parent death

One of the biggest things when my mom died, was I thought I had to get it all figured out. All the complexities of our relationship, all the unsaid things, all the unmet needs, all the mixed feelings of love and abandonment, betrayal and goodness. I was afraid that there were all these things left undone that now I would never be able to resolve. But the truth was, maybe I never would have been able to resolve them, and maybe I would have been able to. and in time, even with her dead, I have. There is this peace about it now. In the sorrow and bitterness, in the beauty of how she moved and how she survived, and the strength she passed on, and in her pain.

The thing that surprised me was how long it took. Like, for years it hurt. The first three years were the worst. I think if I had know in the beginning that it was going to suck for three years, I would have may be taken it easier on myself.

Not that it totally sucked all the time. There were times when it was easy, times when I would forget. Times when I was worried that I wasn't sad enough. Times when I was worried that I was more sad about my failing relationship than my dead mom. I thought I had to get it right. There is no getting it right, it will all come. there is time for it all.

What I needed most was for the people around me to know that I couldn't hold up my side of things. Every task was difficult, most of the time. Cooking, figuring out what to do with my day, holding up my side of the friendship, calling people, reaching out, making plans, answering the question "what do you want to do". I couldn't care take. I needed taking care of.

I read a lot of trashy books. Weird pseudo-feminist mystery novels like by Elizabeth Peters, or Rita Mae Brown. Trashy pseudo-historical fiction, like Zorro by Isabel Allende. Paperbacks. Best Sellers. Shit I didn't have to think about. I read a book a day sometimes.

Part of what I needed was just to get through the day.
Part of what I needed was to do the normal things I did.
Part of what I hated was people being normal around me.
Part of what I needed was for people to be normal around me.

I wish more people had just brung up questions about death and mom in the beginning of each time we hung out, so it wouldn't be looming over us, waiting to see if it would be addressed. Like, they could ask questions about my family, about funeral stuff, about if there were things I was realizing I needed, about what she was like, about did I want to talk about how she died. did I want to talk about my relationship with her. did she read to me. did she know I wrote a zine. did I have ideas about what happened when you die. anything. anything to break the ice. And if I didn't want to talk about it, I could have just answered shortly, abruptly, I could have said I didn't want to talk about it right then. I could have said anything, instead of always waiting to see. Instead of feeling like a freak and a burden. Instead of feeling so locked up and terrible and pretend.

road trip

tour diary
day one. escape from Asheville.

How do you leave a place you've lived for 12 years. with bitterness and sorrow? with tenderness and pain?

I got out. It felt like I was just leaving for a little bit. everything in storage. Michael in the seat next to me.

First stop, Ida.

Ida is some land in Mid Tennessee, near the Radical Fairy land, it is transgender sanctuary land. two houses, a few trailer, a few barns. Maybe ten people living there, something like that. Big gardens. and in September, the Ida Palooza music festival. The first time I went there, I fell so in love. I cut them wood. I made tortillas. This time they were rebuilding a barn that seemed unsaveable. they are good at saving seemingly unsavable things. like me. like my heart.

quotes

"The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives."

-Audre Lorde, Poetry Is Not A Luxury

quotes

Dorothy Allison says that the early Feminist movement changed her life. "It was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change."


http://www.dorothyallison.net/

read these three books: Trash, Bastard Out of Carolina, Skin: talking about sex, class and literature.

crush and crushing depression

Sascha says on the phone to me - we each have our stories that we repeat over and over.

It's true and our stories are similar - the letting someone fall in love with us who we know we're going to hurt, then feeling shitty and falling for someone who will never love us how we deserve. I don't want to repeat the story forever, and I don't think we have to.

It is one thing to see the story, and then another thing entirely to unlearn it and write a new script.

Here is what I am trying to do:
1. recognize what it's about - like how I like to be either in control and safe that way, or totally out of control and safe again, in a different way. the familliarly safe feeling of wanting more than I'll ever get. I know I won't get it. safe. sucks.

2. what is it about the out of control? what is it that is similar in the people who make me feel that way?
there is a thing in it about masculinity and ego, butch players and bad boys. wanting famous eyes to fall on me, to pick me, to count me special.

3. what is it inside of me that holds that part?
Inside me there is this too - this person who I neglect. and it's a little more boring to make inner peace than to look for it out there, so maybe a little of both.

Instead of beating myself up for repeating this story, I say - thanks for letting this in to my life, for letting me feel this way. this crazy way of crush. thanks for letting me some insight into this pattern. Maybe I will still repeat it, but maybe I'll be on a spiral out, on a further tragectory out of the spring loaded place that holds this need.

so if I was good good good I would go to a yoga class, forget the crush, get grounded, talk to my inner butch, but I don't really want to. There are reasons for this defense, this fun thing. so I compromise.
I will go get a vest, a tie, some boy glasses. I will nurture that inside part some, let him out.

4. also, what project can I work on when I can't think and can't write? Draw, interview people. In this whirlwind between crush and crushing depression, the most important thing is to keep something in my life that is worthwhile and outside my head.

journal

Carefree AZ.
It is so sad to me the way people grow old in america, so many people. this loneliness and isolation. My grandma saying it's not fair, still being alive after her husband died. My grandpa. A few weeks ago. No funeral. There is such close feelings, deep sadness and new love. That can't eat feeling and can't focus and hard time sleeping. I am pretending to have new love, but it is makebelieve, faking to cover up something else I don't want to feel.

How do you mourn someone who you never really loved? but maybe grew to love a little bit in this last year. someone who did nothing while the daughtors were beat and abused. Wash your hands of it. Wash your hands of bad memories and eachother.

I never understood my family, the way they didn't look out for eachother. The sickness inside all of them. I wanted a different kind of family, still do, bigger than me and my sister and her partner. I want the family promise of punk and feminism, the promise that I can't seem to ever quite get a grasp on, and is it me, am I washing my hands when other people are holding close? or is it just the incideousness of capitalism and individualism and isolation that is so fucking hard to break out of.

The sadness is the sadness for a whole generation of my family, and for me, and for my dead mom. The sadness is for being so scared I won't create something better after all.

quotes

"People are really, realy hungry to feel some hope about anything. The simple idea that because of challenges people face with the environment, over the next 40 years things must change is daunting. But if you say it's a great opportunity (for this generation) to build a new civilization - that generates hope. We've spent the last two decades being so discouraged and detached, that need to feel some hope is a latenet urge that has been long neglected. In the end there is no practical alternative to hope. Only a certain proportion of people are montivated by despair. The rest of us are motivated by hope."

(I ripped this out of the paper and forgot who it was quoting)