Coming Home Again (Blog #212)

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Ugh. It’s almost four in the morning, and I really meant to be in bed by now. Instead I just got home, brushed my teeth and such, and sat down to blog. With any luck, I’ll fly through this in no time. That being said, I really have no idea what I’m going to talk about and forgot how to form a sentence two hours ago, so I could be here a while. The good news is the house is quiet, which means it’s easy to concentrate. The bad news is the house is quiet, which means my body wants to fall asleep. Maybe I should bang some pots and pans to wake myself up.

Raise your hand if you think my mom and dad would appreciate that.

I spent the afternoon with my friend Bonnie. We have a mutual friend who’s moving into a new home, so we volunteered to run around and look for a few decorations. Y’all, I don’t know if you’ve ever shopped for curtains, but I don’t recommend it. Like, if someone invites you to peruse for window treatments, just stay home and pull your fingernails out with a pair of wire pliers instead–you’ll have more fun. After spending all day going from store to store and looking at solids and patterns of every color, Bonnie and I still couldn’t come up with anything to match an already-purchased comforter. Apparently, finding the right pair of drapes is harder than finding a husband.

All that being said, the day had its highlights. Bonnie and I actually started this project last night, and since I’ve been sick, I walked around all evening with a washcloth in my pocket incase I needed to blow my nose. (If you’re judging me, stop. A washcloth is easier to keep up with than a bunch of little tissues.) Anyway, today Bonnie gave me an unexpected gift–an honest-to-god, one-of-a-kind handkerchief because “friends don’t let friends blow their noses with washrags.” So take a look. The hanky is western-themed, which Bonnie said was in honor of my “cowboy fetish.” The only thing I have to say to that is, “Giddy up.”

For dinner I met my friends and former roommates, Justin and Ashley, at Olive Garden. We started a little before seven, stayed for a couple hours, then went back to their house. This, of course, is where I used to live, the place where feeling welcome and comfortable is a given. After a while, Ashley retired to bed, and Justin and I stayed up talking until almost three. Conversation topics included working for the man, exes we hope to never see again, and how everyone in America is so easily offended these days. (If that statement offends you, well, you just proved the point.) Anyway, we also discussed some of the reasons it’s harder to form solid friendships as you get older. When Justin and I met over fifteen years ago, we put a lot of time into each other, confessed a lot of secrets, and pretty much bonded for life. Now that we’re older and busier, however, not only is it difficult to find new people we get along with, but we simply don’t have the amount of time to invest that we did in our twenties.

Currently the house is sixty-seven degrees (Dad likes it like that), and I’m wearing a sweatshirt and sock cap and still freezing. It’s not even winter yet, but my skin is dry, my toes are cold, and my body is already wanting to pack on extra pounds and hibernate until spring. (The whole situation is not cute, and I’m not impressed.) Honestly, I’m not sure which one is dropping faster–the temperature or my generally cheery disposition.

If it’s not obvious–I don’t like this time of year. Quick–someone send a cowboy over to warm me up.

I realize some of “you people” like the winter. You get to “bundle up.” You get to drink hot chocolate. You get to wear your cute little scarves and hats and whatever else because “you can always put more clothes on but you can’t take more clothes off.” That’s okay. This isn’t a moral issue; it’s just a matter of seasonal preference. My favorite season is summer, but if yours is winter, we can still be friends. Still, I’d like to be clear–I’m personally really looking forward to June.

It’s never too late to be your own friend.

Recently someone told me their head wasn’t a good place to live, so lately I’ve been thinking about all the ways in which we’re uncomfortable in our own bodies, always wanting to change something about our physical appearance, always looking for distractions because we can’t sit still with our own thoughts. And I think it’s ironic that we can spend hours looking for curtains or over a decade working on a friendship, but many of us are hesitant to spend that time working on ourselves–you know–the one we live with. I know I felt that way when I first started therapy. Sometimes I still do. After all, personal growth takes time and hard work–a lot of it. I don’t think therapy is the only way to get to know, like, and accept yourself, but it is one way, and tonight I’m reminded that however it happens, it’s never too late to give to yourself the way you give to projects and everyone else around you. It’s never too late to be your own friend. To me this feels like the sun’s warm rays in summer, although I imagine to someone else it’d feel like a cool breeze in autumn or the snow falling in winter, whatever that thing is you’ve been longing for and haven’t experienced in a while, that thing that feels like coming home again.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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If you’re making yourself up to get someone else’s approval–stop it–because you can’t manipulate anyone into loving you. People either embrace you for who and what you are–or they don’t.

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Self-Critical Cowboys (Blog #52)

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Five minutes ago, I was down on my knees giving myself carpet burn. And whereas I wish I could tell you that someone was down there with me, that was sadly not the case. Rather, I was on the floor with my phone—the closest thing I have to a relationship—because the charging port is broken. So once or twice a day, I have to lay the phone on its back, futz with the cord so it connects just right, and then put a book on top of the cord to hold it in place. All this I do with one hand while I cross my fingers with the other, recite five Hail Marys, and hope to god that Mercury has moved out of retrograde.

This routine has been going on for the last several weeks, and it’s starting to get old. Honestly, I think it’s time for new phone.

Lately my days and nights have been flip-flopped, and because I got up early this morning to have breakfast with my friend Lorena, I’m currently functioning on about three hours of sleep and two pots of coffee. (I’m pretty sure union requirements state that my brain has to have six hours of sleep to work properly, so it’s a wonder I was able to dress myself this morning and not end up with my underwear on the outside of my pants.)

After Lorena and I had breakfast, I went with her in her Subaru to unload a couch at her office. Lorena’s a therapist who’s opening a clinic in Booneville, where she plans to specialize in pet bereavement, which I didn’t know was a thing, but Lorena says is for people who are grieving the upcoming or recent loss of an animal. Anyway, somehow Lorena managed to squeeze a couch in the back of her Subaru, and in order for me to fit in the passenger seat, I had to enter into a yoga pose.

Lorena called it “balls to the wall,” and I held it for forty minutes.

This evening I drove to Fayetteville to take family photos for a friend. I imagine I’ll say more about it later when I can share some of the photos, but toward the end of the three-hour session, I started to feel stressed. And although I’m sure some of that stress had to do with trying to get two adults, a two-year-old boy, a two-week-old baby, and a dog to smile and look at the camera AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME, I’m also sure most of that stress had to do with the fact that I’m tired, and whenever I’m tired I usually get self-critical and think things are going worse than they actually are.

The Old West was anything but a heyday for homosexuals.

For the longest time, I’ve had this thing with cowboys and the Old West. And no, it’s not a fetish, although I guess that could be fun with the right person. (Bad cowboy, bad.) It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s this mental game I play with myself in order to make big things seem smaller and easier to deal with. Like, in today’s world, it’s easy to look in the mirror and then pick up your cell phone and compare yourself to the entire world and end up feeling pretty shitty. But if you lived in the Old West, your world would be a lot smaller, you’d have fewer people to compare yourself to, and you’d probably be less self-critical.

Still thinking in terms of the Old West, I’m now imagining my self-critical and “things are going worse than they actually are” thoughts as outlaws or cowboys. And I guess most of the time there’s a town sheriff keeping those guys in check, saying things like, “You’re drunk. Go home. We don’t want your kind around these parts.” But all I can imagine is that my mental sheriff belongs to that union I mentioned earlier and went to bed a long time ago, leaving the outlaws to run amuck and tear up the town.

My friend Barbie says that negative thoughts are like ants. If you let one in your house, it’s going to bring all its friends. Well, I guess that self-critical cowboys are the same way because even as I’m typing this blog, I’m already getting self-critical about it too, thinking it probably sounds as if a drunken cowboy wrote it. And I guess drunken cowboys don’t have ANYTHING POSITIVE to say, since I’m also thinking I’ll probably wake up fifty pounds heavier because I ate at Waffle House tonight, and I’ll probably die alone because let’s face it—the Old West was anything but a heyday for homosexuals.

All that being said—

I think my personal battery has been running low for a while now, and when I get extra tired, I have to remind myself that I’ve been through a lot lately. And by a lot, I mean—Earth. I have to remember that life these last several months has been a lot like the Old West—new and exciting, sure, but also scary and unpredictable. (The Old West ain’t for sissies.) I guess it feels like I’ve been riding my horses hard, and that simply can’t go on forever. No, my horses need a long, cool drink of water. If only for a night, I need to recharge my battery and I need to rest. And then in the morning, my sheriff will be back on duty, the world will look different, and those bad, bad cowboys can be the ones to sleep for a while.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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It's the holes or the spaces in our lives that give us room to breathe and room to rest in, room to contain both good and bad days, and--when the time is right--room for something else to come along.

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