An Unhoped-for Return to Form

Or: Our Heroine Regards Her Intestines Once More.

As you might have guessed from the titles, I am in a bit rough shape at the moment. The ol' IBS has resurrected itself from the bowels of, well, my bowels, and let me tell you, I hadn't realised how much I hadn't missed it until it came back.

I think now that it started while I was in Barcelona: right when I got back I had some digestive unpleasantness for several days, and I had thought it was food poisoning. It cleared up eventually, but then a few weeks ago I overindulged slightly on awesome cocktails at Drink and ended up very sick indeed; then a few days later I was sick again after a totally reasonable amount of wine; and then this past Sunday night I was sick AGAIN after feeling off all weekend and avoiding alcohol altogether... and now I'm finally connecting the dots. The painful, bloated, vomit-covered dots.

I had a bit of a cry last night at my mom because I was - and am - scared that this will be as bad as and last as long as the first time. The first time that lasted months and months, and was painful and embarrassing and limiting, and meant that I didn't feel comfortable leaving the house for any period of time in case Something Happened. I can't bear the thought of my already limited social life suddenly crashing down that much more.

But after a lovely Halloween with my family, Caitlin's family, and Colleen and her awesome dog Simon, followed by a good night's rest, I woke up this morning feeling heaps better about everything. I know what's wrong with me; I know it's not going to do me lasting damage; I know how to deal with it. It might take a few weeks or even longer to settle down fully, but that's okay. I'll drink lots of peppermint tea, and avoid anything carbonated or alcoholic. I'll eat very carefully and in small amounts. I'll restrict myself to soup and chicken and pureed fruit, all with minimal preservatives. I'll be on the three-bite rule: whenever I feel I can, I'll eat three bites of something I know is safe. I'm aiming for once an hour so long as I feel well, and today it seems to be working: so far I've had two 3-bites of a bread roll and three 3-bites of applesauce, and while it's not what you'd call satisfying, I also don't have much of an appetite so it's okay. In fact, that becomes one of the hardest things to deal with: when I feel like this, I don't want to eat and I'm often afraid to eat, and not eating anything only makes it worse - and then when I do feel well, I eat too much and it makes it worse all over again. But three bites? I can usually manage three bites, even when I don't feel great; and I know that I shouldn't have more than that right now, so I won't overdo it.

So that's that, for now. It's an overshare, and I wish it were better news, but... well, it feels good to talk about it and have my plan written down, so you're all helping me with that. :)


XOXO

Another two fucking months?!

I clearly don't understand how time works. That's the only excuse I can come up with.

Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes! Spain was awesome, and I would recommend Barcelona as a birthday destination to anyone. The weather was spectacular, the food defies description, and the architecture would break your heart. I'm planning a return trip very soon.

I also had a pre- and post-birthday presents in the forms of Paul's visit at the start of September and Rob and Irena's visit at the end. My friends are besotted with my Australian guests, and I strongly encourage you all to keep coming and besotting them.

Apart from all of the excitement, things here are going... well, they're going. I'm still really struggling to find my niche. It's bloody hard trying to settle into a new life at this age and by myself. I actually think it would have been easier if I'd gone somewhere entirely new, because it's really easy to be complacent here when I know the city so well. It wouldn't have been at all feasible, of course - I needed the material support that people in Boston could offer me - but it's deceptively hard because I feel like it should have been easier to settle back into somewhere I know, when in fact I've lived my entire adult life elsewhere and I don't have the slightest idea how anything works, but I also don't have any obvious markers of foreign-ness so people expect me to get it. It's... I don't know. It's not easy.

On the other hand, though, I'm really trying not to dwell too much on this stuff. It's hard, as I have a dwelling-oriented brain and not nearly enough to occupy/distract it at the moment, but I'm trying to do some power-of-positive-thinking things. Like, I've decided to allow myself to spend up to $15/week on nice, (usually) tropical flowers for the house. They make me happy, and happy is worth $15. And I'm trying to find something beautiful in every situation - like, actively looking for it. Right now I'm at my desk at work, so there's not much immediately in front of me (except a bottle of mannequin lubricant, which is... I mean, I have the *most* ridiculous job), but I'm able to find something in most places, and that seems to help. I at least feel like I'm trying, so that's good.

Things with The Lawyer are officially off again. It's... guys, it's rough, I'm not going to lie. Paul met her, and Rob and Irena met both her and The Chef; the verdict is that she's great (true), and The Chef is great (true), and... and I need to meet someone who is neither of them, because both situations are fundamentally busted (entirely, completely, 100% true).

I think a big part of this is that I need to meet new people full stop - I need to broaden my friend base - but it is bloody hard to do that at this age and in this situation. I've met a couple of people I like at work, but no one I want to pursue as an Outside Friend; and I love my belly dancing crew but most of them live outside of Boston (well outside) and aren't really viable options. If I were the sort of person who liked playing sports or going to bars to socialise with people I don't know? I'd be golden. However, I am neither of those people and I like neither of those things - in fact, both send waves of panic through me. So... seriously, what else? Please, suggestions. I need to find a way in.


XOXO

A short play about the nature of modern relationships, and some other things

My boss, noticing that I'm about to change clothes before leaving work: Oh, do you have a date tonight?

Me: No... no.

My boss: So... what, then?

Me: I'm making dinner for The Lawyer.

My boss: Oh no. You're not back with her again, are you?

Me: No. She has a girlfriend now.

My boss: But... wait, what? I'm confused!

Me: Yeah, that makes six of us.

My boss: Six? Who's six? You, your girlfriend, her, her girlfriend....

Me: ...My flatmate, and you.

My boss: Wow. [beat] So, that's how you guys roll, huh?

Me: Apparently.

My boss: Well, bring me some leftovers if there are any.

*****

So yes, apparently that is how we roll. I don't know what else to say. I have bruises. These Things Are Not Easy.

Filed under 'Other Things Involving My Boss', I'm happy to say that the potentially nasty situation at work got ironed out without a problem on Monday. It turned out that there was so much confusion around what I was and was not allowed to do that not only did my boss and I not get in trouble for it, but she was actually able to make a case for bumping me up a pay grade and changing me to a salaried (rather than hourly-rate) position in the next budget. I wasn't in the room when she attempted this, but I wish to god I had been because that is some kind of spectacular maneuver. She is exceptional.

And I'm happy to say that apart from a small amount of lingering jet lag, I'm feeling pretty good about things. I was an anxiety-ridden disaster until Monday arvo, but once the work stuff got sorted out I found that I was... fine. Really, fine. I had expected my return to Boston to be much more tumultuous, especially given how great a visit I'd had, but instead I feel pretty resolved and calm about things. I don't know that this will last - I remember that early on after my move last year I felt way more settled than I'd expected, before crashing hard a few months later - but for now I'm trying to enjoy it.

It also helps that I've returned to a much warmer and more welcoming city than I left a month ago. The snow's all gone, we turned the clocks forward on Sunday so it's light well into the evening, and the weather's substantially better - it's not warm by any stretch, but it's warm enough that I can leave the house in only a warm jacket over a long-sleeved shirt and a singlet, rather than needing a long wool coat, a jumper, a hat, a scarf, and gloves as well. To me, that counts as progress.

All in all, things are... yes.

Another Open Letter to The Lawyer

So you finally 'fessed up: she's now your girlfriend. I'm not sure when this happened, though I strongly suspect a bit of overlap between when the two of you agreed to that and the last time (or two or three) you left bite marks on my shoulder; but I asked and I'm glad I did, even though I pretty much knew the answer.

And I think it's the right decision for you. I don't know that I'm convinced she's right for you, but you have a ton of history with her and if nothing else you need to work out if it's going to work out or not. More than that, you need to be willing to let someone in. It's been too long. And while she's not necessarily your forever-and-ever, I don't think she's going to do you damage, and for now that may be enough.

It's the right thing for me too. I need clear lines and our whole (small-'r') relationship has been blurred edges. That was never going to change without the influence of some external force - hell, it was barely 48 hours from our 'break-up' to the next time we slept together - and now that force is here, and a not-so-small piece of me is relieved. Also, the less you're in the picture, the more open I am to a certain lovely Chef who treats me like gold and really seems to care about me. She doesn't bait me, she doesn't make fun of the weird way I talk, she doesn't get annoyed with my bouts of homesickness. She calls me a foreigner because she's dated one of those before and the way I feel about Australia reminds her of that. I like that she understands that about me. She says nice things to me and does nice things for me. She likes me the way I am.

But I'll miss you. Not that we won't be friends now - obviously we will. We are. But it will be different. I'll miss the will-we/won't-we charge in the air. I'll miss the way you'd stand just a bit too close to me. I'll miss both of us tasting mint chocolate-chip when we kiss, even though we had eaten nothing remotely sweet or minty. I'll miss spending hours in bed with you doing crosswords and cuddling your dog whom I love so much it hurts. I'll miss the weird chemical spell we seem to cast on the world. And fuck, I'll miss the biting. That's going to be the hardest to avoid: no one does it like you do, and no one lets you do it like I do. We know that's the point of mutual weakness. Oh temptation.

So don't get close enough to me to smell my hair or my perfume; don't wear that shirt I helped you pick out just before Christmas (and if you do, don't tell me you wore it for me); stay far away from me when I'm at the stove. In exchange, I'll be a good girl because trying like fuck to be the good girl is my ground state. I won't show too much skin when you're around; I'll step away if you step too close; I'll make sure at least one of us stays sober enough to have a conscience.

You've told me that you don't want to hear much about my love life, not yet; that's fine because I don't want to hear much about yours yet either. I want awesomeness for you and you want it for me, and we weren't going to have it with each other so it'll have to be with other people. That's as much as we need to know for now. We'll negotiate the tricky path until it's not tricky anymore; there will come a time when I can hang with you and yours and you can hang with me and mine, and I hope for all of our sakes that that time will come quickly but in the meantime we'll cut each other a lot of slack and wait it out.

But I'll probably cry about it a little. I know you hate it when I cry, so don't worry, I won't let you see it. But it'll probably happen. Because while the bad with you was... bad, the good with you was good like nothing I'd ever felt before, and although I figured out weeks ago that the latter wasn't worth the former I still can't help but wish, just a little bit in a tiny corner of my heart, that we could have made it work. We could have had something brilliant together if we weren't both so broken in such similar ways. But we are, and the time has come to be smarter about ourselves and kinder to each other.

I love you, fucker. Now go on, get out of here.


XOXO

Enter the Confessional #3: But I've got a really good personality!

Wow. So I'm doing really well with that 'keeping to a weekly schedule' thing, huh?

It would be easy to blame my extended fail on a long list of recent events, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. Some of them are easy to discuss in a public forum: Thanksgiving, moving house, busy time at work, lead-up to Christmas, etc. etc. etc. Others are more complicated and more personal, and have involved an intense mix of joy and pain (and sunshine and rain, sing it all god's children...) and fear and triggering and triggering and triggering. I'm dating a couple of girls, one of whom is awesome and good to me, and the other of whom I actually like - and you all know me well enough to know what that means. I'm settling into a life here that after only a handful of months is already uncomfortably rife with overlaps and I'm making decisions that aren't always good. I'm broke, of course. And I'm going to rot my teeth out with candy canes if I don't slow my roll.

Returning to the topic of moving, it's been... hard. The physical move itself wasn't too bad, but this was the first time in many years that I've packed up my room in my parents' house and not been taking it all to Sydney. I've been dreaming of home a lot lately and I know it's just my brain trying to sort through things and move on, but it's exhausting and it's starting to wear me down. I never thought I'd be living in an apartment in Boston. It's a great apartment, and I have a great new flattie named Karen, and it's in an area that I don't know so it feels new. All good. But I can't help but think back to this time last year, when my life finally felt like it was coming together again after far too long - job I liked, house I liked, friends I loved, new prospects on the horizon - and then how quickly it all got pulled out from under me, and how much I lost in the process. And that's happened too many times in the last few years, that thing of going, '...finally.' right before having my whole life go tits-up, for me to be able to even begin to believe that good things may be on the horizon. Which is all apart from the fact that I still struggle to see Boston itself as a good thing. It was the right thing, I know that, but it doesn't feel like a good thing. So there's that to contend with.

On a less fraught note, my bed is cursed. I'm not sure what the hell is behind this, but it's one damn thing after another: first, the queen-size mattress and boxspring arrived as scheduled, but the boxspring didn't fit up the stairs. They took it back and advised me to order a split queen, which I did... but no one told me I had to order two of them, because for some reason they sell the halves individually at Sears (Flattie Karen said she was going to go by there and ask for one leg of pants), and none of the three people I discussed my order with saw fit to clarify it with me. And so a week later - this past Saturday - the delivery men arrived with one half of a boxspring. And when I called Sears to give them a piece of my mind, they put me on hold for 20 minutes and then asked me to call back later because their systems were down. No, really.

At this point I decided to just get a cheaper set from the furniture place downstairs, and that arrived yesterday without incident. And having the boxspring meant that the bed was high enough off the ground for me to put my brand-new, custom-designed, hand-painted doona cover on without it dangling onto the floor. So I did, only to discover that the lovely cherry-blossom detail that was meant to have bright red flowers instead had anaemic red-pink ones, which is... not what I wanted. And kind of icky. And has prompted Flattie Karen to start calling me 'Salmon'. So now I'm trying to organize a return on a custom item, which is always a joy. I also still have a stray half-boxspring lying around my room because I'm trying to arrange the return of that to Sears, but they seem unwilling to get in touch with me about it. Oh, and my actual bed frame, which I thought was being delivered at the end of this week, won't be here until sometime next week, or possibly after due to the holidays.

[Sigh.]

I mean, all I can do at this point is laugh, but it's beyond ridiculous. The rest of the move has gone pretty smoothly, and I do have furniture (and credit card debt) thanks to the proud Scandinavian meatball merchants at Ikea, but the fact that the main feature of my room is unlikely to be sorted within the first month of my living here is starting to bug me. I will say that the mattress is amazingly comfortable, though, so I'm lucky there. And half expecting it to spontaneously combust in the night, or possibly be harboring Julian Assange without my knowledge.

In better news, the dancing's going well. It's been a busy few weeks, but now I've got two shows down and only one more to go - but the remaining one is the biggest and scariest one. I'm doing a fusion number with a dagger; it's to a song called 'Dr Sin' by Chasing Shadows (highly recommended), and my character is an assassin. It's a bit martial-artsy and a bit tribal and entirely fueled by my latent rage issues, but it seems to be going over pretty well so far, apart from how I almost took out an audience member a couple of weeks ago when my dagger slipped from my hand and went shooting out into the audience. First time I've ever dropped it, let alone flung it, and of course it happened at a show. Luckily no one was hurt, but the event has already passed into legend and my teacher is never ever going to let me live it down, not that I can blame her for that.

So that's me. For now. I won't do anything so stupid as to promise another post between now and February, but I'll see what I can do.

XOXO

File under 'things that shouldn't be this complicated but have decided to be anyway'

I've finally broken down and signed up to a two-year mobile contract. I had been on a pre-paid thing with Virgin, who are very much a third-party carrier here (Caitlin: 'Ohhh, you're the one.'), but the phone was dodgy as fuck and the service was spotty, so when I learned that my work has a deal with Verizon, a major carrier, that meant that I could get a two-year contract and a great phone for only $15 more a month than what I'd been paying with Virgin AND keep my phone number, I was in.

Oh, silly girl. As if it could be that easy.

Something's gone wrong somewhere along the way that means that my new phone is screening my texts and phone calls without my consent. Not consistently, mind: I'll get one text from someone and then not hear from them again for 24 hours, in which time I have of course decided that I have mortally offended them and they now hate me, but I don't want to get in touch because I don't want to be pushy. And then my brain goes in circles for the next several hours until it explodes into a million fleshy pieces and I'm weeping into a bag of Nutter Butters. (Bad enough when it's real people; you should see what happens when Wil Anderson's Twitter feed mysteriously disappears.)

Why yes, I *am* looking for a therapist! Funny you should ask.

[sigh] Yes, I really am. Things have been increasingly rough the last few weeks. I think what's happened is that now that I don't have the worry of job-searching, everything else has come banging to the front of my head. And not to sound self-pitying, but there's a fair bit of everything else to process. I'd suspected that I was dealing a bit too well with the move, and that there might be a crash coming eventually; the small mercy here is that the crash waited until my health insurance kicked in and I could afford to see someone. So now I'm in the process of trying to find that someone, which is a bit tricky because the only recommendations I've been able to get so far have been for people who don't accept my health insurance. But I found a few on my own who look promising, so cross fingers one of them will work out.

In other news, I have just re-read all of Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree series (collections of his book reviews for The Believer, McSweeney Press' monthly magazine), which has inspired me to start doing my own monthly book reviews. I like his format, wherein he lists the books he's bought and the books he's read in that month, so I'm stealing that. Unlike him, however, I am not restrained by The Believer's policy of not permitting negative criticism, so if I read something I don't like, I will absolutely tell you about it. I expect to have the first of these up by the end of the month.

Finally, a last note on my mobile: My old Virgin phone wasn't great with international texts because my receipt (or not) of them would depend on how much random cash was floating around in my account. I've learned that some people did text me and I never got them; if at some point you did text me and didn't hear back, that's what happened. This should be different now because those texts will be added to my bill rather than debited from my account, but given the way my first three days with my new phone have gone I'm not overly confident. So I guess what I'm saying is that e-mails are still and always the best way to reach me, and also there's a bunch of you I haven't heard from in ages and I miss terribly, so if you're feeling so inclined please drop me a line, or even just a comment. I don't care if it's the most boring stuff about your day, I just like to know you're out there. xoxo

Having been through therapy once or twice (fuck off, I'm a Gen X American and as such it is my birthright), I have been led to the idea that a turning point in any break-up is when you look back at the erstwhile object of your affection and say, 'I miss you, but I don't want you back, not the way things were.' I got hit with this tonight. I've been having a teary day for no particular reason - I suspect PMS is involved, but god knows I've still got a few tears to shed over recent events, so it happens - and I was talking a bit with one of the clinicians at my temp job. After she left, I was getting back to work when the thought came to me unbidden: I don't want my life in Sydney back, not the way it was. I miss so much about it, about all of you, and when I think about those things I feel like a part of me has died. But you guys, it was so hard not knowing anything about my future. It was exhausting worrying all the time. It was breaking me down way worse even than I realised, I think. And that's the only life I could have down there, at least as things are now and would be in the foreseeable future.

To wit: fuck all that.

Don't mistake this for a miracle cure. As a lovely person I don't really know yet recently said to me, transition is not a linear process. There are good days and bad days, and the whole mess will go on for a long time. A long, long time. But it took me by such surprise, that thought, that I wanted to write it down mostly to remind myself of it later.

XOXO