I warned you it would be uninspired.

Anyway, I didn’t do it. And I won’t. And I wouldn’t because what have I got to be mad at him about? Other than the fact that I was metaphorically down the street from his house last year and when I rang him up, instead of saying “Sure, drop on in” like a good neighbor, he told me to bugger off as if I were a sheep thieving bandit. Maybe it’s an accurate description. At any rate, he was frightened of me and I can’t help but feel the worst about that in the end.

I also got an email from Herbie. Boy, was I ever crazy about him . . . with his crazy corkscrew hair and Tourist Bureau of Canada clothes, with his ‘ism jokes and french pronunciations . . .  and he’s going to be a father. Geez, what happens? One day you’re some kind of raving lunatic, usually with a borderline alcohol problem, la-di-da-ing your way along,and  then a few days later you’re thirty years old waiting for your wife to have a baby. Amazing. I think he’ll be a good dad. He has a way of centering on someone in such a way that they feel that they themselves are the one constant in the universe. I’ve never experienced such a thing as a child but it certainly sounds beneficial.

So . . . what’s there to say on my 30th? Not much, except I’m looking for a house, will probably be getting married soon, want to get started on a doctorate program, and am pretty convinced I have a sexual addition. Nothing really that spectacular. I’m hoping to keep learning, keep growing, keep writing, and more than all these others, keep becoming more and more refined and like God. I’ve been encouraged of late in the Word. Just that there is the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Just that God is good and righteous and merciful and on the throne. Just that God can redeem anything. Lessons I learn over and over again, and sweeter each time.

I’ve also thought perhaps I will find a different Bible Study, not that the one I was attending is bad. It’s only that I was listening to LaSayre Bradleypreach tonight with his beautiful crotchety old man voice, and I thought, When I go to this study, I don’t find myself going away having learned more about God. I find that there is a good deal of emphasis (and understandably so) on who the Holy Spirit wants me to be and how do I really have Christ in my life and paying  attention to the places where I’m screwing up. (I admit that I may have missed the point, and if that’s the case, forgive me.) But, although I get the importance of those things, I think they really make sense for the group who are for the most part 26 and younger. 26 and younger is a really great time to ask those sort of questions, when your life still really does seem fluid and like you’re still carving out adulthood from it, figuring out who you are at all much less in Christ. I asked them of myself , usually between shots at that age, but that’s really a whole other line of thought. The point is . . . and it is not to say that I think I have any more claim to spiritual greatness than anyone else, merely that God seems to have steered me in this direction .  .  . but the point is that God is the center of everything, and He’s working in us each day, and He’s graceful and has provided through dependence on Him the ability for us to be able to be gracious to one another. The point is that this is real and we are a family and we should meet each others needs and experience depth and help and compassion with and for one another. I’m not saying that those things don’t happen there, only that I have not experienced them in the way I’m trying to explain. Perhaps I haven’t given it enough of a chance, I’m sure I probably haven’t. What I’m trying to say though with all of this is that if I sit and ponder about God by talking about myself and positing on things I should improve and need to learn because of God, surely, am I not still in the end just talking about myself?  Am I not misdirected somewhat in my focus?

I could be wrong. I really could, I’m not just trying to be falsely humble. I’ll have to pray for direction in it. But I am lonely for true fellowship and real definable growth. I hope I find a place where that can happen.

Well, that’s it for my Birthday dissertation, and I see now that it really is my birthday. Happy Birthday to me! :)

Anyway, I came home and took a nap. It was wonderful. And then I woke up and took Emmy outside and there was this young man standing outside talking on the phone by his shiny red hatchback. I squinted in the sunlight. Then I hobbled back inside with my dog and felt a lot more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame that I would have liked.

(in all honesty, I wish I had boots like that.)

It isn’t so much that I was adandoned in a church as a baby or only befriended by a jerkface clergyman or that I have a thing for gypsy girls named Esmeralda. The real issue is the slightness of my excursions from home of late. Studying is to blame of course, so I suppose it’s only the old thing of The End of something. My exams went well, my time was well spent in preparation, but . . . there is much more time today than I’m used to.

Sometimes I think that it would be good to move away, really. Just any old Somewhere Else. This place has already been scribbled on too many times. Case in point: Today I was late for my exam so I had to make it up at a coffee shop across from UC while my professor graded papers. I don’t know if you know this, but a few years ago this particular shop used to be called the Buzz?  It’s called Taza these days. The entrance is met by two flights of stairs, one to the order counter and the other to the seating area. Anyway, the one and only time I have ever been to the Buzz was with Mark the First, my affair du jour in something like 2002. Not expecting the plethora of stairs, I promptly fell down all of them in what can only be described as one of those long cinematic type scenes where everything slows down and my body bounces horribly from one cement slab to the next, legs flailing, patrons looking up sharply and over their shoulders with alarm. The tinkling of ceramic coffee mugs, the chatter of college kids, and the faint drone of indy-pop music are all silenced as everyone waits, in slow motion, for me to stop falling. Finally, when I reach the last step, time speeds to normal, sound resumes, the waitress rushes over to ask if I’m alright and Mark, leaning over to help me, says, “I’m not going to lie to you, Marianne: a lot of people saw that.”

It was distracting being there. And all over the city it’s like that. I drive home and pass by the Walgreens where Mark the Second and I used to go to buy sodas and cigarettes and talk about his life in the Drug Years. I go to work at the shelter and am reminded of when my clothes used to strain over my belly where it held my sweet little Natalie, before she had a name, when she was still the Biscuit. I go up to Field’s Ertel and think of the snowy evening when Simon carried me so my feet wouldn’t get cold. I drive down Creek Road, I go in the house, and the curtains are all still there, and its overwhelming how tactile the remembrance of my mother is, like she’s still there. In all my usual places, I think of the grief dinners and grief breakfasts Stephanie and I had.

Are memories such a bad thing? Of course not. The real trouble is that many of them are unpleasant ones. Not unpleasant in and of themselves, but in situations and with people that turned out unfortunately, either through my own action or inaction or through that of who I was with. I don’t think of myself as someone who’s been prone to disaster, and in fact, there are so many blessings that God has bestowed on me that I shouldn’t ever be able to complain, about anything, ever again. And it isn’t as though I always remember these things. I can be mindless and free of them. But their propensity to come to me unbidden is unsettling.

Maybe I’ve done what I was here to do. Maybe it’s time to be moving on.

Simon,

I hate your guts. Except that I don’t. And I want to.

The truth is that I don’t hate you. I don’t even know you. And I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon. It’s cool. I’ve made my peace with it. But you have yet to hear it.

Have I loved just some idea of you? Probably. How could I care for someone who’s treated me this way? Who, in effect, has . . . has . . . what? Left me? Just left me? Is that really all it was? It seems so much deeper than that. It was all mixed up in everything else around it: the hopes, the losses, the promise, the grief. It still seems unthinkable to be cruel to you, seeing as how I’ve done all the horrible things that one can possibly do in a relationship and you did none of them. I did everything wrong before. And you’re doing everything wrong now.

Do you owe me something?  I ask myself, and the answer is, Yes. At least to give an explanation. At least to have it out. I’m embarrassed to tell people what’s happened to this. Embarrassed because it turns out that you’re not the man that I explained to them. You’re a coward. You’re afraid to say what it is. What it really is. You’re afraid . . . I never thought you would be.

How can I still care what happens with all of this? And the answer is I can’t, and so I don’t. I feel like a fool. I’ve looked like as much to everyone. Not that I care what Everyone Thinks. As I keep saying, and I do believe, there is something freeing in having nothing left to lose. There’s something freeing in doing the rash and stupid thing, because you want to know for sure. And now I do know for sure.

And that is good.

I can’t keep breaking my heart over you. I won’t. There are other plans that God has for me. Maybe it’s no one. Maybe I’ve screwed up enough and passed off on motherhood too many times for it to be anyone. It is what it is. I submit to God’s will. And His will is not us, not now at least. You hear that?! I’m still saying “not now”, instead of just “not”. What is the matter with me? Have you hypnotised me so much?

The truth has always been that I really did think . . . But what good is what I thought? It isn’t so. It is just so difficult to look at this and think, Never again. Never. I’ll never have you again. But I won’t. And I don’t think I would now even if I could.

So go on with whatever is so important. Go on and do the work of God and go wherever He takes you. Be good and great and so high above us all. Go. Do. Be. I can’t even try to make those things sound sweet. I don’t feel sweet, not towards you, and besides,  no amount of pretty words will make a damn bit of difference. Just get on with it. I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to know about it.

I’m over it.

-Marianne

So I have done this thing. I have called the mighty phone number. I have learned the truth of the ages, or at least what seems like ages to me because I’m a freak who is annoying and somewhat obsessive.
The truth is not great.
But the Truth is great.
And so I suppose the lesson in all this is that what I must pursue is the Truth and nothing else.

I just got out of my three hour French class, and it was divine. I think I’m in love. All those “c’est”s and “voudrais”s. Heaven!

And as I was walking down the stairs and out into a cool spring evening, it struck me suddenly that I knew these stairs. What is it about a college campus? The way the air smells, the non-skid strips on the linoleum steps, the weight of books carried over the shoulder. It’s like being in a Meijer: once you’re inside, they’re all the same place. And it was a good familiar feeling strolling down the overwide sidewalks basked in dim street lights. L’amour, my friends, l’amour!

In other news, I still haven’t heard from Simon, so I thought I’d do a poll. YOU vote! Yes! You! Can!

Here are your choices. Simon hasn’t talked to me in three months because:

a) He was a victim of that vile creature, The Economy, and is on the street, looking so bummy that they kick him out of the library computer lab

b) He joined a religious cult that forces him to handle snakes and accidentally got bitten by one that paralyzed his vocal chords and/or all of his limbs

c) He’s rebuked society and decided to live off the grid, building himself a shack in the wilderness and refusing any kind of technology

d) He was kidnapped by alpacas who took him to a remote part of India where he freed himself, slaughtered them in their sleep, and is now in foreign prison and/or on the lam, or

e) He’s more of a jerkwad than I was expecting

Personally, I’m leaning towards b).

But when it really comes down to it, what are you going to do? Pay some private eye to track down his whereabouts, sell everything you own to emmigrate to Europe, show up one night at a place he frequents and when he rebuffs you, break into his house and put up pictures of yourself all over the walls and furniture and burn love threats into his lawn? Pleeeease. That never works.

So I’m going to be blase, because what choice have I got? Besides its wasting too much of my time and I’m too hot and awesome to pine. Pining is for trees and cleaning solvents, and I’m neither.

So the downside of things is that I recognize that some of my efforts are futile. But in the plus column, I got to talk with Ellie this morning while I was cramming French into my brain! Which was really nice and I remembered how much I used to enjoy his company those few months we were nestled together in that square mile of space at UUJ. He’s still one of my favorite people. Unfortunately I’ll never get to hang out with him ever again as long as I live.

So today is Simon’s birthday. I know, I know-THAT guy again?! But I still haven’t heard from him and I have to say, I feel a little concerned. It’s really all his fault. I mean, the last I hear he’s in a car accident and he’s fine, really, he’s fine, but then a couple of weeks later,  he tells me he has to go get some freaking brain scans, and then . . . nothing.

Sigh.

In a related story, according to VH1, the New Kids on the Block are (is?) making a comeback , “cleverly” disguised as “NKOTB”. It seems unfair. They can, and I can’t?

Whatever.

And she also asked me to take the same tomorrow because the woman who usually comes in is in the hospital and no one knows when she might be released. Fabulous. Super. Happy to oblige.

And after work I have an interview at Kristen’s mom’s workplace. Fantastic. Cool. Bring it.

And when I get to work there’s a knock down drag out fight over whether or not the door should be left open in one of the rooms, futher complicated by a language barrier and stressing the already taut nerves of a group of domestic violence survivors. Manageable. Pithy. Taken care of.

And I’m sitting up in the early morning hours, chugging a 20 oz. Diet Coke and playing Text Twist on Yahoo.com, when my sister calls and asks me, So, how’s school going?

Anxiety. Panic. Disaster.

And suddenly I’m reminded of all the crushing pile of a million and a half things that I have to get done, should have been doing, should be done with by now. Making sure that the lawyer has everything she needs to finally settle my mom’s estate, getting my gramma to cough up her half of the wireless phone bill, meeting with an advisor at UC, coordinating with Kent State to find out how exactly this whole little switcheroo school thing is going to work, filing my taxes, figuring out if I have to also file some kind of tax-related items for my mom’s estate, getting my 3inch4 dog’s nails trimmed (and picking up some more dog food, too, now that I think of it), picking up some more dog food, stay up all night again, and again, and again this week. I feel overwhelmed.

And added to that is this recent fragility of useless thinking that sets me so on edge. I know it’s probably because I haven’t been sleeping. I know I’m probably just worn down. But I just keep feeling and feeling and FEELING this grief and it’s driving me crazy. And when I think like this, all I want to do is sleep.

I think, a year ago, my mom was on vacation in Florida, and this year, I’m not going to get a Valentine’s heart from her.

I watch The World’s Tallest Women on the Learning Channel and think to myself, Simon was tall.

I go to the store with my sister late at night and I see these hair elastics with fake hair in curls wound around them and think, I would have loved those as a kid, would I buy them for my daughter? And I realize that it’s not up to me anymore. I don’t get to decide what she gets for her birthday, she won’t ask me for a tshirt with some cartoon she likes on it. I see a blue Ford Focus in the parking lot with a baby seat in the back and think, That could have been us.  I placed her for adoption because I didn’t want Mark around her, and I didn’t have the money to take care of her, and now I have the money and Mark’s moved to Seattle.

And I talk to Kristen on the phone tonight and she’s talking about how she misses someone and asks me, Does it ever go away? And all I can say is, I think so. All I can say is, It’s like alcoholism. You just focus on dealing with it and getting through today. And then tomorrow you do the same thing.

The truth is that you can’t think ahead. You can’t look forward in the widening emptiness that you feel without these people that you loved, that you depended on, that you were hoping for. Or, you can, but you’ll go crazy if you do.

I’m surprised to say it, and moreso that it’s true, but I think I can really deal with this. My sister may not believe me because I’ve acted like such an idiot in the pursuit of this, well, let’s admit it, melodramatic demand for this boy. But talking to him as something of a chum was . . . nice. I actually enjoyed it. I think I’ve finally been through the crux of this crisis and now I can look at myself from the other side, with a bit of a chuckle about how silly I’ve acted and more pleasure in the act of knowing my friend than would be gleaned from forcing myself on him.

This is a good thing.

And I believe that prayer is what has brought me here. I know that the Lord is my strength and that his will is perfect. Not only complete but without error. And . . . this is just another piece of it. This is just the last chapter. And I’m being led into the next.

I can’t sleep at night. I either refuse to go to bed because of some free floating anxiety or I wake up again and again and can’t fall back asleep. Grief is choking me. It creeps up on me while I lay in the dark with my eyes closed and suddenly I hear my mind say, “My mother is dead.” It’s as if I just realized it. I weep. My mother is dead.

There are framed photographs of my daughter in my room, taken during the four days that she was mine. She’s so pristine, so frozen. She seems like a dream, like a memory of something I made up. She’ll be eight months old in a couple of weeks. After that, years will pile up, time will pass, and one day she’ll be a child, and then an adolescent, a young woman. And I may see her from time to time, we may even become friends if God is merciful in his will. But what of all the days in between? What of all the discoveries and abilities and a thousand mental photographs of her that I will never carry with me? The way she will watch television on her stomach on the floor, feet waving lazily in the air? The exact angle of her chin when she refuses to clean her room? Her very favorite dress she will remember from her childhood?

I keep thinking that things are going to turn out differently than they do. I plan, and my plans come to nothing. And, this is the reason that my relationship with Simon is such an ordeal. He’s someone I can do something about. Or so I thought. And in him is wrapped my other losses. I thought he might be my husband, and so, and as such, he and I could have had more children. More little girls whose ins and outs I might have been able to know and carry with me. My mother wrote him an email before she died, asking him to come to visit me for my birthday. Even then to be thinking of me . . . and of course he didn’t.

It’s only two in the morning. It’s really not that late. I don’t want to go to sleep. My heart is aching. I don’t know what to do now. For more than just tonight, I just don’t know what to do.

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Yes, believe it, I bought a new bike last night! And after riding it today for about three and a half seconds, my legs were so worn out I could barely stand up to get off the thing. OMG, IHM! But the good news is that if I keep it up I’ll be able to ride for five seconds next time, and eventually I may even be able to work up to a whole minute. It’s gonna be awesome.

In other news, I’ve deleted the old Mark from my Facebook friend roll (I can’t believe I’m actually writing about this. I remember when the new Mark sent me an angry email once complaining that I’d taken him off my MySpace list and I thought to myself, This is MYSPACE, man, MYSPACE. What the crap?!) Anyway the reason I did it was because my sister was kind enough to counsel me on the fact that you shouldn’t broadcast a loose affiliation with someone you’ve had an affair with on a social network through which you’re connected to your ex-fiancee that you’re desperately in love with and on whom you cheated with said loose affiliate. I’ll be shocked if that sentence made sense. But it is true. So I got rid of him.

And, finally, I have no word yet on where I’ll have to go to finish my degree. Hopefully I’ll have an idea soon, though I doubt it considering I’m dealing with Kent State and the only thing they do quickly is come break your legs when you’re late on your payments.