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.

lightning vs. lightning bugs

Posted April 11th, 2006 by Michelle

LASIK is a miracle. Truly. I’m not out of the woods yet- still terrified of infection and desperately trying to keep soap, sweat, and my own little fingers away from my eyeballs (oh! how I LONG to rub my eyes, like in ye olden days!) – but I still can’t believe how well I see, how beautifully deliciously I see everything. When I have the energy to do so, I’m going to describe the surgery in detail (christ, it was weird) although things get fuzzy immediately after, since that’s when the valium finally kicked in. Boy, was it not working before or during the surgery.

So, yes, it went wonderfully. I even have some complications- some wrinkling of my cornea on my left eye- but my vision is so good out of it that they aren’t worried. I have YET ANOTHER post-op- my third- on Friday, and I’m hoping for a clean bill of health. It’s scary, though, to know that I’ve just undergone elective surgery, and that things could still go wrong. For some reason, I’ve not done the sacrifical burning and stomping of my glasses and contact cases and such… maybe I’m just superstitious, and I’d never be able to use any of them again anyway because my prescription will never be exactly that again… but still. I’ll destroy it all when I’m sure I’m out of the woods.

Full details on the surgery and the post-surgery fun coming soon.

In other news, I broke up with Dan on Sunday night. As wonderful as he was, something shifted in him when I finally started liking him. He pursued me so dilligently, so consistently, with such affection and admiration, and as soon as I started returning all of the above, he took a step back, and then another and then another, until I woke up Sunday morning and looked over at him thought to myself, “I want to wake up totally excited that the person next to me is there, and want him to be totally excited that he’s with me.” And neither was true. And so I foray back into the world of singlehood, because I don’t want to be with *someone*, I want to be with *awesome*. I just can’t do it any other way.

Two Days to LASIK

Posted March 27th, 2006 by Michelle

I’ve felt a little paralyzed lately, not exactly in a bad way (as if there could be a good way), but in a way that sitting down to write – to write anything – seems a chore. My work life has gotten so nuts, so gray, so murky and unknown that it’s as if my creativity is being gently but firmly pulled from my brain, as if Dumbledore was standing behind me with his wand to my head, invisibly removing the creativity from my brain in long, wispy strands, and keeping them in his sieve. I’m somatizing like crazy, too- my skin has gone nuts, and if you can believe this, I have ANOTHER UTI. And not just “another”; there have been numerous unreported ones (to this blog anyway) so this is now my fifth or six in as many months- I don’t even remember anymore. Finally, I think my right wrist is finally deciding that typing as quickly as I do is no fun anymore, and whispers of carpal tunnel pain are shooting up from the joint. All in all, it seems to me, it’s time for a big, fat vacation.

Alas, instead, in two days, I’m going to have elective surgery. This time Wednesday morning, I’ll be walking into the eye institute, where they will strap me down, slice open my eyeballs, and shoot lasers into my eyes.

I’ve been doing all the crazy pre-op stuff required: hot compresses on my eyes, lid washes, lid massages, and twice daily doses of Theratears vitamins. I’ve been back to the eye institute for another pre-op appointment, and also back to my eye doctor who had to do a final check on my prescription to make sure that nothing whatsoever had shifted in the last three months, and all of it checked out. So, it’s really happening. I don’t really think I’m the elective surgery type, and I’m not even sure exactly WHY I’m doing this anymore, other than my deep hatred of contacts and glasses, as well as the freedom I need from such trappings to really do relief work. But it’s almost as if I made the decision to do this, and so I’m jolly well going to go through with it. The possible complications are horrendous, but… but if I can wake up in a few days and see well enough not to run into walls, I’ll consider that a thing of such tremendous beauty that it makes all of it worth it- the $50 eye drops, the three trips to Berkeley, the $4000, the 24 hours of goggle-wearing, the 4 weeks of no contact sports (what exactly is included in “contact sports”?), the post-op hours of worry, etc.

For a couple of days I am not allowed to read, and therefore I’m also not allowed to write. Perhaps this will be a good rest for my wrist, although even a full weekend does not seem to improve it on a Monday morning.

What does improve a Monday morning? Waking up with warm arms wrapped fully around me and a cat spooned next to my belly. Waking up and not being able to move, because two living creatures, in that moment, want to be as close to me as possible. And then getting up, starting my days, and hours later, still feeling that warmth. These things I do not take for granted.

change

Posted March 9th, 2006 by Michelle

I’m in New York again, this time for a very brief stay on my way to D.C. for an arts advocacy conference. It’s oddly warm here, and since it’s oddly cold in California, the two places are about exactly the same temperature. It’s good to be here, in a way, because suddenly “here” is no more rich than what I have at home. It’s easier to be away, less stressful, when I’m happy to be away, but also looking forward to going home.

I’ve moved into a new home, a little creekside house that is a four-minute walk from work, and a five-minute walk to the heart of the downtown district. Better yet, “creekside” is a truly apt descriptor. I walk out from my porch and the creek- which during this season is much more like a river- is ten feet from my door.

One of the views of my porch (still without the porch swing and all the potted plants, but they are coming…)

And another view, just to the side of the porch- I realize these pictures aren’t terribly exciting, but it is extraordinary to walk out to see this much nature.

And once I’ve finished bricking the patio out there, and lining it with flowers, and buying a new gas grill, it is going to be even MORE extraordinary.

My new place is twice as big, and unbelievably, twice as sunny, with windows stretching the length of the rooms. I don’t have all of the furniture I need, nor all the art I want, but I love it. At night I fall asleep to the sound of soft, flowing water, or if there is a storm, rushing crazy water. Mornings are filled with birds and squirrels.

Someone else is rather fond of the new place, too.

And handing over the spare key to a certain someone else was the easiest important choice I’ve made in a long time.

what now?

Posted February 21st, 2006 by Michelle

So, umm, yeah, what happens now? How do I learn to lean into this, this new relationship in my life? How do I learn to trust, to quiet down, to not wonder almost every minute if I’m going to screw this up? How do I find that elusive ease that characterized the time I spent with him before I realized how much I liked him? With all the damage done to me, how do I not question him? How do I stay secure when he’s distant or tired? Rather, how do I stay secure in a healthy way, rather than asserting (in my mind) that I don’t need him, that he could walk away tomorrow and I’d be fine? I seem to have two states of being in relationships: 1) everything is great and wonderful and unbelievable and 2) I don’t f*cking need you. I seem to be lacking the nuance that I’m sure is in between.

Most of the time I’m fine, most of the time I spend with him is truly wonderful. But every now and then it’s as if someone knocked my legs out from under me, like a powerful blast of worry, like, how could I POSSIBLY think this is going to work.

This is all so new to me. And these growing pains of learning to trust threaten to topple the balance.

where to begin

Posted February 17th, 2006 by Michelle

These last two weeks have been filled with such beautiful blessings and such massive setbacks that every time I sit down to write about what is going on, I stand up and run away. My agency is either shutting down, OR getting seriously funded for the first time in three years; I have to leave my cottage, BUT I might have found a truly extraordinary new living situation; I’ve seriously committed to a wonderful man, AND I’ve seriously committed to a wonderful man. Wait, that last one isn’t an “or” or a “but”. Hmm.

So while everything else in my life is as topsy-turvy, as unpredictable and challenging and difficult as possible while having possible silver linings, there is one slice of my life that for the first time in many, many, many years, is extraordinary.

Meet Dan.

This photo was taken at the Buena Vista in San Francisco, where we were enjoying Irish coffees at 2 PM on a Friday. He doesn’t yet know about this blog, or if he does, he hasn’t yet confessed. it’s been a long, slow process, the path to trust with him, and it’s kind of like the first time I ate scallops a year ago: I’ve been refusing THIS all my life? What was I THINKING?

Sweet Dan is a nurse, who works evening shifts, but who will still show up here at 12:30 AM, still in his scrubs. And so, I spend a delicious night to myself, quiet and peaceful after my extremely draining and difficult week, but I do so with the loveliest still sense of expectation, knowing that soon he’ll be here.

I’ve long said that if I ever started seriously dating someone, I’d yell it from the rafters, I’d celebrate the hell out of it. And it’s true. It is such a joyful thing, and something I actually tried pretty hard to avoid and sabotage and his patience and intuitiveness and kindness and goodness saw it through. No matter what happens with this, I’m doing it right, we are doing it right, for the first time in my life, and I am thankful for the feeling of being awake in my own life. I’m curiously unfamiliar with being loved. It is a foreign feeling to wake up in the middle of the night and the person next to me is smiling in his sleep. It’s a strange thing to be out in the world with someone at my side who is becoming a partner. It’s odd to be so much myself around someone, so utterly dorky without realizing it, and looking up to see him clutching himself because he’s laughing so hard at my dorkiness. Someone who so easily says, even though we haven’t yet reached the point of professing future huge feelings, “that’s what I love about you”. (Usually in reference to my extreme ridiculousness.)

So, from the rafters, I holler: I’VE FOUND IT, IT’S WONDERFUL, AND I WANT IT TO BE LIKE THIS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. With him, or no, no matter: this is HOW I want to do it for the rest of my life.

suckage

Posted February 8th, 2006 by Michelle

Never in my life have I wept over a home. We moved what seemed like a hundred times, although it was more like twenty, but I never wept over a house, and I rarely even wept over a friend.

But tonight, I weep. I weep like a little girl whose dad never came to pick her up, not for twenty years. I’m an utter fucking mess because the little cottage I’ve called home for almost two years must be vacated in thirty days. The details don’t matter; what matters is that my little home, these tiny five rooms, my tomato garden, my swing, my tiny slice of peace in this world is being ripped from me and I feel like I’m losing my best friend. Or that I’m in the middle of a long, rolling earthquake during which everything that is stable is going to shudder and fall apart.

I’m reacting so strongly for a number of reasons- this may be have been one of the most difficult days of my entire professional career- but also, it’s just awful, this feeling that I’ll have to leave the first place that EVER felt like home. And it certainly doesn’t help that I’m on my third glass of wine and I’m reasonably sure that the bottle is destined for recycling within the hour. I’m at an utter loss. I don’t want to leave my home. I don’t want to leave my writing nook, my swing in the sunshine, the earth I tended so carefully to make it bear such beautiful fruit last summer, the porch where Fezzik has made his napping home, hell, I don’t even want to leave all the spiders and the absolute lack of storage space. I don’t want to leave my home, but I have to, within 30 days.

I guess I should be thankful for the almost two years that I got to pay next to nothing for a beautiful little place that helped nurse me back to health. And I’m the one that keeps insisting that every firmly closed door leads to one swinging wide open. But this sucks ass.

In the interest of full disclosure

Posted January 30th, 2006 by Michelle

I’ve chronicled many an unpleasant illness and ill events in my life on this blog, and so it is time- yes, it’s time- to talk about my current raging UTI. Nope, not the Universal Trade Institute, not the UTI Bank, I’m talking the whopper of all whoppers: the unmistakable, undeniable Urinary Tract Infection. Know what that really is, folks? It’s when you get E. coli, or some other awful bacteria, in your female innards. It can happen to men, too, and when it does, it’s really REALLY bad, as opposed to just really bad.

So I could talk about the causes, the history, the statistics, but instead, I’m going to talk about the pain. There’s the constant pain- the awful, sharp, cramp-like pain that makes you want to double over, but then also the rushing, frightening pain whenever you visit the loo. It’s dreadful. I’ve really tried to keep my head above water all day, and indeed, I just came from a two-hour meeting that I had to facilitate regarding coaching foster youth (so YEAH, it was kinda important), but now that I’m home, I think, really, that I’m going to go curl up in bed and cry for a while. I really think that would help. Because none of the pain medications are working, and I don’t see my doctor until mid-morning, and I don’t expect to accomplish much in the meantime.

I’m really not so much of a wuss when it comes to pain. I live in a constant state of mild soreness from working out all the time (and trying to work off the fifteen pounds of wine and cheese I gained when I moved to Napa). Indeed- even when I impaled the meaty part of my thumb with a fork tine while trying to wrestle cookie dough from a cold baggie, I didn’t even flinch. (This is a true story, and it happened this weekend. The fork when through the cookie dough, through the bag, and one tine stuck straight into my palm. Fascinated, I withdrew it, watched the blood pool, and then got back to eating the cookie dough.) But this is a scary pain, one that makes me feel very alone. I know help is around the corner, just a antibiotic prescription away, but there are parts of you that just shouldn’t hurt, not like this.

58 days until LASIK.

eggs and thanks

Posted January 29th, 2006 by Michelle

It’s almost 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, and it’s not yet thinking about getting dark- which gives me so much hope. I am not someone who should be out of the sun, and during the winter months when the world shuts down before 5 PM I have a hard time keeping my spirits up. But today, the winter flowers are blooming, the mustard has gone nuts all over the valley, and the sun has not yet decided to abandon us for the day.

This past week was stranger than even the weeks before it, and I find myself questioning every major decision I’ve made of late. Suddenly I don’t know what I want to do, where I want to go. I know that less than six months from now, things will be different, but I don’t know what brand of different, although, damn it, every time I close a door, I swear another one opens, and maybe that will continue.

Yesterday, my Friend Dan and I spent the day wandering the valley and then for dinner, we made cookies and deviled eggs. It was a superb dinner, one I recommend to anyone, but I mention it only because I was finally able to use a gift sent to me some months ago:

That’s right, a Tupperware tiered deviled egg holder. It is hilarious. It was sent to me by Jordana’s parents because they noticed how I tend to power down deviled eggs at family events. I should be so lucky to marry into a family a tenth as cool as Jordana’s. Anyway, I know I look insane in this picture, but it is a testament to my thanks for such a delightful, thoughtful, inspired, and random gift, sent for no reason other than the opportunity to give.

my cornea is plenty thick

Posted January 26th, 2006 by Michelle

I have a dear friend who got LASIK surgery five years ago, and she is a little outraged at the number of tests my doctors are running on me. Not because she feels like they are wasting my time, but because she feels slighted. “I walked in, they did a test or two, said OK, then sliced my eyeballs open. WTF?”

Mr. Mildly Handsome was replaced by Super Nice Peruvian Doctor. If not for Mr. Super Nice, I don’t know if I could go through with all of it. He’s the director of the eye care center, and he was gracious, and funny, and honest. He did roughly a billion more tests on my eyes, and then pulled me around so I could see the results on his computer screen. I got to see 3-D diagrams of what exactly is wrong with my eyes- the bowing out of my nearsightedness, the anomalies of my astigmatism- it was SO COOL. And it turns out that the thickness of my cornea is on the high side of normal, which is really good.

They do not yet know if I am a candidate for custom LASIK, because results from two different tests weren’t exactly the same, and apparently that means something that I don’t understand. But I am a perfect candidate for regular LASIK, and they’ll be able to tell the day of the surgery which one would be best for me.

Mr. Super Nice answered every one of my questions, but he also made it abundantly clear that the success of the surgery depends on little more than my expectations. I could end up with 20/40 vision. I could end up needing nighttime driving glasses. I could end up needing a second surgery if they heal in the wrong way. (I could also end up blind or losing an eye or two, although that is extremely rare.) Or, I could end up with better than 20/20 vision and not need to wear any sort of corrective anything until I’m in my forties and need reading glasses. (I’m totally okay with that.) There are all sorts of rare and terrifying possible complications, but I don’t want to write about them.

And the surgery itself lasts all of a few seconds- under a minute for each eye. For two or three weeks prior, I’ll be taking supplements, and massaging my eyes (because apparently my tear ducts are a little blocked- not that you’d know that if you spent any time around me), and of course the contacts come out again. And then after the surgery, I keep my eyes shut for the day (and wear funny-looking goggles) and then I wear those goggles to sleep in for a week and for a month, I can’t swim, can’t play contact sports, can’t do anything that might poke my eyeballs. Because although they seal immediately once they replace the top flap, it takes time for that seal to be permanent… and if my eyeballs get poked during that time, I could get an infection, and that would be VERY VERY VERY bad.

Anyway, this is all the roundabout way to say the surgery is scheduled. March 29th. Plenty of time to chicken out, unfortunately, but the doctor that Mr. Super Nice thinks is the perfect one for me is booked until then. The total cost? Just under $4000. Would have been $5000 but I’m joining an alumni association that gives patients 20% off all surgeries.

I’m scared and excited. And funnily enough, now I hate my contacts. My glasses are off, and put away, but now that I’m wearing these little plastic discs in my eyes again I’m miserable. They itch and they feel all suffocaty and stuff gets on them.

Anyway, two weeks before the surgery, I go back in for the same round of tests I had this last time, to make current maps for the surgeon. So until March, no more eyeball updates… other than just chronicling my fears.