still I cling

Posted April 29th, 2006 by Michelle

All I can do is jump in where I am now. There is so much worth covering, at least, so much I should have been writing about, but the lapses in my journaling since April of 1981 are always when things are most intense. What can I do, I’m a creature of habit, and part of that is retreating from the world when things are hard.

Ian misspoke when he said I am single-handledly “saving the arts scene” in Napa. I’m doing no such thing. I am tearing some shit up, as it were, but I don’t know if any of it is actually going to work. And I am alternately exhilirated and exhausted by my job. And the call to relief work gets ever louder, ever more insistent.

And, sadly, I write today when I’m feeling poorly, even though I’m all dolled up and just out the door to a rare party- rare in that I actually sort of want to go, and that there will actually already be people I actually like there. (I hate parties where I don’t know anyone. Antisocial of me, isn’t it?) But I am so terribly, terribly tired of being disappointed. I almost wrote “bitterly disappointed” but I rarely let myself care enough to actually feel bitter about things. I don’t understand how “friends” can be so disrespectful of one another, why infatuation turns into distaste, why my solitude grows ever thicker. And why I allow anyone in my life- ANYONE- to treat me poorly. There are so few unkind folks left in my life; why do I find it necessary to hang on to one or two, to make sure I’m slightly abused at least once a week? What ugly part of me does that feed?

I feel as though I’m wallowing, and I don’t think I tend to be a wallower, and I really want to shake this off. But I’m in one of those situations where I’m keeping a door cracked, rather than firmly shutting it and triple-locking it, even though I know the window will fly open with some fresh air the minute I’m finally able to do this. I wish I was strong enough to be decent to myself. And yet, I keep a wedge in the door, and disappoinment firmly in my life. I wish I knew why.