The Legend of Miss Adventurous Part Six: The Love of My Life

"WAIT!"

I literally stuck my arm in the door of the train as it was closing for departure. Not a subway train... an AMTRAK. The conductor met my desperate plea with a grimace; she was probably trying to decide whether or not to leave me in ugly Penn Station.

"Please, my best friend is going to Iraq..."

It's amazing how that softens people's faces--you'd think I was going myself. The door opened and I hustled in, thanking the woman about twelve times as she gestured to show me toward my car.

People often find it hard to believe that my best friend in the world is a soldier for the United States Army. Well, technically she's an officer, a lieutenant. I'm a pacifist, an isolationist and a bleeding heart liberal. The military leaves a sour taste in my mouth with its just following orders attitude that acts without regard for an individual's belief (or disbelief) in a cause. I realize it's a necessary entity, but I'd like to see less of the "defense" money spent on guns and more spent on ways to reduce the necessity for them. Also the Army stole my best friend and partner in crime, and I've always been a little bitter about that.

-----

I will always vividly remember the moment I first saw AJ because I immediately fell head over heels in love with her. Four weeks into my freshman year of college I was in the lobby of my dorm waiting for the elevator with my laundry. I was saying goodbye to Three First Names, my sort-of boyfriend, giggling at him as he made a goofy joke and then wandered off to his room on the first floor. That elevator always took forever, but all traces of impatience disappeared when she danced up (literally, she danced) to wait with me.

Her curly blonde hair was haphazardly pulled back into a ponytail, and her cheeks and lips were rosy from the unseasonably cool September weather. She wore a lavender hoodie over a white tank top and had on flared jeans and white sneakers. I was sporting the goth look back then in a black minidress with tiny red flowers all over it, and a curtain of straight hair that hung to my waist in a shade closer to purple than to red. I probably had some serious eyeliner going on too. If anyone had been watching they would never have guessed that we would become friends. They definitely wouldn't have suspected that my heart was racing about a mile a minute or that I was dying to pin her against the elevator doors and kiss her and entangle my fingers in that messy blonde hair. I was totally smitten. "Hi," I squeaked.

"Hi!" she chirped back. "You're [Miss Adventurous], right? You're friends with PDF?" (See? I was popular in college. People knew who I was and stuff.)

"Yeah. Do we live on the same floor?"

"I think so. I'm [AJ]."

Her name was like a whisper through leafy trees in the forest. I completely forgot that Three First Names existed...or anyone else, for that matter. Her smile melted me. The sweet smell of vanilla hovered in a cloud around her. I saw her only in soft focus with a key light gleaming in her green, almond-shaped eyes. I couldn't stop noticing the little sliver of exposed skin between her jeans and her hoodie (remember when shirts weren't all hip length? Good times). We chatted for a minute but I was so busy gawking at her and marveling at her breezy, comfortable essence that I don't remember what was said. I just loved her instantly and wanted desperately to be a part of her life.

The next time I saw her she told me she'd been sexually assaulted. I was floored that she told me, but she said she was telling everyone because the police couldn't do anything and she didn't know how else to deal with it. I was enraged that some asshole guy had taken advantage of this angel. I asked if there as anything I could do for her. I visited her room, which was down the hall from mine, and we talked about it some more.

We got closer over the weeks that followed and eventually I confessed my hopeless love to her. She generously tried a little to love me back but she just didn't have it in her to love a girl. We agreed to be friends. Then, suddenly, it was like we had never been apart. We were like two trees that sprouted seperately and then, as we became saplings, grew together. We were two separate identities completely entwined with one another. There was no separating us.

Although our physical relationship never seriously progressed beyond warm hugs and pecks on the cheek, we were the perfect couple in every other way. Eventually her roommate left school and I moved in in a matter of hours. We had a hamster together that I pretended to hate. I followed her to cheesy college keggers and she came with me and PDF to the gay clubs and drag shows. I toned down the goth look and she got her tongue pierced. She got me stoned for the first time. We dressed up in funny costumes together. We played cowboys and Indians in the halls. We danced and danced and danced. We stole a drag queen's wig out of his apartment and had a million late nights at Denny's. She was the one at the hospital holding my hair back while I vomited charcoal into a trash can. She was the subject of all of my student films and I coached her monologues and enthusiastically applauded when she practiced singing and dancing. We founded the Circus, a motley group of like-minded, creative kids who would be an informal institution on campus for years to come.

A year after we met she went away to basic training for the Army. She never was the same after that. When she came back she was a nineteen year old grownup, and I was coming down from a year of sex, drugs and poor academic performance. We never really shared the same friends again. She still had dreams of the stage and the spotlight but they were overshadowed with a new rigidity (which I have since recognized as discipline, something totally foreign to me at that time). I wanted New York, she wanted LA. I was dreamy and experimental and she was driven. Even though we spent two more years at the same school I hardly ever saw her. I found myself saying "I miss you" on the phone. I met JH. I moved away.

Through the years though, "I miss you" became "I love you" on both ends, and with greater significance than the puppy love I once felt. And though the gap of our fundamental differences grows wider and wider every time one of us makes a life change our respect for one another grows too. I used to love her so intensely that I think it was hard for me to see how different we really are... Now that we're older my blind adoration has smoldered to a deep appreciation for a great and dear friend...although I have to admit a little jealousy when I found out her boyfriend had proposed.

Much as I disagree with the war and the military, I am proud of AJ for the life she has chosen to lead. She and I agree on one thing though; it sucks that she has to go. It blows my mind a little that she is strong and noble enough to follow through on her promise to a country that basically screwed her and stuck her and millions of other soldiers between a rock and a hard place.

The Legend of Miss Adventurous, Part 4 - The Real Journey Begins. On Foot.

The year was 1995. I was fourteen, going on fifteen. I was completely nonathletic and spent most of my time buried in books or notebooks. I had bangs (not cute bangs) and long, stringy brown hair (there, I said it, it's not really red) and was for the most part incapable of relating to people, including (especially?) myself and my own feelings.

At the end of Part 3, I mentioned that I started running. Somehow, the summer after 8th grade, I made up my mind that I was going to join the cross country team in high school. My sister had been a cross country and track runner, which is where I got the idea, but I'm still not entirely sure why it appealed to me, given my status as a fat, nerdy, non-shorts-wearing, gym-class avoider. I do remember why I kept doing it though.

The first day I ran for about five minutes before I got winded and had to walk. I knew that it was just about one mile down Woodiebrook road to the bridge though, and I was determined to make it that far, and to run as much as I could. I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured out that I could run a little, then walk a little, and that it was kind of fun to set little mental goals for myself. I'll run until I get to that mailbox. I'll run until I get to the telephone pole. Hell no I'm not running up this hill. I'll run down the other side. For the first time I was challenged by something outside of academics, and although this sounds kind of weird, it felt really good to do something I sucked at! This running thing was harder than it looked!

I set a goal to conquer the one mile to the bridge without walking, and within a few weeks I had done it (thank you adaptable teenage body). By the end of the summer, I could huff and puff all the way there and back without stopping once. I lost weight. I felt awesome. I loved the feeling of overcoming the little "I can't" voice in my head.

When school began, I realized that my sedentary childhood had left me with a handicap on the cross-country course. My first 5K was run in just over 31 minutes which, as a matter of fact, sucks. The next slowest runner on my team was running at about 27 minutes. Rather than getting discouraged, I continued working harder. I became the Little Engine that Could, chipping away at the elusive 10 minute mile split. I had good mentors that year--Sarah and Melanie, the two senior girls on our team, and Patrick, my coach. They saw how hard I was working and how much I was improving and they were always quick to offer advice and encouragement, even though I was the slowest runner on our team during every practice and every race. I don't know if those three people will ever really understand how much the memory of their voices cheers me on every time I try to do something really challenging.

The next year my coach wound up working at a different school. At my first race that year, I saw Patrick on the side, cheering for both us and for his new team, and when he saw me he started hooting and hollering louder than I'd ever heard him before...and with good reason! I finished that race in 26:15. I'll never forget that. It's the fastest I've ever run.

The new coach was different; he wasn't in the business of helping kids improve themselves, he was in the business of winning the conference championship and going to State. He either ignored me or treated me like I didn't belong on the team, and I can't say that my teammates were any better, as cliquey as they were. Instead of improving, my performance went downhill and hovered there. The team did go to the state championship that year. I wasn't even invited.

Still, I managed to stick around all four years. They never acknowledged it (they said my junior year didn't count because I missed two races after I flipped my car over), but I was the only one in my class who started at the beginning and finished at the end. As hurt as I was (and still am) over the lack of recognition, I'm actually kind of glad, because it proves that I did it all for myself.

And now, chasing down the elusive 10 minute mile all over again, I do it for me. Sometimes when people ask why I like to run, I say "oh, it's like meditation." That's true...but that's not really the reason I do it. I like it because it's something that does not come very easy or naturally to me. And I do it to make myself a better person inside and out.

The Legend of Miss A, Part 3 - In which Miss A emerges from Fantasy Land

As I said in Part 2, a lot of my memories are really fuzzy for a few years after my dad died. I never thought about it before I wrote Part 2 either, but I'm sure that it is a psychological coping mechanism. Really, I spent much of that time in a fantasy world. I had this friend, Cari, who was going through some serious trauma too (although I didn't really know that at the time). The two of us loved to read, and we would make up stories and play them out on the playground, and eventually we started writing our own stories. At home I watched cartoons and sitcoms almost constantly. I read books. I played out stories with my My Little Ponies. I lived in fantasy 95% of the time. I was enabled by adults who praised and rewarded me for my uniqueness and chalked it all up to creativity.

My fantasy world came crashing down when I was eleven and Cari moved away...I think she grounded me in that world, and when she left it was like being shaken out of a deep sleep. I realized how isolated I was from the other kids at school. They all seemed comfortable in the real world. They were having their little first boyfriends and girlfriends and being social with each other and none of them watched cartoons or played with My Little Ponies anymore. I started writing short stories, most of them involving young adults in their late teens/early 20's. They were generally cheesy love stories. I remember one in particular was about a girl who rode horses in the circus who tried to run away with an acrobat. Her father, who spoke with a thick Mediterranean accent, saved her from making a huge mistake. I also remember knowing that the exposition was thin and the dialogue cheesy.

My mom got married when I was 13. We moved and I changed schools. Having spent the last six years in fantasy land, I had no idea how to make friends or function socially. I didn't know how to act around all the strangers at my new school, so I did nothing. I didn't talk to people, I didn't look at them. I tried to become invisible. Trouble was, I had been working far ahead of these kids at my old school and I loved learning; it was hard to be invisible and active in class at the same time. The other kids, apparently, thought I was a snob for not talking to them and they started teasing. It was merciless, and it came to a point where I was crying in my room every day. I thought it was their fault. I thought they were mean. I didn't know what I could possibly do to make things better for myself. I was thirteen and miserable.

When my mom caught wind of the whole bad situation she took mercy on me and enrolled me in the local Catholic school, which had one classroom for each grade. There were 16 kids in my entire grade! I still didn't talk much, and I still got teased, but at least they were actually on my intelligence level. There was a really great element of academic competition, and I was in the top three, battling it out against the coolest kid in the class (Matt someoneorother) and the bitchiest girl I have ever met to this day. I was discovering a little bit of who I was at school with this whole competition thing, and learning about the kind of person I could be in reality.

It was also about this time that I developed a near-desperate need to become closer with my dad's family, his six living brothers and sisters and my grandparents. This could have been a reaction to my mom's remarriage. It also could have been a reaction to learning--and for the first time, fully understanding the implications of--how he died. I began understanding that I wasn't the only person who was affected by his death, and that it wasn't my fault. It was probably around this time that my four aunts (including Aunt J) started meaning what they have come to mean to me.

I remember a particular Thanksgiving (I was fourteen, maybe?), sitting around the table at my grandparents' condo with the Aunts and Salty, and it was the first time I ever talked openly about my dad and what had happened to him. I remember the realization growing inside me that they too had experienced his death and my uncle's death, but that they hadn't stopped living. They were having relationships and families and careers and happiness and self-discovery. I no longer saw them as extensions of my dad, and instead they became my aunts, independent of him, and four strong, smart women who live their lives on their terms as much as possible. I think that might have been the first time I understood that my life wasn't ruined.

That night was a real turning point for me. Instead of pretending in my mind to be someone else, I started having ideas about who I could be and how I would get there. I started thinking about my future and goals and ideals...and I started running.

Alright, you asked for it.

I was tagged!

Salty tagged me in a comment the other day (I've had, like, no time! I swear!), and according to the rules, I now have to link to Salty, post 7 random or weird facts about myself, and then link/comment to 7 more bloggers who then will have to spread the love. Like Salty said, it's kind of like a chain letter, but with less of a pyramid scheme slant. Normally I see this kind of thing as lame and silly (like those emails that say you have to forward them to 20 people or you'll have bad luck for 20 years). And by now you know that I detest talking about myself, so you know that I'd never do it. Not in a million years. Not me.

Let's get started!

1. I don't like rice. I'll eat it, but I just don't like it very much, and I certainly would always prefer a noodle or pasta dish to a rice dish. If I have the option of potatoes instead I will always choose potatoes--they really are one of my favorite foods, although I try eat more nutritious plants when I can.

2. I have a lot of scary dreams. My worst one came when I was 22. It was about standard poodles the size of Clydesdale horses. They had huge fangs and giant pegasus wings and they talked in sinister voices. Some were all black, and they were the mean ones. The others were all white, and they were even meaner. They had taken over a city and were chasing me and some other people all over town, terrorizing us. I most vividly remember hiding in a giant warehouse full of cardboard boxes while the poodles stalked around, growling and telling me all the ways they were going to tear my body to shreds but not let me die.

3. I was one of those internet-addicted dorky rpg kids for a few years in high school. And it was fun, in a ridiculous kind of way, and it was a way for me to let out my creativity and dorkiness, when I felt like my environment at high school was stifling and mildly oppressive. I found this emailing list that was based around a tabletop roleplaying game about vampires and started reading the stories people wrote--and some of those stories were really great and really well-written. Then I started posting on it. Then I found out that all the people on the mailing list had a chat room, so I checked it out. I even had internet "ldrs." LOL.

4. I was also, simultaneously, one of those youth group kids for a few years (I'll go into the reasons why this an the internet-addiction thing happened and how they relate to each other as the Legend of Miss A unfolds). Some friends invited me to church, and I went, and then as I kept on going I became a self-righteous, card-carrying Catholic Life Teen dork. I went through all the motions and had lots of fun and even got to see Pope John Paul II. Talk about a desperate outcry for social acceptance... I wonder what my youth group leaders would think if they found out I'm an atheist now.

5. Smart as I am, I almost failed out of college. I still don't know how I didn't even get a warning, but I got a 1.7 GPA one semester. Clearly, I was allowing myself to be distracted by..... drugs! Not heavy drugs, mind, mostly just a lot of pot occasionally mixed with booze or opium. The heavy drugs came later, and I was more of a dabbler than a user. Still, after I transferred to my school in New Orleans I was a 4.0 student and made the dean's list every semester, even in the face of Hurricane Katrina! My graduating GPA was still a 2.97 though. Lame.

6. I love singing. I often deny it, but I really love it, and sometimes I wish there was a choir for grown-ups that I could join. When I was in high school I decided that I liked music and wanted to sing, so I joined the choir. Under Sister Mary Karita's tutelage, I got pretty good. I went to the state music contest (which was really not a contest, more of a do-your-thing-and-get-rated-on-it) and got great scores. Then when I went to college I started hanging out with PDF, who could put the American Idols to shame. I got self conscious under the constant hail of his well-meaning taunts and I really haven't sung since.

7. When I think about myself from an outside perspective, I generally imagine myself as a cartoon girl wandering around in the real world. Not like Roger Rabbit, but like...like if Sally Brown was 27 and wandering around New York. This is, obviously, a function of not wanting to grow up and resisting the looming anvil of reality overhead. I like the bubbly little cartoons in my imaginary habitat, it's what keeps me me. It's why I named my plant and talk to him (he's Phil the philodendron). It's why I put up pink curtains in my apartment. It's my green coat and my goofy multicolored polka dot galoshes. I love all things rainbow striped.

So that's it....my turn to tag. I really only know four of y'all from actual real life, but I've been reading your blogs, so here goes anyway. Loud Paper, Queen of Crows, Dawn, Jay, NYC Ponderings Chick, Quarter Life Crisis Girl....consider yourselves tagged!

And PS, I know I was supposed to blog about speed dating today; I'm a little behind.... Believe me, I wouldn't be this far along if I actually had a life!

The Legend of Miss A, Part 2 - The Empire Strikes Back

When my mom was a little girl, she lived in a cute little white bungalow on Empire Road.

As I referenced in Part 1, we moved away from the Little Red House on Tioga Trail when I was four years old. The reason we moved was that my Grandparents had built a big house out in the country, but they wanted to keep their suburban house around too, knowing that as they grew older they might want to return there. So, instead of my Mom and Dad renting the Little Red House, we rented out Grandma and Grandpa's house instead. It wasn't until later, when I was seven or eight that I realized how neat it was that my Mom and I spent our childhoods in the same house.

Life on Empire Road was a lot different than life at the Little Red House. We had moved away our close family friends, the O's: My "friend-mom," her husband, and their four kids that were of appropriate age to play with my sister and I. No more pancakes at the O house. No more Lake Erie in our back yard. No chance of going to school with my friends. I would have to make new friends. I didn't like that idea very much...which has become a running theme in my life.

Still, there were lots of kids on the block and I did actually make friends with them. I went to kindergarten, where I found out I was really smart and creative. My teachers couldn't get enough of me and lavished attention on my precocious little freckled face. I loved school! It was around this time that my weight problem began. I was constantly rewarded for my scholastic accomplishments with food; ice cream, cookies, chips, and all kinds of goodies.

Then it happened. The bomb dropped, and nothing was normal anymore. I felt isolated from other kids, and stopped hanging out with the kids on my block. Soon, the food rewards became food to replace my grief. I started getting fatter and fatter, and the kids on the block started making fun of me for being fat (although it probably had more than a little to do with me not playing with them as much anymore).

Every time I showed signs of sadness, I was met by my mom with some kind of treat, and soon I learned that I could use what had happened to my advantage. Within two years my grades were slipping, I was ditching school (in fourth grade!), and I was hanging out with other kids who had marginalized themselves for various reasons. This included a girl who asked me to steal my mom's cigarettes for her, a girl whose dad got drunk and beat her up for being too nerdy, two boys who are now openly gay (god knows what was happening to them at home), among others.

It's not that nobody was around...plenty of people were there. Mom, Salty, my mom's parents, my teachers, aunts and uncles... they were all there... Like Salty keeps telling me, not all things are good or bad; some things just are. And it just was that nobody knew how to help a little kid grieve. Grandma and Grandpa came to stay with us for a while after it happened (I don't remember any of this; I remember the night we found out about it, and the next thing I remember isn't until seven months later), and then suddenly I was supposed to be all better, like it never happened. Like he was never there. Like it was normal.

And now I sob every time I think about his absence during the last twenty years. Thinking about him...Salty was right when she said it's like finally calling an old friend that you accidentally stood up. Now I'm finally alone, and nobody can tell me to shut off my tears because it makes them uncomfortable. And with Salty's help, I've figured out where the tears are coming from, so I let them flow. Nearly every night. Sure, some of that is self-pity for the whole no-job no-money no-love thing, but it always, always comes back to being sorry that I missed out on having a dad and being sorry that it took me so long to tell him how very much I missed it.

The Legend of Miss A, Part 1. The Little Red House on Tioga Trail

I love the phrase "like a phoenix" that I used the other day. It's so melodramatic...I used it when talking to Betsy on the subway one day about River Phoenix and Johnny Depp. She wished River Phoenix were still alive. I contended that Johnny Depp would have had to fight for his status as King-of-Cult-Superstars before rising up from underneath River Phoenix like...a phoenix.

Anyway, I decided today that it is not enough to just drop a bomb and move on with my blog. If this blog is truly going to serve me with some kind of personal reconciliation or revelation or...something, I need to really spill my guts. I need to put it all out there and explain myself to myself so that I can figure myself out. And if you're reading this, maybe you'll figure something out about yourself from it. Wouldn't that be nice?

Thus, I give you The Legend of Miss Adventurous.

Part 1: The Little Red House on Tioga Trail

Sweetest Day is a holiday that was concocted by a bunch of candymakers in Cleveland, Ohio in 1921. Observed only in a few regions (and even then only by sappy sentimentalists like my mom), it falls on the third Saturday in October. In 1980, it fell on October 18th, which proves in my mind that my mother was doped up when she had me, because she always says I was born on Sweetest Day. According to calendars, however, October 17, 1980 was a Friday. I suppose I must have arrived a few days later at the Little Red House on Tioga Trail, just a few hundred yards away from Lake Erie.

I had one big sister, aged 5.5. She quickly became fixated in my brain as a bossy know-it-all. I wanted to be just like her, but she seemed to thwart all my efforts.

I had one mother, or Source of Affection and Cuddling. I remember her being silly and fun, with long, fiery-red, stick-straight Pantene hair. She worked at a department store and read me stories every night.

I had one father, who was a little more mysterious. I remember him sleeping a lot, and sometimes being afraid of him, even though I loved him intensely. I also remember that he was sillier than Mom, but in a way that I didn't understand as well. I don't remember him working at all, though I know he sometimes did.

I also had one female cat named Sylvester. I don't remember her at all, since she either ran away or died within a couple of years of my arrival.

Some things I remember from the Little Red House:

1: The day Olly came to live with us. My second pet (not counting fish) was another cat, a long-haired, grumpy-old-man sort of fellow. I remember him in the doorway, looking at our house for the first time. I was really excited. He became my best friend, and I became his arch-nemesis.

2: The dead Oscar. My dad used to keep Oscar fish, and one got sick--I think with the Ick disease. I remember he put it in the trash can. That was the first time I understood what dead meant.

3: Swimming in Lake Erie. This one's vague. I remember the smell and taste of the lake water. I remember seeing my sister, who always swam out too far, like a tiny speck on the horizon. I remember wishing I could have one of the inner tubes so I could swim out that far too.

4: Trick-or-Treating. We had a neighbor kid with the same name as me. His dad dressed up like a gorilla on Halloween and scared the bejeezus out of me. I think I cried.

5: The crazy neighbors. On the north side we had this dude named John who was really nice, but had a creepy beard that always wigged me out a little. On the other side, there was this completely insane woman with this disgusting red dog. I think if I had known what a witch was at age three, I would have thought she was a witch.

6: The Orange Truck. We had this weird little orange pickup truck that my dad used to drive around. I always thought that truck looked so cool, like a big giant toy. If I had one today I would be the coolest gal in town. Jay Leno would stalk me.

7: Bunk Beds. For a while, my parents thought it was a good idea for my sister and I to share a bedroom even though I needed a nightlight and had breathing problems. So they bunked our beds. I thought it was really cool and fun, like a sleepover. I remember my sister yelling, "MOM! SHE'S BREATHING TOO LOUD!"

8: (most vivid) Stir-fry and the Perm. One afternoon, I was sitting on a bench in the kitchen while my dad was making stir-fry, his favorite (not mine by a long shot). I remember the smell. My sister sat at the kitchen table. I don't remember what she and I were doing, but I remember it felt fun, like my dad was in a good mood and we were all giggling about something. Maybe I had my jelly shoes on. Then my mom came through the door with a brand-new giant 80's perm. My world came to a screeching halt as the one person I could always count on no matter what had suddenly done away with her long, beautiful Pantene hair and come home with a small red dog attached to her head. I cried and told her she wasn't my mom.

9: Packing the fish. When we were packing up to move away from the Little Red House, my dad put all his fish in a cooler. I remember them swimming around in there. I remember thinking it was really weird to put our pets inside a box that usually contained food items.

10: (most poignant) My pink jelly shoe. I had these awesome pink jelly sandals. They were my favorite possession ever, even more favorite than all my toys. If I could get them back today I would probably try to figure out a way I could wear them. While we were packing up and getting ready to move, I could only find one. I was frantic. My mom helped me look around the entire house for it, but to no avail. My last memory of the Little Red House on Tioga Trail is staring out the rear window of the car as we were driving to our new house and suddenly remembering that my pink jelly shoe was behind the water heater.

And like a Phoenix, I will rise out of the ashes...

Okay, so when I started this blog a month ago, my intent was to create a funny and introspective documentation of one person's mildly frustrating efforts in relocating to New York City. Funny and introspective, kind of like me. As I go back over all the posts from the last month, I see a little bit of funny and introspective, but I see a lot of pain under the surface too. While the average blog consumer may not see the pain, I can see it conspicuously poking out from behind.

Personally, I don't want to read about someone else's angst, and I don't imagine that anyone else wants to read about mine, so I feel a little guilty and disappointed that my blog is coming dangerously close to turning out to be less funny and introspective and more thrashy and outlet-for-painy. My inclination is to say, "It's silly that I feel guilty and disappointed, but nonetheless, I'm sorry for vomiting angst all over you. I'll start over and be funnier and more introspective." But after reading through it all, I didn't even really vomit angst! Well, maybe just a little... But the pain and the thrashing are all happening inside, and I'm trying to hide them by being funny and introspective (which is really kind of like me).

In her last blog entry, my sister, Salty, referred back to an older post of hers about pain. She's afraid of pain so she has anxiety about dealing with pain, which causes more pain, which gives her anxiety about anxiety, blah blah... As I have mentioned over and over, I'm going through a lot of that same stuff, hence the occasional thrashing. It took Salty a long time to drop the bomb in her blog; the bomb that explains the pain. That's not really my style, but neither is dropping the bomb at the end of a post. So hitch up your skirts, ladies. We're going to wade through some shit.

When I was six years old, my father shot and killed himself. There it is. Now you know.

I don't know a lot about him, or about what happened, because I was six. I was brought up in a working-class Catholic family that didn't know how to deal with that kind of tragedy, other than to ignore it. My sister's feelings were stifled. Mine were coddled with unhealthy and unsatisfying solutions like toys, food (a story for another time), and a spiral perm. No kidding--when my mom agreed to get me a spiral perm in fourth grade (heh), she really justified spending $80 on my nine-year-old head by saying it would make me feel good about myself.

I get really frustrated because I can't squeeze the entire story out of anyone...the closest I can get is my sister, who was eleven at the time and although she has a lot more of the story than I do, she doesn't have the whole thing. In fact, I don't think anyone knows it all...from what I understand there was no real explanation, no note, no witness. He was found in his car with a picture of my sister and I. About a year before it happened, his youngest brother had died in an accident, after which amorphously he said to his oldest sister, "now I know what I have to do." That's the best I've got. My Mom, who was probably closer to him and to his illness than anyone else, doesn't talk about it. As a kid, I felt like that was because she thought it shouldn't be talked about, but as I've grown older, now that we're twenty-one years removed from it (Feb. 7, 1987, I think), I think it's because she didn't have anyone to talk to for a very long time...Nobody else was in her position (trying so hard to understand and help only to have it literally blow up, left with two children to support, abandoned emotionally by family and friends who didn't want to talk about it because they were afraid of pain).

One of the main differences in the way my sister and I are coming to terms with all this is that she can afford therapy (and lovingly shares the wisdom) and I may not make rent (more on that later). So right now I have no outlet...this is it. This is my outlet. So I might thrash about. I might need to talk about it. And I'm not going to apologize. I may feel guilty and disappointed about it, but if I do that's okay and not silly, those are just feelings that come with this territory. And ultimately those feelings are the problem behind all my angst: the inability to properly cope with or confront my pain, and the guilt and disappointment that comes with being unable to do so.

The truth is that nobody teaches you how to deal with your pain, you’re just expected to learn by example. It just so happens that my examples weren’t very good at it, so it’s completely okay that I don’t know. In fact, since I had to unlearn before I could begin teaching myself, I think I’m doing a great job so far.