He went away

Just like that, he was gone. I was standing on a road in Red Hook, covered in sweat and my skin burning under a cloudless afternoon sky. I stared at my phone, my heart having dropped somewhere, laying on the sidewalk between my running shoes, maybe. He was leaving. It was over.

It had been all summer, and I had used any and every excuse to keep in touch with him all along the spectrum of passion, and just today I had hated him. I hadn't slept with anyone else, and the fucker gave me a case of HPV that ended up turning into precancer. I was pissed, convinced he'd given it to me from sleeping around with whoever and not giving two shits about me when he was all I'd been able to think about for months. I yelled at him, pretending there was no way I could have gotten the HPV from the Crocodile before he'd gone off his meds and held a knife to my throat.

I intended to yell more. Then he said he was leaving New York for good. Something about his mother. He hated it here. Then my heart fell out and suddenly I was standing there in the sun, the conversation having ended minutes ago without me knowing how or why. I was parched. I wanted to lie down right where I was, on the dusty sidewalk in front of wherever I was. It was over.

Then Josh moved out. He had moved in just six weeks before, after a several month tour of Europe and Africa, the two of us sitting in bars and crying in our beers about how useless it was to meet the person you're meant to love if that person doesn't want you back. Just six weeks and now he was leaving, right when I needed a friend to cry with. I felt like he was cutting our friendship apart with a knife.

Two weeks later, I forgot my best friend's birthday while she spent it taking care of me after the surgery to remove the precancerous cells from my cervix. I was lying on my couch with my head in her lap when my landlord called me and told me he was selling the building. I didn't remember it was her birthday until the next day, when she had gone back to Long Island.

I think I stared at the cats wondering if one of them was going to die.

Then I looked in the mirror and wished I would die.

I wished the Crocodile had cut my throat. I imagined the blood all over the floor in the foyer, seeping under the door. I imagined the police kicking the door open to find it slamming into my lifeless body, my purse still slung over the arm. I imagined them finding him in the bedroom, overdosed on whatever the fuck he was on, and finding the three bottles of untaken antipsychotics and looking for my ID in my purse. I wondered how they would find my mother's phone number.

I spent much of the next few months feeling sorry for myself that I was still alive, but I got a therapist. I knew I needed a therapist. I felt insane. I felt like everything was crumbling around me, and my home was once again going to be taken away. She didn't even know where to begin, my intake took three sessions and my problems, while not dire, all rooted back to this one thing: loss. Coping with loss. Regret of loss. Fear of loss. Worthlessness from loss. Emptiness from loss. Anger from loss.

Thanks, Dad. Thanks a lot.

I keep running back to that road in Red Hook. I go to the track just to turn around and run over that pavement in the sun and bring myself back to the moment my phone rang. I check it. I see that it's him. I don't answer. Even if I hate him, I don't want him to be gone.

It's back.

It's been a long time.  Okay, not so long since the last time, but before that a REALLY long time.

It's been good.  Things have been up and down and all around...but mostly good...until now.

Now It's back. That old weight on my shoulders. That old feeling of wading through Jell-O. The dull ache in the back of the brain that whispers to me that I shouldn't be here, that I should be gone, that I should have gone away long ago.

I know I'm here for something though. I know I'm good, and that this is all about how much I care for people and try to make them happy and make sure they're okay.  Nobody tries very hard for me, it seems, not in the same way.

I'm depressed again.  There's an anchor reaching from my frontal lobe down into my gut.

I can't get work.  I've been picking up PA days here and there but I worked that camera job and then haven't worked in almost two months and things are getting scary...I'm getting that sinking feeling that maybe I'll never be able to get work.  Maybe I'm screwed.

I really dropped the ball with Local 600, missing the deadline for the test.  That smacks of self-sabotage if ever I heard.

I got really drunk last night.  I tried to leave the bar but my friend caught me, told me to come back.  There were tears - I wanted to go, I needed to go, but I couldn't explain why. I was stupid and went back in. I don't even remember what else happened at the bar... When I left the second time I had drunk more and was not okay. I could barely stand up. I didn't know where I was. I couldn't figure out my way home. I needed help and my pride made me refuse to ask.  Then all of a sudden I turned around and they were gone. Like vanished. I was alone, I was lost.  It was like a nightmare except not a dream.  I'm not entirely sure how I got home.

I feel like hell today.  It's not exactly a hangover.

Maybe It's Not a Disease.

The drama with No Name continues. After work he sought me out to talk. We rode the Subway toward home together, with some of the boys from work in tow. They were all going out to party together but I had to work the next day on a commercial so I couldn't go. He told me he'd broken up with the girlfriend. I regret that I never did mention I had broken up with Columbia. He sat next to me and touched my hand a little and we talked a little about the script he's been working on. He told me about a job he has coming up, two months of work, and said he'd put me in for it.

I had an interview with the AD's on the job this week and I nailed it - I'm in. I'm going to see him for over two months straight. Every day.

I'm half nervous, half excited. There's a piece of me that believes he and I would be amazing together now that the timing is better, but there's also a big part that's concerned I'll wind up getting carried away and then disappointed. I was talking to Thinky Face last night about how getting romantically disappointed can really send you into a thick depression ... Lately it feels like things are even more precarious; instead of falling from a normal height and being able to pick yourself up it's more like you're falling off a roof. I mean, maybe it's not...but it seems like it hurts worse now when I sink into a depression.

What I really know is that I don't know anything. At one point I made a joke about him cheating on the girlfriend with me and he said no, he'd legitimately been on the outs with her every time he'd seen me. That's something. And I don't really know that he's been with other women in that time ... I have no reason to believe he does, it's really just a fear I have, thanks to the Producer shaking me violently into the reality of casual sex. I've assigned a lot of meaning to the things that happen with him without really knowing for sure what's going on. And I've been wrong to judge him based on fear and my own insecurity. I mean, I have to protect my feelings, sure ... but there's got to be a line I can ride between protecting myself and pushing people away.

Plumbing Problem

I wish someone would save me. It feels like I'm drowning in nothing.

I'm so frustrated.

If I ever complain about too much work, please remind me that when I don't work I don't know what to do with myself.

My heart hurts, my head hurts, and I wish I could stop crying. But the tears just keep coming, and tears of joy they are not.

I'm angry. I want to punch someone in the face. I want someone else to be as angry and frustrated and confused as me. Maybe then I won't feel so alone.

This is disgusting; it's like a scene out of Ghostbusters - I'm leaking angerplasm from everywhere, from my eyes, my nose, my mouth...I wish I could scream. New York isn't good for screaming. There are too many people around to hear.

I wish I could just disappear.



Oh thank goodness, I feel better now.

I'm a little sorry (for you) that my blog has become a repository for my negative feelings, but I really feel like I have nowhere else to put them. And it really does help me get through moments like this.

As part of the intake process at my therapy place I had to go see a psychiatrist yesterday. She said she feels pretty certain I'm bipolar but she was very supportive of my not wanting to take any medication. She said she thinks I'll be fine if I have someone to talk to. I think that's probably true. I'm really done with being lonely.

More in the same vein

See, it's not so much that I'm suicidal. I'm not. I don't have the desire to kill myself. I can't even fathom how to do it painlessly, and I'm too much of a wuss to do it otherwise. And also my survival instinct remains intact - I'm not purposefully putting myself in dangerous situations or anything.

It's more that I'm having trouble seeing a point. This all feels very futile to me. I don't really understand what my end goal is, except professionally. And then what? I've been working so long trying to be a PA, now here I am doing it and now what? Try to be an AD? Sure...but then what? Go for UPM, right? Great. But THEN what?

It feels very much like so many mice on so many wheels inside so many cages.

I guess the answer to "Then what?" is love, right? Sharing with other people, making other lives better, that kind of thing. But I have that. I have that with my family and with my friends, and it isn't really all that fulfilling to me. I mean, I like it don't get me wrong. But I want a companion. It's been a long time since I've had one and I miss it.

Him...He doesn't want that with me. Like He said, He can't promise me anything. And that's okay. I wish He did because He fits my requirements, but it's okay. It doesn't have to be Him. There are plenty of others out there. I think it bothers Him because He saw the emptiness inside me when I cried in his bed. He saw it all gush out of me: two years of aches and pains, side effects of the hard work I have done just to live normally and for myself. He knows I feel incomplete and hollow and all those lovely things, and I think He's sorry He can't help. I don't mean I want someone to fix me so much, I just mean I want someone to be the other piece of my puzzle. Someone to be nearby so it isn't so hard for me as I continue to rebuild myself from the inside out. Or maybe just to rub my sore shoulders once in a while, and pet my hair if I have to cry. But I never asked Him to be that person, nor did I expect Him to be.

The truth is that I don't really believe that anyone who fits my requirements would actually step up and volunteer. I don't think any of the puzzle pieces that fit...I don't think they want to fit with me. I find that frustrating. Especially when I see the kind of dumb hos they actually try to fit with.

But it makes sense. Dumb girls are too vapid to have dark and hollow voids. Dumb girls don't make boys go on adventures. Dumb girls make even regular boys seem smart. Dumb girls make wussy girly boys feel like manly men. Dumb girls let boys have an easy life and pretend that they're awesome...because next to a dumb girl, anyone is awesome.

Wow, that just made me really glad I'm still single, because by this logic I'm probably very awesome.

Ain't no title.

Alright, steel yourself for a moment.  Approach this mentally, not emotionally, because if you don't you won't understand my meaning.

It's not that I want to die. It's just that I feel like death would be better than what I've got now, which is nothing.

I have no money, I have no love, I have so little happiness. The only thing I really find gratification in is my work, and there's so little work available right now and for the next few months.

A year ago I thought maybe running would yield some results, maybe if I lost some weight and saw some results as an athlete... But I'm still where I was then. Even though I look good and feel good I'm still nowhere when it comes to my life. Even in my work, the best part of my life, I'm still the low man on the totem pole of things. I work so hard, hoping that ship will come in...but it doesn't. I'm starting to wonder if it ever will.

And still I don't really feel depressed. I feel more like this is all just a matter of fact.

I'm going to go running now. There's a little part of me that hopes I get killed in an accident.  It's horrible! I know! But in this very cerebral way it makes sense.

And I was just bragging that I hadn't done that in a really long time...

It's a small world in movieland. I found out yesterday that the Camera guy I've been pressing for a job is THE Mr. S. The Mr. S that used to work on indies in Dayton with Aunt J. The Mr. S that moved to New York with Aunt J to make it big. The Mr. S who lived in a shoebox apartment with Aunt J and another woman in Chelsea in the 90's. Whoa.

So I think I have a really good shot at getting a camera PA gig with this guy. He's kind of awesome, and he works with a DP who's kind of awesome, so I'm pretty excited about that.

Anyway, now that my on-set life is in full swing I've found myself a whole new set of buddies and I'm drinking a lot again. I would like to drink less perhaps, but socializing with these people does several things for me. First and foremost, I like them a lot and enjoy hanging out with them. Second, it is necessary to build rapport with people to nurture the whole job-getting network thing. And also, all the social time I'm getting is helping to keep me happy. I genuinely like it.

So anyway, I don't know if I said so earlier, but I have a great suspicion that I have the same manic-depressive thing my dad had. Or maybe it's different, but it's definitely there; I definitely swing back and forth every few months. I've been doing great since the middle of the summer and things have been really good. I trained for and ran my first half-marathon, I totally switched gears with my career and am loving the changes, I got through The Starlet moving out and have been coping fairly well with a new roommate that I don't especially enjoy living with. That's the major stuff. Little things have fallen by the wayside, like normal, but mostly I'm getting tons done and really enjoying myself, which is totally great.

So manic phase has been in full swing for oh...four months now? And I'm watching every moment for warning signs that the pendulum is swinging the other direction. So far I think I'm okay; I'm dealing with my feelings openly and using running to help release my stresses, but the other night I'd had a drink too many and then the old pain came back when the 22 year old was all sunshine and roses with me one minute and then all icicles and vanishing acts the next. So I put my head on the shoulder of my friend and though I put up a good fight, the tears won. I had a Drunk Girl Cry in front of three of my new friends and some chick I'd met five minutes earlier and then and there I vowed henceforth to become a great consumer of ginger ale.

I Come From the Isle of Misfit Toys

I had a really good thing going for a while. I had my guard up, I was interested in the people I saw but I kept them at an arm's length, kept them away from my life and didn't get my hopes up. They came and went, sometimes at their discretion sometimes at mine, but it wasn't ever that big a deal. I wasn't looking for my next great romance or anything, just for a good time.

Then there was North Dakota. I don't want to get into the details, but here are the points - 1) I knew better than to get involved with this guy before I got involved, 2) I ignored my better judgment 3) It didn't work out, and 4) I felt pretty fucking dumb for ever having relented to him in the first place. This is certainly not the first time I've done that either. There's a lot of that in my history, of glossing over problems and making excuses for others. "Oh fiddle-de-dee, I'll think about it tomorrow!"

The depression wasn't really about North Dakota, it was about feeling powerless to change the cycle and about fearing that I am too fucked up, that I will never be able to be happy in love because I'll just never be able to be happy. When I arrived here in New York I was so happy to have my freedom, to be my own woman and not depend on someone else to make sense out of my world...but now that I'm ready to try not being alone anymore things are all jumbled up again. I'm suspicious of anyone who shows interest in me. I mean - who on earth would ever want a crazy girl? If you bought me in a store you'd take me back and ask for a new one. I'm not totally broken, but I definitely belong on the scratch n' dent shelf. I'm a train with square wheels.

Enough melodrama. The reality of the situation is that I am just fine on my own. Just fine. My wheels might be square, but they give me character, and I still get around okay. It might be a little lonely on this here island, but at least I know who my friends are. And the other stuff...it will come. There's no rush, no need to make excuses, and no reason I can't keep chugging along on my own.

Red, red wine

I like being drunk sometimes. It can be quite fun. There are some things that are better when you're really drunk, like boring parties or bars with bland atmospheres or random hook-ups. There are other things that are way, WAY not better when you're, as Banana likes to say, "hammered," or as Thinky calls it, "shitfaced," or as I shall daintily say, "a touch beyond your limit." Three of these things:

1) excellent food

2) conversational skills

3) first-time sex with someone who is decidedly not a one-night stand


I'm glad to report that I very much did enjoy the amazing food, but I think I might have appreciated it all the more had I not enjoyed the wine quite so much. My conversational skills were shot from exhaustion at the end of a six day workweek of extra hours every day, so maybe I can't blame that on the wine. But that last one...

I went into the evening prepared to have sex. I was thrown off my game when he didn't kiss me hello. I figured maybe the timing was wrong, maybe I looked like I'd just worked a 90 hour week, or maybe he just didn't want me like I'd thought. It was then that I realized I wasn't being my usual lively self, that I was really tired and yeah, it was showing. I tried turning on my feminine wiles (I have wiles), but nothing. No kiss.

Then the bottle of wine came. It was delicious. Then the food came. It was beyond delicious. More wine. I'll blur through the rest because the rest is a blur...blurry walk back to his apartment, blurry climbing to the roof, blurry flirting, finally a blurry kiss. Blurry trip back downstairs. More blurry kissing. Blurry fighting myself on whether or not to have sex--dehydrated, sloppy, nervous and ready-to-pass-out-any-second isn't really my A-game, so to speak. I think I said no, and that he was really sweet about it.

Then the latch on the door clicked open and his roommate's girlfriend walked in. I sat there staring at her, completely incredulous as she walked in very comfortably to what was obviously a private evening. Like she owned the place, which she really does not. Except for the bra conspicuously strewn across the coffee table, we were completely clothed, but I was nonetheless aghast at her audacity as she sat down at the table and ate a late dinner, chatting like it was the most normal thing in the world for anyone--much less someone who does not pay rent--to walk in on such a scene and not immediately retire away from it. I was too exhausted and too fucked up to know what to do about it so I feigned feigning sleepiness and went into his room and shut the door. I don't know how long I slept before he slid into bed next to me.

Then I jumped the gun. I'm terrible at not giving in to my body; my libido is rather demanding and lately my sex life has been rather nonexistent due to a drastic change in my standards. If I really hadn't wanted it I would have gotten into a taxi, but I got into his bed instead. The alcohol rationalized it, told me I could just sleep, that I was too tired to have sex with anyone but a necrophiliac. The alcohol said maybe in the morning. But half-asleep, my subconscious at the helm, I reached for him. I was dehydrated. I was sloppy. I was nervous. I was ready to pass out at any moment, but I managed even without my A-game.

It actually freaked me out a little. I don't know if I was ready--I mean, I made a conscious decision to get off that couch and into the bed so clearly I wanted to do it. And I certainly don't regret it. But I'm still climbing my way out of the depression that took over my life a few months ago. My emotions are still tangled up in knots. I'm not sure how to process the things that were said. I know it doesn't have to change things, but it changes things for me, and that's a fact.

I woke up feeling lonely. I need a lot of physical affection. All by myself on one side of the comfy, squishy bed I thought maybe my presence was being tolerated rather than appreciated. I climbed out of bed, tugged on my clothes and padded off to pee and have some water (in attempt to alleviate the incredible headache that throbbed in my ears). I curled up on the couch and thought about things. I stared into space and sipped from a glass imprinted with a little cartoon naked lady on a pole. I liked the glass. I liked the staring. I liked that it was quiet. I liked the sleeping man in the next room, but I was very concerned that maybe he wouldn't like me anymore.

After a while he came out looking furious and stared at me for what felt like a long time. I heard my voice squeak, "I needed some water." He shook his head. "Feel free to come back any time," he said from the doorway. My heart sank. I was being kicked out. My stuff was still in the bedroom. "In here, I mean," he indicated his room and went back in. After a second it clicked in my head--he had thought I'd ditched out on him and it had upset him. Hope restored, I went back to the bathroom to fuss at my looks a minute then scurried back in to him and scrambled into bed. All I needed was to know I was wanted.

El Presidente

Hi!

I'm drunk. Drunky drunk drunk. Yay!

Went out to dinner with some work folks and there was so much wine of a type that I do not remember, but it was very very good. Dinner was super awesome at the Spice Market. Sooo awesome. I recommend the red curry duck and also the mango salad. Yummm. Go with a party of 12 or more so that it's family style, because family style is so much more fun. Especially when production is paying. Try the lychee raspberry bellini or (OOH!) the ginger margarita!

The President (my boss) is...well...awesome. We shared a cab. There was bonding. She reminded me in her silly drunky drunkerson talk that I gotta keep on pushing for the things I want and toward being what I want to be. She reminded me I don't need to care about what other people are doing to get where I want, just about what I'm doing. She reminded me that my life is mine and that I gotta take good care of it because nobody else will take care of it for me. There is no deus ex machina ending for me. There is no magic wand to wave to make it all perfect. (Oh yeah...now I remember...)

It was super cute because it was in her silly little drunky voice, but also because I didn't realize that she noticed I've been sad lately. It's nice that she noticed. It's nice that she cares and that she wants me to be better. I need to move up in the world so we can be friendlier and less bossy/employeeish. I'm nervous to be too friendly with her because of that boss thing. But then again I would do anything for her, which is (along with bird-in-the-hand factor) why I took another job with her that will carry me through the summer, even though I so so so want to move on to a different department.

"Don't worry, dear," she slurred. "We'll get through it."