Luteal Phase.

& the image that haunts me today is that of a shaved leg in a cowboy boot. The woman had asymmetrical hair, & dressed as I would dress if I fit into any of my clothing (or remembered how to have time to use my hair dryer).

I can’t remember the last time I felt put together. “Put together.” Out of context, it doesn’t necessarily sound like a good thing, though I like that the language affirms the constructed nature of presenting oneself. I am not a “natural” woman, perhaps until/unless I am lazy. Or “busy.” Which is the same thing.

Why am I terrified to do what I want, to look at myself / why do I say I MUST do this / must make ends meet, must..?

My biggest fear is that I don’t know how to do it. Find a career, to be “rewarded for my passions.” That narrative.

Moreso than writing, the thing I feel most passionate about is self-reflection & examination. What kind of career can I have with that, imaginary reader?

My therapist says that “narrative therapy” is a real thing but would I have to leave Boise to pursue it?

*

If I examine close enough, I was happiest when:

1. I only worked part-time at a job that robbed me of sleep but allowed me to write/submit poems.

2. I had a stable relationship (which I have now).

3. I made time to meditate nearly daily.

4. I made time to run/do yoga nearly daily (or at least 3x/week).

5. I didn’t eat meat.

6. I had health insurance.

7. I had time to write, or at least journal.

8. I planned my meals. I knew that I would have access to flavorful, healthy foods.

& how can I have this now & how can I know this traditional will work now when it didn’t stick before & I am now essentially a different person?

*

At the bottom of every complaint, a desire.

I’m too busy could translate to I want (to make) more time for things I enjoy & find meaningful. (& I want more time to take things slowly, to enjoy cooking my eggs in the morning.)

I hate my job could translate to I want to be able to stick up for myself & insist on my life reflecting my passions, intelligence, & worth.

My biggest fear is that I don’t know how, that somehow I missed the “how to find work &/or a career” memo.

*

My student wrote about wanting to be a bohemian & basically described what my life had/has been.

Am I really okay with not knowing what time it is right now as I write this? It smells like potato time in my house.

The list of my traditional means to happiness provided a stability. I want stability. I want a degree of comfort &/or faith so I can work on the essay ideas about which I’ve been passionate–

I wish I could have been one of those writers who couldn’t see their lives any other way, couldn’t see failure as an option & knew that they could take that correct path to write for magazines or have a tenure-track position.

I am grateful to have done everything I’ve ever wanted but now I don’t know where I’m going–

*

I do know this:

1. I do not exercise. As a result, I do not fit into my clothes.

2. I do not meditate daily. As a result, I watch myself participating in blame games & ego defense at work.

3. I haven’t submitted poems to journals in a year.

4. I do not like working in a restaurant. I do not like whether or not I get paid to be determined by the time of day that I work & the mood of the people that I serve. (I want a steady income. I feel as though I deserve one, though hesitate to work hard to find other work…)

5. I do enjoy teaching, but find it difficult to do while working at the restaurant. I am also afraid of the slave labor wages it pays, of not adding enough to my “household economy,” of possibly relying on P for health insurance.

6. I am in love with P & it’s that limerence kind of love that has an addictive quality & most of my happiness lately (besides things like the bath I snuck in between this & commenting on student essays) has been derived from that which is wonderful that I’m doing something (& someone!) that I enjoy BUT it is also unfair. Still, I want to frame it this way: since I want to build a life with this man, it is only fair that I too am stable, that we build our house upon rock (as the Bible & new age teachers & myriad other metaphors suggest is THE way).

& what if I am being very stupid & missing something here? Is it a red flag that I’m missing red flags or is it possible that I’ve actually found someone who wants to create what I want to create & wants to treat me well & if so, what did I do to deserve this?

7. I have been neglecting my finances. & my rabbit.

 

*

So from here, I need to get through this semester. I need to sleep enough. I need to think beyond instant gratification: 15 minutes of meditation goes a much longer way than a donut.

After the semester is over, I need to start bike commuting again. I need to work in yoga & exercise.

I need to ask around about jobs.

 

 

Naive Song.

I wrote a long post & I deleted it because I decided it reconstructed a narrative of doubt/lack of self-trust that I no longer want to reinforce.

*

P & I have promised that we will find full-time jobs because honestly, it has to be less tiring than what I’ve been doing over the past 3 years in order to have “jobs that allow me to write”

that actually rarely allow me to write.

I’m sick today, the perfect amount of sick that allows me a guilt-free “stay home & write” pass. Or stay home & read in the bath & not grade papers because I have been unacceptably tired…

or perhaps it does oscillate, between a self-imposed “busy” & a “so bone-tired from surviving that I frequently cry re: others’ negativity, & my own.”

*

I don’t want to be this tired anymore, or be busy.

I want to be able to articulate what I feel for P, but I can’t. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so excited about another person, & I’ve certainly never been this excited about a person who I know is also excited about me.

I want stable work.

I want to cohabitate with P, to build a life/co-construct a narrative, to have bunnies & chickens & babies–

I want to be able to pluck my eyebrows & not have it feel like a special event.

I want to write. I’m not going to check my email tonight, just revise poems.

(& this is the first step, to know this. To weed out what’s not in service of this. & to take it one day at a time until the semester is over…)

AWP fucks you up. (& by “you,” I mean “me.”)

It is 6:17am EST & I’ve already thought about a million things for this blog post that probably sound more profound in my head than they will on the screen.

I am up this early with a feeling that I never thought I was going to have again, & I was perhaps happy to never have it again because it would mean that I successfully stopped drinking–

I’m up because I went to bed without hydrating, with more booze than I’ve had in my system since October 4th.

*

I don’t think I’ve had any new revelations about drinking.

I do it because I feel anxious because I feel unimportant & feel like nothing is “real” & poetry is so small & the world of poets is so insecure & ego-driven. By which I mean we write to construct mythologies of ourselves so we can go among each other & be loved. We make currency out of our ability with language.

& I like to drink sometimes to feel out of control, out of my mythology, my cage of language, or simply to change the way I’m feeling–

Nothing matters, so in my everyday, sober life I build a palatial cage of significance out of my time–

I manage a restaurant, I must matter.

I run a poetry reading series, I must matter (to poetry).

I adjunct, I must matter & be very intelligent.

I farm & have a savvy, realistic business sense, I must matter.

Mattering will make me feel something, which I simultaneously want to be the end of feeling, which I don’t know if I actually want to reach

even though I am afraid of my feelings. The tender darkness from which I feel deeply–

*

I purposely keep this in check in Boise by being very busy. At some point I decided, again, that if I were to not show this to you I could love you safely.

I associated it with the drinking, I called drunk Megan another person who wasn’t real.

But who decides what is real? (Doesn’t the Velveteen Rabbit associate realness with devotion? Where’s that quote.)

I got messy. I was sensitive to this construct of sensitive poets anxiously constructing things. I rely on another, a “you,” to keep me in check & safe. With a grounded “you,” I can better perform myself, better feel important.

That’s what I want to tell amg. That she makes me feel important, which is what I needed last night.

All my planned “yous” bailed on me for this trip, even if accidentally. S had a plane ticket that didn’t go through. A had a bus ticket that didn’t go through. & the comforting bit is the coincidence, that maybe there could be meaning to it, a lesson that I could learn–

*

If I didn’t show you this, I could love you safely, but I had another feeling I didn’t want to have again, that part of me that D would call “desperate” which is really a desperation to express myself

to another person, to let them know that they matter because they are real because they make me feel real & safe

& I couldn’t help myself, when I sent you those texts, it was the best I could do & now I’m awake & my skeptic is awake & the voice of the world in my head is awake that that kind of love & devotion is codependent &/or scary &/or wrong & when I’m experiencing it it is drunk Megan & when I’m experiencing it I should keep it to myself & when I’m experiencing it I should punish myself with self-examination, look back to my childhood, see what I haven’t “fixed,” what I’m doing “wrong”

& what narrative am I buying into that I want to love & be loved in this way? I feel ashamed that I want to make this the real

I decide what’s real, which is a terribly vast thing to look at.

I get a feeling inside & I want to map the shape of it with language.

*

I feel so ungrounded right now.

I guess if I were actually crazy I would not have the awareness of “crazy,” but I feel crazy with the awareness of crazy & it’s kind of exhilarating.

I had to step out of “Boise” to see what I had done to “Boise” how I made “Boise” safe

& continued to make choices by not making choices by saying “yes” to everything in pursuit of matter/mass the end of emptiness (oh god the metaphors the language makes too much sense) because I want

to be a monument in your worlds, something you project specialness onto

even you, who may not read this, who I never wanted to have to see me this way, scared & scary because I want to continue to feel worthy of co-constructing a narrative with you & “worthy” in my head is apparently defined by stability, by not derailing like this.

I want to make you feel both safe & exhilarated.

This is likely for a purpose: if I “make you feel” these things, if you feel them with me, then maybe, someday, we’ll mate.

Or you will be the stable place from which I can perform myself, even if you are not always stable neither am I & I think that’s okay.

Always the hope of being generative.

God I am licking all the seams of artifice & I want to penetrate them

I want life to have a phallic trajectory but it is definitely much more cyclical

which could also be interpreted as “not learning anything” but what if I don’t want

to dwell in that hopelessness, what if it feels better to reimagine it as a feminine learning

a failure narrative // if I can frame it in language, in a concept it becomes comfortable

& acceptable & has the bonus of making me feel smart, a rarity these days.

*

From the outside I can see that maybe I am inarticulate with fear.

*

Writing this makes me feel better, makes me feel like I’ve apologized or tried to understand why/how I’ve experienced the last few days

*

I don’t want to construct time as a cage anymore.

I want to learn to say “no, not now” which I think was my New Years’ Resolution.

The only thing that has changed is that I feel even more capable of describing my motivations & mental states

but it’s still perhaps wrong to think that my ability to put them into language makes me solved or sane.

Maybe it does just mean I’m a “poet,” even though I spend so much time running from it, staying too busy from it

because what does it mean to be a “poet,” anyway? Who gets to construct that meaning? Do I buy into history’s narrative, which is so large, so many ways–

Do I really want to be a poet if all it means is that I can adequately feel safe in moments where it’s clear that everything is artificial

even the safety of language is artificial.

*

I want to go back to sleep & not feel so afraid that I broke something.

I wouldn’t blame you if you asked me for silence but I wouldn’t like it.

I’m afraid I forgot to say something.

 

I’m not tired

but I’m in love & I want everyone to know it.

*

Seriously.

 

Year of the Water Snake

D leaves for California tomorrow.

I did not go say goodbye to him. Another layer of closure-feeling drifted over me as I walked to my car after work today. So many old ghosts.

Whatever cliche construct that denotes a closing or an ending has been folding in on itself over these months. Today another one. I grow & get stuck simultaneously. Everything in the present out into perspective by the past, three improvements, the “better” boyfriends, the “better” decisions, but it’s still me.

*

I didn’t go say goodbye to D, but I did sit in his hospital room for hours on Thursday. I didn’t know what else I could do. I didn’t know whether he would get lucky, or what should happen, he was in such ugly shape & not recognizing anybody.

He doesn’t remember this lack of recognition.

I hugged him in his hospital bed twice. I was furious. Furious that he would still “have too much fun,” that he didn’t know how painful it was to watch, that I couldn’t leave, or didn’t, & don’t know why. I was handed a giant pile of perspective. The present in terms of the past.

I don’t know if I could ever relate to D without trying, in some sense, to rescue him, or improve him, or see the best in him, selfishly, for my own self-interested ends.

I once would have considered our relationship one of my greatest accomplishments.

*
“better boyfriend” & I still have the same anxiety

Expressive &/or needy

I don’t say what I’m feeling / too much or too soon. Just weaker approximations.

& what is it, really, with him gone for a week, we only talked once & I was high & text messages rely too heavily on punctuation to express feeling–

Everyone always texts in their “annoyed with Megan” voice unless they litter it with smileys or exclamation or so much silly that there’s no mistaking “I like you too” for STOP BEING SO SYRUPY!

The problem might be I’m searching for evidence of how this could be the same, & flawed, how I’m not deserving of a smart, sexy man who seems to adore me even as I project the annoyed voice onto him…

I can’t wait until real P gets in to town so maybe we can rectify this squealing feedback–

*

Yoga workshop in 8 hours.

I want to juice beforehand.

I have a syllabus to write after, & cards to make.

P gets home, hopefully before the poetry reading. I love to introduce him to people. I want to advertise how I feel.

& yet, I still overstayed my welcome in the hospital room, I’m still awake & ate frozen yogurt, I still said yes, I’ll teach a class I’ll have to make time to teach…

If I am too idle, I may love too severely. I don’t know where this would leave me.

The Vitamix & The Meat Grinder

The new fad is diets that proclaim the evils of fad diets. I read another one in the bath tonight. I no longer trust my body to know whether it can handle eggs or not.

I want to invest in a Vitamix blender.

I want to feel healthy again. I have consumed three different kinds of animals in the last 2 days & my digestion is unhappy. I feel slow & sluggish. I was a vegetarian for so many years, & thinner. While I feel as though this carnivorous diversion was absolutely necessary, I don’t know why it’s so difficult to turn back. What I need is a new middle path.

*

A new middle path. That has been a theme of late: what will bring me joy, pleasure, or happiness without leaving me feel burned out or deprived. It’s not always you have the power to make a different choice as much as which choice to make? Will eggs or lamb or rabbit bring me sustaining happiness? What about an exercise routine? Do I need to repin Couch-to-5k on my bulletin board? & as for engaging with my community, how many apologies are too many? How can one claim her authority at work nonviolently? What is the line in a new relationship between expressing excitement and indulging insecurities, anxious clinging?

No right or wrong decisions. Just actions and consequences. But what should guide my actions? How can I act out of a sense of peace and stability as opposed to anxiety and fear?

*

In The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama suggests that the guiding question might be will this bring me happiness? Not pleasure, momentary, fleeting pleasure, but true, sustaining happiness. We ought to regret the decisions we make that don’t ultimately contribute to a long-term investment in joy. Even having read this book, and carefully, as a therapy homework assignment, I’ve found that this question somehow fails for me. I choose pleasure over happiness and then feel bad about my decisions and give up on &/or question my pursuit. I read articles that suggest that the pursuit of happiness is pretty empty compared to a search for meaning. Strangely enough, my biggest preoccupation in my search for meaning simply has been the search for how to live–what is the right, best, richest, most meaningful way to exist in the world? Because of this, I am well-versed in diets & pop Buddhism. More than any knowledge that may remind my boyfriend that he is dating an intelligent woman–

Which leads me to a conversation that P & I had at Salt Tears yesterday regarding mortality. The discussion veered in the direction of is it better to suffer from a terminal illness or die suddenly, which is a hypothetical I often avoid exploring because I know I don’t get to choose. & since I don’t get to choose, I ought not live in a way that’s just marking time until a life-changing diagnosis. What if I always consider the possibility that I could die at any moment? How would I treat people if I considered that my life is small and finite? How would I treat myself, even in the midst of contradictory information about animal protein?

This may be a better guiding question. Considering my own demise, I feel more comfortable directly addressing the severs I manage & claiming my authority. I feel more comfortable apologizing to J again, or letting P know how I’m feeling and what I want without making it my business that he doesn’t always know these things–

Lately I’ve felt the courage to change the things I can while acknowledging the difficulties and baby steps required. Difficulty sometimes frames my I can. This is okay. Still difficult to accept, but okay.

*

A moves in on Tuesday & I’m looking forward to lower rent & the challenge of living with someone new. I don’t feel overbooked at the moment, which is strange & wonderful. Maybe I’m finally overcoming busyness as a form of laziness? I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything, but I’m thrilled not to be depressed this winter & to be another month away from my rock bottom & feeling hopeful. Concretely so.

Oxytocin Time

1. This last hour of work feels the longest. My table wants me to go away & there’s not much else left to do besides note how attachment hormones have rendered whole segments of my brain useless. I rarely enjoy infatuation, I feel stupid, I want it to pass–

2. If I were to rewrite the previous in terms of what I want:

I want it to be midnight or I want the restaurant to be busy.

I want to have sex or cuddle or make out with P. I want to stop having him on my mind so much. I want to stop future-tripping. I want to arrive at deep, abiding love & companionship–

3. I am impatient.

4. But time is moving by at quite the clip. In my head most days I’m still 24. I have a job that would have been fine at 24, an unfinished book–

I want to spend time doing what I value. I value too much. I want even more than I value. Desire, desire, desire. To be held onto for dear life? Nothing makes me feel more elated, or warmer.

5. Becoming so tired. Afraid I will always lie around, waiting to feel loved. Afraid I will always be “too much.”

6. Will you enjoy too much of me, my scorpion passion, need for play? I am a projector tonight. I want to sleep on it, this image, smother it until it goes away.