when i was a child, my favorite place in the entire world was new orleans, louisiana (NOLA). i can’t remember the first time my parents ever took me there but i have many memories of being there over the years. from the aquarium of the americas; the fudgery in jax brewery where the people would sing songs and rap while making fudge and then give free samples; a carriage ride around the quarter where my mother made us cover our eyes going down bourbon street; and of course beignets at cafe du monde. i always wanted to have my palm or tarot read by one of the people who sat in camping chairs behind folding tables around jackson square and i thought that the (likely homeless) punk teenagers i saw walking around were the coolest ever and i wanted to be just like them when i grew up.

as i grew older, nola became more about the party than the tourist attractions; though perhaps drinking is itself a tourist attraction? i have many fond memories of those times too: drinking martinis at the funky butt when we were all but a few in the group still under 21; the test-tube shot girl who had us all do our shots out of her cleavage, right in front of my elderly parents; the private “haunted history tour” with bridget where i kept getting long island iced teas for the walk to wherever; i could go on and on. of course a lot of those memories also have portions that aren’t so fond – the night with bridget i broke my ring, blurted out some embarrassing stuff in front of the guy my sister liked and kept blacking out going from the table to the bathroom at our 3am breakfast.

in fact, my last trip to nola included my girlfriend getting sick into a trash can in a bourbon street pizza place/bar; me blacking out in the courtyard of our hotel and her having to hold me up in the elevator. i woke up still drunk to a trashed bathroom, having a panic attack and insisting that i had to go home to jackson immediately rather than going to the MS gulf coast as we had planned. it’s hard to pinpoint where it all went so wrong, from age 20 dancing happily at the funky butt in a room full of strangers who were just friends i hadn’t met yet to age 30 ending up in my hotel room having no idea how i got there or what had transpired over the last eight hours. somewhere in that decade my drinking problem became a real problem, in fact as i type this i’m craving the taste of a too-strong absolut and tonic something fierce…

it’s neither a secret nor common knowledge that this coming thursday i will be two months sober. this is the longest i’ve been sober that i can remember, probably all the way back to after kevin and i separated when i was 22 – longer even than the time i was going to AA. the decision to finally get sober rather than just not drinking came after a long series of realizations that it just wasn’t fun anymore and hadn’t been fun for longer than i cared to admit. thankfully my road to sobriety did not include a DUI or a trip to rehab, the former thanks to the many wonderful people who have taken good care of me over the years and a penchant for drinking alone in my apartment.

the quandary becomes, how do i find the nola of my childhood as an adult? how do i rediscover a place that i wrote poetry about as someone who technically can drink but chooses to abstain? i’m unsure of that, of how to begin it really. nola is a drinking city, a place where no one blinks if you have a beer with your eggs at 8am and a bloody mary is pretty much standard issue before noon; a place where you can legally drink on the street. i know that it’s a slippery slope. december of 2010 i had pretty much stopped drinking because i had gotten so into running. i wasn’t sober but i simply stopped drinking much because it hindered my work-outs. i took my running shoes on that trip and the marriot had a very nice work-out room but even the first morning after a night out i choose to sleep in rather than run. in the blink of an eye i was drinking an absolut peppar bloody mary out of a to-go cup while strolling around the aquarium of the americas. three months later i was smoking full-time again and i’m still not back to where i had been with running, almost a year later. i don’t blame nola for it but i know that if i had been in another town i might have thought twice before drinking with breakfast though i likely wouldn’t have thought anything about drinking to excess – i can, have and did in pretty much every city i’ve ever been to.

thinking ahead, i made the difficult decision that if the family christmas is to take place in nola this year i will not be able to attend. i will still be too young in my sobriety to be in that environment and say no. i’m not sure if i said yes that anyone would blink an eye anyway. it’s difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t have a problem with alcohol (or is in denial about their own problem) why it’s not possible for me to just have a drink or two. i can actually stop at one or two drinks most of the time, but sometimes i can’t or just don’t want to and i’m afraid of what even taking one sip of alcohol would do to me at this point. i don’t go so far as to call myself an alcoholic and that bothers some people but it’s not a term that i embrace for myself. i’m still not convinced that i am an alcoholic though i know that i did and do have a problem with alcohol. maybe there’s not a difference, i don’t really think that it matters as long as i’m making healthy decisions for myself and for me my life is a much more pleasant place without alcohol.

i can’t imagine never going back to nola, the city that i once said of, “if i can find someone that i feel half as strongly about as i do the city i will know that i have found ‘the one’.” still, i know the timing isn’t right for me now. i know that my connection to her (yeah, i always referred to nola as “her” when i wrote about her) goes far beyond alcohol but how to go about finding a sober NOLA for myself is something that i’m not sure how to do.

i am definitely a child of the internet. i started off online in 1997, chatting on a website called the-park; my first website was on wbs around that same time. it’s undeniable that the internet changed the way that we interact with others, and who we have access to interaction with. i had many friends at the-park who i talked to, all over the world. one of my closest friends for years lives in australia, he & i followed each other’s blogs from open diary to livejournal and we even talked on the phone occasionally. i have people i have never met who i will always consider to be some of my best friends, dan being one of them. as the years have worn on, livejournal and social networking kept me in touch with real life friends who moved that i would likely have completely lost touch with otherwise. of course, this can go far beyond friendship and often does – the internet has also changed the way that we date and meet people to date.

my first girlfriend as an adult, sally and i met in the-park when i was 16 or 17. before that i’d had “internet girlfriends”, people that i had never met and we would say that we were in a relationship and chat/talk on the phone a lot. that’s not that different than when you’re a teenager and “date” someone at school that all you do is pass notes to and talk on the phone to, the only real difference is proximity. sally and i transitioned from “online dating” to dating in real life when i moved from mississippi to ohio to live with her after i turned 18. that relationship ultimately did not last, although she is one of the most positive influences in my life and i will always consider her to be one of my best friends. after sally, i did date a woman who lived an hour away, which was sort of a long distance relationship but we had many mutual friends and hung out a lot so it wasn’t quite what i’d consider a stereotypical ldr. then after a while i got into another ldr with someone i had known for years but never lived in the same city with.

it is around that time that i started thinking about ldrs and the slippery slope between fantasy and reality. ldrs have very little to do with reality; our relationships exist in a box separate from our everyday lives. they take place on the internet, over the phone, over text, and we have the ability to choose exactly how much energy that we are going to give to the “relationship”. if you’re having a bad day, you can always not pick up the phone or not text back right away. your significant other is not in your face demanding time, energy, and attention in the way a person who lives just across town is. even worse, we get to romanticize even sickness with texts like “oh, if i were there i would take care of you and make you soup from scratch! i would wait on you hand and foot. xxxooo.” when in reality if your sweetie was just a few miles away at work, it would likely go more like “baby, i can’t leave work to bring you soup. i’ve got a deadline and my boss is breathing down my neck. plus i’m already in trouble for playing WOW on company time.” however, even with only an hour or two separating you, reality doesn’t exist – you and she both get to pretend that if she were there, she’d be taking care of you like you were her full time job.

does she snore or have sleep apnea and you’re a light sleeper? doesn’t matter – you can long for her cuddly embrace in bed at night while texting her how much you wish she was there. she’s not going to actually interrupt your good night’s sleep by smacking you as she snores so loudly she’s probably disturbing the neighbors. do you have the bad habit of wearing your socks 2 days in a row before washing them? doesn’t matter if your sweetie is a germ-phobic clean freak, she never has to know about that. it works the same way too, her saying she’s “a little messy” probably means that she has no problem leaving dirty dishes in the sink for a week but “a little messy” for you might mean that you kick your shoes off when you walk in from work and then put them neatly against the wall. these are all things that are going to drive you both crazy about the other person if you ever decide to move across the country and live together. now, there is a snowball’s chance in hell that she is just that one person that has absolutely no annoying traits at all, but if so what are the chances that you are too?

“wait!” you’re probably saying by now, “she’s come to visit me for a week and we didn’t fight at all. how do you explain that, you evil, bitter, anti-love cynic?!” here’s one of the biggest traps of long distance relationships: for one of you, it’s a vacation. think about how you are on vacation. you’re relaxed, happy, not thinking about laundry or deadlines or if your perfect girlfriend forgot to set the dvr and you know it wasn’t you and now you’ve missed rachel maddow, wtf honey? how hard is it to set a dvr?! you are you in the vacation vacuum, the best possible version of yourself who may or may not be drinking a lot more than usual. in the vacation vacuum, no one says “i can’t have sex tonight sweetheart, i have a big presentation tomorrow and i really need 8 hours of sleep!” you have sex all night, and sleep til noon and life is exactly as it is supposed to be. just don’t tell yourself that is how life would be if the two of you lived in the same place, because it’s not. in everyday life, we do not get to be the best possible versions of ourselves.

i want to tell you a story about one of the most perfect days i’ve ever had. i thought really hard about exactly what i would wear, down to what color i would paint my toenails. my stomach was a mess of knots, i had waited for this day for five+ years, the person i had a crush on long-distance (yes i knew them in person, had spent short periods of time with them) that i had exchanged countless emails with, that i had gotten SO close to, finally we were going to spend an entire day just the two of us. i was so nervous and excited! i had sushi for the very first time, at a picnic in a beautiful sunlit park, under a shady tree where we laid on a blanket and talked afterward. the day ended in our first kiss that didn’t involve a game of truth or dare. well, actually the day ended in pretty awesome sex but i’m not going to tell you that story, lol. as close as we were, as wonderful as every single moment we spent together was before we lived in the same town (incredible sex! wonderful dates! total foodie moments in restaurants and cooking together! tons of laughter! poetry!) it didn’t keep the relationship from crashing down around us in a million tiny pieces just a few short months after we moved in together. we communicated really well over email, better in fact than we communicated under the same roof.

the two pieces that i believe doom most ldrs are these: longing & incomplete intimacy.

longing is almost impossible to resist; it’s intoxicating. every moment would be better if only your love were there. it’s all so bittersweet; the wishing, the imagining, the way you miss them so much it’s almost physically painful. longing tells us a story that’s based on a fabrication. longing tells us that every minute would be enhanced, better, more fulfilling if only the other person were here with us. yes, shared moments are amazing and an important part of a relationship, but longing steals us from our reality and places us into a fantasy of what things might be like if they were different. you’re not really going to enjoy the movie, sporting event, or concert if you’re thinking how much better it would be if long-distance-lovie were there; worse yet, no one benefits from your partial enjoyment of whatever it is you are doing. not you, not long-distance-lovie, and that’s a moment that you are never going to get back. why are you wishing instead of living?

incomplete intimacy is just that – incomplete. it’s not a false or fake intimacy, you definitely have some real intimacy with someone you’ve had five hour phone conversations with and IM-ed until the sun came up. this intimacy is unfortunately incomplete because you get to stage it so that you are the best possible version of yourself, as does she. this happens in real-life dating too but we can only keep that facade up for so long, eventually it crumbles and when it does you each get to evaluate the other and make the decision on whether or not to keep exploring your real selves. if you move across the country to live with your long distance love, the facade crumbles after you are cohabiting in a city where if you know more people than just her it’s likely her friends. the problem with long distance relationships is that we don’t acknowledge that the intimacy is incomplete, so we don’t perceive moving in together as moving too fast. “we’ve been together a year!” you may say, as i have done, “we know each other.”

weeeeeell… technically you’ve not been together a year. you’ve been in a relationship for a year and you’ve been together a week and a half out of that year. there’s nothing wrong with being honest about ourselves and our relationships, in fact if we can’t be that’s a huge sign that something is not right. your significant other should not immediately run for the hills if you are able to take a step back and say, “you know what? i love you, but i feel like it would be healthier for both of us if you get your own place when you move across the country. i know that financially it’s a bit more difficult, but we were both living separately to begin with and i want us to move in together out of a genuine desire to be together 24/7, not because it’s easier on our bank accounts.” if she does, what exactly are you losing? someone who isn’t ok with you having your own space? because i guarantee that you’re going to feel smothered by someone that won’t let you have your own space once she’s not only living in your town but also living in your house.

like all my posts this is me pouring my head & heart out. i’m not here to tell you that long distance relationships don’t work, in fact i know some relationships that started out long distance that do work, just like i know some people who moved in together on the 2nd date that are still together – i believe that these are the exceptions, not the norm. whether our partner is two feet, two miles, or twenty-two hours away it does take similar things to make a relationship work: mutual respect, a desire for the same things out of life, patience, the ability to say “i’m sorry, i was wrong.” and love however you choose to define it. i can’t even say that i wouldn’t consider a ldr again if i were to meet someone in another city or state that blew me away, although i doubt i would consider it with someone that i knew strictly over the internet. i do know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if i chose to move to her city or she chose to move to mine that i would not immediately move in with her. there’s an intimacy that i believe is necessary for lasting love that requires face to face contact in our everyday spaces, when we are not at our best or our worst but our average. where she gets to see that i’m not just this amazing writer, blogger (lol), and activist but i’m actually rather boring and have an anxiety disorder; and where i get to see whatever it is that she doesn’t necessarily like about herself.

when it comes to relationships, at some point we have to get real and i just don’t believe that’s possible with entire states in between us.

the fear of being alone is one that i am very familiar with. for most of my life, i was literally never alone. i was home schooled from first grade through high school graduation, so i was with my mother and my sister 24/7. there were times i longed for an empty house, and every once in a while when it was, i loved it but i always knew that it was temporary. when i was eighteen, i moved from my parents’ house into a condo with my first girlfriend; i lived with her after we broke up and when i moved it was into an apartment with the guy who i would end up marrying. 13 months later that relationship was over and for the first time in my life i had to face living alone. i was a mess. i spent a year living in an apartment by myself, but before that lease was up i had a new girlfriend and plans to move to another state. when that relationship ended i was already involved with yet another person, and i didn’t even finish out that year long lease before i moved back to mississippi.

the last 3-1/2 years of living alone here in fondren are the longest chunk of time i have ever lived alone. even if we are living alone, many times we are still involved with or dating someone. in the lesbian community, i think that we can easily interchange the phrases “fear of being alone” and “serial monogamy”. truthfully, in my younger and less enlightened days i looked down on people who had been single for a year or longer. what was wrong with them that they couldn’t find someone to date? i wondered. i realize now that i was not only painfully naive but falling into the all too common trap of serial monogamy. the truth is, there is growth that needs to be done that can only be done when we are alone. we don’t have to live alone to do it, i just prefer to, but we do need periods of time when we are single. being single affords us the opportunity to really get to know ourselves without the influence of a partner.

serial monogamy is a salve for many things associated with a fear of being alone: low self esteem; judgment from family for being not only single but also gay; a need for attention; familiarity or habit; or maybe we just don’t like being alone – it is likely unfamiliar after all plus we get the thrill of infatuation with a new person. whatever the reason for one’s serial monogamy or fear of being alone, it’s important to overcome it unless you really want an existence where you are always in a “serious relationship” but never in a lasting one. one of the thing i see looking back at my life and the lives of those i know is a tendency to end a relationship without telling the other person. this may sound comical to those that are not lesbians, but you lesbians probably know what i am talking about. if you are honest, you’ve probably done it. you come to a point in the relationship where you know that it is going to end. this is complicated by the fact that you live together and have a lease or perhaps own a home together. it doesn’t really make sense to break up because hey, you like your house and your way of life – and anyway there’s no one else you’d rather be with… so you stay, but because you have “checked out” of the relationship you get to deal with the end of it before the other person is even aware that it is over. you may become critical of your partner because you no longer have anything to lose (except the house/pets/furniture you bought together).

worst of all, because you know the relationship is going to end at some point, you get to start looking for your next “great love” at your leisure. there’s nothing to lose, technically, you still have a girlfriend/partner. you can get close to new people under the guise of friendship, and then if you want more you can always finally leave the relationship that has been over for X amount of time and more than likely because the “i want you but i can’t have you, OMG THE LONGING” has been cultivated on your part and the part of your “friend” both, there’s a fairly good chance you already have a place to move when you finally do end the old relationship.

there is very little dignity in that, my friends. in fact, what seemed natural to me five years ago seems rather disgusting at this point. i have done it, sure. when you start having “hypothetical” conversations about who would take the cat or get the coffee table, that is probably the point you should become an adult and admit, out loud, to yourself and your partner that the relationship is over. i’m not really sure what is so frightening about being alone anyway. i guess there’s that fear that you’re going to grow old and die alone, but what is the cost for reassuring yourself that you will never be alone? lost opportunities for independence, lost opportunities to grow and become who we truly are inside, and the never-ending roller coaster of being in a relationship; let’s face it sometimes it’s actually nice to be alone. i am often reminded by my friends why it is not so bad to be single – memories of hurt feelings that never mended and fights over where to eat dinner come flooding back to me.

it’s true that i have been involved with a few people even though my last “official” relationship was years ago. involved is another subject that probably needs its own blog post but the bottom line is that if one of you wants more and the other doesn’t it’s probably better to just go ahead and end it. it may sound like i am saying to run away when the going gets tough, and i am absolutely not, i’m just advocating radical honesty with ourselves and those in our lives. if you know it’s not going to work out, get out. don’t wait for someone better to come along. it’s much better to be alone than to live a lie which is what we are essentially doing when we stay in a relationship that is over in every way but saying so aloud. we all deserve much more than that – you, your partner, and your future potential partner. nothing was ever gained by being driven by fear, and avoiding things because they are going to be difficult (like breaking up, dividing stuff up, moving out) doesn’t do anything but post-pone the inevitable. why would you want to wait to go through all that angst once you meet someone new? to have someone to comfort you? to get back at your ex? to prove you are still attractive? to show her that you can get someone else? to “win” by being the first to move on?

all of those things are horrible reasons to stay in a relationship, or to get into the wrong relationship. it’s time we all got real with ourselves and each other. i know one thing that it is way worse than being alone – and that’s being in the wrong relationship just because i’m afraid.

a friend suggested dinner at Eslava’s, he had already been there and had great things to say about it. he described it as a “latin/mediterranean fusion”. i checked it out online and found the poor chowhound reviews so i was curious to try it for myself. first of all, the restaurant is in what appears to be an old fast food restaurant, next to schlotzsky’s deli on lakeland drive. when i arrived, early of course, a little before 6:30pm i wondered if the restaurant was closed because there were only 2 cars in the parking lot. i entered to wait for my friends, and i like the ambiance of the place. it is all open so you can see everything going on in the kitchen, and it has a small but slightly upscale & clean feel to it.

the one thing i did not like was that the chef/cook and the server (possibly the owner?) were sitting at the back of the restaurant playing on laptops. though that area is in the back it is not separated from the dining room in any way so it does feel a bit like you’re having a nice dinner in an employee break-room someplace. it’s a small annoyance when it comes to a good restaurant with good food, but i would put a divider or something up to separate that area from the dining room. as i waited for my companions i looked around, and that was the point that the server got up from the computer and came over to take my drink order. that didn’t bother me, because i had only been sitting there a minute or so.

the service was very good for the entire meal. our water glasses were re-filled promptly and the server (again i think maybe he was also the owner?) was very friendly and apologized to my friend for being out of the flan that he wanted for dessert. he said that next time my friend is in to mention that they were out of the flan last time he was in and he will give it to him at no charge. my other friend ordered the fried green tomato appetizer. as one of the poor reviews on chowhound pointed out – this menu isn’t anything you haven’t seen before. it’s not fusion as i know it to be, unless you count that they have a greek salad as well as tres leches and flan for dessert as “fusion”. i think that it’s a detriment to the restaurant that they have either decided to call themselves fusion or that someone in confusion termed it at such. those looking for fusion, whether it is latin/mediterranean as my friend had heard or latin/asian as a chowhound reviewer thought, are bound to be disappointed.

this is a straight up seafood and steak restaurant. that being said, i think that the key to serving food that a diner is familiar with (fried green tomatoes, cajun pasta) is to do it better than the other places around and this is where Eslava’s Grille stood out. the fried green tomatoes were the best that i have had in jackson. they were light yet rich and topped with a little crab meat. the side salads that came with each of our meals were side salads, nothing special but the feta dressing was very good and not as heavily seasoned as the feta dressing i’m used to at keifer. i love that dressing too, Eslava’s was good in a different way. for my entree i couldn’t decide so i went with a bit of everything: the seafood platter. the platter is your choice of tilapia or red snapper – i went with the snapper – topped with crab meat, scallops, shrimp, and oysters. even though it is a grill i inquired to double-check and was happy that only the oysters come fried, everything else is grilled. the snapper was huge and cooked perfectly, topped with the crab and a lightly seasoned sauce that was flavorful but not overpowering.

another complaint i saw on chowhound was that the entrees were under-seasoned. i’m not sure how seasoned the reviewers like their food, but i add salt to nearly everything and i found it unnecessary to season anything but the potatoes that came with my entree, and just a touch of salt to the fried green tomatoes. the one complaint i have is that of the two scallops one was just slightly overcooked but the other was very overcooked, rubbery. i am also not a huge fan of cornbread batter, which is what was on the oysters, but the oysters themselves were beautifully done and not over-cooked at all. the entree was $24 and i’ve eaten seafood all over the jackson area and it was the largest portion i have ever gotten on a fresh seafood entree anywhere. i felt like i got my money’s worth, easily.

one of my friends got the seafood pasta, which will be my choice next time. the sauce was very good and slightly spicy. i did not try my other friend’s chicken pasta because i do not eat chicken, but he was the one that recommended the restaurant and this is the second time he has gotten the chicken pasta. my other friend did try it and remarked that the sauce had a nice “roasted chicken” flavor to it. i will definitely be returning to Eslava’s Grille but i hope some more people try it because if it is always as dead as it was tonight they won’t be in business long. we were the only table from 6:30-8! the only other draw-back we saw was that there were no good vegetarian options, just a salad or you could order the fried green tomatoes with no crab.

definitely check it out if you’re looking for seafood done very well, and i would like to hear how their steak entrees are! it’s not fusion, and there’s no pork bellies or marrow on the menu, but we have had a few fancier restaurants open lately so it’s nice to find a place that takes classics to a level that a lot of the lauded but overrated restaurants in this town can’t match.

final thoughts 3-1/2 of 5 stars. (would’ve been 4 if not for the scallops and the laptops).
$15-$25 entrees, no alcohol
2481 LAKELAND DRIVE, next to schlotzsky’s deli (turn at the light at treetops).

in my mind, new years eve was the fun midway point between the forced family togetherness of thanksgiving and christmas and my birthday in january. new years eve was our reward for putting up with all the snide remarks, the passive aggression, the bickering, the all-out fights, the bad food, the disappointing presents, and all those other tiny heartbreaks wrapped in a glittery red bow. new years was perfection, a night that you are encouraged to blow off steam, to drink to excess, and to have the greatest time of your life. i thought this until i took a good long look back at the new years eves that have come before this one.

it started out innocently enough. my sister and i had shirley temples once at a pool-side bar and after that not knowing what was in them (i don’t think any one of us ever did) my parents would make us festive new years eve “shirley temples” of seven-up with red food coloring in them. eventually we graduated to sparkling grape juice and apple cider; having a palate even then i had a particular type and brand of sparkling grape juice i preferred. my mother correctly predicted that i would grow up to be a wine drinker. my sister, lel, and i had a tradition in our pre-teen and teenage years of watching the film flashdance every new years eve. why my super overprotective mother that would not allow us to watch the smurfs because it had a sorcerer in it allowed us to watch flashdance, a film about a stripper, i do not know. these are unanswerable questions, but every year we watched flashdance.

until the first bad new year’s eve that i recall, the year i was 16. no one else wanted to stay up until midnight. with my parents and my sister snug in their beds, i rang in the new year watching tori amos’ perform pretty good year from the concert for RAINN. it’s not a festive song; i cried. this is the video:

the next year, i spent new years eve (yes of my 17th year) in ohio with my 31 year old girlfriend, trying champagne for the first time. there was a bad snowstorm and we had pizza delivered. i thought that ohio was the coolest place ever. during the sally era we always had nye dinner at a steakhouse who’s name i cannot remember and given that neither of us ate steak and that they had a smaller menu on nye (chicken with raspberries? no thank you) we would always end up eating steak and not being happy with ourselves hours later. those nights we spent with “the gang” a group that i will always remember fondly, fun people with whom we would play cards or mingle without that forced frivolity or small-talk. the gang had known each other so long there was no awkwardness and they accepted newcomers with warmth.

after this there’s a series of uncomfortable nye’s i’m surprised that i forgot… there’s the nye where i brought my new boyfriend to sally’s gang’s party (in very poor taste but i was 19 or 20, i didn’t know any better, and had no other friends). that was the nye where it snowed in MS for the first time in many years and when i called friends at midnight they were shutting down the waffle house in vicksburg. unheard of! i know i spent a new year’s with kevin after that, but i can’t remember what we did. perhaps that is best. then after kevin and i split up, and sally & tracey made sure that i didn’t end up dead, i started to spend all the holidays with tracey’s friends in cincinnati/northern kentucky.

i would like to say nice things about the nky lesbians. they weren’t especially friendly, and any time someone tried to invite new people out the new people would be alienated because the entire time would be talking about the good old days years ago. no new people joined the group unless they started dating someone in the group and you just learned to deal with it. i have stories about going to provincetown that feel like i was there and i’ve never been it was a nye, in a house that smelled like cat pee so bad that you didn’t want to inhale, that started a series of events that put me in the most dysfunctional relationship of my life. imagine it please: you’re going through a divorce, it’s been about 8 months since you separated. in this time you have been isolated drinking way too much, working 3 jobs to pay the bills while being a full time student. (yep, i did that. i used to eat a peanut butter & jelly sandwich in the car driving to one of my jobs and that was lunch.) i had good friends that loved me and took very good care of me, and i had people that were interested in dating me but i felt broken inside. cut to nye when someone i had said “oh lord, i would never date her” gave me a cute purple bag full of hershey’s kisses at midnight. “from one single person to another,” she said, “i thought you might want some kisses at midnight.” i dare you to not decide you’re falling in love with someone like that.

before you knew it, i had left dayton (something i planned to do anyway) and had moved in with “i would never date her”. it’s not that either of us were bad people, we just weren’t right for each other. we were so glaringly wrong for each other i’m surprised our mutual friends didn’t intervene. maybe they did and i just blocked it out. we were living in a gorgeous apartment and it didn’t take us long to realize that we couldn’t stand each other. she was passive, as well as passive aggressive and we would have long drawn-out fights in her truck about where to eat dinner. i was aggressive and a drunk and i used hating my job as an excuse to do several shots the moment i walked in the door. it was a match made in hell. neither of us were dealing with our individual issues. we were broken by the past, lost, and the worst possible versions of ourselves.

i don’t need to tell you that it ended badly. i won’t go into the lies, deceit, and behind the other’s back actions that took place on both our parts. then, i spent a nye in mississippi with 3 of my most favorite people in the world. they are all three still my most favorite people in the world though i am not as close as i would wish to be with any of them anymore. we started our hard core partying the night BEFORE nye when it really got crazy with some absinthe which was still not legal at that point… hey we were still babies, i was 24 i think. nye was a disaster. i got mad at my partner at the time because of a comment he made about another woman and proceeded to be a drama queen. he spent the better part of that night hiding in the kitchen of someone else’s house mostly hidden by the refrigerator. we made up only to spend 45 minutes in line at what-a-burger (the only place in jxn open in the wee hours of any day) to not move at all before giving up!

what exactly is it that i think is so great about nye? i don’t know. i’ve had as many bad ones as good ones. the ones since i have lived in MS again have all been good, thankfully. when i throw a party, i find that i have a great time and i hope that others do too. i love to throw parties. we have hosted nye (we being me, my partner, my roommate, or just my friends) every year since i have been back til this one. the purple house just wanted to host parties, it needed to, so that was our excuse for that even here in my apartment we have had some great ones. last year it was just me, kferg, and another friend eating pizza and passing out but we had a great time, yet this holiday that i have gotten all dressed up for, went out for, put so much into, hasn’t really been great overall.

so this year i decided not to go out. it’s nothing sad, i had 4 parties that i could go to, one of which took place in nola, but nothing seemed preferable to hanging out and cooking a meal. would i like someone else to be hanging out to eat the meal? sure. am i going to lose my shit because i’m alone? nope. every one of my friends made sure that i knew that there were places to be. that warms my heart. nothing seemed like something i wanted to do. i’m in a quiet place, i didn’t want to make small talk with strangers. i’m not any good at it and i don’t like it. i know 2011 holds many events that i will attend because i love them and i always do: best of jackson and MS heARTs against AIDs being the ones early in the year. i will go to those and make small talk even though i’m not good at it and i’m sure i will have a great time. i always do. i love those events.

growing up homeschooled, i always felt like i was missing out on something. other people were out doing what i needed to be or should be doing. i wasn’t cool enough. i had a big chip on my shoulder. i thought that i could overcome that by having the best time ever once i became an “adult”. i did have the best time ever. i had some amazing times. i had times i won’t put on a blog crazy, insane, epic times. that didn’t make me like small talk any more than i already did, it didn’t make me any more outgoing than i am now, and that didn’t make me any less lonely. that’s the weird thing that some of us have to learn – we can be in a room full of people and still feel as lonely as if we were alone. tonight i am cooking a lovely dinner for myself. i will ring in the new year alone. it’s not sad, it’s not pathetic, it’s just what i’m doing. i am single.

i have great friends who love me. i am at the best place i have ever been personally and professionally. there isn’t any shame in being alone. that’s the lesson i need to learn and that is why i actively chose to be alone tonight. i’ve had some new year’s eves with the greatest loves of my life that have been awful. today is just a day. being loved means something every day of the year. if you would rather hang out in your house than go out and party, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. i don’t. i know that a lot of people i love are having a blast without me tonight and would like for me to be there, and when i’m up to it i will be.

the problem is, after nearly 30 years of being a quitter, i’m not sure when fear of failure turned into fear of success. there are lots of things about my personality and upbringing that lend themselves to my quitting habit: i’m a perfectionist; my mother is and has always been overbearing as well as inconsistent about showing love and giving praise; at this point i’m used to giving up; i’m rather lazy at times so things that don’t come easily to me i’d rather just not put in the time; i’m very easily bored and need constant stimulation; i’m insecure and struggle with low self esteem; i was in an abusive relationship and told that i was nothing and deserved nothing; and i’m terrified that the world is going to figure out i’m not so great. i’m very hard on myself, i often say that my successes or achievements are actually just “good on paper”. none of these are reasons to hold myself back from having the kind of life that i want, and yet i have for 29 years, 10 months, 3 weeks and 2 days.

it’s easy to fall back into old patterns, to beat myself up for the 5+ unfinished novels sitting on my computer rather than accepting that the past is the past and all i can do is take life one day at a time. i have to look toward the future but live in today and make it different, better, kinder. like everything, since this doesn’t come easily to me i am tempted to give up but for some reason, i’m not doing that anymore. it’s a combination of things the last few years that have helped me find the strength to change what needs changing. i started to say gave me the strength, but those people and situations did not make me strong, they put me in situations where i had to find strength inside of myself. that strength is not external. it’s difficult for me to give myself credit for that, for everything i’ve done. i tend to focus on the positive when it comes to everyone i care about but the negative when i look at myself. when i gained 4 pounds over the holiday i started to freak out, i didn’t see the 30 pounds that i worked hard to lose this year and perhaps i never will. that’s not what this blog is about i have started several blog posts about my past struggles with eating disorders but for whatever reason they remain unfinished. i haven’t figured out exactly what i want to say on that yet, though i haven’t quit on them.

changing one’s self is a difficult and tedious process. the things that we don’t like about ourselves are at best ingrained in us through years of repetition or at worst just part of who we are. the hardest part about changing the internal, the emotional, is that it tends to happen not only gradually but also is just something that you realize is different one day; most of us can’t pinpoint the exact moment we got over a relationship or began thinking more positively without effort. that is why i know that running will forever be one of the great loves of my life. it’s not easy, and it is so gradual that it’s barely more gratifying than the emotional growth i am also experiencing, yet because it’s something i didn’t think i could like or even do, the tiniest achievements are huge for me. like everything with me, the road getting here was a long one.

when i moved back to mississippi and into the purple house on state street nearly four years ago, i found out that the MS Blues Marathon route ran right outside my front door. i was intrigued. people run over 26 miles, why? i didn’t know. 26 miles seemed like the most ridiculous thing ever, yet 13 seemed completely reasonable a goal – so at that moment i decided that i would run a half marathon. i had never run for fun or exercise before, and i had never been athletic in my whole life. i was good at karate, i have medals to prove it, but that was fun not work to me. over the years i had forced myself to walk on the treadmill on and off trying to lose weight, but never ever had i done any type of physical activity consistently. to me exercise was meant for one thing, losing weight. i wasn’t really sure how to meet my goal, or that it ever was a goal really, it was a whim. i heard something on the radio while driving about “team in training” a fundraiser for the leukemia and lymphoma society where i could train with others and raise money for charity while in the end running a half marathon. like everything else in my life, i quit.

wait – it gets better. i quit the team in training training because i couldn’t go to the groups runs. i couldn’t go to the group runs because i had saturday morning biology lab, and then i dropped the biology class because it was too much when i had just moved into this new apartment. for several years, i didn’t think much about running. i had only ever run two or three times training on my own anyway. then “the bad time” happened. i talk a lot about the bad time, because it was the turning point in my life. it was literally the “get busy living or get busy dying” decision. after almost a year of being unable to deal with functioning in any tangible way, i had to make a choice. i had to get out of that bed, put down the fried chicken & the bottle of vodka, and DO SOMETHING, anything really! either do something positive or kill myself and make it work this time. there could be no more just getting by, there could be no more half of a life, there could be no more waiting for things to get better. i had to live pro-actively or not at all. that year was this year, 2010. i got busy living.

like everything that frustrates me, i haven’t done as much this year as i feel like i should have; yet compared to last year i’ve really done a lot. i did fall in love and i did get my heart broken, but by now i know that there’s just nothing that can send me back to lying in my bed eating fried chicken and not dealing with my feelings. i’m scared to death actually. i’ve never succeeded at anything. every relationship i’ve ever been in has ended, i haven’t graduated college yet, i’ve quit every job i’ve ever had (never been fired though!), i haven’t finished a novel or my autobiography yet, i can’t even consistently blog! i’m afraid to live pro-actively, to make choices, to try and fail, to give myself a break – but i know that this is the only kind of life i care to live at this point. i’m not going to not take chances anymore. i may not get that job i want, no matter how hard i try. i followed my heart, gave it freely, and had it broken to the point that i’m afraid i may never recover, yet that can’t ruin my life. i may never get a book published – i can’t control that – but i can finish writing one. it’s scary now because if i fail i can no longer use the excuse that it “just happened” because i didn’t try.

today i am approximately 30 pounds lighter than i was this time last year, but what i am doing is not about being thin anymore. it’s about health. i want to be healthy, i want to live healthy. i can walk on the treadmill at a pace that i couldn’t run at four months ago. i can run nearly a mile, probably i could run a whole mile now if i tried. i quit smoking (again). i cut way back on drinking alcohol. i gave up soda again. those are the tangible things. there’s no way to really count the intangible, the shift that happened inside me when i ran 3/4 of a mile and then broke down in tears, sobbing on the treadmill for a minute or two before i shook it off and finished my workout.

i am different. something about me has shifted, changed, but i feel like i’m approaching a much more authentic version of me. a person that i like better. i may not ever be as outgoing as i would like, in fact i probably will never be as outgoing as i think i should be but that’s ok. i’m not choosing failure so that i feel like i’m in control anymore. will i slip up? sure. have i done the best i can so far? no. is that the end of the journey? hell the fuck no. i am never going to be perfect, but what i can do is accept that i’m pretty great the way i am even if no one knows it but me. i’m going to be even better tomorrow because i’m changing what doesn’t work and being good to myself. i’m changing but not for you, not for my mother, not for anyone but me. i deserve to be happy, and i deserve to be loved if not by anyone else (though i am quite lucky to be loved by many wonderful people) than at least by myself.

i don’t know when i’m going to run a half marathon. i don’t even know when i’m going to be able to run two miles without walking. there’s not a deadline. i will do it at some point, and each week i’m going to push myself a little harder. this is a battle between me and my fears and my head. i can blame whomever or whatever i want but no one has been stopping me but me, and i’m just not going to do that anymore.

one thing that i really want to do is get away from facebook. it is much too easy to blog there (notes), post photos, and interact with others. the more things facebook changes, the more personal privacy is taken away from us and it’s to the point now where i don’t like that. it’s not even about visibility, (because i will blog here publicly, i will pay to get a flickr account that will be public, etc) it’s about being able to easily and accurately control what is and is not public. facebook doesn’t seem to care that i am able to do that, so i would rather just start to funnel my blog, twitters, and photos into facebook so that people i already have established relationships with can still see it in one easy to access place. i already do this for the most part, but i also use facebook for unique notes and content which i am going to do less and less. i may start a personal tumblr blog in addition to my feminist blog if i decide i want to post random quotes and photos.

i want to get back to sharing my thoughts and feelings with the world, or even just writing for myself. i need to, and i think it’s time. not that i HAVE to, but that for the first time in a long time i am ready to let down my guard in a real way. there’s a wall i put up during “the bad time” that’s keeping me imprisoned, and it’s time that wall came down.

still, just about every person in a relationship has had a fear related to it at some time or another. we’ve been hurt, we’ve likely trusted the wrong person, fallen for someone who wasn’t caring in the way they should be, maybe our parents’ relationship instilled fears in us; for whatever reason there’s probably something about a relationship or your relationship that scares you. this is still a defense mechanism, but because you have no reason to be afraid (assuming you are not in an abusive relationship) this is an opportunity to figure out what scares you and why – and what to do about it. here are some common relationship related fears that i see in myself and my friends/loved ones.

fear of being “known” this can be common for women, perfectionists, abuse survivors, people with critical parents, and others. at some point we have gotten it in our heads that there is something about us that is a liability and that if our partner finds out about it, truly knows us, that they will stop loving us. i’m not a serial killer, or a criminal of any sort, so this fear is probably an unrealistic one. is there something about you that should make your partner stop loving you? the answer is usually no. if we come up with something it is usually vague like “i’m too selfish” or “i have deviant sexual fantasies”. most of the time, we can’t even come up with a concrete reason why we fear being known, it’s just there. if you can come up with a reason, take a look at it. your partner loves you, and probably knows you pretty well so the chances are that they already know you have a selfish streak, or an anxiety disorder; and chances are they won’t stop loving you if you tell them you fantasize about being tied up – they just might not be interested in trying it.

when we withhold parts of ourselves out of fear we are robbing ourselves and our partner of the joy that comes from loving and being loved exactly as we are, as an imperfect person. none of us are perfect. unless what you are hiding is something truly awful (and in that case you should see a professional to talk about it) if your partner stops loving you when they find out you aren’t perfect, they didn’t really love you to begin with. it’s better to move on and find someone who truly loves you, when you don’t have to hide.

fear of intimacy when we open ourselves up to someone else, someone we love, there is a chance that we will be hurt. there’s no way around taking that chance, but we try to get around it by getting involved in relationships and not returning the intimacy and trust that our partner gives us. this is a surefire way to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because your partner may very well hurt and leave you if you are unable or unwilling to open up to them. even worse, we may avoid getting involved in relationships altogether, settling for casual encounters and acquaintances rather than friends. intimacy is a part of friendships that are not romantic or sexual in nature just as much as it is a part of romantic relationships. if you cannot open up to your partner, ask yourself if it is because of them or because of you. if you cannot trust them, then you have no business being with them. if they’ve given you no reason to NOT trust them, then the problem lies with you. everyone is afraid of hurt, but hiding from it out of fear limits the depth of the connections that we can have with other human beings, and these connections are something that nearly everyone not only craves but needs.

it is ok to tell your friend or partner that you are frightened. fear does not mean that you are weak, and being honest about it is the first step in overcoming it. there is no need to tell someone else every thought in your head, and you can start off slowly, with small things. everyone is not going to hurt or disappoint us if given the chance. those that do did not have a place in our life to begin with and we are better off without them.

fear of abandonment this ties into the first two fears, and many others. maybe our parents didn’t give us the attention and affection that we needed; maybe we were hurt & abandoned by an intimate partner before and we are terrified it was somehow our fault; whatever the reason, fear of abandonment can cause us to not get close to begin with or smother a relationship once we have it. it is natural at the beginning of a relationship to neglect friends and hobbies because of this new and amazing feeling of falling in love, but after a time we need to balance the aspects of our lives. hopefully you did more than sitting on the couch just waiting for your partner to come along, and it should not take an extended period of time for you to begin enjoying those activities again – on you own. it is wonderful if you and your partner have many things in common, and it is an indication that you are in a good relationship if you share interests; however, if you loved horror movies before you met your partner and he or she hates them, there is no reason to never watch horror movies again. enjoy that activity you love with a friend or on your own. if your partner is a couch potato and you enjoy an active life, there is no reason to neglect your health and happiness. don’t quit the softball team, don’t let your gym membership lapse; if your relationship cannot handle you spending an hour in the gym a few times a week, or your partner isn’t willing to come cheer for you at softball games, giving up what you enjoy is not going to do anything except make you resentful.

a healthy relationship is a relationship with outside friends and interests. you do not need to melt into your partner until the two of you become “one”, a stereotypical “romantic” notion that is actually codependency. if your partner doesn’t want you to have friends, this is a very bad sign, as it is if you don’t want your partner to have friends. if your partner cannot handle that you enjoy something he or she does not, and expects you to give it up, ask yourself and your partner why it is that they would want you to give up an activity you enjoy? love celebrates difference as well as sameness, and if a relationship unravels if every moment is not spent together, that relationship was on very shaky ground to begin with. we cannot exist in a bubble of “just you and me”.

fear of betrayal it’s sad to say, but most of us have probably either been unfaithful or had someone that has been unfaithful to us. this is devastating, because when we are betrayed we most often blame ourselves asking “what should i have done differently?” or “what does he/she have that i don’t?” when a partner is unfaithful, it is a sign of problems in the relationship, and very likely problems in the person that is unfaithful that he or she hasn’t dealt with or acknowledged. once we have been betrayed, we are likely to carry that fear of betrayal into our new relationships, taking out on a new partner something that they do not deserve. fear of betrayal can manifest itself in many ways: jealousy and being clingy are very common. attractive friends become adversaries, a traffic jam leads to accusations about why someone is late, and even the most rational explanation can leave a nagging fear in the back of our heads that we are not being attentive enough to a potential problem.

this is not an easy one to get over. first, we have to acknowledge that we did not cause our partner to betray us. no one is responsible for another person’s actions, and we make our own choices. if your partner cheated, it was his or her choice. perhaps the problem was the relationship, but they could’ve ended it and moved on rather than subjecting you to such hurt. (i do not judge here, i have cheated on a partner in the past.) cheating, even if the relationship has problems and isn’t working, is selfish and insensitive; it’s about the person who cheats ultimately, not the betrayed. if you could’ve done something to prevent it, it would have taken both partners to admit the problem and commit to fixing it. if there was nothing wrong with the relationship, it’s still them and their poor choices. not everyone you love will betray you, and it will damage a perfectly good relationship to demand that your partner not see attractive friends anymore, or never go out without you. keeping your partner locked up at home may keep him or her from cheating but it doesn’t cure the root problem which is that if your partner wants to cheat either they need to deal with themselves, or you both need to deal with the relationship. it’s much more flattering to have a partner who genuinely wants to be with you than have someone you are keeping prisoner out of jealousy and insecurity.

fear of being trapped no one wants to do something that they don’t want to do. whether or not we want to believe it, we do make our own choices. yet, for whatever reason we may fear that a relationship will “trap” us somehow. perhaps in a city we don’t want to live in, or a job we don’t want because we have financial responsibilities beyond ourselves, etc. it’s true that when we make the choice to share our life with an intimate partner that we may be giving up on some spontaneity. we are giving up the chance to move to paris on a whim, but more than likely we aren’t giving up the chance to move to paris, and when did you ever move to another country on a whim anyway? if you fear the relationship is or will keep you from something, ask yourself why you didn’t do that something prior to getting into the relationship. if your dream is to live abroad and your partner has made it clear they will not do that, ask yourself why you are with a partner that doesn’t have the same goals and desires as you. yes, it’s true that you don’t have to share every interest, as i said before, but if your view of the future is wildly different then you need to seriously consider why you are in this relationship. there is more to a partnership than “love” and “in love”, as any long-term couple will tell you. if one of you has always planned to have kids and the other has no interest in raising children, the fundamental difference in your ideal lifestyles is probably something that your love is not going to overcome.

i’m not saying just abandon your partner if they don’t want to move to paris, that is what fear of being trapped would do. i am saying, examine your goals and your partner’s goals, decide what is non-negotiable, discuss it, and decide what your lives together are going to be like. if you chose your partner over living in paris, you are not “trapped”, you are actively making a choice. resenting your partner because you never lived in paris is childish and damaging to the relationship. you make a choice, and thinking “well, if he or she just wanted to live in paris, everything would be ok” is fantastical thinking. love is not a trap, love is a choice. you have the ability to choose something else, and it is controlling and wrong to blame your partner for not having the same life goals that you do and “trapping” you in a life you did not want. if you didn’t want that life, you should not choose it.

these are just a few fears that i have encountered in myself and others i know. when we face our fear, we often find that it is not nearly as scary as we imagined, and we overcome it. relationships involve compromise; if one of you is never compromising, you have an emotionally abusive, controlling relationship. it is a trite saying that if you love something set it free, but it ties into the idea that if you truly love someone you should allow them to be who they are – completely separate from you and the relationship. you are not going to change them, nor should you want to. if you find that there are deal breakers, break up. it is really ridiculously simple unless you fear being alone which is going to have to be a separate post.

this is something that i’ve been actively trying to figure out for the last three years, but it goes back much further than that. a few self-help (personal growth, whatever the heck the bookstores are calling that section these days) books have come into my possession over the years. the first was “how to break your addiction to a person” by howard halpern which my then-therapist, holly, suggested that i get when i was separating from my husband almost eight years ago. i’ve re-read it several times since then, which i guess means that i’ve never successfully broke my person addiction, or really “love” addiction as i’ve come to think of it. then, three years ago when i was dealing with that particular situation i happened to be working in a bookstore, so there was no end to the books that i could read without buying them. i read and then purchased such horrifying titles as “obsessive love: when it hurts too much to let go” by susan forward and “addiction to love: overcoming obsession and dependency in relationships” by susan peabody. i even broke down and read “codependent no more” by melody beattie, a book that i had been fighting the desire to pick up for most of my life. when i was promoted to “merchandising specialist” at the bookstore and someone left a copy on the endcap of teenage vampire trash i was to reset, i thought maybe God or fate was sending a message i needed to finally stop ignoring.

i felt a bit like the character of charlotte in my favourite tv series “sex & the city” when she was embarrassed to buy the (fictional) book “starting over yet again”, and pretended to be looking for the travel section, going home to buy the book in the safety and anonymity of her own home, via the internet. is it the horrific titles of these books that shame us? “when it hurts too much to let go” really does send a message; or is it the fact that having a problem, a crisis, something internal that we need to do some work on is so socially unacceptable that we cannot fathom letting anyone know that we are not perfect? whatever the reason, i was getting to the point in my life where i was tired of hiding the fact that i am a flawed person on a journey; so i picked up each and every one of those titles, and i sat on my lunch half-hour each day reading them at the bar of the coffee shop in the bookstore. “what are you reading?” a co-worker asked, making a face as she saw the title.
“A very good book.” i replied, “It’s helping me a lot.” there wasn’t a soul there that didn’t know i was in a really weird relationship with my boss who was also having an affair with my other boss, i don’t see how reading “obsessive love” was going to make them think any less of me. lol.

that was the first step in reclaiming my authenticity. we don’t need to be ashamed of our journey, we are all on one. sometimes we need a little help, whether it’s a book with a mortifying title or going to therapy, whatever it is we need there is absolutely no shame that should be found in being honest about the fact that we do no have all the answers. no one has all the answers, there’s really no point in lying about it. over the last year or so, i have gotten a few more “personal growth” books, either because i bought them or because my mother decided she didn’t need to grow anymore once she got back with my dad after divorcing him. some of the books i’ve read in part, or over and over a few times. what sticks with me is the fact that i’m still on a journey, that i don’t quite know all that i need to know yet. i shouldn’t, i’m not even thirty.

so tonight i was having a conversation with a very good friend about how we can distinguish between “in love” and obsession. how do we ever know? she wondered. i can’t have answers for her, i don’t even have answers for myself. i learned that i don’t need to feel bad about not having answers for her when i read “codependent no more”. what i can do is share with her what i’ve learned on my own journey, if it helps her that’s awesome, if not well, it’s not my job to help the people that i love grow – i need only support them while they grow in their own way. she said, “obsession must be stronger than ‘in love’.” i said, “oh yes, obsession is 1000 times stronger than in love, because obsession is about us. how we feel, how they make us feel. love is about what we can give to someone else. how we want them to feel.”

i didn’t say it, because i didn’t need to cloud her personal journey with this, but i thought to myself, “except when you’re codependent and then you have to deal with that part of it too…” then i thought, my God, when the fuck does anyone catch a break? if you’re a codependent and a love addict, which i am, how the hell do you find a happy medium between it being all about how you feel (obsessive “love”/love addiction) and codependency (how they feel, protecting them, controlling them)? i wanted to tell her, “you need to seriously reconsider getting better, because it’s a hell of a lot harder trying to get well than it is just dealing with the aftermath of our addictions.” of course that wouldn’t be good for her in the long run, but the part of me that has been in therapy for the last decade trying to work through all this shit felt like screaming, “RUN! SAVE YOURSELF!” i mean, when do we deal with any addiction? at the point where it’s going to destroy us, of course. it’s much easier to be a raging alcoholic/drug addict/sex addict/love addict/codependent/etc than it is to be in recovery from that addiction; and even though they took addictive personality out of the DSM i can tell you with absolute certainty that those of us who are addicts will just trade one addiction for a more socially acceptable or easily hidden addiction until we either die or have to deal with the next one. it would cause a stir probably if anyone read my blog, but i’m pretty much convinced i was born an addict as much as i was born non-heterosexual.

i have watched my friends trade one addiction for another (it was always really odd to me that i had so many friends who were in AA or NA) booze turns into relationships turns into anorexia turns into cutting turns into eventually you work your shit out because otherwise you die. it may not be true for everyone, but then maybe every alcoholic or drug addict doesn’t have an addictive personality. addicts want highs. i don’t care what the high is, where the control or release from the need to control comes from doesn’t matter, but i know i have it and i know addicts know each other. i may not be a drug addict or an alcoholic or a sex addict, but i am an addict. i’m just addicted to something that is a socially condoned addiction that we are taught to seek out, like caffeine. i am addicted to “love” or more accurately i am addicted to the high that i get off of “falling in love”. there’s not a hell of a lot of resources out there for love addicts. six years ago i joined an SLAA group (sex and love addicts anonymous) but everyone was a sex addict and as much as i love and support them i just didn’t have anything in common with a sex addict aside from addiction.

i got to where i missed the love of 12 step groups. i have never felt more accepted than when i walked into a room full of 12 stepping addicts. you feel like you could say “i killed your grandmother and i liked it.” and they will just love you and say “it’s ok, you’re among family now.” unconditional love, i’ve never felt it any other place before, not church, not with family, nowhere; but you do get to the point where you need for people to understand your experience, and i’m not a sex addict, i’m not an alcoholic. it may be personal to me, but i need to be authentic. i’ve been told, “well you can go to open AA meetings and just work the steps for your addiction.” well sure i could, i suppose. i love the LAMBDA group here in jackson, but they don’t get where i am in a literal sense, only in the sense that we’re all addicts. i haven’t been where they are, nor have they been where i am. i can hide my addiction. i’m not going to be pulled over by a cop for having a series of monogamous relationships that i end when the high goes away. i’m not going to go to jail for that, no one is going to force me into rehab for cheating on my partner with my boss because i’m in love with her and i just had to throw away someone i was “in love with” for six years because of how i felt when she looked at me.

it’s not going to land me in jail or rehab but i am secure in saying now that it absolutely destroyed my life. i can excuse it any way i want to, sure i was unhappy, yeah we had problems, we fought like any couple will, but it is not normal, it is not natural to go from being head over heels in love with one person to being suddenly head over heels in love with someone else. if you think that is normal, you need to examine your own life. we are bombarded with images of what “love” is supposed to be like, from the time we are children. it’s not like our parents’ relationship, it’s disney princesses and happily ever after, and meeting on the top of the empire state building with someone who you have never seen before but you heard on a radio show and knew that they were “the one” just from the tone in their voice. this is fucked up, people. this is a sick, fictional, and for some of us it causes us to keep seeking out the unreality that is complete “love” addiction. it’s obsession. for me, acknowledging it took falling “in love” with someone i couldn’t have. slowly i realized that of course she was “the one”. she was never given the opportunity to not be “the one.” i could romanticize her in my head as much as i wanted. i could excuse away anything by saying “if only we were together…” finally i realized that she, like everyone else i had ever been “in love” with was only a fictional character, romanticized in my head. the only difference was that she never have the opportunity to really disappoint me. i never got to be with her, so i could chalk any problem, any disappointment up to the fact that she was never “mine”.

well, what about all the people that were “mine” before that? every person that wasn’t what they seemed, everyone who disappointed me, everyone who hurt me, everyone i abandoned because the “spark” was gone? what made more sense? that this one woman, the first unobtainable woman, was “the one”? or that i had a serious problem that i had never acknowledged before? it helps that we stayed close for a long time after that. i saw exactly how she would’ve disappointed me if we had ever been in a relationship. the romanticized her that i was in love with wasn’t who she is. i do love who she is, but i know we’d kill each other if we ever lived together. she’s one of my best friends, and probably always will be, but now i get to love her and see her for who she is, not this made-up character in my head that i thought she was. it wasn’t everyone i’ve ever dated letting me down and disappointing me, it was me making them into something that no one could ever live up to, because i’m a love addict. i hate to burst your bubble if you believe this, but there is no “perfect person”. there’s no one out there that is meant for you who is just going to love on you when you’re an asshole, and not want anything from you, and not disappoint you, and not annoy you or piss you off occasionally. ask couples that have been together for 20 years, they will tell you (i know, i’ve talked to quite a few) that they bug each other, they make each other mad, they do stupid thing sometimes. we’re all only human afterall. i remember a really beautiful moment talking to someone i dearly love who i don’t get to see nearly often enough, where she was talking about how she knew she would do something unconstructive that upset her partner and didn’t help their relationship at all. she smiled, ruefully, and they are to this day a couple that many cite as ideal.

there’s no such thing as a happy ending. we don’t have an ending except for death. we do end chapters of our lives, and begin others but there isn’t a moment where in reality it goes “and they lived happily ever after. the end,” that doesn’t involve a headstone. relationships are compromise, disagreements, fights, but in the good ones, the ones that last, those are overshadowed by a mutual respect, a caring that we term “love”. there’s nothing remotely sexy about that. that’s what comes after “and they lived happily ever after.” if you don’t want to be romeo and juliet. my apologies to john lennon, but life is what happens after “and they lived happily ever after.”

where we find the balance between obsessive love and codependency i am not really sure because i’m still learning the lessons, but stick with me. i’m going to figure it all out; and then i’m going to write a new story. a story about what comes after all of the hollywood film, nyt bestselling novel bullshit, and it’s going to be based on my life.

in truth, i didn’t think i’d be the first to succumb to it. a friend of mine seemed poised to run herself into the ground, but then, she’s nearly a decade younger than me. burnout is something that no one seems to ever talk about, certainly not in the activism community, and yet we put ourselves and our passion into the work we do so it stands to reason that being an activist would have a higher level of burnout than say, a 9-5 desk job you can leave at the office. it’s more like being a social worker; it’s your job to hear stuff that is hard to deal with. being a feminist activist or lgbtq activist in the age of web 2.0 is pretty much a 24/7 job. we tweet, we blog, there’s always something we need to be reading to have the information (for example, killing time today i texted a friend to say i was going to target, and she replied “no! target is the devil now! they donated $150K to a right winger, it was on twitter.”) miss a tweet, you might inadvertently spend money at a place owned by homophobes that hate and exploit women; or who fund 20% of the Crisis Pregnancy Centers in your area.

another “great” example of this, we recently found out that the owner of mcalister’s deli contributes exclusively to right wing anti-choice politicians. starkville NOW used to meet at mcalister’s deli. on the one hand, it’s fun that a feminist group was using an anti-choice deli to meet in; not so fun when you realize that all of those feminists spent money in that establishment. being a feminist or an lgbtq american that cares about where our money goes is like the cultural equivalent of being a vegan: every single thing we do, we have to scrutinize. we have to know who owns the places we shop and eat, and where they donate politically. here in the south, it’s damn near impossible to frequent a place that is in line with progressive ideals. i like to shop local and eat local, i’m a big advocate about supporting locally owned businesses and local artists and farmers. here’s the biggest example i can give you of the disconnect in jackson, mississippi: rainbow whole foods, a local co-op with the only vegetarian restaurant in the city, refused to support the National Organization for Women.

i didn’t broadcast this too loudly at the time, but i’ve since stopped caring who i piss off. afterall, if someone has a problem with you being lgbtq or a feminist, it probably doesn’t matter if you piss them off by telling the truth. i’ve never been too good at remaining silent. Jackson Area NOW, the group of which i am currently president, decided back in february to have a book sale as a fundraiser. we asked for donations, and were overwhelmed by people who gave us books, cds, and dvds to sell. so many people were interested in donating that we weren’t physically able to pick up all the donations. it was really amazing. when it came time to have the book sale somewhere, the best idea was rainbow whole foods. the jackson free press had just had the first ever vagina monologues performance there the following year, and it seemed like a win-win: we would bring in feminists who might not shop at rainbow already, and we would reach some like-minded individuals that were shopping at rainbow on a saturday afternoon. after a few slight problems (the person in charge had just left on maternity leave) my second in command, tom head, got in touch with the right person. i expected something, but i never expected a “no.”

the final word we received was this: rainbow would let us use their building to have our fundraising book sale, but we were not allowed to have NOW rounds, or information about our organization. i can even understand asking us to please not hang up any “keep abortion legal” rounds, but they didn’t want to identify ourselves as NOW in any way. they were afraid that it might alienate customers and board members. who is on the board of a natural grocery co-op but not progressive? i wondered. apparently, some are. when i received this news, i was in a business with a friend. i exited onto the sidewalk and began pacing back and forth. i seriously wanted to take off my shoe and throw it. “what are we supposed to tell people who ask what we are fundraising for?” i shrieked into the phone, at poor tom who was only the messenger. “are we not supposed to say we are NOW? and if we say we are NOW and people ask ‘who is NOW? what does NOW do?’ are we supposed to LIE?” there may be people out there who have no problem tricking people into donating, but myself and my chapter leaders are not those people. i do not want one cent of money from someone who is anti-choice and doesn’t want their money going to a pro-choice organization. that is just me. that is my moral compass, that’s how i was raised. i believe in honesty, and integrity. i fight for what i believe in, i support causes i believe in, and i do not want to trick anyone so that my organization has a little more money. if you believe in a cause, you give money to that cause. if it’s against everything i stand for, well it’s none of my business because that’s your money and your conscience. in the end we declined to have our sale at rainbow, because no one was comfortable pretending our organization is anything it’s not. we are unapologetically pro-choice, we are pro-woman, we are pro-equality. a lot of stuff can be said, both good and bad about the National Organization for Women, but one thing that will not be said for my organization, locally, or state-wide, is that we are liars. in the end we had our sale at the Unitarian Universalist church, and in fact we screened PBS’s “The Last Abortion Clinic” documentary which tells the truth about abortion access in the state of Mississippi at the meeting just before the sale.

it’s not just this one incident that caused me personally to get burnt out as an activist. i can tell you exactly when i gave up. i know the date, i know the time. i know the person that spoke the words that killed a part of me that had always been strong; and i know the lies that were told. it probably wouldn’t have been the straw that broke my back if everything that came before hadn’t come before, and if everything that came after hadn’t come after. i fought to keep my head above water. i bargained, i went through all the stages of grief. maybe we shouldn’t put faith in anyone but ourselves. not an organization, not a movement, not a political ideology, not even in those in the trenches with us, just ourselves. we only know our own motivation, in the end. it’s not that i stopped caring, i will never stop caring. i will never stop believing in the ability of a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens to change the world (margaret mead.) it’s that little by little, lie by lie, drama by drama, every ounce of fight in me was drained out like activism was a vampire sucking out what used to define me. i was never a “do-er” i was a talker, a thinker, i’ve blogged for fifteen years on what i believe in. i felt like i was an “armchair activist,” i wasn’t doing enough, and finally i stopped talking, stopped blogging and DID. i’m not really sure if any of those things had any tangible effect on anything that matters, except for one.

the greatest moment of my activist life was the abstinence summit at the MS colosseum. it wasn’t even a NOW action, it was NOW working with the MS Reproductive Justice Coalition through the ACLU. we attended that event, and my dear friend izzy and i left to make more postcards rather than document religious themes in the content. that’s what the lawsuit the ACLU filed against the state of MS was about, religious themes, prayer, in a state funded event. izzy and i went back to the aclu office and we printed out more postcards that had URLs for websites where kids could get truth about sex education, because we have no comprehensive sex education in the state of mississippi, it’s just abstinence only at this point. the postcards told kids where they could go to get real information about sex, about STIs, about what they need to know if they become sexually active; and we taped a condom to each one of them. i was overwhelmed by the event itself, an event funded by the state that churches bused kids into… that before it began played a song by soulja boy, a song i had never heard before called “supersoak”. the chorus included the line “Super soak dat ho(ahh), super soak dat ho (ahh), super soak dat ho(ahh)” which i later learned means for a man to cum on a woman (ho). it seemed every kid in that huge auditorium knew the lyrics, they were all singing along. “super soak dat ho” before the first inspirational speaker came onstage to tell young women to “guard their gift (virginity)”. don’t have sex before marriage, but super soak dat ho.

when the event ended, i was keyed-up with adrenaline. we were about to pass out information on sex education and condoms to the kids that were being bombarded with those mixed messages. we went to izzy’s car and we got the postcards. at that point, it started to rain, torrentially. we started to hand kids the postcards, “do you want to know about REAL sex education?” we said, thrusting the postcards with condoms taped to them at the kids. everyone who wasn’t with the youth pastor of their church took them. it was just a matter of seconds before i was surrounded by a mass of mostly african american kids. “can i have two? i want one for my friend!” kids said. they were laughing a little, because condoms are funny and frightening, but they wanted those postcards. they were all around me, i started to panic a little because i was getting mobbed, but i just kept handing them to the grabbing hands all around me, “go to the websites” i said, “tell your friends.” we managed to dodge security for a pretty long time. in the end, we were brazen, going up to kids with adults right beside them, “here’s REAL sex education.” giving the postcards to all the grabbing hands. then security told us we had to leave. “this is private property.” they said, “You can’t be here. you will be arrested if you don’t leave.” all the postcards that weren’t completely soaked had been passed out by then. we joined the rest of the activists out on the sidewalk, where they held signs that said things like “REAL sex education saves lives.” every school bus, every church bus, had to exit looking at those signs.

every protest i have been a part of, every sign i have made, nothing felt as tangible as the hands of those eager high school kids, wanting those condoms and i hope some wanting that information. we are a poor state, here in mississippi. they bussed kids in from the delta, from the poorest of the poor, a place where all the white people who claim to give a shit about fetuses don’t care about babies once they are born. a place where all those “welfare queens working the system” live, i defy you to rage about your tax dollars helping the poor if you understand the culture here. i dare you to be anti-abortion when a woman who has been told that condoms don’t work preventing pregnancy gets pregnant in a region where the only abortion clinic in the state is two hours away and has a 24 hour waiting period, requiring her to not only have a car but have the means to stay 24 hours in a city where she doesn’t live. it’s a disconnect. you can be anti-abortion, but don’t you dare be anti-”welfare”. you can want the “killing of babies” to stop, but don’t you dare not give a shit how those babies eat once they’re out of the womb. a twitter troll told me the other day that i “get pleasure from dead babies”. you know what? if you think they’re babies not fetuses, why is it that you don’t give a fuck how they’re getting food once they’re born? it’s because your tax dollars will not fund abortion aka “baby killing” but they do fund the means to feed those children, but you don’t want to. “everyone should work for what they have.” you say, but you don’t know what it means to be in poverty. you don’t know how a mother can’t get a job at mcdonalds if she’s living in a homeless shelter because that shelter requires she be there by 6pm and she has to ride the bus because she doesn’t have a car and no place is going to give a new-hire an 8-5 shift!

get out of your privileged, white existence. either be willing to have your tax dollars feed toddlers, or stop screaming at the pregnant women that their “baby” “loves them” and “wants to be born.” that to me is the lowest of the low. i am pro-choice, without apology, but i also know that those “babies” you want to save need to eat after they get born, and i’m willing to pay for it with my tax dollars unlike 99.9% of anti-choicers. NOM (the National Organization for Marriage, and anti-lgbtq organization) called an adopted baby of a gay couple “not their baby because they were white and it was black” recently. it stands to reason if you don’t want fetuses to “die” that you want them to be adopted, but apparently white people adopting black babies means the child “isn’t really theirs” especially if they are gay? apparently no one can win. not women who don’t want to carry a child, not couples that adopt a baby that isn’t of their race, not gay couples who care enough to feed a child that you don’t want your tax dollars to pay to feed.

is it any wonder we get burnt out? i’ve gone off on a tangent here, this wasn’t where i intended this blog to go, but i feel i’ve made some really valid points. i dont know what to do with my burnout. clearly i am still passionate about what i believe in. i’ve just stopped believing that we can make a difference. one day out of countless other days, i felt i made a tangible impact on anyone. one day out of years isn’t enough. i don’t know what to do, i don’t know what to say. i know that when i stopped talking and started trying to make a tangible difference is when i stopped believing in just about everything i used to believe in. maybe that means i’m weak, but i know i’m saying shit that i have not heard anyone else say. i am tired. i’m burnt out. i’ve stopped believing in the organizations i represent. i think that almost everything we do is wrong. i feel that what i used to care about is only a vehicle of stroking people’s egos. i think we spend more time, money, and energy fighting for a title than we do making a tangible difference in anyone’s life. still, i hang on. i guess i could resign from everything, i wouldn’t be the first. i could say “fuck this shit” and just concentrate on myself, my career and my education, aside from my activist work. apparently, a part of me still cares. that part of me is doing nothing, to the point of causing me anxiety on several levels. i still care, but i don’t have the energy to do anything about it.

how do we deal with burnout? i wish someone was talking because i have made it abundantly clear, prior to this blog, that i am burnt out and i have no idea what to do about it.