I have finally started writing it.
Mostly Forgotten
I’ve forgotten much more about the beginning than I remember. I know that a year ago I could have reeled off a play by play for the entire nine months but now I can’t seem to recall some of the more significant details. I don’t remember the day or date. Was it first thing in the morning or in the afternoon? Where did I buy the tests and how many? How long did it take for the lines to develop? How long did I wait before I called my parents and did I cry before then or did I wait until I heard my mom’s voice? I know I felt scared out of my mind just opening the pregnancy tests and that I was shaking and sweating and trying to concentrate on what I was doing but there are so many black spots in my memory. I can’t remember if I did it upstairs or down, if I waited in my room or the living room. How much water did I drink before hand? I don’t think I talked to anyone that day, if I had let them know what I expected. Did I call James? Or Erik? Anyone? I can’t remember.
One thing that I do remember is after I talked to my mom and she and dad were on their way home I remember vividly curling into a ball and crying so hard that I thought my stomach was going to rupture, I had a fleeting thought that maybe if I got worked up enough that there would be a miscarriage. That’s horrible I know. I remember feeling so lost and I know that I felt like no one was going to understand because I didn’t even understand. I couldn’t wrap my head around a pregnancy.
I have a decent enough memory. I can remember the outfit I was wearing for most any momentous moment in my life, except this one. I can remember details of conversations with strangers from ten years ago but I can’t remember past “promise me you wont be disappointed in me” with my mom and I know my mom and dad were on their way home when I called them but for the life of me I can’t remember what was said when they did get home and finally saw me. Where they crying? Was I? Did they hug me? Did I let them? I can’t remember words but I can still feel the waves of disappointment that rolled off them into me like it was a tangible thing that kept beating at me. Did my dad look at me? I can’t remember looking him in the eye or even if I could have if I tried. I know my dad and I know he was red faced and quiet and probably had tears flowing but I can’t see it. The memory isn’t there anymore.
I’m starting to wonder if I’ve somehow blocked or repressed these memories in some form of self preservation. Or is it that it’s been eight years now and my mind is really just okay with everything enough to forget it all. I figure now is the time to try and get it all out of me and down on paper, before it’s all really gone for good.
I’m not sure exactly who I want to read all this. I don’t know why this is any different to me than telling someone about my life but it is different. I can’t stop midway and answer questions and defend myself or explain why I did one thing over another. Laying it all out and assuming everyone will come to the right conclusion is taking a lot of trust on my part and I’m not that comfortable trusting others.
Thursday, July 22
Monday, July 19
Some Days are Born Ugly
I haven’t been much for sharing lately, have I? The past few months it’s been a bunch of updates about Laine and one little thing about change but overall I’m doing a bit of blocking. I’ve got tons in my head right now, things that probably need to be talked out and things that would get better/change if I’d clue a person or two into what’s going on with me but I’ve developed a more concentrated sense of autonomy than usual. It isn’t like I feel I don’t have anyone to talk to, because I do. I’ve got a person and a husband and a mom that I feel are always there for me no matter what , I even have my mom’s people if needed, but what my issue is now is that I don’t care to talk. I don’t care to complain or whine. I don’t want to defend myself or attack anyone and I don’t want to get emotional. So I’ve been withdrawn a bit maybe. A little more introverted than what would be typical. And I’m okay with it for now I think. I’m not hurting in anyway and there isn’t anything going on that I’m sad about or angry about, I’m kind of in a whatever place. It’s not a bad place, but I don’t feel like sharing it with anyone as of right now. So, if I don’t blog for a while or I don’t write anything of consequence or if you see me and you get a distinct whatever vibe, now you know why.
From John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday
“Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good whatever the weather, and everybody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.
On such a day it is impossible to make a good cup of coffee, shoe strings break, cups leap from the shelf by themselves and shatter on the floor, children ordinarily honest tell lies, and children ordinarily good unscrew the tap handles of the gas range and lose the screws and have to be spanked. This is the day the cat chooses to have kittens and housebroken dogs wet on the parlor rug.
Oh, it's awful on such a day! The postman brings overdue bills. If it's a sunny day it is too damn sunny, and if it is dark who can stand it?
Mack knew it was going to be that kind of day. He couldn't find his pants. He fell over a box that had crept out in his path. He cursed each brother in the Palace Flophouse, and on his way across the vacant lot he went out of his way to kick a dandelion flower.”
From John Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday
“Some days are born ugly. From the very first light they are no damn good whatever the weather, and everybody knows it. No one knows what causes this, but on such a day people resist getting out of bed and set their heels against the day. When they are finally forced out by hunger or job they find that the day is just as lousy as they knew it would be.
On such a day it is impossible to make a good cup of coffee, shoe strings break, cups leap from the shelf by themselves and shatter on the floor, children ordinarily honest tell lies, and children ordinarily good unscrew the tap handles of the gas range and lose the screws and have to be spanked. This is the day the cat chooses to have kittens and housebroken dogs wet on the parlor rug.
Oh, it's awful on such a day! The postman brings overdue bills. If it's a sunny day it is too damn sunny, and if it is dark who can stand it?
Mack knew it was going to be that kind of day. He couldn't find his pants. He fell over a box that had crept out in his path. He cursed each brother in the Palace Flophouse, and on his way across the vacant lot he went out of his way to kick a dandelion flower.”
Thursday, July 8
Squirt
I found this online this morning.
I laughed so hard I peed a little.
Enjoy.
Lament of the Imaginary Boyfriend.
BY Brendan Flaherty
- - - -
As the imaginary boyfriend of an eighth grade brace-face, I have found my make-believe life to be a hell pit.
Whenever Stephanie's bored in math class or seeking refuge from the orthodontist's disappointed frown, I'm conjured and enslaved, put upon to amuse her. Not that it's that difficult. I'm an impossibly accomplished doctor, actor, hunky dreamboat billionaire, and the highlight of her week is chicken patty Tuesday. Still, everyday I want to dump Michael Jackson's entire medicine cabinet, gauze and all, down my imaginary gullet and just call it quits.
Call it quits, that is, if I had time. But I'm in the gym like eight hours a day, cardio kickboxing and pumping iron and winding down with some advanced yoga. My imagined physique (impeccable) takes hard work, and Stephanie loves envisioning me stair stepping to Sting's "Desert Rose" while she lies on the kitchen floor eating ice cream topped with Skittles and beef jerky. She has quite the appetite, and a knack for jamming her favorite things together regardless of context. Her favorite animal is a horse-dolphin. Her dream vacation is a trip to Chicago, Florida. And since she likes sexy aerobics instructors and sassy cowboys, I have to work out in bike shorts and bejeweled cowboy boots.
If she could spell better, maybe Stephanie could find true love in a chat room. Or at least attract a halfway decent predator. Whatever happens, I just need some rest.
In the gym locker room, between fitness routines, I'm busy composing love sonnets for my girlmaster on scented parchment, which I send to her bedroom by way of my kind falcon, Jonathan—named after Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Her choice.
Curled up in her stained Smurf sheets, Stephanie wants assurance I will always be there to indulge her every flight of fancy and sub-human craving. Yesterday, for example, I bought her a chocolate helicopter. She ate the whole thing after we toured craters on the moon. Little snacks like that mean I have to take a timeout from Jazzercise to buy and sell islands in the Aegean Sea. She learned there was an Aegean Sea in social studies. Lucky for me, buying and selling islands there only takes a few minutes each day.
I end my fun day at the gym with like a thousand crunches, then I pop in at my dear friend Jean-Luc's vineyard to get Stephanie a rare bottle of taffy-flavored wine from the private collection of some artist or famous cartoonist. Jean-Luc and I rib each other about our fencing rivalry and the stint we spent in the Peace Corps, selflessly building houses for whales or something. I offer to pay him half a million dollars for the wine, because I carry that much in my wallet, but he won't accept the money because he's sophisticated (all my friends are).
As the sun sets on my pretend day, I bid adieu to Jean-Luc and drive through miles of lilac fields in my Aston Martin to my mega yacht. There, Stephanie is waiting for me to cradle her huge head and watch The Notebook again. After her tears dry she'll violate me missionary style.
I want to die. I want to swan dive off the yacht and inhale as soon as I hit the water, ending the searing agony and boredom of a crackpot fantasy life inside an eighth grader's brain. But I don't have that luxury. I don't have that power. I'm just an imaginary boyfriend.
If I were a real boyfriend I wouldn't talk to vineyard owners or go to the gym. I wouldn't be governed by emotional spin cycles that have me dressing up like Stephanie's long-lost father one second, then growing a blonde ponytail and going big-wave surfing the next. I'd sit on the couch all through the weekend, watching other people do stuff on TV, like play sports and build houses. I'd imagine my own sports victories and the houses I'd build. Then, I imagine, I'd imagine steamy (perverted) adult situations with exotic women, until some unrecognizable female frump walked into the room and told me I had to fix the garbage disposal. But it wouldn't bother me, because in my mind I'd be in a tropical lagoon, drinking beer and shooting skeet from a jet ski with ten naked make-believe girlfriends. If I were real, I imagine, that would pretty much be heaven.
I laughed so hard I peed a little.
Enjoy.
Lament of the Imaginary Boyfriend.
BY Brendan Flaherty
- - - -
As the imaginary boyfriend of an eighth grade brace-face, I have found my make-believe life to be a hell pit.
Whenever Stephanie's bored in math class or seeking refuge from the orthodontist's disappointed frown, I'm conjured and enslaved, put upon to amuse her. Not that it's that difficult. I'm an impossibly accomplished doctor, actor, hunky dreamboat billionaire, and the highlight of her week is chicken patty Tuesday. Still, everyday I want to dump Michael Jackson's entire medicine cabinet, gauze and all, down my imaginary gullet and just call it quits.
Call it quits, that is, if I had time. But I'm in the gym like eight hours a day, cardio kickboxing and pumping iron and winding down with some advanced yoga. My imagined physique (impeccable) takes hard work, and Stephanie loves envisioning me stair stepping to Sting's "Desert Rose" while she lies on the kitchen floor eating ice cream topped with Skittles and beef jerky. She has quite the appetite, and a knack for jamming her favorite things together regardless of context. Her favorite animal is a horse-dolphin. Her dream vacation is a trip to Chicago, Florida. And since she likes sexy aerobics instructors and sassy cowboys, I have to work out in bike shorts and bejeweled cowboy boots.
If she could spell better, maybe Stephanie could find true love in a chat room. Or at least attract a halfway decent predator. Whatever happens, I just need some rest.
In the gym locker room, between fitness routines, I'm busy composing love sonnets for my girlmaster on scented parchment, which I send to her bedroom by way of my kind falcon, Jonathan—named after Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Her choice.
Curled up in her stained Smurf sheets, Stephanie wants assurance I will always be there to indulge her every flight of fancy and sub-human craving. Yesterday, for example, I bought her a chocolate helicopter. She ate the whole thing after we toured craters on the moon. Little snacks like that mean I have to take a timeout from Jazzercise to buy and sell islands in the Aegean Sea. She learned there was an Aegean Sea in social studies. Lucky for me, buying and selling islands there only takes a few minutes each day.
I end my fun day at the gym with like a thousand crunches, then I pop in at my dear friend Jean-Luc's vineyard to get Stephanie a rare bottle of taffy-flavored wine from the private collection of some artist or famous cartoonist. Jean-Luc and I rib each other about our fencing rivalry and the stint we spent in the Peace Corps, selflessly building houses for whales or something. I offer to pay him half a million dollars for the wine, because I carry that much in my wallet, but he won't accept the money because he's sophisticated (all my friends are).
As the sun sets on my pretend day, I bid adieu to Jean-Luc and drive through miles of lilac fields in my Aston Martin to my mega yacht. There, Stephanie is waiting for me to cradle her huge head and watch The Notebook again. After her tears dry she'll violate me missionary style.
I want to die. I want to swan dive off the yacht and inhale as soon as I hit the water, ending the searing agony and boredom of a crackpot fantasy life inside an eighth grader's brain. But I don't have that luxury. I don't have that power. I'm just an imaginary boyfriend.
If I were a real boyfriend I wouldn't talk to vineyard owners or go to the gym. I wouldn't be governed by emotional spin cycles that have me dressing up like Stephanie's long-lost father one second, then growing a blonde ponytail and going big-wave surfing the next. I'd sit on the couch all through the weekend, watching other people do stuff on TV, like play sports and build houses. I'd imagine my own sports victories and the houses I'd build. Then, I imagine, I'd imagine steamy (perverted) adult situations with exotic women, until some unrecognizable female frump walked into the room and told me I had to fix the garbage disposal. But it wouldn't bother me, because in my mind I'd be in a tropical lagoon, drinking beer and shooting skeet from a jet ski with ten naked make-believe girlfriends. If I were real, I imagine, that would pretty much be heaven.
Friday, July 2
Not Cool
I am not okay with change. I try to be, I try to be flexable and understanding when things need to be updated or switched around but really I’m not okay with it. It buggs me, down to my very core I am bothered by things that need to be changed. It makes me laugh a little because I remember making fun of my dad, how he’d always buy the same style of shoes and he’d always order the same dish at every restaurant but now I’m that person. I like a certain kind of flip flop, the generic Target ones, black. I’m on my third pair. I like my jeans, Silver brand from Dillard’s when I can afford to buy them and the Target brand that are basically Silver knockoffs when I can’t. I like my Mossimo tank tops and my Folgers coffee and my Victoria’s Secret body spray and my CVS Tylenol and I really don’t see a problem with never changing from what I like. Now Erik came to my office yesterday and set up my new computer and updated EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM ON MY COMPUTER. I’ve been putting off updating to Windows 7 for some time, well, since it came out. Now I’m updated and I have to completely relearn how to use Microsoft Word and my EJE program. Everything is different and confusing and it’s like I need to start completely over in my job. Three years I have been working here, my office is just the way I like it things are set up a particular way, my desktop icons are in alphabetical order and I don’t care what anyone has to say about that, I’m happy with the way I run things in my corner of the world. But now it’s all messed up and different. I feel like I should look outside and find an orange sky and blue grass. It’s all wrong. And I don’t like it.