Waiting to Collide

I count the aches in my body as the weekend’s funeral procession crawls along the overpass. Still groggy from the sort of night’s sleep that happens in an unfamiliar bed, I roll my right shoulder back, trying to work out the persistent kink between my shoulder blades. I flex my big toe. This guy I used to see said it was probably tendonitis, but a small, nagging voice whispers things like gout and arthritis. I wonder if that woman over there plucking dozens of napkins out of the dispenser has problems with uric acid crystals. Swollen toe joint? Perhaps a bunion. Something. I’m sure of it. Why else would she wear such atrocious shoes?

The parking lot fills up as I stare listlessly out of the glass cafe front. Real estate agents with gaudy earrings, mothers with children in tasteful navy strollers, and retirees and their wives with their oversized taupe purses — people with no where to be at 9am on Monday morning — wander in from their SUVs and squint myopically at the menu over the barista’s shoulder.

Women with voices like hungry chickens sit down at the table next to me. One of them drops with a spectacular flop on the shared bench and it bounces like a teeter totter calling my attention to her presence and the stiffness in my back. I lift the mug to my lips but the last half-inch of liquid has gone cold.

I scoot out from behind the table, grabbing the cup from above in a clumsy, desperate way, and claim the last from the carafe. I give a half-nod to the barista then tap the empty vessel. He flashes me a smile and retrieves it from behind the counter. It’s not the first time we’ve had this exchange today.

When I turn to go back to my table, I see you. Maybe ten yards in front of me. You’re wearing that grey Batman shirt you used to wear weekly — I wonder how it has survived over the years. Your glasses, gait, posture haven’t changed. You look the same even though you’ve shaved your head. The stubble gives away that you’re going bald.

I forget you when I recount past loves. My longest relationship, but the least formative. We were together when I wasn’t yet myself. Still raw. Sore. Fetal. Too young to know that chronic boredom is a death rattle. I became bloated on frustration. Fat. Tired. Melancholy. I still can’t stop myself from blaming you.

I’m forty pounds less sad now and sporting the coiffure of the sexually satisfied. You don’t recognize me as we pass.

I get lost later in the day and turn around in the parking lot of our old apartment — the one in the hills — and regret not saying I’m sorry.

Not too long ago, a coworker at the hospital found a Buddha on the side of the road with both arms broken off. He later gave the figure to me. At times like now, I not only do my best to curb the tendency to want, but try to remember that succumbing to the inability to control circumstance may be the only way to tolerate uncertainty. Impotence is, at best, an uncomfortable feeling. For someone who thinks in terms of possibilities, chronically speculates, and plans as if it were a symptom of OCD… Being powerless is waterboarding for the mind.

Over the past six months, I have managed to disentangle myself from an identity that no longer serves me now that I am not accommodating my illness. No longer obsessed with embracing transience (relationship, mood, location, etc.), I’m starting to make progress in the direction of a suitable career, contributing to a cause that I care about, developing close relationships, taking better care of myself physically, and contemplating starting a family of my own. These goals are obtainable, and I’m obtaining them with an ease that I would have found impossible a few years ago.

I recently became involved in a long distance relationship. My first serious relationship since March of 2009. With every passing year — every passing relationship — I get closer to knowing not merely what I desire, but what I need. This person has the potential to be both. It is exciting, terrifying, and baffling.

When one sits down to conjure their perfect mate, they imagine his or her physical features, interests, personality, sexual proclivities, life goals, domestic compatibility, and so on. As a planner, I do this in extreme detail — almost to the extent that the standards would be impossible to satisfy. So, imagine my surprise when I came across someone who satisfies them extraordinarily well on paper. Even more surprising when there is mutual attraction.

He has obligations tying him in one city for the next few months, then will be abroad for a year. I have obligations here in Austin for the next two years. The timing lines up neatly; there’s even an active plan. Hoops to jump through. Compatibilities to test. If things go well over the next few months, we go on to the next six-month round of waiting and correspondence. Then another round. What happens at the end of that? How can I look forward and determine if waiting a year-and-a-half for a man I’ve known just seven weeks will be worthwhile?

The question, “What do you want?” has been volleyed. What I want is to settle down. I want to be done with school, in a career, married, and starting a family five years from now. I’m done with the restless period of my life, and I’m anxious to create something stable and satisfying. It’s a twisted game of Russian Roulette where no one wants to say, “If we get through the 18-month obstacle course, I think you’d be worth marrying.” That’s an insane thing to say to someone you’ve known for so short a time, and easy to misconstrue as an attempt to corner and capture them like big game. So in our delicate treatment of the subject, for fear of scaring the other person off with an extreme level of intensity, we’re circumventing the very discussion that needs to happen. Neither one of us would be involved in a long distance relationship if it weren’t for this perfect storm. I don’t know if it can wait to be discussed until he comes to visit in March, or if the revolver will go off before then.

Due to the nature of the relationship being a variable, any attempt to plan for two years from now is futile. All I can do is see him in March, again in six months, and then in a year to determine what will happen. The huge swaths of time between visits allow him ample time to decide it’s not worth the investment, or meet someone else, or simply tire of me. I’m deeply worried, feeling extremely vulnerable, and almost anticipating ultimate rejection. An equal low to match the high I’ve been feeling since I last saw him.

This is where Buddha comes in. There’s nothing to cling to yet. It hasn’t had a chance to solidify. I need to relax my grip and allow events to unfold as they may.

Or perhaps I just need a strong drink.

I started 2009 confused and rough. The year chewed me up and spat out a softer, more sentimental Ash than I can recall myself as ever having been. I consider the first 25 years of my life to be a false start. My life, as I want it to be, began this past year.

Volunteering at the state mental hospital in the Peer Support program forces me to repeatedly rehash my family history. Given the Jerry-Springer-ness of it, one would think that this would be traumatic. But much like repeating the same word over and over again, it begins to lose meaning and becomes abstract, an academic curiosity, distant to me as the Iran-Contra Affair, defanged. For this and countless other reasons, my experience at the hospital has been invaluable.

For a long time, I skirted the subject of my family. At first, I’d refuse to respond to inquiries — angry, lonely, and still stinging sharply from the first eighteen years of my life. Then I minimized. Sometimes I’d lie and say that my biological mother was dead. I’d shrug my shoulders at my father’s death and mutter, “Don’t worry about it; you didn’t kill him” to those who instinctively apologized for my loss. I didn’t want to deal with the stigma of a broken family. I didn’t want to be perceived as damaged goods. Then rage and self defense. I hated my biological mother so intensely — the pain of rejection and abandonment melted and left a hard pit of independence. I felt as though I were without family, alone.

I moved back to the Northeast, in part, to be closer to my aunt and uncle. My aunt had been in poor health and had had a close brush with death that was not communicated to me at the time because I was too far away (in Austin) to do much besides worry. Faced with the prospect of her dying and being unable to see her before that happened prompted my return.

I visited them frequently over the next year and a half while living in Massachusetts. I loved everything about it. I loved the drive down (two hours from Boston, breaking 100 mph multiples times in my new, light, beautiful car). I loved her exuberance when meeting me at the door. My uncle’s good-natured stoicism. Helping in the kitchen. Knocking back beer and playing cards with my uncle until after midnight (he’s still my favorite drinking buddy). Picking marigold seeds completely sloshed on glühwein. Badmitton for hours on Heineken. (Detecting a pattern here…) They are relaxed, content, joyous people who love, accept, and support me as I am and as I wish to be. Each visit felt like a celebration. I slowly realized that I was not without a family. I had a perfect, chosen family.

In addition to my aunt and uncle, I also had Dr. McAwesome at home. He is, to this day, the person to whom I am closest. He receives the uncensored, unembellished truth, processes it rationally  and returns in the same fashion. He shares my hobbies, my curiosity, my desire to spend quiet hours indoors, and my domestic patterns. He is brilliant, affectionate, accepting. He is irreplaceable and I will love him forever no matter what the form of our relationship.

When I moved back to Austin, I moved in with a close friend, and quickly made other supportive, mature, and fascinating friends that I admire and love sharing optimistic thoughts and time with. Musicians, artists, nerds. Passionate, intelligent people. People I want in my life forever. That will come to my wedding, that I will call at Christmas, that I will weep for when they die someday.

In short, I am surrounded by awesome human beings. Even Dr. McAwesome’s mother, who wrote me the sweetest, most earnest thank you email for a scarf I sent her for Christmas. My new family is an oddly shaped tree worth embracing, and I heartily thank my biological mother for leaving the month of my 18th birthday. My life will be rich and filled with love.

Happy New Decade, y’all!

My downstairs neighbors are having extremely loud sex at this very moment.  She’s doing vocal warm-ups at the same time.  It’s humorous and sexy at the same time.

BFF and platonic lifemate is at her parent’s house all day.  Roommate is giving a talk in North Carolina.  Girl Date is busy all day.  Man Date is most likely sleeping off two weeks of 18-hour days.  I don’t have the option of going to my family’s because I have cat duty this weekend.

There is a large scale pillow fight happening today in Boston.  For the first time in months, all I want is to not be alone; courtesy of drugs, I am well-rested and frisky.  Today is seeming to be a vacuum for social activity.

There has been a serious uptick in the insomnia in the past week.  Four of the seven past days I’ve had to take Seroquel to sleep at all, and still wake up frequently…  On the nights I don’t take anything, I really don’t sleep.  There’s this thing I call the “gator death roll” where I just roll over and over and over for hours — anyone I’ve slept with can attest that this is just about the most obnoxious habit ever.  So I roll, look at my phone, check my email, roll around some more, look at my phone again.  Completely exhausted, but unable to put out the flames or slow down the burning carousel in my head.  Debating whether or not to just go back to staying awake until I can’t stand up, sleep 3-4 hours, and have done with it.  Frustrating.

Up until this weekend, there was a ceratin duality to my social life.  I had lived in Connecticut until I was 18, then Austin for 7 years or so, then back to New England for the past year and a half.  During these periods, I put friendships in opposite places on pause.  These were people I had grown close to over the years, and felt extraordinarily comfortable with on different levels.  For some, this was the rule that any and all things in my head were open to discussion — for others, it was the rule that the unspoken could be accepted and expressed only in moments of acute emotion.  It’s the art of being known both verbally and instinctually by those closest to you.  The dichotomy of being fiercely private but needing, desperately, to be understood and accepted.  Both beautiful and complex, but confusing to even myself.

This weekend has been particularly surreal in that two of the people I consider to be in the closest friends circle have been introduced.  They’re quite different, and fall into the opposite catergories of friendship.  Awkward, yet satisfying.  Knowing that Best Friend and I will be moving back to Austin this summer is intensely pleasurable, and a moment that I look forward to.  Restarting again…  Maybe for the last time?

I am the proud owner of three very chill cats, and one very well-behaved dog.  I love them all quite a lot; taking care of them and training them is something of a hobby.  The cats have always been very good about their litter box habits.  They seldom, if ever, pull a vengeful-cat-pees-on your-stuff, move from house to house well, share one box, and tolerate changes in litter type and box location.  None of this is “normal” cat behavior.  Most people just suck at raising/socializing cats.

I’m officially sick of scooping the box.  If the Doc and I want to go away, it is limited to a few days, due to the box needing to be scooped.  The mechanized boxes tend to break down after a while with as many cats as I have.  Also, despite being an angel otherwise, Clam (my pup) tends to raid the box for kitty ganache.  I would like that to stop.

So I’ve decided to toilet train my cats.  I had purchased a City Kitty a long while ago and it had been a flimsy piece of plastic that would have scared me to sit on if I were a cat; it was discarded.    After roughly 30 seconds on Amazon, I found the Litter Kwitter (I am not responsible for kitschy misspellings).

As you can see from the pic, there are three steps: red, orange (“amber”), and green. Technically, it will be closer to five. One, replace the regular litter box with the LK tray and red pan; the cats must only have one option for eliminating. Two, after the cats have adjusted to the LK tray/pan on the floor, place it on the toilet. Three, give the animals about a week to adjust and, if there has been no house soiling, then you are ready for the orange level. Four, after another week or so, up to the green pan. When the urine and feces are being eliminated into the water rather than the pan, they are officially trained. I plan to add a fifth step of leaving the tray on the bowl for a little while longer before bumping the cats up to the toilet seat, as the tray plus pan is a bit wider than the toilet seat, and I don’t want them to be surprised and fall into the toilet, thus ruining weeks of moving the tray on and off the toilet to eliminate my urine and feces.

As you can see, we are currently at orange level:

So far, so good.  Goober has left small, solid presents were the old litter box used to be a couple of times so far, but is urinating through the magic hole.  The other two kitties seem to be doing well.

Always remember that animals are animals.  Even if they sleep on my bed, and poo on the toilet, my cats are cats.  Anthropomorphizing your pets teaches them bad habits and fuels PETA’s campaigns!

The first time I met Robbie, I scared him into silence.

My friends Jasmin and Janet, Jan’s husband Robbie, and I were carpooling to a work picnic (we three ladies worked together at a vet clinic) at the farm of one of the vets.  Jan is a stereotypical, flighty soprano.  She takes a while to get things together, and gets other ideas in the process of leaving her house.  She’s something like a squirrel.  In fact, we took to calling her “Squirrely” towards the end of our friendship.

When Jasmin and I arrived, Jan was gathering miscellaneous things:  jackets and blankets into bags, food into ziplocs, soda cans into coolers, and so on.  She was not bringing beer, or wine (she was a white wine drinker), as “Robbie doesn’t like me to drink.”  Red flags were flying immediately after she said this.  Robbie appeared and shook the hands of his wife’s friends.  Quiet, and maybe a bit shy.  Jan began looking around for the music that she (vocalist) and Robbie (classical guitarist) would be performing at the picnic.  There was some difficulty in this, as the area around Jan’s piano was stacked waist-high in loose papers, junk mail, music books, text books, and possibly a few, small animals living in the heap.  Robbie began chastizing Jan for not keeping a cleaner house.

Janet worked full time with the two of us and went to school three-quarters time, in addition to taking care of three dogs and a cat on her own.  I was displeased by Robbie’s comment.

Finally, after waiting a little over half an hour as Jan gathered the picnic materials, we loaded everything into the car.  We stopped off for gas, and ran into the conveinience store for snacks and sodas to consume on the way to the farm.  As Jasmin and I picked our ways through the nuts, chips, cookies, meaty chews, and candy bars, Jan lingered over some very tame-looking chocolate bars at the the front of the store.  She turned, and selected a bag of plain M&Ms, and a bottle of water.  Robbie, who had just finished filling his Big Gulp saw this, sauntered up to her and began to speak in a low tone.  A few isles over, I only heard “…you know you shouldn’t be eating that…”

Janet was 5’7″ and at the time, she tipped the scales at a mere 110ish pounds.  She had issues getting food at stay down, and had grown self conscious about her waifish frame (she had an average build — 110 was far too thin for her, and she looked very unhealthy).  Jasmin and I had an idea of what made her throw up and what didn’t.  Jan loved chocolate, and it didn’t make her sick.  My suspicion was that Robbie had a tendency to tell her what to eat (both vegetarians).  This displeased me.

We purchased our food and went back out to the car.  Some things had fallen over in the back, or needed to be rearranged, so Robbie popped the fifth door with one hand, holding the Big Gulp in the other.

He turned to me, extended his hand holding the soda and said, “Hold this, hun.”

I took the drink and moved a step closer, “You will never speak to me that way again.”

Robbie blinked up at me — without the heels I was wearing, I still had a couple inches on him — paused, “OK.”

From that point on, I did not speak to him.  In a matter of one hour, he had insulted me, and made every effort to control one of my best friends.  The bridling of Jan stunk of abuse, and I knew that his behavior in front of Jasmin and I was not as overt as it would be when we were gone.

Jan says Robbie “is taking care of me”.  “He loves me and wants the best for me, is all.”

Jan moved away to Alabama with Robbie, far away from her friends and family.  She moved to a small town in the deep south where she knew no one.  If he has not hit her yet, he will soon.

I found out last night that Janet is pregnant.  She thinks Robbie will make a good father.

Jan, if you read this, please know that I still love you.  If things get bad, I have a futon in the study with your name on it — baby or no.