once was.

I ran into the little girl I once was last Wednesday. She's been turning up here and there all this year, usually at inconvenient times. I'm not going to describe her, because she's had enough trouble. Except to say she was a good reader at an early age, and a true believer that people are capable of love. She only assumed that eventually they would know how to love her, frog face and all. And each other. She has high hopes.

She's here now, and she doesn't want to talk about it, so I'm going to spare her. Flash to the woman I hate to admit that I actually am. Today and for years to come.

I complain about a job that isn't supposed to be my career, but is, if you count that it's the only thing I have seven years experience doing. Experience doesn't always make me perfect, but I get it done. "I don't want to," the little girl says. And I tell her nicely, "But dear, that's just what you have to do." I remind her, "This is just what you have to do so you can afford to have the things that allow you to do what you love."

The little girl becomes angry, and sometimes she makes a big raucous about it. She and my boss's little girl duke it out, and I have to rope her in before she loses my job for me. Ironically, my boss's little girl can still get me fired.

And I begin relationships that may or may not end abruptly, or die slowly, and the little girl says, "How come?"

"Because people change, and sometimes we don't change with them," I say.

"But what if I do everything right?" she asks.

And I tell her that I'm sorry, but that can never happen because sometimes we're going to have to fail, and that if we keep chasing the perfect version of ourselves we're going to be lying to everyone, including us. The little girl thinks that if she keeps her bad feelings under wraps, they'll have to stay. If she pretends not to mind when someone hurts her, they'll stay. And she thinks if she lets them see that she hurts enough, they won't leave.

"I'm feeling uncomfortable," she said just now.

And I'm saying don't worry, I'm going to take over from here. That I'm older, and while I can't make her feel better, I'm going to teach her how to be real. And that once I do, she's going to be in a place where she gets to play with her friends, and won't have any reasons to cry.

"I think I'll like that place," she says.

I'm not telling her yet that she can't stay here,or that we may not meet again, but I know she'll be happier when she's gone. I've allowed her to stay much too long, and while I've always kept her with me, I've come to a place where she doesn't belong. There are things I have to see through, and they're not for her eyes.

It's for her own good.

i'm not out.

Friends. They know how just how to save you. With the very same knowledge, they know just how to hurt you. Whether or not that's a bad thing depends upon how they use it.

I haven't always been right, but I've always tried to be kind. I'm no martyr, either. Sometimes I've been dead wrong about what's good for anyone else, let alone me.

I've never really been sure who anyone thought I was, or whether or not they knew who I really am. Now I know.

I guess the least I can do today is keep writing everything down, because that's who I've always been.

oh, sister.

This is about me. Some things are. I've been carrying the universe on my shoulders, and trying to balance it, too. To the universe, I say I'm sorry, but I need to let you down. To me, I say I'm sorry, but I'm out of rope.

I thought I was going to fall, but I've since landed, only to realize that it wasn't a deepening hole beneath me, but the ground. The very real, very rocky, and sometimes slippery ground. I can't say that I've landed on my feet, but I'm getting up now and I can't let anyone tell me to get back down. Not anyone. I'm dirty and I'm writing it down.

It's been a hard year. Creatively stifling, heartbreakingly disappointing, moderately overbearing, and sometimes just plain ugly. I'm taking a few steps back, assessing the damage, and trying to get back to being right again. I haven't changed, but the lighting's bad, and I've been someone else's duck in a row. I've hated it. It ruins everything I try to write and makes anything I say translate poorly. I have plans, and they don't include falling into place if said place is only where someone else says I should be.

That said, I'm calling some things off. There's cause, there's effect, and then there's a root, or a core. Whatever you want to call it, it's there, beneath your feet, underground. Or maybe it is your feet, planted there solid, safe from the weather, but not the tide.

Knowing this, I'd say it's come time to dig up the dirt and have a look at what's been killing me. It ain't always pretty.

"It's a slow rolling thunder that keeps the blue jays at bay, and the blue jays say she's pretty so it must be true."

these things I've seen.

Regarding the change of scenery here, I needed something new. I hate change. I cope with change, sometimes I roll with change, but I've never been able to like it.

I can't understand it, because I've needed it so badly, which I didn't know until this week.

Status quo is for suckers. How can I say that when I took almost a year off from everything challenging in my life to watch television? Here's how. This year was the most miserable yet. I'm talking lifetime. And who would ever have guessed it? I'd say maybe one or two people. Possibly three.

Before things changed, there used to be my father; he always understood me, at least until the booze soaked in. Sadly, he knows his cognitive skills are bad. He can't comprehend simple hospital forms, or his daughter, but he recognizes that he can't do those things. Yet he remembers when he could. Now that's a bad year.

I'm going to have to move on. From toll booths and trainstops to other, more tangible things. Like destinations. I don't love it, but I figure it's about time I start arriving, since I've grown out of driving just to be anywhere but here. I've never been good at leaving things behind; as a result, I've only become worse at being left behind.

It's been a crap year, and until now, I thought I was falling. I'm beginning to think that I've just been driving down the wrong road.

And if I'm lucky, I'll get a Garmin for my birthday.

"La Maga, without the drugs, this relationship's dead/when we were high, you agreed when I said/that comfort is fraud/and true love is like/true love is like watching you go/so watch me/go." - Vague Angels

kicking television.

I'm in the same boat as a lot of people. Problem stated, most succinct: I accept the love I think I deserve. How cliche, I know.

I don't feel entitled to anything in particular, and I always want to work for the things that I want. Really, really hard. I feel so lucky when I don't have to do anything, that I usually sabotage it just to make it work for me. For that, I apologize. To about eight or twelve guys, and a handful of friends, both former and present.

For the record, I did give back the engagement ring once. I'm not that girl. Instead, I'm the girl who feels really, really terrible when things don't pan out the way you or I or he and I or she or I thought they would. Especially when we've gone to such great lengths to make them good. And I feel so sorry, no matter how long it's been.

There are situations that take a long time to shape your life. Sometimes it takes less than three seconds. Other times, it's both, and you don't even see it coming.

For example, my father's drinking patterns. I'm angry with him now, but it's been such a long time coming. Ten years ago, I figured we were o.k., regardless. He never hit me, or yelled at me unless I deserved it. Most days, I didn't even know he was off his rocker.

Today, he forgets everything I say, he lectures me about things I've already learned how to do, and sometimes he leans on me so hard that I can barely stand myself. And just like that, I hate the way he smells. Almost sterile, and I can smell hospital, because that's where he's spent a lot of time. He hasn't been back in six months, but I think it's gotten into his blood. The lacking stench of the permanently infirm.

I've smelled it before, when my grandfather was dying of cancer. So clean on the outside, so dirty on the inside. I watched him die in what seemed like a week's time. On the first day, I called the hospital to say he needed help, because he wouldn't get out of bed, and he wouldn't take food or drink. I don't know what anyone else was doing, but I knew it wasn't much. On the fifth day, hospice came. On the seventh day, everyone else came, and then he was gone.

I don't always know that I'm doing so much to hurt me when I'm trying to help someone else. I wrote his obituary because I worked for the newspaper at the time, but also because no one else wanted to do it. I don't know whether this was good for me, but I'm leaning toward 'no'. I think I had to suck it up, and I think I do that a lot.

As for my father, I'm doing it now, because no one's talking about the smell. Maybe it won't be seven days, but I don't think it's much longer. And I don't like that my senses haven't lost their memory.

taller than you.

I was the kid whose lunch box was kicked around the schoolyard by the boy she always liked. This did not mean he liked me back. It meant he was a dick.

And when I fell down chasing them both around, hoping to save my yellow Garfield pail from certain damage, someone asked, "Are you hurt?"

That person liked me, or at least had a heart. At the time, I said, "No." But here's what I say today:

"Yes, but for the last time."

Under the advice of my parents, I also told the principal and she got me five bucks from the kid for my broken lunch box. I duct taped the thing together and spent the five bucks on candy. 

This time, I don't need his five bucks, and I'm going to go buy myself a beer. Here's to happiness in small doses.

nine days of Saturdays

"Let's get out of here/past the atmosphere/squint your eyes and no one dies/or goes to jail" -Andrew Bird, Noble Beast

Today, I am officially on vacation. The sad fact that I almost cried tears of joy when I left work yesterday tells me I'm meant to do something else. Something more.

I've done a lot of things. I'd like to say they were all awesome things, but some of them were not. As for those things, and they run few and far between, I have to remind myself that they are not the only things I've done.

I had this roommate once. I had lived with her for about a year, and things were going along swell. Then I had to make a choice.

I quit my job because accounting decided I might be a hot ticket to bed, if accounting was a 47-year-old divorcee with a creepy smile and hands he didn't want to keep to himself. I was 22. I told one of my managers. And I chose the one that said, "I'll tell you what, I can lay you off."

I didn't apply for unemployment. I worked at a cleaning company for three hours a day, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, dusting and vacuuming an office for a guy who thought I was stupid. Better? Probably.

I looked half-assedly for another job, but for some reason, I felt defeated. I did the dishes. 

And I didn't pay rent for five months. As for my roommate at the time, she didn't kick me out. It was 13 years ago, and I still feel badly about it, because I never got on my feet quite well enough to pay her back. There are times I think about doing it now, even though it's much too late. She called me just the other day, and I wonder if she still thinks about it. I do.

And yet, I'm still the girl that will give you her last $20 if you need it, or maybe cook you a meal if I find out you've been hungry and broke.

So, at one point in my life I've been a dead beat roommate. I've been so much more since. That I still hold the worst of me against me tells me I'm self-defeating. I've been a damn good roommate to a lot of people since, for better or for worse.

Today, I'm telling myself that one, I have to eat. Two, I need more sleep. To live. Lastly, I need to keep doing things that are better than the things I wish I didn't. 

By the way,karma is bullshit. At least in the way it's translated these days, which is that people can't rise above their poor behavior because karma's coming to push them down. And maybe if one does something good, something better's going to come and lift them up. That's not real life, man. Sometimes bad people get ahead, and good people suck pavement.

And sometimes, one's best intentions are flawed.

in white.

Paper. It's going out of style. I can't even write on it anymore. I can't hear me on it, but I miss the way it feels in my hands. I miss the truth of it. Pen to parchment, no eras-eys, no copy pasting. It's the realest thing I know.

But for now, this is where I am. 

I don't have a lot to say today. I'm busy listening to the traffic, the crickets, and Calexico, all slightly quieted by way of the Indian summer humidity.

And it makes me wonder who can hear me.