halloween...

After celebrating my first real Halloween in years I felt it was time for a proper update. The picture to my left is one of my favorites from the night and I'd like to call it "drunk at 1:00AM" This is of course before I threw the jack-o-lantern off the balcony in a whiskey fueled rage. What my rage was about, I am not so certain...

I'm finding it increasingly harder to blog about my life when I am happy. Perhaps an overhaul of my blogging habits needs to occur. It is fairly safe to say that if I am not posting, I am happy and that I don't need the catharsis that this format offers as much.

But about that happiness: Things with Damien are going really well. So well in fact, that I think I have to turn in my emo club card. I've held on to it for a good five years and I think now is the time to move on to the world of being a grown up and approach relationships in a manner accordingly. We'll see how this goes... One of the things that I admire about Damien so much is that he doesn't play games and is not about creating and perpetuating drama. He has his issues, like we all do, but at no point in the past three months has he projected his problems on me. Overall he is genuine and I appreciate that more than I'll ever be able to adequately express in words.

Other general housekeeping updates:

• I'll be home in Pittsburgh from Nov. 4-6th, if you want to get together, please feel free to call, especially if you want to go to Gullifty's.
  
• I can not wait to tear it up at Pittstop. Get the WTF ready!
• If my hair appears much darker to you, that is because it is. Lauren did the best job ever. I am still SO in love with it.
  

woah is me...

cross posted:


Dudes and Dudettes,

Most of you know of my upcoming road trip across the country to San Diego with Kate. I figure (ok well, mapquest figures) that we will be in the car for about 36 hours and what better way to spend the time than watching the landscape of the country unfold outside the window, planning side adventures and listening to quality music.

Here is where you come in. I mean sure, my collection of music is pretty much the best ever, but I would LOVE it if you would send me some suggestions of your favorite music for road trips and I would love it even more if you would send me a mix! (message me for my contact information)

It would be awesome!
Love,
Clare

70 x 7

It just irritates me and I don't know why I bother to continue to let it. It is obvious to me that you have a skewed view on what happened and why and while that irritates me what irritates me more is that you have some how convinced yourself that it is the truth and that you have done no wrong when that isn't really how things played out. And furthermore the truths you convince yourself of you did so for the express purpose of hurting me.

You can not say that "I played you like every other worthless relationship I've ever had that have all ended the same." I can honestly say, that NONE of my relationships have ended the way ours did. Perhaps you would like to confer with the four people I dated before you but I don't think any of them would say that they deliberately started hanging out with people for the express purpose of making me jealous and then playing us off each other for their own amusement all while cheating on me emotionally and physically and accusing me of horrible acts and begging me for sex. Nope, you are a whole new kind of asshole in my life, congratulations. Oh, and yeah... I'm SUCH a player, clearly you know me SO well. Who played who here? Were I playing a game, I don't think it would have ended with my boyfriend doing all the aforementioned. Spencer for all of his faults broke up with me in the way that he thought would be best for me.

And you let your car break down? How does that work exactly? You did lose your job after that 20 days (21 actually, but who's counting) but if you recall, that happened because you DID NOT CALL THEM until it was way way way too late to do anything about it, despite the fact that I asked you several times because I was worried excessively about it and you acted like you couldn't have cared less. If you also recall I also lost out on that one, but no, I don't blame you for causing me to drop out of school, I don't blame you for anything so fuck you and fuck your scapegoat theory. And as for you line about getting shit for my parents, they sent you an email where they expressed a small measure of uneasiness at our cohabitation for 21 days. Yeah they dumped on you SOO much when they told me that they thought highly of you and that they liked you and when they invited you over for dinner. Also I wasn't aware that my offers to pay for your gas and your food while you were visiting was such a hassle for you that you needed to bitch about your visits to DC.

All of this woe is me bullshit, it just re-enforces your selfish nature. It's glaringly obvious that you are unable to see beyond yourself. What you call selflessness on behalf of Nicole is really you selfishly holding on to possibility. The easy way out is to continue to scrape by doing what you are doing. The hard way out is to try and advance your situation by the means you have at your disposal. If you are not looking for something better and if you are not trying to advance your marketability within the job force you are not doing the hard thing. From time to time we all need to be a little selfish, there is nothing wrong with that, but when you fail to see beyond yourself at all, you fail to be able to really love, because love requires more than just superficial sacrifices. And placing everything you have emotionally into a relationship because it is the only thing you have going for you is selfish too. That is a lesson I learned long before you came around. Remember when Noni told you that the "other half" theory was bullshit and that you needed to look for another whole? She had it right.

I don't even have to wonder if this will make you upset or not. I know that the answer will be yes, but you should figure out what makes you more upset, that I bothered to contact you at all about this or that there is some measure of truth to what I am saying.

from the old blog...

This is an entry from my old blog that I wrote over the summer shortly after my 22nd birthday. I really like it, despite the fact that it is abundantly clear I was not in a good place when I wrote it. It is the truth although stretched some extent, I suppose the catharsis was in writing everything down, even the exaggerated thoughts. At this point I'd only add: hope springs eternal, and thank the good Lord I am no longer in that place.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005


I look at my forearm. I see my skin, marked with the flaws and scars of a life lived. I can explain most of them away through lies about accidents or clumsiness, but the truth is that even the most innocent scars are self inflicted.

My two most prominent scars are marks from the steering wheel of my old car. The official explanation is that I was trying to change lanes and I didn't see that traffic had stopped in front of me. I drove into another car going over 45 miles per hour. I remember looking ahead at the last second and seeing the rear of the car in front of me approaching quickly. I meant to hit the brakes, but instead I accelerated into the mini-van. I don't know why I did this, I know where the break is and I don't think that I could have missed it on accident. I've read that people view pain as a healing agent and a purifier and I find some truth in that. Did I seek out my salvation in the back of a mint green Chrysler Town & Country? Did I want that pain?

I wanted the pain last week when I stood in the Rocky mountains, well over 12,000 feet in the air. I asked my family to leave me there for a few hours. I laid on the ground feeling the rocks irritate my back, I let my nose crack and bleed, I let the sun blister my skin and I let the thinness of the air make me sick and cold. I never felt the blood flowing in my veins more acutely. I never felt my head so clear. I never was more aware of myself. When I reunited with my family, I could read the uneasiness in their faces and I don't blame them, my blood soaked shirt and scrapped exterior couldn't have been easy for them to understand. What was probably harder for them to understand was the smile on my face.

I thought a lot while I was laying up there, mostly my failures at love and the most startling self actualization that like the pain I was seeking out, the salvation and distraction that love offers is fleeting and unsatisfying. Or at least it can be, because the reality of loving someone is that it is conditional. I thought back to my days when I was a much more spiritual person than I am now. I used to seek my salvation in Jesus and despite understanding that he was sent for that purpose, I don't know anymore if I can believe in it. God tells us that his love is unconditional, but my experiences with love tell me that it has to be otherwise. This grappling with my faith is difficult. I see it come easily to my parents and I almost resent them for it. Perhaps, seeking out God's love for yourself allows you to love someone else a lot easier?

I wonder it all comes down to some Henry David Thoreau bullshit about self-reliance. How ultimately your salvation has to come from yourself? And what you make of your short time on earth is living in your wilderness and forging your own path? Though I can't believe in the gospel of Thoreau either, since Walden Pond was a stone's throw away from his mother's home where he dined each night and collected his mail.

Despite my own quandaries about salvation the scars remain constants for everyone. Whether we inject ink or shove metal through them or like myself, inflict our own, they are marks that indicate that we aren't happy with who we think we are. I'm learning rapidly though that marking your skin is as empty a change as switching socks and what worries me most is the marks that I've made on the inside of myself that I can't change.

SOMP...

This past weekend, at the behest of my parents I road-tripped into the wilds of semi-rural Virgina (with Damien) to join my parents and several of their friends at their annual Fall reunion. (The event attended was the SOMP Fall Golf Classic in which my father disappointingly took second place.) As a child these reunions used to always be boring or awkward for me and my siblings as we were forced to take a back seat to our parent's past lives. What I failed to realize, was the significance in between the in-jokes and the teasing and the warm smiles. The significance is that the shared history between my father and the other men in the group extends throughout the entirety of their lives. They were all born within the same week in March, in the same town, 52 years ago. Their history extends back to painting old lady Chapman's garage with stolen paint, playing stick ball in the alleyways, graduation, marriages, children, deaths of parents and marriages of their children. Most of the women in this group are from the same town or like my mother moved their during high school. After these weekends my parents always seem so much happier. I think it is because they get to touch base with people who really know who they are, who know where they have come from and where they are going.

This year was somewhat bittersweet for me. It brought into sharp relief the people who have come and gone in my life. I suppose this isn't the time or place to muse over blame or wonder what could have been or what memories could have been made but I ruminate over these things too much, I think. In some cases the break up of the friendship was probably for the best, but there are others I don't think I'll ever have a clear view on. Example:

There was a girl I went to elementary school with. We were in the same Girl Scout troop we were close through high school (despite a few events in her life that at the time I wasn't really prepared to deal with let alone offer her solace) We learned how to dance together. We were on the rowing team together. We leave in different directions for collage and communication between us was sparse but when back home we spent a lot of time together. Over time we gradually drifted apart. Communication became more sparse. I went home for the fourth of July weekend; coming out of a nasty cycle of self loathing brought on by a recent break up and I ran into her. She bounds up to me, I just wanted to leave. I was miserable and it had nothing to do with her. I read in her livejournal the following week her accounts of the fourth of July and all about her encounter with me, her "friend," the "bitch." I think I left a comment. I don't remember what it said, but I am sure I didn't apologize for acting coldly. I do know I am too proud when confronted to do that. I was hoping for an apology from her but one never came and again, my pride seems to be standing in my way. I've seen her a few times since then and it has always been awkward. I choose to ignore every thing about the situation, probably not the most mature move, but I also don't know what to say. The unresolved nature of the whole ordeal is what upsets me the most, though I do miss her friendship. It was also painfully clear that we approached life in drastically different ways and our lack of communications since high school make painfully apparent that we aren't that close anymore. Was it for the best, was it not? Who knows?

I do know that the people I have in my life are wonderful dear people whom I cherish and I can only hope that in 30 years we're all sitting around sharing and creating joy together. I hate feeling so far removed from them in DC and I miss each of them more and more daily...

the great adventure...

I have the worst luck with New Year's Eve plans. As a holiday it has always been the biggest let down. Greatness is planned and mediocrity is the reality. Never fear for the start of 2006! This year will either be the greatest adventure of all time or I'll end up dead.

The Plan: Kate needs to move to her next nursing assignment which starts in early January in sunny San Diego. We will take off from Pittsburgh at some point after Christmas, hit the open road and spend a few days driving to California where the Rhythmic Arts Festival is taking place around and over New Year's Eve. I don't know who we are going to stay with or how long it is going to take or if we'll die or not, but I do know that it will be spectacular.

It should be fun to go to a big dance event. I haven't been to one in what seems like forever. I have soured on the scene somewhat so hopefully this will be a breath of fresh air and quite frankly even if it sucks (which I doubt) I'll get to see the Pacific Ocean and I can not complain about that.

My one regret about this trip is that even though we are headed out west we won't be able to make a stop in Fort Collins, CO to visit my favorite relatives, but alas it is very out of the way. This trip will however, expand my list of states visited and give me stories to tell the grandkids etc.