Awkwardly Social

For the past week, I’ve been watching movies for the Obvious Bigtime Awards Show (that I won’t mention by name, lest someone find me and fire me or something…) and all of these movies have one thing in common.  They are being watched because someone involved in the making of the movie croaked this year.  I did this 5 years ago for the SAG Awards, and for some reason that didn’t really bother me.  Maybe because I wasn’t in my 30s yet.  Maybe I used to be a heartless Hollywood hack.  Or, maybe because now I’m watching movies that I originally watched for one dude being dead, and now the other dude is dead and fuck me, watching The Muppet Movie is a real bag o’ laughs when everyone in every scene is fucking dead.  Even goddamned Kermit the fucking Frog is dead.

I watch the movie in fast forward, and say, dead, dead, he’s dead, she’s dead, camera-man dead, writer dead, director dead, dead, is he dead?, not dead, dead, dead, dead.

No one else is allowed to die. I know it’s going to get crowded down here, and traffic in Los Angeles is a bitch already, but I can’t take it.  No more death.  No more legacies.  Let’s just all stay alive a little while longer.  At least until the Obvious Bigtime Awards Show is over.

A year ago I was sitting at Tara’s house crying my eyes out because my boyfriend at the time and I had put the final straw on the back of our relationship.  The Christmas photo.

Louie is a Jew.  Also, he’s kind of an asshole when it comes to people taking his picture.  Or, at least, he was kind of an asshole that day.  All I wanted was a simple fucking picture of him, me and our dog so my mom could take down the random photo she had of us and put up a photo I actually liked.

God, he was such a dick that day.

The next morning he broke up with me.  Told me he was moving out that day.  That it was over.  It was.  But that night, this night one year ago, I came home from Tara’s house, my eyes red, drunk, and furious, and didn’t even look at him.  I didn’t want to see him.  I wanted to leave him.  I went to bed and he slept on the couch.  He never once had slept on the couch, so I knew he was pissed, but at the time I thought he had no right to be pissed.  This year of reflection and some kind of sideways reconciliation with him has taught me that boy oh boy there were certainly two of us in that relationship and whenever you have two people telling a story there are dramatically different versions.  Louie is probably going to read this.  And to him I can finally, a year later, say, “Thanks, man.  You did me right.”

So now here I am. I’m sitting in my office typing these words, drinking from a heavy leaded crystal glass that was given to my boyfriend by another woman.  A married woman.  A woman who in the recent past has tried to get my boyfriend to go on expensive vacations with her.  A woman he’s having dinner with next week. I wish it didn’t bother me the way Louie’s female friends didn’t bother me, but it does.  And I’m fighting the urge to throw this glass against the wall.  It probably wouldn’t break anyway.

Here’s to a year gone.  A new year coming.  A break up. And a glass I’m not going to break.

Last night I was laying semi-unconscious on the couch, watching Mr. F rearranging boxes so the cleaning crew could access the floor. Lula was on her brand new gigantic bed beside me. Miles was playing on iTunes. And I started to cry.

I have no idea why.

It wasn’t a sad cry.

It wasn’t a tears of joy cry.

I think it was an emotional exhaustion cry.

I had spent 2 hours getting irrationally angry at myself for being such a slob while I cleaned my old apartment. Spent 40 minutes loading the last bits and pieces of my life in 201 into my tiny Honda Civic. Spent 30 minutes unloading my car while Mr. F was on a wild goose chase for nails to fix Lula’s dog door. Spent 30 minutes aimlessly walking around the new house trying to figure out where, exactly, I was going to find my one clean bra. And then when Mr. F walked in the door, spent 20 minutes trying to fight off eating food. I finally lost that battle.  It turns out that when Mr. F asks me if I want food and I say no, he cooks it anyway and puts it in front of me and there I go, eating.  Good man, that Mr. F.

Mr. F asked me why I thought I was feeling emotional. We have lots of these conversations, getting to the bottom of what’s bothering him, what’s bothering me, so things don’t build and fester and create boils and infections. As we talked through it, I realized that I was just a little wistful about the end of that drunk, slutty, rebellious period I went through. I was so completely ready to be done with it, but I think it’s important to say goodbye to those times in your life properly with a little bit of emotion and maybe a few tears. Then, when it’s all said and done and your next phase has started the baggage has been unpacked and fresh starts are all queued up.

This morning I woke up and walked into the living room, and it was like Christmas morning. Out of extreme chaos, Mr. F had made our packed to the gills with boxes house a home. And I can’t wait to get home to him tonight and every night.

Two nights ago,  I walked into my apartment to a disaster of Lula proportions.  Dirty paper towels, dog hair, a mysteriously empty bag of Ricola (that had been full when I put it in the trash), and a very excited dog. She was pretty thrilled she had mastered the art of opening a closed trash bag, and couldn’t wait to tell me that her SORE THROAT, it was gone!  Never mind the fact that she didn’t have a sore throat.  I found it hard to get angry at her because she was so clearly on a sugar high, bouncing from the bed to my head to the floor to my shoulders to the ceiling fan and back again.

Normally, as a concerned pet owner, I would have worried and fretted about Lula eating an entire bag of Ricola, but she seemed fine.  That is until 3AM.  When she yakked all over her side of the bed.  And then proceeded to clean it back up.  It’s really disgusting that dogs eat their own vomit, but also, free clean-up!  *gag*

Last night on my run, at the last stretch before I hit Wilshire and head back home, a guy who works in one of the restaurants was standing on the sidewalk having a cigarette.  He called out to me, “You run every day!” And then he started jogging in place, “Is good exercise!”  I got a little sad that I’m finally being recognized by someone on my route.  Then I busted around the bend and flew across 6th Street and some teenagers on skate boards yelled, “Yo, that dog is fast!  That dog is the best!”  And I have to assume they were talking about Lula, because when she stretches out into her longest gait she looks rad.  And I got even sadder because I’m going to miss those skate boarding kids in their skinny jeans and floppy hair.

I have two more nights in 201.  Two more runs in my urban oasis.  I’m going to miss the brick wall and the quiet mornings padding five feet to the bathroom, and five feet back to the kitchen in my underwear while all of Koreatown looks on.  I think Koreatown is going to miss the white lady with the ratty underwear trudging around her small apartment.  But that’s ok, Koreatown, I’ll make sure to visit every once in a while to smell the human feces and see the garbage strewn streets!

It’s all beginning and ending at once.  Mr. F told me a while ago that the Romans didn’t see the future as something that lies in front of you waiting for you to discover it, but as a wave rushing up behind you.  I couldn’t agree more.

I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but I can’t help myself.  I am moving in just over a week and last night I totally meant to go through the two unpacked boxes that have been sitting in the corner of my very tiny apartment since I moved in. I opened them and looked at the disorganized creative files, a pile of unopened Christmas cards, Lula’s health certificate from my hasty break-up Christmas trip to Seattle, journals filled with angsty writing from my 30 year old self who totally should have known better, and folder upon folder of crap I still cannot deal with. I sighed and re-taped the boxes and shoved them back in the corner. Lula looked at me with concern. Then she shook her head and returned to her rawhide bone, tail wagging uncontrollably. She can’t help herself, she really loves rawhide.

I went on a walk with Catherine the other night and started giving her the litany of concerns I have about ruining my relationship by moving in, the worries I have about falling out of love with Mr. F, about him falling out of love with me, and on and on, and I kept going back to my relationship with Louie. She listened and made the appropriate murmurs of understanding and said, “Clearly you have some stuff you’re holding on to about the end of your relationship with Louie, but Mr. F and Louie couldn’t be more different, and your feelings for each of them are unique.”

Basically, the junk I’ve been holding on to, storing under my bed, shoving in my desk drawers, ignoring in the corner of my room, had just gotten a little dusty, and here I came eyes wide open peering in on it and getting a face full of sneezes and sputters and weepy eyes.

Last night as I wrapped myself around Mr. F and tucked into that part of his shoulder that I fit perfectly into, I promised myself that stuff was not coming with me. I am shredding it, leaving it in a dumpster, getting it off my stupid back.

I wrote this on January 2, 2008 and saved it to my drafts. I’m trying to clear up some stuff before I go on vacation, and my draft box was one of those things on my list. I have no idea why this particular task seemed important before going on a family vacation where presumably I’ll have internet, but c’est la vie, my mind is a mysterious place.

And for those of you who are new here, a little back story, my boyfriend had broken up with me a few weeks earlier and my life was kind of flipped upside down. My ex and I are on pretty good terms now. He occasionally dog sits for Lula. He knows about my new boyfriend and teases me about him. (Mr. F is 21 years older than me, which makes him 23 years older than Louie, which makes Louie a mere 3 years older than Mr. F’s oldest son. Which maybe would creep me out if I wasn’t so in love.) I’ve come a long way since that January day, and want to get this old post off the plate, but didn’t want to let it disappear into my hard drive of things that disappear. So, without further ado because this introduction is now almost longer than the original post, I give you -

flow-chart

In an effort to not write about how I’m feeling about things today I thought I would make you a handy graph of things I’ve said to people in a weird and awkward way about my break-up and things I’ve thought about saying but didn’t say because I am a chicken. Then I realized to make a graph I would have to have the ability or desire to do that thing with the checked paper and the lines and the clever wording, so I’m just going to write you a list, and in your head you can imagine it is as awesome as these graphs.

1. My ex-boss has been feeling sorry for me because I crashed my car on the way to his birthday party, also I occasionally do things for him like fix his fax machine and turn his computer on, so he gives me money every once in a while. I think of him like a curmudgeonly patriarch, not unlike my two grandpas mushed into one, but with a bigger bank account. So today he came in and gave me a check and told me to buy a car. It was kind of funny because the check he gave me wasn’t really of the car buying dollar amount. And we laughed. Then he said in his authoritative voice with what I think I’ve diagnosed as a slight Brooklyn accent, “No really, go buy a car, I don’t want to think about you sitting on the bus anymore.” I said, “Didn’t you hear? I bought a car and I got dumped by my boyfriend! I’ll never ride the bus again! Happy New Year!” I was feeling kind of chipper because I had just consumed three Ferrar Roche thingies for lunch, and we had a nice laugh. At my expense.

2. Fiona and I were sitting at the dinner table and Fiona said, “Do you think you’ll ever get another boyfriend like Louie again?” I said, “Not if I’m lucky!”

3. At lunch yesterday when I found a short black hair in my soupy macaroni and cheese I called the waiter over and told him to take it away. In my head I thought, “And give it to Louie.” Out loud I said, “And bring me another Bloody Mary.”

The building is beginning to wear on me. At least once a week I come home to find some kind of management flier on my door, reminding me in a condescending and passive aggressive way of various policies the building has. The last one (and my reaction to it) was so preposterous, I figured it was just an odd combination of our building being part of a big slummy group that has a few less than desirable properties and it’s attempt to keep the place clean and tidy. (At the risk of using a played word: FAIL.)

I think the memo was trying to tell us they would be painting the doors of our apartments, but it came off like, “You people with your stickers and religious hoo-ha on your doors need to be aware that this is against the SPECIFIC POLICY OF NAZI GERMANY and these stickers and crosses and Jew signs need to be removed or ELSE.” They really did mention ’stickers.’ And that’s when I got all crazed. I was standing at my (blank and completely up to code) door having visions of a sticker pasting party that included putting stickers of lewd and sexual content right where they leave their lame ass fliers. Then I remembered that I don’t give a fuck and threw the notice in the trash.

The worst part is that they try to posit the ‘fire safety’ issue of ’stickers on your door,’ when really they should just say, “Hey, you aren’t living in a dorm, keep the KROQ advertisements and weed enthusiasm where it belongs. On your car. Which we don’t provide parking for. Mostly because we hate you. And your stupid attempts at brightening your life by putting a kitten sticker on your door. Eat shit. And then, possibly die. But don’t do it in your apartment. Because we have a policy about that.”

It’s not just the passive aggressive notes. It’s the piles of trash that float up to our gate and into our front stoop and aren’t cleaned up. It’s the lack of parking. It’s the homeless men who sleep dead center in the sidewalk and smell like they aren’t sleeping, they smell like they are dead. It’s the constant harangue of the ice cream truck. The constant honking of the Korean woman next door who won’t get out of her car and tell her daughter to come down, or at the very least invest in a cell phone. It’s the crazy bug I found in my bathtub this morning. It’s the brown water that comes from the pipes. It’s the fact that I quit smoking and every stupid little thing is irritating me. It’s that I still have three boxes of unpacked files that I have no room for. It’s that I want to move in with my boyfriend but have 5 more months on my lease. It’s everything piling up like the tumble weeds of dog hair that NEVER, EVER STOP.

201 was so good to me. It will always be my favorite ‘post-break-up rescue me from insanity’ apartment, I just think I’m ready to move on now. Really, really ready.

I’d like to warn you that a bottle of wine was purchased, and drunk, and I’m not ashamed to say that this is a drunk post.  A drunk, rambling post that I might delete tomorrow.  I had a day, ladies and gents. I had a fucking day today, and if that means I get to drink wine and talk to a man that might be the guy, fuck it all, bring it, universe.  BRING IT.

I don’t talk about my life during the 9 to 6, and I stand by that decision to not really talk about it, but I think it’s important to mention that beginning July 4th I’ll no longer have a 9 to 6 existence.

I found out today I was losing my current 9 to 6, immediately got an interview and tomorrow (today, it’s after midnight) I’ll find out my fate.

The universe has it in its head that it’s funny to break up with me on a Monday morning.  I got talked off the ledge from some really great friends who cooked me shrimp and served me wine and listened to me from hundreds of miles away while I smoked and compared this day to that horrible day six months ago when the rug was pulled out from under me in a completely different way.  I survived that, they told me, and here I am talking and living and breathing and laughing, so I’ll survive this, they surmised.  But fuck it, will I?  Do I want to go through this again?  That was a dark fucking room I was in, thank god my friends opened the blinds and had a few parties and brought me food, because today, I forgot to eat.  And those of you who know me, know that’s a level of insanity brought on only by extreme terror and pain and trauma.

It’s awkward to talk to the new guy about why this is so fucking PTSD for me.  But I told him.  And he got it. And I’ll tell you now, it’s because every time a 17th of the month hits, I think about that morning.  And this new complication of not having a paycheck or a safety net is hitting me about as hard as not having a boyfriend who lives with me and shares my bed and loves my dog.  He, this man who knows me from my voice on the phone and the way I drink like a fish at Figaro and the Beverly Hills Hotel, patient as a sloth trying to reach the next branch, said all the right words and took all the correct pauses and listened as I choked up about that old failure.  That six months ago failure that is now rearing its head at this new fucked up situation that I can’t talk about because it happens between the hours of 9 and 6.

So here I am, people.  This is as low as it gets for that 9 to 6 place and this guy who knows me, but doesn’t know me, listened and understood and was there to make me laugh when I, shell shocked and broke as the day I was born (broker, actually), had to sit and tell him that I’m still holding on to another horrible day that shook my life up.  And he’s been there.  Maybe you all have been there.  Maybe you haven’t, but you will be there.  Or maybe you’ll be lucky enough to never be here.  But there he was.  Not a knight in any kind of armor, but a voice from a long way away and a promised shoulder and a knowing phrase, and this is what it feels like to be cared about.

And now I’m going to bed, because I’ve achieved that level of buzz that allows me to shut off those voices and stop hearing that doubt.  I’m supposed to get a call tomorrow, and if you could cross your fingers every once in a while, like you did for me and 201, I’d appreciate it.   If not, be prepared to visit me in debtor’s prison.  Blogging from skid row doesn’t sound like fun.  It sounds smelly.  And stabby.

Good night.

I sat down to tell you how I don’t know what has gotten into me lately with the drinking and the eating and smoking (I know! I know! two years down the toilet.  Never fear I only do it when I drink… oops), but then I realized that I know exactly what has gotten into me.  I’m a little sad.  Not weepy or maudlin, but kind of rocking back and forth between the sink is full of dirty dishes and the up late cleaning and organizing and worrying about the sink being full of dishes and they all appear to be wine related.

To top it off I got my cell phone bill.  Rather, I saw the amount my cell phone company auto-deducted from my checking account and I had a minor moment of terror.  The money is still gone.  It was rightfully deleted from my account (thank god for that Oscar bonus) but yeah, that’s going to put the final nail in the coffin of my trip to Mexico and Belize.  I really couldn’t afford it anyway, but I was imagining how nice it would be to stick my feet in that white sand and listen to that Caribbean breeze rustle the palm fronds.  Oops!  Now I’m weepy.  That did it.  So, I’m not going.  I will probably use that miles ticket to pop in on Kristin (who has generously offered her guest room), because Canada is almost exactly like Mexico right?  Just to the north instead of the south.  I just have to figure out if I want to put Lula through a kennel stay and for how long.

The upside of all of this stupid overwhelming blergh is that I haven’t been peeking (not even once!) at you know who’s page of you know whats.  So I think it’s finally the end of that.  Maybe.  I don’t know.  Anybody have a cookie?  And a brownie?  And maybe a plate of cheese?  And are you eating that donut?  Or that one?  And can I get some macaroni & cheese on the side?

Speaking of macaroni and cheese, when Louie abruptly moved out and took all of his stuff with him he left several half empty boxes of cereal and about 10 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese.  I piled them on the book shelf I didn’t want to have to deal with (which now sits nicely against my wall and holds almost every one of my books) and told him that he had left “some shit and he better come pick it the fuck up.”  I wish I could have seen his face when he saw the all those boxes of stupid cereal that had been languishing in the cupboard. His look probably wasn’t as satisfying as I wish it was.  When I came home that night all the stupid cereal boxes and the macaroni and cheese were gone, but the big bookshelf of doom remained.  That stupid bookshelf (the Expedit from IKEA) was a pain in my movers’ asses, and might be about to fall apart at any minute, but now that I have it full of my books and used as a place to put my tchotkes I don’t really even think of it as something we bought together.

That is, until Catherine and I went to IKEA this weekend.  Holy giant memory of picking that out.

So.

Here I am, drinking a non-fat latte, wishing I had a cigarette I could smoke and hoping this wave passes soon, because I have some serious shit to get done these next couple of weeks and I won’t be able to do them if I’m constantly being consumed by my need to consume.

Anybody have a bowl of mixed nuts?  Or just a jar of peanut butter?  Maybe a glass of wine?  Just give me the bottle.

I wrote a difficult e-mail to my family last night. I told them for the first time about my year and a half of heavy drug abuse.

I wasn’t sure what they would feel when they read the words, “I tried crystal meth. And for the next year and a half I abused the drug. Trying to die.” I was so scared they would worry, that they would think it was their fault, that they would look at me differently from now on. And speaking from experience, once you’re confronted with something as dark as hearing about a loved one’s suicidal thoughts and learning that beneath a slightly cracked surface is something much blacker than you expected, you worry. You wonder what you did wrong. You look at them differently. The thing is, you look at them with more love, with more understanding, and you hope that there is something, anything you can do to take the pain away, knowing there isn’t.

I love my family. I love each of their subtly different responses. I love that because of my writing, each of them knows me better and they each have a different perspective of what I was, what I am now, where I’m coming from, and what I am capable of. And because of this blog I was able to tell them something that I had been holding back from them for 14 years.

I’ve wanted to write about this for some time, especially when I heard a distant friend of a friend was dealing with the addiction of his sister. I know both where she is and where he is. I have the almost unique perspective of someone who has dealt with the drug, the clean-up, and watching my former friends continue to waste away. I know how impossible it is to leave your friends because they won’t stop. I know how it feels to want to do another line. To never go to sleep again. To conquer the world. I was completely lucky to have the combination of my stubborn personality, my exquisite but certainly flawed upbringing, added to the fact that the friends I lost because they couldn’t quit, told me I should leave. All three factors aligned to get me where I am today. I wouldn’t have ever tried the drug had they not introduced it to me, but I also would never have left if they hadn’t made it possible.

I know my story is not unique. I recently saw an old tweaking buddy pop up on my myspace inbox. He’s alive. He’s well. He doesn’t use. I think a lot is written about this drug and the devastating effect it has, but I think just like any other addiction there are stories of success, of survival and of, not to be too Lifetime movie gag worthy, hope.

When I was in Mexico last March, I was talking to a cameraman about the drug. He was surprised to hear that I had used it and was able to leave the life. In his mind, it wasn’t something people survived. I think the best and the worst thing about meth are that it’s not an incredibly lovely life that you have to leave. It’s dirty, it’s dark and it took me to places I wanted to go because I didn’t want to be on the surface, I wanted to be in the dirt. I wanted to feel like I had been punched in the face, that I took the hit and could take another. For someone with my sheltered life, up until that point, it made me feel like I was living harder, being tougher and operating on a different level of survival. I wanted him to know that people do survive. That it’s not a death sentence and it’s not as white trash as the news would like you to believe. White middle class girls like it too. Why? Because we’re white middle class girls who want to have it tough but don’t? I don’t know.

It’s a gigantic weight off my chest that my family knows now, and that I can write about it openly here. I’ll be sharing more about my experience in the future.