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Scarlite
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Name: Korey
Birthday: 12/7/1982
Gender: Female
Interests: Themes & Rhythms, Concerts, Biographies, Classic Cartoons, Poetry & Music, Rituals, Photos, Philosophy & Spirituality
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AIM:  Erraticka
Member Since:
4/2/2007
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| I'm going to keep this pretty short ... we just finished unpacking from our weekend trip to West Virginia, and I'm exhausted. In a good way. It was the mini-retreat we've put off for almost 5 months. We spent three days at a hospitality house out there for our 8th month anniversary, aka monthiversary. Just us 2 in a huge house full of cozy furniture. We got up early; made big Southern breakfasts; filled the rooms with music and scented oil; took a billion pictures and tons of video. We hiked around Spruce Knob, the highest point in WV. There's an observatory up there from which you can see miles of mountains, to the edge of the world. We horsed around setting up the camera and tripod and taking crazy shots of each other and the wind-sailors. Apparently we acted so giddy and green that a random woman assumed we were on our honeymoon and offered to take a picture of us together.
Only half the time was fun and games. Things did get intense a few times ... we crackled over the problems that we hadn't had time to hash out during the busy weeks. I never get more frustrated or feel more alone than when I face the person who I must relate to for the rest of my life and know he has no clue what I'm really saying. Our debates have yet to become tame or orderly, but we do things our way, and somehow work it out. So we don't go to bed angry, a lot of times we've ended an argument by watching the sunrise, together. This weekend, tensions were laid out in all their festering foulness, and we saw them for what they were, and took out the trash. And the trip ended mighty well.
So it's back to the grind, bright and early tomorrow. But for the first time in weeks, even months, I'm not dreading it. With so much emotional garbage unloaded, and so much reassurance that the most important and valuable things in my life really are mine for the appreciating, I feel like I can deal with these next few weeks.
Okay, maybe only this week.
Or just tomorrow. At least, until J gets home. :) | | |
| more and more I find myself browsing xanga networks, rather than getting started on whatever is due, tomorrow. I hate getting up two hours earlier than usual just to fill my morning with panic and frustration as I speed through a few hours worth of unfinished business. after a six month absence, I hate to take another "break", but it looks like I have to, if I can stand it ... just for a few days. | | |
| J's started a new
job, today. tech support at a little local company with a pretty cool
name. he came home all "computered out", but with the biggest smile
I've seen on his face in daylight for weeks. When he got the news last
night, it was like some huge, invisible burden suddenly lifted - no more
part-time, piecemeal, paycheck-to-paycheck contract work. He whistled while washing dishes, and breaks out in random smiles. and I'm happy to see him happy, again, and it took most of the weight off of my Stupifyingly Protracted Unhappy Day. today's S.P.U.D. started off bright and early with a depressing dr. appointment, and ended in a week's worth of catchup for algebra class. just one of those days when I can't wait till this is over.
last night I took a test that revealed something I've been suspecting for a while: I'm an introvert. I discovered that it's been hidden because when people are
around, i'm tempted to talk away the silence that becomes
awkward as I reflexively retreat deeper and deeper into my thoughts. but I constantly, secretly wish I could lose my voice for a few days, so that I could stop being so ashamed of my faucet-mouth. I wish I had an excuse not to use speech with anyone, about anything. no words, at all. just gestures, and only if necessary. after a little while of that, maybe I'd finally be able to hear the thoughts my incessant verbal discharging is drowning out.
things have been a little better, tonight. I found a recipe for "dutch baby" online - another way to get rid of the ten pound bag of flour that J insisted on getting (well, $2 is a really good deal) but has now devoured a third of the space in our tiny freezer. he'll make a good character, when I decide to write my autobiographical memoirs. I already have the material for those memoirs - I've started
writing them in the margins of my class notes, when I feel like spacing out in class - random notes about the
people in front of me, or to-do lists, or a story fragment inspired by
my professor's tie or the sound of the projector screen unrolling. those margin memoirs are some of the most interesting writing I do ... if
only I could do it for a living.
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| I want my week back! I've got so much to do, and absolutely NO time to do it in. Sunday is a sad day, for me. T-minus 24 hours before it's back to the salt mines. but I seem to be able to find just enough time to post.
yesterday started off rough and could've been really bad, but ended rather well. :) we set out on foot went out to see a movie that should have been at 10 pm, only to find out that it had been cancelled and shown on Friday night, instead. so we took the long way home, under a starry sky, through dark neighborhoods where we'd wandered, really late at night, while we were both students and freshly dating. that was way back in the times when we'd bundle up and walk the streets of this "sleepy" town, so we'd not end up sleeping over each other's apartments. our first icy winter together made short work of that small measure of modesty, which resulted in our share of problems and regrets. but last night, we walked and talked like old friends, and it felt as if we were somehow redeeming the path. something shines inside the memory that before the awful, scarring pain, there was us - in the dark, under the stars and streetlights, holding hands and accompanied only by the sound of our steps, and our breathing, and our own voices searching for words to describe truth, God, souls.
it wasn't always like this. we came a hard way to get here - harder than a lot of people around us believe. I can understand why that is. people think that since we're "just starting out", our problems have yet to begin ... we "ain't seen nothing, yet". I wish that were true, and that my mate still had my untarnished trust. but my gramma used to say, "you never know what's gone on, behind closed doors." the Grave is the Grave, no matter when you fall in.
maybe it's that most starting-out married people already knew about this thing that we've only just begun to discover - this ability to shed time and place and create between us a pure, sacred space. honestly, I don't think about others, much. the hell we lived isn't long enough ago or far enough away, yet - and because of that, I guess, all that matters to me right now is that we've come this far, one day at a time, and we're here.
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| on the eve of our six month anniversary, my mate and I spontaneously ended up sharing our views on focusing on the positive people and situations in our lives, including (gasp!) each other. a couple days ago, my best friend forwarded me an inspirational email about choosing to be happy, no matter what you have or don't have ... "work like you don't need money, love like you've never been hurt, and dance like no one's watching."
My attitude's been that if I don't remember and in my own way confront all the shit people around me do, I'm turning a blind eye to it. But that's evolved into a terrible habit of putting a depressing amount of weight on negative people and situations. It sounds so obvious, but the good stuff people have done for me matters, too. In fact, those things matter even more than the manipulative, mangling crap that I've been put through. In the few years that I've been mucking my way through adult life, a$$holes have appeared, and then disappeared. I don't even know where most of those haters have ended up. but the people who've had a really positive influence on my life pop up in the most random and wonderful ways. like what happened with my abuelita:
a few days before this past New Year's, J and I were on our way to run some errands, downtown, and as we passed some obscure parking lot, I thought I recognized a car. it looked like the one that had belonged to my "abuelita", a friendly fireball of an older Mexican woman who I became close with when we'd worked together, two summers ago. I'd lost touch with her, when I moved to D.C. early last year. I couldn't remember her real name, but I was pretty sure that was her car. since my and J's apartment is only five minutes drive from downtown, and business hours were long from over, I told him to turn around and drive home. there, I picked up a Holiday card and addressed it to my abuelita, and included a note giving her a number to call if she was the right person. when we drove back to the parking lot and looked the car over, I realized that it wasn't hers. it was filthy and there were handyman's tools strewn all over in the back. but J noticed an identical car, three parking spaces behind us, that hadn't been there when we'd passed the first time. that one was decorated with red-and-gold bows on the outside and pasted with catholic icons and rosaries on the inside. the "de colores" bumper sticker was the clincher. we taped the card to the windshield under the wipers, and hoped for the best. two nights later, our phone rang. when J read the caller ID, I instantly recognized her name. we were stunned when she said she'd driven all the way to the farmer's market 20 minutes away and back, with the card flapping in the breeze, ignoring it because she thought it was some solicitation. she'd read it when she got home, and called us that minute. she just had us over for dinner this past saturday night, and I finally got to introduce her to my mate and catch up, after over a year.
things like that aren't to be taken lightly, or for granted. but I can't say I'm living as if such amazing, once-in-a-lifetime things like that are more valuable or memorable than the volunteer coordinator whose religious book study I was a year ago and who I spent a few days with on a trip, who consistently refuses to greet or make eye contact with me in the halls. yeah, I'm being rejected. so what? why shouldn't the unconditional acceptance of mi abuelita completely overwhelm the pettiness of some two-faced guy I'll probably never see, again?
the world's full of haters. but at the end of the day, I get to sit across the table from someone who gazes at me as I am - barefaced and in my head-wrap and baggy T-shirt - and tells me that the way I just tossed my head was beautiful, and can he get me some more lemonade? come on, now ... who the hell can hold a candle to that? those punks may as well not exist.
trouble is, they do. and every day, I have to talk down the pride that demands confrontation, fire-for-fire, and listen to the quietness that is true strength. J says I'm getting better at it, and he would know. so I think I'll dedicate this post to him. here's to surviving 6 crazy months of the radical, irreversible evolution of our souls, and may we always find at least one reason to kiss and make up.
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