delayed the discovery of the depth of our issues, but wouldn't have stopped them from existing, or from being just as difficult to reconcile. In a way, my not finding work was a blessing for what it uncovered in our incompatibilities.

For the longest time I didn't have a name for what our biggest disparity was, then I found, through a facebook link, the study on the website yourmorals.org. (I'm not going to go into all of what that encompasses on this post, but it's a very cool study and you should go check it out). One of the questionnaires there deals with a concept called “need for cognition” and the proverbial lightbulb went on. I have a need to know things. I spend a lot of time every day reading about topics that interest me, reading the news, reading what is going on with my friends, reading maps, calendars, how-tos, books, newsletters, you name it. When I'm out and about in life I try to pay attention to things I encounter, however incidentally, that might come in handy in the future and store them away. Learning everything I can possibly manage is hugely important to me – this is a high need for cognition. Pete has an incredibly low need for cognition. He does not consider most things worth bothering with until it has already been demonstrated that a certain bit of knowledge is directly relevant to his day to day life. He was a virgin when we started dating – it didn't occur to him to learn about how females and sex work until AFTER we'd become intimate, and even then his attempts at educating himself were minimal and mostly reliant on information from me. The same happened with stepparenting. He knew for months that he was moving in with an elementary aged child, but didn't find time to learn about adjustment issues that might follow, learn different disciplinary techniques, or even basic information like what school Matthew would attend and where the nearest fun kid things to do were located. (He's got a teacher's license AND when I first met him he was a youth pastor and taught acting in a children's theatre. These issues and resources should not have been foreign to him. It seems to me a youth pastor should have a lot of awareness of child/parent issues, but it turns out he mostly spent time having fun with the kids and not so much getting to know them or offering counseling. ) I won't even get into how this also factored into cleaning, cooking, financial management, car care, and other minor household problems, other than it was perfectly clear from the get-go that he expected me to know about and take care of it all, and was stunned when I had a huge problem with that, because, well.. his mom did it all and didn't complain, you know.

The other way the differences in our need for cognition became issues was in the way I felt devalued for doing things important to me. I would get up at 7 am every day (before Pete) to get Matthew to school, spend my days looking for work, chatting with friends, reading, gardening, cleaning and errands before making dinner and hanging out with Pete when he got home until going to bed almost always well after he was asleep. It was an uneventful existence but it was what I could afford, and as far as the job hunt went, what was necessary. Yet Pete would make snide remarks every few days about how I spent my days doing “nothing.” I would point out that my job hunt, thinking through my problems, and learning things in addition to the household tasks that got done (not that he ever really noticed those) were important to me and not “nothing” and his devaluement of my life really hurt, but it would happen over and over again, his comments that I was lazy because I mostly stayed at home and spent a lot of time using the computer (something he did mostly at coffee shops). Even though I often would show him what had been done during the day, it never registered with him in a real way that spending time knowing things was a worthwhile task, which made me feel as if I was not a worthwhile person to him. His need to always be up and moving around also made that kind of slow, sweet intimacy during long cuddly talks impossible. He hated conversations and spending time cuddling both.

Combining with this trait was an intense need to feel as if he was unique and doing things no one had thought of and marching to his own drum, while also harboring the most intense fear of rejection I have ever encountered. He wants to rebel and be non-conformist, especially with the church and his family but also in the music world, but cannot BEAR suffering the consequences that would come from such rebellion – they would disapprove and reject him (heck, he would get upset for DAYS because people in a bar were talking at his shows. Seriously.) So Pete rebels by means of a willful ignorance (yes, he actually believes in and frequently states that “ignorance is bliss,” totally- and probably purposefully- unaware of the negative connotations of that phrase as it is usually employed). If he doesn't know he's breaking a rule, or isn't aware of what he's supposed to do, or how something is done, then he believes no one can hold it against him when he does things his own way or doesn't do it right. By not knowing things, he can do what he wants when he wants without suffering rejection. He is incredibly defensive of this state of willful ignorance, and becomes angry and makes personal attacks if you try to point out to him that an important concept of adulthood is that not being aware of your responsibilities does not absolve you from them.

This little combination of traits helped me to realize that, in part, he married me to be a status symbol for him. He denies this, but it is so clear from so much of his behavior. If he married a bi kinky pagan girl, well... that was pretty damn rebellious and unique in the church community. Yet, he himself was not doing any of the bi kinky pagan things and could not be held accountable for them, he was only tangentially related to any of it. I also lent him cred in the music world – he wasn't some nerd trying to break into the pathetic christian rock genre, but someone who happened to come from that background who was actually hip... see? Here's my wife! She's kinky and bi and an aspiring porn star and wearing skinny jeans and a top showing a ton of cleavage!

This was especially obvious when I applied to kink.com, how often he commented about how excited he was to tell his music friends his wife was going to be a porn star. I so often felt totally objectified by him: I was a means to a goal, a way of externally reconciling his internal conflicts without his having to do any work or suffer any consequence, in fact, this means of achieving a goal got him sex! (well, right up until I stopped sleeping with him exactly because I felt so intensely objectified). Trying circumvent this, I would ask him to make compliments of me more specific.. usually he only said “you're beautiful” and/or “you're sexy.” I asked him to try to comment on specific traits of mine that he loved, whether it was the sound of my laugh or the crook of my elbow or the way I move while making a pie crust, something that was about me in particular and not a generic compliment anyone could say about anyone or anything. He eventually did tell me a couple of times he loved it when I laugh, but otherwise would come up with things like (and this is not hyperbole, he really said this) “You are as gorgeous as a gaggle of goslings” and other things I just couldn't take seriously... not to mention they weren't any more specific to me than “you're beautiful” is. The result of course was that I couldn't get past feeling like a combination of object and abstract ideal to him.

And yes, all of these issues of willful ignorance extended to his ability to identify and deal with emotions, too, both his own and other people's. He had a hard time identifying energies or moods, or realizing that there are emotional states in between and outside “really pissed off” and “totally hunky-dory.” He doesn't seem to feel anything beyond those two, or at least acknowledge that he does. He couldn't discuss emotions without resorting to defensive, angry attacks. I got called fat, lazy, and stupid more than was ever called for whenever I would try to talk about things, no matter how much I made the effort to use the “I” statement strategy and avoid blame. I know it's hard to hear things about oneself that are not awesome, even in the situation where someone is bringing it up hoping to fix relational issues, but it got to be that I was unwilling to try to work things out because talking about them not only didn't solve our problems, but instead meant he would say horrible, untrue things and call me names. I know he felt criticized by me in a way he's never been before, because he's never had a relationship like this before, or even emotionally close friendships, and I can understand the anger and defensiveness about that. I might have even been able to take it if he at least had retaliated by saying things that were true, because I certainly have my faults and it would have been fair for him to bring those to the table, but I'm not fat or stupid or mean and not usually lazy and I couldn't take listening to him just trying to hurt me. (There were also communications-styles issues related to this, but this post is already too long...)

The rest of the big problems had to do with his half-assed efforts at parenting and how they mostly were based on dominating Matthew instead of interacting with him as a person, and the way he tried to motivate (me, his band members, matthew, whoever) by inspiring an angry defiance by means of insults – obviously he is motivated by being told he isn't good enough to do something and the subsequent desire to prove the person/institution/world wrong, but he doesn't consider that other people aren't just exactly like him, or that there are other approaches and that you have to tailor the approach to the psyche of the person. The only kind of angry defiance Matthew ever engages in is stonewalling – refusing to move, talk or otherwise cooperate when he's really pissed - which is entirely counter to what Pete was trying to accomplish, and it resulted in several awful confrontations between them. I will withdraw entirely from a situation if someone tries to tell me I'm inadequate, and that resulted in a lot of anger and scathing contempt between Pete and I on occasion as well.

The sum result of all of this is that I felt devalued, unseen as a person in my own right, and not only not cared for both emotionally and in practical terms, but that I had an additional burden to care for the details of his life, to moderate his relationship with Matthew, and care for his psyche while he could neglect mine because I am “too complicated” and he doesn't know enough about suffering or about feelings to help me. This feeling turned me into a contemptuous, resentful shrew. I felt mean and unkind and unlovely most of the time. I felt like a bad person and I hated it, and I hated him for being unwilling if not plain unable to do the things that would help, no matter how much I tried to communicate to him what those things were. And I don't know how a couple even begins reconcile those kinds of incompatibilities. It would take nothing short of a personality transplant for one or both of us, and that's just too much to ask for a relationship when there are other people out there who would fit each of us better. I don't think the supposed sanctity of marriage trumps the health of the psyche and soul of the people inside of it.

So, how do I really feel? Relieved. Unstuck. Like my inner fire has been rekindled. Loved. Cared for. Enthusiastic. Joyful. Like I can use my sweetness and kindness and bubbliness and love for other people. And so incredibly excited to have some hot, hot dirty sex with someone who knows what they are doing.. even if I have no idea when such a thing might happen, the real potential of it has awoken my libido to a level that stuns even me. ;)

*Anyone else that tries to call me Mack will swiftly be relieved of his/her gonads/gamedes.

Sleepless in Wyoming just doesn't have the same ring to it.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:43:28 GMT

It's 4:30 AM and I'm in Evanston, WY. Yesterday's drive went pretty well except for one scary moment where we discovered my cat gets carsick... in her panic she was jumping around and making for the litterbox on the floor in front of the passenger seat and she knocked the car out of gear while we were just about to cross the Richmond Bridge, then, in my idiot panic at freaking car/barfing cat, knocked it into reverse for a split second, which stalled the car. I'm glad it did, you know, have an auto-save-the-transmission-shutoff thing, but it was frightening to pull over on the bridge with a terror of being stuck there with most of my worldly possessions. Then I started the car back up and everything was fine. The rest of the trip has been uneventful; Matthew is even pretty good about not whining too much.

I'm excited to be heading back but really sad about leaving and I feel torn between going on and turning around and going back. Which is dumb and I won't do since there's the simple fact of houselessness and no money, plus a rocky relationship to boot. I guess I just miss Pete more than I thought I would, at least right at the moment. But like he said earlier this week, California isn't going anywhere. At least, we don't think it's quite ready to fall into the ocean just yet.

But I still can't sleep. Plus this Comfort Inn has scratchy, pilled blankets that smell like feet. I prefer AmericInns when I can, but the nearest one is in Laramie - just a little too far for a single day driving on my own.

So here's a meme. Post a screencap of your current desktop/wallpaper. (This photo sent to me at random last week made me very glad I was coming home. L to R, lj-less Kasey, kurterossbach , heartless1979 , and the infamous jerasue

Who is training who?

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:54:51 GMT

My cat is weird. Ok, so all cats are, but this post is about her particular weirdness. She does not like to play with toys. She will deign to do so if they happen to be filled with catnip, but otherwise only seems to enjoy playing with rugs and her own tail, and the occasional hair tie or bouncy ball that falls on the floor. She does not like boxes or bags, either, and Pete feels this is an unacceptable state of affairs when a cat will not play with a paper grocery bag.

So he tried to teach her.

"First, you sniff it! Are you paying attention?" (He really did make sure she was looking at him before he went further. Not that she felt obligated to keep watching)

"Then this is how you do it! It makes an awesome sound!"
(Posy stares off into space)

"All cats love paper bags!"

(Posy's eyes shoot laser death beams of immediate doom)

Because more than one person has asked...

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:09:13 GMT

If you want to contribute to the get-me-home fund, in whatever amount you want, you can use the Paypal button below. I will bake cookies/be eternally grateful/help with whatever/pay it forward/pay it back as you wish.

Thank you all so much. I have never been so amazed at how much love and support I have. I may have very little in material terms, but I know I am really one of the most blessed people who has ever lived.

This post has been a long time coming.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:44:19 GMT

If you haven't picked it up from twitter/facebook/actual conversation, I'm moving home next week.

I will be crashing at my parents/camping/couch surfing for the summer while Matthew stays with my parents full-time. I have an apartment lined up in Madison on August 15, providing I can find a job to pay for it (if you have any leads, let me know! I can do any kind of grunt work, i'm a fantastic admin. assistant, and I can learn to do just about anything). I have to condense my belongings to what fits in my car plus maybe a few boxes to ship, as well as a few left here in storage until I can afford to have them sent. I also won't have any beds and minimal furniture, so I'm going to need to hippie christmas like no one has ever hippie christmased before.

A lot of this decision is financial. Most positions that open in the area get hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants. So far I have not been that 1 in 1,000, not even for jobs I'm incredibly well qualified for, although I was second pick once. I'm out of money, living on child support which amounts to $40/week after crucial bills have been paid. CA is about to eliminate most of the human services that can help us. Pete's internship doesn't pay enough to support us all, but his student status makes us ineligible for food stamps and other aid. He signed a lease for an inexpensive room rental in Oakland, and we have to be out of here by July 1 and I have nowhere down here to go. I'm hoping that going home, where I have support and places to stay and access to human services if things really get that bad will help us survive. I also know that going home, where I feel surrounded by love and family of both the blood and chosen varieties will help my soul.

However, this is in part a break from our romantic relationship as well. As much as I feel I should have put more into a marriage than 5 months, we have fundamental differences I don't even know how to begin to reconcile, on top of being in totally different places in our personal growth, with the addition of having really, really conflicting styles of day to day life. We aren't divorcing, we aren't closing any doors on reconciling, but we are going our separate ways at least for the time being. I am ok with this. I will miss him, yes. The loss of the dreams/hopes is hard, yes. But I'm really ok and I'm excited to come home, and be with people who make me smile and feel beautiful from the inside out and be in big huge cuddle piles.

I am hoping to be in the midwest by the end of next week, and ideally attending the rendezvous in Prairie du Chien on the 20th-21th. This is, however, entirely contingent upon the generosity of family/whoever helping me out with gas money... my mom initially promised to get me home but she ran into money difficulty herself. I am going to try to convince Pete that as I gave up my job, my savings, and my possessions to come out here for him, and since I'm his wife and all, and since his lease is what leaves me homeless (this is student housing for his school - I can't continue to dwell here without him) a few hundred dollars to get me to shelter isn't an unreasonable thing to ask, but Pete also doesn't really understand about being poor, so even though he has a small but sufficient and stable income, the "small" part of that means he's disinclined to share. I know I'll find a way...

I can't wait to see you all. I have missed my friends, my community, my Madison so very much.

an utter fluff post

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:09:48 GMT

You should all watch this video, but go to the bathroom first because I, Little Miss Bladder O'Steele, almost peed myself laughing.

My son channels Brautigan and Ginsberg

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 28 May 2009 04:13:10 GMT

I found out tonight that Matthew writes poetry at school. When I finally got to read them, I was startled at how lovely and abstract they are and how beat-ish. I'm putting some here, too, because I'm proud of him. My favorites are the last three.

(and you can all just suck it up. :P )

Me Almost Getting Run Over

The music took me to the wild
And I almost got run over by a rhino
And a chimpanzee
And a saber-tooth tiger
Because they hate people who are not from the wild.
But there were more animals
There was an elephant
And a chimpanzee monster king.

1998 India

The smell of Indian spice
The sound takes me to India
Dancing around the fire.
I feel like I'm above the fire
It smells spicy.
It's 1:00 AM in India
Because it's 9:00 here.

Gold is Cool

Gold snowboards into the house.
He was born under a mushroom.
He wears green pants and a gold shirt.

I Look into the World

I look into the world and I see
A black-headed
Lemon-eyed duck.
I see an anteater.
This world is cool!!!

The world we live in is cool.

Sounds

I'm a saber-tooth tiger munching on some berries.
I am the lightning of a storm.
I am red.
I am the sounds of the ocean and the tides.

Matthew - 2009

you have to laugh so that you don't scream.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:40:39 GMT

i just overheard our across the street neighbor telling another neighbor that she's re-landscaping her yard because she saw what it looked like on google street view and was aghast that a person could see her compost pile.

i think i'm going to scandalize the neighborhood and listen to the savage lovecast with the volume really loud. ;)

Helicopters did always terrify me.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:12:59 GMT

This is from an email I wrote to Lenore Skenazy today, the founder of Free-Range Kids, which is basically a movement that counters much of the odd, paranoid parenting styles that are prevalent(and touted by the "experts!") today, often called "helicopter parenting" in which a parent believes a child (an older one of course, well past preschoolerhood) cannot be unsupervised for even a few moments without putting their lives at risk. The truth is, if you teach kids how to deal with the world, they are actually very competent, and when given the chance to be independent, often end up learning this amazing thing called "self-sufficiency."   Basically, it's an anti-coddling movement.

Lenore,

I have been reading your site for some time now, and practicing free-range parenting (and railing against the bizarre and inhuman expectations of both parents and kids) since my son was quite young. Thus far, it's been great for both of us.   However, we recently relocated to a totally different area of the country while my husband is in grad school, and we are living in student housing that is situated in the middle of several very, very affluent suburbs. Helicopter parenting isn't just a lifestyle around here, it's a strict religion from which you do not deviate or ELSE. This thankfully doesn't involve the police like some other recent incidents you've talked about, but I do think I'll end up facing the administration of his school, and the body of the parents as an extention.

Thankfully, the other parents in our housing complex are more relaxed, but I've run into several issues at his school. Mostly I've been able to ignore them since they didn't directly involve my son - things like getting multiple email bulletins about a "strange man" scaring a little girl in her yard in a town 15 miles away (the man was a neighbor with mild dementia that had simply waved to her), and a more irritating scenario with an elderly man being caught watching some girls at horse riding practice at a nearby private school. This man had been convicted of possessing teen porn sometime in the distant past, but that was enough to cause his arrest and for a mob of hysterical parents to show up at his arraignment, screaming at him to stay away from their children, nevermind he has no record of ever hurting a child or attacking a person at all and uses a walker. We received over a dozen emails about that, complete with his personal contact information and vehicle registration information.   Again, these didn't relate directly to my son but it gives you an idea of the mindset of this school. One other thing to note - this school houses grades 2-5, but also thinks that kids can't handle a full day of school until third grade, and release the second graders an hour and a half earlier than the other grades, except for Wednesdays when the whole school dismisses early.

The school is set off of a very quiet residential street that rarely gets traffic except for the school. The school itself does not have a parking lot, but it does have a long, speed-bumped driveway ending in a large cul-de-sac with a circular median in the center. Parents use this "loop" for dropping off and picking up. There are no posted rules either at the school or in the handbook about parking or dropping off other than a sign that says "pull forward to drop off or pick up" - the drive is sufficiently small and narrow that it only allows for a single-file line of cars around the loop who move at a crawl - not even close to 5 mph.   There are also no posted rules about the children's movements either - they wait on the lawn until they see their parents' car and hop in.    Apparently the school recently decided to designate a sort of "pick up monitor" as suddenly today there was a woman in a bright yellow vest trying futilely to shepherd the kids about as they went off to their respective cars. Most of the kids were largely ignoring her.

This particular Wednesday I was stopped on the far side of the loop waiting for my son.   I saw this entire incident.   My son was waiting and watching on the sidewalk. Seeing that the traffic was entirely stopped, he crossed the first side of the loop at a jog and got to the median. Before he could cross to our car, Ms. Yellow-vest-monitor ran to the median, grabbed my son by the shoulder, and pulled him back across the street. She then forced him to walk around the loop (through not an insignificant amount of mud because there are not sidewalks on the loop's far side) and then approached my car.

She immediately began ranting about how my son "crossed the street without even LOOKING!!"   Except... all the cars were parked or stopped, he DID look, and I saw him do this.   My son, incredibly insulted that someone would think he lacks that much common sense, protested. After yelling at him about how he was talking to a TEACHER and how DARE he use that tone, she broke into a spiel about the "Principal's safety initiatives" and how he openly defied them (I have heard absolutely nothing about safety initiatives - if there are new rules, they never informed the parents).   I responded calmly that I had seen my son cross the street responsibly and that I, for one, found the school's obsession with "safety" to be paranoid and detrimental to the development of the students as independent thinkers. She looked at me in horror and whipped out that classic line "Do you WANT your son to get hit by a car?"   I replied "Of course not. He's quite capable of crossing streets carefully."   She then started demanding that I tell her my son's name and room. I refused her requests and said I'd deal with the situation at home, and told her that I would like to leave, would she please let go of my vehicle - at this point she had her head inside the car window and was hanging on to the door.    Instead she started banging on the door frame, shouting "I'm going to report this! I am going to report this!"   I had to start easing the car forward before she finally let go.   My son had no idea who this woman was.   I found her level of threats and hysteria to be totally inappropriate.

I don't know if the school has had any incidents of any cars hitting kids, but I suspect not. It's just not possible to go fast enough around that loop to pose any great risk.

I told my son I would absolutely stick up for him if they attempt to punish him, because he did nothing wrong or reckless.   I find it hard to swallow that the school really believes that 8 to 11 year olds cannot cross a private cul-de-sac with incredibly slow to stopped traffic. Even if there IS a rule somewhere other than the handbook that kids are not allowed to cross, her reaction was totally unwarranted.   He was never in any real danger.

How does one defend one's child in a situation like this where the school believes wholeheartedly in coddling children? I am quite certain I'll be contacted by the school administration, and while I know I can say that this woman completely overreacted, at the heart of this issue is this ludicrous idea that older kids can't get themselves safely from a lawn to a parked car.

...........

This kind of paranoia doesn't just happen at schools either. That stupid line could come up at someone saying they thought the 3oz limit on fluids on airlines was paranoid and useless and someone swallowing the propaganda would answer you "Do you WANT to be killed by a terrorist??" no matter how incredibly unlikely such a thing would be.

I really hate the idea of trading a great deal of our freedoms to "eliminate" an infinitesimal risk. I hate the idea of people being suddenly restricted in situations that have never been particularly dangerous (like the Brookside pick up loop) because someone just imagined there might be a danger (because I really don't think there have been any actual child-car accidents there). Did you know that the chance of becoming seriously ill from consuming homemade cookie dough is about 1 in 50 million? That only about 6 people out of 300 million die from egg-related foodborn illness each year, and that includes all egg instances and not just cookie dough? Did you know that cookie dough is incredibly delicious? Did you know that some parents nowadays might call CPS on you if you let your child eat it, nevermind that they're more likely to get ill from lunch meat or processed peanut products?

I'm so tired of fearmongering, and even more I'm tired of the pussies who just lay down and tremble in the face of it and hand over whatever freedom or money they're asked to sacrifice (yes, go right ahead and buy those knee pads and helmet for your crawling baby. I'm sure they wouldn't ever survive without it). I'm tired of people who can't accurately judge a risk, or understand statistics, or put isolated incidents in perspective. I'm tried of the judgment I have felt when I refuse to lay down and roll over as instructed. This is control people. When you let someone talk you into being terrified of something you didn't even know about yesterday, you are allowing them to control you.

What's more is that nothing you give up, not your money or your freedom or your control, nothing will make you or your child immortal or immune. Your padded baby will still die someday. Horrible tragedies will still occur at random to good people. This is life. You do not live it to it's fullest by hiding from it.

Picture meme

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 17:44:56 GMT

Yeah I know, but I'm bummed out from not getting a job I was a finalist for and i was almost sure i was going to get. so suck it up. stolen from syncopatedlife (lj says there is no such user! wha??)

1. A picture of you in your room (don't have any from my current room, but this was my most recent past room)

2. A picture with someone you don't actually like - I didn't think I had one, but then I found this gem with Sarah and Stan.

3. A picture of you very drunk (drunk texting, even!)

4. A picture from your birthday or favorite holiday

5. The youngest picture of yourself you can find in digital form
age 3

age 21 (on the left) and ZOMG BLONDE

6. A picture of you in one of your favorite outfits heeheheehee

7. A picture of you making a goofy face at the camera

8. A picture of a night you regret

9. A picture of you being truly yourself

11. The most recent picture of you

12. A picture of you being absolutely ridiculous (helicopter cheeks!!)

13. A picture of you showing off a new haircut or color ( also the day of my first tragus piercing)

there was also the pumpkin hair....

14. A picture of a time in your life that's over, but you wish it wasn't.

15. a picture of a time in your life that's over, and you couldn't be more thankful that it is. (fall/winter 05-06)

16. a picture of you when you were anything but happy.

17. a picture of you that you had no idea was being taken.

18. a picture of you when you were a different person than you are now.

19. a picture of you with someone you love.

20. a picture of how you'd like the world to see you.

21. a picture that describes how you'd like to spend every day.
haha, same as above!

also
(thanks jackshoegazer !)

22. a picture of a time when everything was changing.

When is my life not constantly changing??
(please note the uber-sexy plastic sheriff's badge i'm wearing)

23. A picture that makes your heart hurt

(i miss jera, who took this, and all my friends)

24. A picture that makes your heart smile

25. A picture of one of the best days/nights of your life

memory

the sunlight glistening on her lips
refracting in her eyes
pale and beautiful and bluegraygreen
sun dappled freckled and laughing
the wind and grass
that earthy spring-time smell
new and fragile
water sounds
and the moon rising clear and blue
and larger than life
the sun setting behind me
reminding me of that slow-moving tidal wave
of golden light
surrounded by her
and millions of years of history
watching tips of branches holding
budding leaves that were
moving with the wind
one
both again
and for the first time
ajs

starving. (yeah yeah not foodwise)

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:37:25 GMT

a quick disclaimer: these posts aren't meant to put down or rail against pete. they're just me putting my thoughts/feelings out there so i don't hold them all in and turn them into excess body bloat, or anything else.

i was in a horrible mood when pete got home last night, due to tape measure and failed experiments with leg-hair management and various other things. he came home, babbled about band practice, offered me headphones to listen to the show i was watching online and crashed.

he never touched me, or asked if anything was wrong, or let me get a word in edgewise before zonking out maybe 15 minutes after coming in the door.   he got up early to finish a paper this morning, bounded out of bed and took a shower without ever touching me at all, and was astonished to hear me say to matthew when he came in for morning snuggles that i was super glad because i'd had a not so awesome night and needed hugs.

it dawned on me a little while ago that pete never touches me unless he's initiating sex. if i hug him or cuddle him for some other reason, he invariably gets aroused, and will promptly inform me of this fact, usually by means of some ridiculous middle school locker room terminology. he's point-blank said before that all touches are sexual in nature to him....   he was actually saying at the time it was impossible to cuddle me in the morning in matthew's presence because it was tantamount to watching your parents get it on.

not being able to to be hugged because i'm loved, or to be consoled, or to show affection or comfort or any of the other dozens of reasons people hug you isn't ok. and all touches being sexual feels like a violation to me, not exactly like rape but akin to that same kind of thing.   on top of that, there's a starvation that comes because he hardly ever touches me otherwise, and i'm a person who communicates a great deal through touch with the people i'm close to.

we've talked about this before, too, but like many other things it doesn't really seem to sink in for him.   so i spend my days lonely and feeling uncherished and then he can't understand why i'm not in the mood for sex, or why a couple of brief snuggles are not sufficient "foreplay"

Why did I do this again, exactly?

Help?

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:43:27 GMT

Ok.

Since moving my activities and diet have changed somewhat. Mostly, for the better.

Our apt has stairs in it instead of just up to it. I move around our house more, I walk places just as often, and I work out on the wii fit (mostly aerobics but also some yoga and strength training) about 45 minutes a day (about half an hour of workout time once you factor out all the menu-picking stuff).

My diet has gotten considerably better in terms of what I eat, especially in lack of candy on a daily basis, and I do not eat in greater quantities. yes, I've been keeping track.

I have not gained any weight. I haven't lost more than a pound or two, but thanks to the wii fit I can confidentally say I am not putting on any pounds.

In fact, according to my friend's magic happy scale with the electric current thing, my body fat measurement is actually on the low end of normal.

So.

I need to figure out why over the past few months my body has been ballooning to epic-for-me proportions. It's puffing up all over the place... I've gained two inches in my waist and hips each, and three and a half inches in my bust line (my boobs are also rather sore most of the time). Almost all of my clothes are uncomfortably tight and I really feel like I look awful. I don't even fit into the bras I wore when nursing, which means this is the biggest my boobs have ever been. (for the record, i hate having very large boobs and would really like my b+ cups back)

the worst part is that I have no reason for this. i haven't gained any weight. i'm not pregnant (took the test even to rule it out), i haven't changed birth control (have the same IUD I've had for three years), i'm eating less crap because fresh produce is so much cheaper out here, and while i don't walk around a ginormous office and sit on a balance ball daily anymore, i do walk all over and work out and go on hikes regularly.

does anyone have any idea as to what could be happening? or ideas to combat it? i don't currently have insurance so a physical is out of the question. right now, drinking lots of water while cutting down on salt and dairy (makes me gassy) is a tentative plan, hoping that it's water bloating, although i've tried taking diuretics and they haven't really done much.

i'm so annoyed and confused. why i am so puffy if i'm not actually getting fatter? any suggestions/advice are welcomed.

i suppose "too picky about semantics" is an argument feminists hear a lot?

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 05:46:36 GMT

so today i told someone that, unless the person addressing me is matthew, i really, really, really dislike being called "Mom." i don't care if the person is another member of my family or what, i am no one's mother but matthew's, and no one else gets to call me "mom" because that means they are addressing me by a job or role title instead of by my name. i'd be similarly insulted if someone i worked with closely yelled at me "hey, Designer!" or "hey, Secretary!" being a mother is a thing that i do, the title of "Mom" is not how i wish to be addressed because i am more than just someone's mother. "Mom" is not my identity, and is certainly not my role to anyone on earth but one.

so when i told the offending party how much this bothers me and how much i do not wish to be addressed as "Mom" as if it were my name, they argued that i was being "too picky about semantics" and that in their family that's how things went and, i shit you not, did it twice more in the course of ten minutes.

am i being too picky about semantics? or should that not matter, since the offending party should respect that it bothers me regardless of the reason?

For the first time in years my hips don't hurt.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:08:06 GMT

A few weeks ago, a girl only pete knew who had attended our wedding and been intrigued by its "pagan" parts asked to me to a peruvian fire ceremony at the home of a shaman she had visited some months before.

the ceremony itself was amazing, and so was the girl. people around here had led me to believe she is uptight and prissy, and she is somewhat, but she and i are more alike on our spiritual journeys than we are with anyone else around the seminary, and it was really refreshing to talk to someone like that again. the ceremony itself allowed me moments to feel connected to the earth and to feel that connection blossom out along and into the people who were there with us. i met a man named vincent who talked about how he was just opening up his own therapeutic massage business, but that he no longer was interested so much in relaxation and lotions but more into energy work and all the other deeply hidden aspects of a person this type of "massage" can reveal.

he contacted me recently and offered a complimentary session, and i went today. the massage was brutally painful, both physically and emotionally, but not because it wasn't good. it was amazing. i never realized i held so much energy in so many odd places and fought so hard to keep it from being released. it didn't take me long to learn though that he would let go, and the pain would go, only when i would relax and let go of whatever it was i was holding. he figured out almost immediately that i have an unnaturally high pain tolerance.. he framed the question, asked out of nowhere, as "do you think ballet helped you build this intense pain tolerance?" and i responded "no, i think i did ballet in order to push the tolerance i've always had" and he seemed to understand what i meant. at least, he didn't go easy on me.

the part that got to me though, and the reason i'm writing this, is when he put pressure on my heart chakra areas, even slight pressure, i could hardly breathe. he commented that he understands it feels like he's plunged a metal pole through my chest (boy did it ever), but it was because i was holding unreleased and unexpressed emotion there, a LOT of it, and i needed to breathe through it and let it go. i managed but it was a scary few minutes.

then i realized how true it was..

i haven't been journaling. i haven't been paper-journaling. i've been talking to people here and there, but there is no one i've told the whole truth of what i'm feeling to. i don't feel like i CAN tell pete, because i've discovered he's incredibly sensitive and internalizes every statement and situation and it's all but impossible to discuss things without him feeling attacked and going on the defensive or on the blame-path, no matter how many "i" statements i use and no matter how careful i am to frame things in terms of being my own issues.

i've just shut up, and it's toxic to me.

marriage has ceased to be one long extended argument but still isn't going well.

however, friends and california have had a way of growing on me, and bringing me joy.

i'm very tired though of not going out enough, and being ensconced in a community i don't feel like i relate to very well.

to top that off, i have a really promising looking job prospect. but it's in a church. a liberal, lovely one as far as i can tell, but still not a place where i will ever feel like i'm not fundamentally at odds with much of what is going on. i can't afford to turn it down, but i realize if i take it, i need to triple my efforts to become part of some other community somewhere around here.

however, that said... i'm thinking of starting a blog if i get that job, about the adventures of a bi kinky paganesque pseudo-poly girl in a christian world. it will be locked up tight so i don't dooce myself, but you'd all be welcome to come read.

My kitty is adorable.

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:11:31 GMT

I realized I have woefully neglected to jump on the bandwagon of posting lots of sweet pictures of my kitty on my lj. This is probably because I never had a camera until my iphone.

So now, i present to you: Posy! Also known as Posyrina, Posy, Posy Pretty Toes, or Poseur if you're Pete and have no sense of how freakin' girlie this cat is.

haha!

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:55:04 GMT

excerpt from a yahoo news/time.com article.

"The course would bring in experts - experts in satanic cults, experts in criminology, they even had a psychiatrist come in to talk to the priests about the differences between the various mental illnesses that could be confused for demonic possession vs. what the church says is actually demonic possession. (See photos of Pope Benedict XVI.)"

that's about right. especially with this business of upholding the excommunication of a brazilian 9 year old (and her mother, and her doctors) who had a life-saving abortion after becoming pregnant with twins being repeatedly raped by her stepfather - but not excommunicating the step father. uhhuh. that's pretty much your definition of demonic right there.

bah bah black sheep

ephelide.descent@gmail.com — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:34:06 GMT

If you comment to this post, I will give you five words (or phrases) that remind me of you. You will post those in your journal with an explanation of what they mean to you. Please also copy this explanation so that other people can ask YOU for five words about THEM. So the meme can merrily perpetuate itself...

My 5 words from martina_d :

Body art
Music
Long-distance love
Intuition
Madison

Body Art: I really don't have that much of it so far... one small tattoo on my right leg and 10 piercings, all but one of which are in my ears. That said... if I had the resources and worked in an industry that was very body-mod-friendly, I'd have a several more piercings and at least a full back tattoo, as well as a scarification on my chest. I love piercings. I love the whole process of having it done, even if they are temporary. (especially if they are temporary because you can do all sorts of crazy stuff and still show up for work without getting booted for dress code issues!) There's something so infinitely relaxing and releasing about the puncture of skin and the trickling of the blood, it allows me to sink into states of being I can never get to just of my mind's own will. The jewelry is a visual reminder, as well as an expression of understanding how your body and your life are your canvas to create.

Music: Music, like pain (see piercings) is a way for me to transcend my mind's normal state of being, and to evoke or control or soothe my emotions. I never felt safer than when crawling between the notes on the page during orchestra rehearsals, or losing myself to it during ballet class, no matter how rotten everything else was going. On days when I just can't take anymore anything, I'll lay down in a bubble bath and listen to music to forget how cruel existence can be and refocus on the sensuality and beauty of silence transforming to sound and to light.

Long-distance love: I've have more than my fair share of stints at this - every major relationship I've had was long-distance for at least a few months. I know people often bemoan how rotten it is, and yes sometimes it really sucks to achingly miss someone with no hope of seeing them in the short term, but really, LDRs suit me. They give me love and romance and emotional support and mental/emotional intimacy and at least occasional sex while also allowing my happy single life to go about unimpeded. I do better when I live alone and have as much introvert time to myself as I need, that is for certain. That is not to say that I can't function in more traditional or cohabiting relationships, I just realize that the whole setup of an LDR is really ideal for me, weird as that seems.

Intuition. I couldn't live without mine. I'm definitely emotionally-led, and I also try to allow subtle and sometimes unnameable perceptions from the world at large to influence my decisions and opinions and these things combine to be something akin to intuition. My intuitions rarely lead me astray, or at least rarely let me be taken entirely by surprise... there are times when I know by intuition I'm about to do something not entirely awesome for myself but I do it anyway, so I can't say it stops me from doing stupid shit, but at least I know I'm doing stupid shit so I can be ready to deal with the aftermath, right?

Madison. Thus far, the only place that's really ever felt like home to me. While a not insignificant portion of my time living in Madison was decidedly difficult, I always felt like I belonged there, like I was part of a community instead of just living amongst one. 90% of my good friends and people I consider my chosen family are there. It's very hard now that I'm in CA to not dwell too much on how much I miss it and want to go back. I feel like a wuss sometimes for not adjusting well out here, but then.... it's hard to compete with the kind of life I had in Madison. I love you all like crazy-sauce.