i'm drifting farther away and reaching further inwards.

there is an end or at least a solution which is and has started going into effect.

i just don't know how many more minutes of hours of days of weeks i can handle all of it.

it doesn't help when i am aware of the fact that i am consistently belittled in a passively manipulative way by someone with whom i care. it also doesn't help on the days when i am flat out ignored, steamrolled, bulldozed.

i'm struggling. it hurts.

So much going on in the life of Miss Karoline presently. Sometimes it feels like I am suffocating on toxygen (toxic + oxygen = toxygen). As I continue moving forward with what I know I need to do for my own health as well as Maggie's, I keep discovering there is more and more work to be done. I'm digging through the layers of my earth, and beneath the surface there aren't just four layers, there are layers within the layers, and then the toxygen takes over and I am left breathless. I'm scared, yet excited. I'm overwhelmed, but I know I've been through worse things than this. A wise woman I know, my therapist, advised me to be a broken record to parties who refuse to listen. I think this is a smart move, yet in practice, it doesn't seem to be working; although, rationally I know it has only been less than a week, and sometimes messages aren't clear in such short timeframes. So I keep playing the broken record. Needle skipping on this one scratch. Repetition. Obnoxious in its unrelenting ways, but I know it's what I need to do to keep my sanity. Skip. Skip. Blip. Blip. Hopefully the message will register loud and clear over the next couple weeks, and I can then stop breaking records and start enjoying the music that I know is present in my future.

Wanderlust

I've been laid up with some sort of virus the past few days and haven't been able to leave the house. And while I typically don't mind being a shut-in to an extent, absolutely not being able to leave my house for fear of the sudden tossing of cookies, has made me a bit cagey and lusting for some wandering. I started feeling better last night and feel about the same today, so I'm hoping tomorrow I'll be up and ready to face the outside world.

After being shut inside all week, I decided that I really want to go on a short trip this weekend. It is a three-day weekend after all. But I wonder if I can persuade J into this...probably not, since he'll be leaving the country in about ten days. Blargh. I feel like this is the best time to do something fun and just for us since everything is going to drastically change in five short months. And my morning sickness (read: I've had the worst possible type of it you can imagine - twenty-four/seven, all day and night sickness) has abated to no more than a few times a week, so I feel now is the time for something fun. Nothing major like a flight west or anything, but maybe a roadtrip to Niagara Falls or somewhere in Canada.

We had talked about taking a trip about a month and a half ago, but ultimately decided against it because of home improvement projects and landscaping we could better spend the money on, but I've got some seriously itchy feet and I don't think my plans to visit Erie next weekend are going to quell the travelchitch. But who knows? If the weather here actually cooperates for once, maybe it will be a good productive landscaping weekend.

I need to do my posts for numbers twenty-five and twenty-six. Hopefully I will get to it tonight...

Sadly, it hasn't been paramount to me as I have just discovered the joys of television show watching online (not youtubing) and have been kept up late at night this week catching up on House and Criminal Minds. I am a slacker. Yes.

Also, I am stressed beyond belief of not having a full-time job. I do think I secured some consult/freelance business today, so maybe I'll have December's rent paid.

I really don't want to be forced to move back north. I am not ready to face that. I do not know if I will ever be ready to face that in the next year. Hell, I've already planned on Thanksgiving time down here or in Kentucky caving by myself.

Which leads me to wonder what is wrong with me. Why do I not so much want to see my family or few friends I have up north? Why do I not plan on spending holidays down here with the few friends I have made here instead? Why am I compelled to go and do some solitary activity/adventure?

Probably because I know it will balance me. Balance me in ways that I need, otherwise I am not whole. Not me.

Many people don't understand this component of my personality. Sometimes I don't even understand it, but I know it works. Most of the time. Sometimes I do want companionship and all that jazz, but all relationships, be it platonic or romantic or both, are two way streets and I often find that many people don't understand that.

I know when I lack. I know when you lack.

...ENTER TANGENTIAL RANT...
I also know when you lie to me and tell me you are my friend, when in reality, you are not. If people are really your friends, they do put forth the energy and efforts and don't throw hissy fits when things don't go their way or the way that they projected them to go and then cut you out of their lives when things don't go as planned. So to me, just because I might be off the radar for a few days, does not mean that I am not your friend or that something is up or whatever it is people think.

If you are my real friend, you understand and respect my need to get away and I will speak with you about my experience(s) when I am back inasmuch as I would you; But if you REALLY need me, I will emerge from my solitude time to help you. If you actually need me and aren't just being unsure of your placement in the friendship which goes both ways, you know? And just because I might go off the radar, is that real justification for deciding to stop being my friend? I don't think so.

I know I don't do that to people I actually care about, and you see, that has happened to me recently down here in Knoxville. Been on the receiving end of passive-aggressive, overly needy friendships where people freak out if you aren't as available to them as they think you should be. Stress on the "think you should be."

It never ceases to amaze me how utterly juvenile grown adults can be.

On the other hand, I am glad to have learned things like this in a shorter timeframe than I have in the past. This is good. From pain, I grow. From pain, I grew.

--

And here I thought I had no time to write...

Punks

While I was out adventuring along I-40W today, it was all I could do to contain my intense need to goGOgo. "Go" in the sense of flight. That whole fight or flight concept. You see, I-40W takes me to I-30W, which also takes me to I-20W, and then finally to I-10W.

What is off of I-10W? Tucson, Arizona. I miss the desert, but moreso, I miss my non-sexual soulmate - my punks. I haven't spoken or written to him in quite awhile. And I know that the next time we do talk, it will be like we never stopped talking. Gosh, it hasn't even been a month, but it feels like an eternity.

I miss the superconnection. The Level.

When we are together we don't even have to talk to know what the other is thinking. It's as though as each brain synapse (mis)fires, we read the language before it is ever verbalized or even displayed in body language.

This is the Level.

Not many friends could get through some of the crazy stuff we've been through together unscathed, but somehow we have both managed to forge ahead and emerge relatively unscathed and a stronger force to be reckoned with...I don't recommend you test us, though. You probably couldn't handle it.

I know I will never have another friend like him and I am willing to bet he won't either. Over ten years of friendship, and I cannot imagine my life without some semblance of his presence in it.

Punks, you are my heart.

Not a Legend In My Mind

This morning I had a dream that you were magically in Knoxville.

Emerging from the fog and rain, sauntering in my direction. I gave you the once over and decided you simply disgusted me with your mask of pseudo-sincerity while wearing a "muscle" shirt with the sleeves and neck cut out of the material.

I spit in your face.

It was sweet vindication.

New York.

You write to me and your language intrigues me. You write to me and I feed off of what you choose to nourish my brain with on any particular day.

This dance that we perform every time we interact. Online. Telephonically. In-person. The beauty in the what is not being said, perplexes, humors, chafes me.

New York is always on my mind.