Things I Love Thursday

My orchid that was given to me post Vagina Monologues- I’ve named her Francesca, burning candles at my desk, blisters going away, green glass, my co-worker Heidi’s coupon-farm, LivingSocial.com, eos lip balm (probably the greatest invention known to man behind penicillin), highlighters, new business cards, super-long post-it notes, emails from Gala Darling (<3 Surprise on the way!), Rilke, planning a vacation (also a surprise), something called a “fluff” in the fridge with a note demanding I eat it (and who am I to question the refrigerator gods?), glitter (so help me god).

SAAM Again.

Dear sweet baby Jesus I survived another Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This is like the gauntlet for advocates- we do an insane amount of shit in a tiny, tiny frame of time.

I did a seventeen mile walk for charity yesterday. I can barely move. I wore bedroom slippers to work today. Blisters on the bottom of my feet keep moving around when I step down and it feels fucking weird. Not to mention PAINFUL.

But it was for a great cause and a great lady, a young woman who is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse that organizes this walk every year across the state to raise awareness.

I have really bad heartburn.

Things I Love Thursday.

Here's what's making me do jazz hands this week-

Red Starbursts, Burt's Bee's lotion in the bathroom at work, burning candles on my desk while doing stats, whatever this awesome chicken stuff is that my roommate's mom made, rainy weather, getting on a multi-vitamin regimen, purple pens, the Harley Davidson boots I haven't stopped wearing since I bought them in September, and a new asthma treatment that seems to be working already. Huzzah!

Guts N' Teeth.

"After all, underneath
Ain't we all just guts n' teeth?
Ain't we all just reflections
Moving in separate directions?
In our heads, out of our minds and out of time."

http://www.oldmanmarkley.com/Music.html

There's something going on again with me where the internal pieces seem to be having trouble fitting together. I feel like it's some sort of internal pangea that just refuses to fit- too many years wearing away at the edges and undoing the symmetry with which they used to fit together.

That's poetic. And kind of gross. But I was talking about guts here, wasn't I?

The work I do is emotionally overloading sometimes. I take on the emotional burdens of other people- of rape victims -and it's amazing and I'd never have it any other way, but while I'm an expert compartmentalizer, I seem to be losing my touch. Which worries me.

I think sometimes I'm kind of astounded by the fact that I survived losing my mother. I don't talk about it much, the act of losing her, although I'm starting to talk more about her when she was alive than I think I ever have since she died. And it's the good things too- funny memories, good ones, things she did right. I'm refocusing and it's made it a lot better. But I guess when this sort of thing happens, it's like little earthquakes, releasing pressure from the plates so I don't explode or implode or whatever it is I'd do if I didn't. I'm new to this "let it out" thing.

But sometimes I'm acutely aware of the rip that's still there inside of my chest, and it shocks me. It's kind of like re-realizing it. "Oh, yeah, my mother..wait, she's gone?" Sometimes I look at the things I wrote in the first months that I was living here- I wrote religiously, with white-hot fervor after she died -and it's some of the darkest, most disturbing shit I've ever read. About being dead on the inside and making a good show of hiding it from the people around you.

I don't talk about it, but when I first moved here, I mean in the first few days, maybe a week...I was convinced that I had died and that this was hell. She was alive in Alabama, but I had died and this was my eternal punishment or whatever. Convinced. I wonder what that means about my ultimate mental state.

I'm okay. I promise that. It's just that this happens every so often where I can't quite fathom the reality of the situation.

I'm happier than I've ever been in my life and I'm finally starting to accept this and slowly but surely heal, but I guess this is the thing I was afraid of, the thing that kept me from ever staring at it head on. Because I knew this would happen. And I knew I would have to accept it.

I sleep restlessly, dreams invaded by shadowy things that I thought I'd stopped thinking about ages ago.

This happens every so often. I'm alright with that. But it's putting a serious dent in how productive I'm able to be during the daytime. Hm.

Inj.

Injunction court. Miserable process. People herded in in bulk, waiting on the opposite side of the room from OTHER people herded in like cattle that the people on the left were scared enough of to file an injunction AGAINST. I think if I were like Wolverine and could smell pheromones to detect things like fear, I'd pass out, because it's palpable in that room. It's ugly and brown and wooden and the lights are too bright and the benches make your ass go numb. You might get called first, you might sit there for five hours in the same room as him, or her, or them, in silent contemplation of how scared you are and how there might be consequences to this action no matter WHAT a judge orders.

I've had success on all but one, but since that one, I assume every one that I go after is going to be denied. You taste that kind of disappointment once, you train yourself to expect it. That way, I'm never let down and sometimes I'm pleasantly suprised.

This girl has a severe anxiety disorder- she didn't sleep at all the night before -and I know she's so nervous she's on the verge of running from the building. She's a tiny little thing with big beautiful eyes and a soft voice with a minor speech impediment. We were dead last.

She stood up there on the opposite side of a man in four-point cuffs, the man who had raped her, now in jail for a related offense; I made a physical barrier between them, turned to face her but forever watching him out of the corner of my eye, arm braced on the stand and constantly ready to act if shit hits the fan. It doesn't, it never does, but every so often I sit down and have the talk with myself about what I'm gonna do if it eventually does. How much I'm willing to give if it means protecting this person I'm with.

Every time, the answer is "everything". I'm not a martyr and I don't consider myself a good person on the whole, but every time, in my head, without hesitation..."everything".

It's good to know what you'd die for.

Things I Love Thursday

Florence and The Motherfucking Machine, pomegranates (even though they're a bitch to eat and clean up after), Getting Shit Done, Iron Maiden, Bath and Body Works antibacterial hand lotions (Midnight Pomegranate, seeing a theme here?), new candles for my desk, my great uncle's jewelry, new storage bins on sale for $5 at Target, Amazon gift cards, organic deodorant, Tweezerman tweezers, "Sway" by Dean Martin.