Cleaning My Closet... My Attic, My Relationship

Saturday, April 19th 2008 at 6:00pm


Strange that as soon as I don’t have a video game I’m addicted to anymore I turn right back to my writing. Then again, I was writing very long winded suggestions in the Saga Forums.


I have cramps, though not as bad as last month. I suspect they could have been, but I did take those pills this morning, and I got some exercise today, and the heat might actually help a bit since applying heat to the stomach (as all women know) soothes cramps a great deal. I’m really too hot to apply any more heat than I already am feeling throughout my body, but they aren’t so bad.

I drove (with my mom in the passenger seat) out to Wegmans to pick up some more organic grass-fed goat-milk yogurt (sweetened with a bit of “organic cane sugar”) as well as some things I’m going to give Tina tomorrow. On the way I stopped at My boyfriend’s work place and gave him some hugs and kisses. Outside Jeremy was there playing hacky sack with Chuck and two other guys I didn’t know. (The card shop is actually attached to the tattoo shop.) I gave Jeremy a quick hug and told him he should visit me sometime this week. I didn’t hear a response to that. Since I wasn’t exactly parked legally I didn’t have time to lag.

I just now returned. The attic is at least ten degrees hotter than the rest of the house even with two window fans on exhaust, foil on the windows, the attic door closed, and another fan blowing towards a window fan. The heat from two desktop computers and two laptop computer probably doesn’t help. I hope the heat doesn’t do anything to the new alien ware laptops. Did I ever mention My boyfriend bought me a laptop? I think that’s the biggest sign of commitment a man has ever showed me before.

Odder than writing so much again, and odder than My boyfriend buying me a laptop, and perhaps odder than Tina having a baby (well, no, not that odd) is that today I saw Jeremy for the first time in months (even if for the briefest of moments) and I spoke to Tre on the phone for the first time in... a year? Yeah, must be about a year. It was shortly after my road trip that I spoke to him last, and the road trip ended in early April of 2006 so that would be about right. I explained to him about not wanting him to come here, and not wanted to meet him in a hotel, even if he is married, I don’t think My boyfriend would go for that, and personally I wouldn’t either.

I told him that I wanted to go to Delaware park. He said he didn’t want to be in public, and I suspect it’s because he doesn’t want old drug customers to see him, but I explained to him about Delaware park’s location, and how it has more private and more public areas to it, and that it’s very large. He sounds just like I remember him, and doesn’t seem to have changed at all really. In a way I’m glad he hasn’t changed, it just goes to prove how right I was not to stay with him (even not counting the fact that I’d rather have My boyfriend over any man I’ve dated, or even met) but in another aspect it’s kinda sad. But what can one really say from a short phone conversation anyway? I’m glad he’s married though, that means he won’t even try anything, and I know I certainly won’t.

It seems like an innocent thing to see him, so why do I feel so nervous about it? They say go with your gut, but my gut has cramps right now, so I can’t really trust it’s inclinations. Well, surely over the next week I’ll have more time to think, to de-cramp and to write some more.

Right now I think I will lay down and read. This is proving to not be enough distraction from my cramps.


10:30pm


Jeremy and Chuck stopped by today. We talked and goofed around for an hour or so, and then they left on their way about an hour ago now. I just wrapped Tina’s presents for tomorrow. I can’t wait until My boyfriend get’s home tonight.


Sunday, April 20th 2008 at 8:13pm


Happy 4:20! I think this is the second April 20th I’m not smoking for. Yeah, go me! My boyfriend celebrated over a blunt with some random people while I went to Tina’s baby shower earlier today. I gave her infant diapers, rice crisps, organic fruit bars, and baby wipes. My mom got her two baby outfits, hair spray and a baby bath with toys. It wasn’t an exciting affair, but it was enjoyable enough. There was fruit to eat and not just junk food, though the only beverages were Soda which I of course did not drink.

Other than that My boyfriend and I have spent the day playing Final Fantasy XI. His white mage is only one level higher than my red mage so we’ve been able to party together, though we were not getting far because of the poor exp from killing the weakest creatures in Kazam. We left our party to go cook apple, sausage and yams together, but as it turns out my Mom already put a container in shortly before we came down. Since we couldn’t just log back into the party I figured I’d work on my game design.

I had severe cramps yesterday, glad they are pretty much gone today. I actually vomited yesterday which is a period-symptom first for me. Though I ate a lot of yogurt (completely organic of course from a grass-fed cow) yesterday which is undoubtedly related.


Wednesday, April 23rd 2008 at 4:37pm


I’m exceedingly worried about my relationship with My boyfriend. I want to say that there is nothing “wrong” with it, that there is nothing to “fix” because nothing is “broken” but clearly there is. I feel the patterns creeping in from the past. I feel my emotions in constant deja vu. I told him last night that I felt that we weren’t going to make it through the summer at this rate. He lied to me. That’s really depresses me. I’m not even angry about it. I’m just exceedingly sad.

In this very strange way I sometimes think that I want it to be over, but then I realize it’s just because I’m afraid that it’s work. I’m always scared of something being work. (Aren’t we all?) Every time I get that inkling in my gut like I just want us to go our separate ways I think realize how much more empty it would feel to be alone, and that’s when the deja vu hits me. I recall having those thoughts about Tre, and then I recall how happy I was to be separated from him. That’s when the analytical and logical self kicks in and starts saying things like “But My boyfriend is a more mature, practical, loving and wonderful person. And Tre was selfish, manipulating, immature and dangerous.” And I listen to logical and analytical self, and I push the feels aside. But the little voice asks, “Then why do I feel this way?”

Is this the same feeling I felt as a precursor to leaving Tre? It’s hard to remember. I’m talking about exactly two years ago, and a completely different mind set than the one I have today. So logical and analytical self doubts that I could feel the same way. I prefer comparing this relationship to my first love... Except that I’m playing Jeremy’s role, and My boyfriend is playing mine. Of course none of that is right, because I’m me, and My boyfriend is him, and now is not then. But logical and analytical self can never stop comparing and contemplating and computing, can she?

I find myself jealous about everything now. I find myself going from apathy to annoyed more and more often, and less and less do I suddenly become happy, and it’s so short-lived. I ask myself if I can break the two year barrier. Perhaps that’s why I insist our wedding date be in April of 2009, because after all, if we’ve made it to two years and four and a half months then surely we can make it for the rest of our lives, right? Perhaps just because it’s uncharted territory it seems like if I can make it there I can do anything.

I find myself having thoughts like “if I just can make it through the summer” a lot. What happens in summer that I’m so afraid of? Bugs? Heat? No, I’m afraid of being social, especially of My boyfriend being social. The more dissatisfied I become the more he will pull away, and the more he pulls away the more he’ll notice all the attention from girls he’s getting. The hotter is gets the shorted our fuses will become. Relationships start up in summer and then fall out the next summer. Why? Because the first summer you’re on the hunt, and then you find them, and then you’re blissful in love, enjoying parks, and walks, and talks and sex. The next summer you’re bored with each other and looking at everyone else wearing the summer clothes at parks, in stores, on walks and you talk to them, and perhaps if you’re the cheating type you have sex with them.

That’s why summer scares me. Summer to me spells hanging out, drugs, sex, staying out late, and laying around because the heat is killing you. Summer is sticky with sun block and sweat. Summer is painful with the sun in your eyes and the stones in your heart. Summer is crushing with all the rush to do things, and all the broken hearts. Summer is crazy with people falling for new people, people lusting after new people, with concerts, parties and weed circles growing, growing, growing and staying out later and later and later.

I had hoped to “tame” My boyfriend with “husband boot camp” before summer. It seems like just last week it was snowing, and now it’s already summer. (I must have missed Spring entirely. If this is spring, then I dread summer even more...) It’s hot, and the flowers are blooming, and I’m seeing more bugs crawling around the room daily. And I feel like the cold is slipping through my fingers with My boyfriend in toe.

Why do I feel this way? He’s upset about what I said last night. He wants to be with me. He’s not considering leaving me. He wants to marry me. He wants to support me. He wants to let me live the type of life I want to live. We both enjoy art, anime, sex, and video games. So why do I feel like something is wrong? I feel like this is the calm before the storm. I feel like I’m anticipating the ground opening up beneath my feet.

The odd part is that I felt the same way four days ago but I couldn’t stop crying and crying and crying about it. Now I feel so ambivalent and near apathetic that I’m more worried. I don’t feel worried, I’m just thinking like a worried person. If that makes any sense. I feel... Timid. I feel very timid and small and insignificant and unimportant.

I think I’m feeling failure. I have not made him completely give up drinking. I have not proved to be more fun than his friends. I have not made him understand that I don’t lie to him or ever make fun of him. I have not made him trust me. I have not made him compromise with me and stick to it. I have not found a system that works. I’m still a shitty girlfriend. Somehow, despite all that logic and analysis implies, I just suck. I feel the suckage.

Oddly I don’t feel ugly, I just feel stupid. I feel like I’m missing the key to my life. I’m standing in a room the size of a closet, and there is a trap door beneath me, but I’m not strong enough to pull myself up off of it with my arms on the walls so that I can open it. And I just know that under the floor I will find the answer... When I’m strong enough to lift my own weight with no firm holds. When I can just push against the walls and seems to levitate... But that will never happen.

Instead I’ll need a pick axe and a ladder. The pick axe to open the floor, and a ladder to climb back out when I have the answer. I’ll probably just find that the entire world is under my floor and that I’d just been in a small closet my whole life... For some reason I feel like that statement should have been funny, but I’m still staring blankly at the screen.

I can’t say I’m depressed. Just nervous. Jittery. Scared of something unseen. If I go on feeling this way I’m likely to start seeing things again. I want a psychiatrist, but somehow I don’t think I could find one that could really help. They probably prescribe me a walk everyday, to make friends, and to take yoga. I can prescribe myself to do that if I wanted. So why don’t I?


Thursday, April 24th 2008 at 12:13pm


Last night something happened that makes me have to question... Things. It’s so odd that I don’t even know how to justify it. My boyfriend got home from work at 11:05pm yesterday, which proves that it only takes five minutes for him to bike home from work. (Which I knew.) And that his nonsense about taking another fifteen minutes to bike home is to stall and smoke a blunt with his co-workers. (Tuesday he didn’t get home until 12:20am, which was a direct violation of the compromise we made three days previously, which was so generous that I couldn’t believe he had already violated it. I’m offering both Fridays and Saturdays with his friends on two conditions, no drinking and staying with me the rest of his time off of work. I’m flabbergasted that he violated it so soon. Not just by not coming home after work, but by drinking and then trying to lie about it!)

Anyway, after he got home he felt like drawing. I told him I wanted to cuddle for a few minutes first. He undressed and crawled onto the bed with me. He’s been like a lump lately, so cuddling consists on him laying near me and me touching him. This is dissatisfying to say the least. Worrying is another term that describes it. But the way his distance makes me feel is impossible to ignore. It’s causing a nervousness in my very center. It’s like my spirit is shaking, because my body refuses to.

After several minutes of trying to get him to show me some love I gave up and we went on to drawing. Drawing... (as he calls me – and we have the best phone conversation we’ve had in days – one that leaves me cheerful instead of sad.) When him and I are both drawing next to each other I get this immense sense of pride and belonging. I feel so completed, so honored, so lucky. It’s not that he’s being cold to me, just aloof. I was able to suck in a lot of that affection that I crave, (need, want, lust for and need at all costs) just by drawing beside him. Especially because he acknowledged my current artwork for it’s amazing qualities. I’m truly amazed at myself.

I’ve learned to put depth into the eyes of my characters, how to put expressions on their faces, how to use positions to evoke a feeling, how to complement their bodies with appropriate clothing, how to shade metal to make it look metallic, how to shade fur to make it look fuzzy and touchable, how to shade cloth to make it have weight, how to make up muscles and bone structures on mythical creatures, how to shade in perspective so you can tell what is closest to you, how to fill an entire sheet of paper, how to put in highlights where the belong, how to draw a woman’s profile... And it’s all because of him. I probably would have gave up art altogether if I had not met him.

When he tires of drawing he pulls out his journal (which reminds me that I need to see what he wrote) and he writes for around ten minutes, scratching away... He obviously knew exactly what he needed to get off his chest when he got his journal because he barely paused at all the entire time he was writing. Then he pulled out his book and read for a bit. I felt close, even though he was distinctly distant... Not sure how that works, but I could feel his love through his mask of melancholy.

Then we agreed on playing Final Fantasy XI together, and since he knew he was a long run from where I was (and we wanted to party together) I told him I’d cook for us while he ran to where I was. I don’t like cooking alone without his company, but last night that didn’t really seem to bother me. I cooked myself one sunny-side up egg with a slice of toast while cooking him three eggs with chopped peppers, bacon bits, two slices of cheese and a myriad of seasonings.

When I returned he was sitting at my computer. And oddly a folder named “Tre” was up, and I was confused at first because I couldn’t figure out what folder it was. He said to me “I was just looking at it because it was up” which then really confused me. How does a folder called “Tre” with four files in it (his journal entries copied from his diaryland journal written in 2005, and saved to my computer in January of 2007) just get opened? I was bewildered and told him I didn’t open it.

He didn’t argue with me and call me a liar, but I know he must have been thinking it. I can’t imagine that either of us (as computer illiterate as we are) would accidently open such a folder. Odder still it was open from the “my computer” application, not “windows explorer” which is what I use. So the only logical conclusion is that he was snooping my files and lied about opening it. But why would he do that? I’m more apt to think that I somehow accidently opened it while using Word Perfect... I mean, if he was snooping my files I really wouldn’t care, I have nothing to hide.

But if it really was up when he sat down here, and he didn’t open it, then he’s going to wonder why I would lie about opening it. I feel like somehow some silly mis-click is going to backpedal all my work at proving that I would never lie to him.

Did I mention we made love before that? We made excellent love last night. My period came on Saturday or Sunday, I forget which, and not that I mind the blood at all, but some odd reason sex on my period is painful and scratchy. I wonder if the blood drying against the friction causing the pain? But that can’t be it because it still feels that way a day after the blood is gone...

Anyway, it was right at the cusp of a new menstrual month, the bleeding gone light, and I was going to wait until tomorrow, but oddly I was overcome all yesterday. I masturbated twice in one day which I never do. I mean, perhaps once in six months. And odder still, I was still aroused when he got home. I suspect it was a combination of a few things. For one thing, I forget that I have not lost my sex drive entirely, it’s just that it seems nonexistent next to My boyfriend’s ongoing desire that only takes a break for about half an hour after sex. Half an hour later he has a boner again, and really would prefer us to make love again.

In light of that, I realize that whenever we don’t have sex for four days, I’m ready to go, which means next to his preferable three times a day, mine is once every four days. And compromising down to once a day is our usual, but it leaves him less than satisfied, and it leaves me more leery towards sex because I don’t enjoy it as much... It’s hard to want sex when you feel like you just had it, like you’re already full from the last time.

Last night though, I was on fire in a way I have not been in a long time. I was kinky in a way I haven’t been in a long time. Was I craving him all the more because of his recent rejection of me? Can I call it rejection to refuse to caress me?

This brings me back to my mental illness. That’s how I think of it now. It’s a mental illness the way I crave to be touched. My entire childhood I rejected hugs, I rejected touching, and then around thirteen I became a touch-aholic. What happened? I was so depressed, so hateful towards myself until I feel in love with Jeremy, until I had someone to touch me, but it was never enough... They always get sick of me, every one of them. And they always say the same thing “I like to be touched now and then, but you always want to be up under me. Maybe I don’t want to be up under you all the time!” Jeremy said it, Tre said it, and recently even beloved My boyfriend said it. And now it’s really pissing me off. My boyfriend, Mr. Different, Mr. Right, Mr. Perfect-for-Me, is falling out in one of the things I fell in love with him for in the first place.

Finally! Finally I had found a man who never grew tired of me touching him, who never grew tired of touching me! I was saved, my illness was being treated, and I became so blissful and so happy. Little did I know it was just that normal “I just met you, so I’m crazy about you, so I need, need, need to touch you right now, and now, and now, but in a few months I’ll stop” that happens to seemingly everyone in the beginning of a relationship.

To hear those words out of his mouth was like a slap to the face. I raged at myself “You stupid idiot! How could you believe that he really was like you! Atara, you’re a really stupid bitch aren’t you? You fell in love with another man who will never feel like you do, who will never understand, never care...” I think the pit of my nervousness is how he doesn’t want to touch me. I feel sick.


Thursday, April 24th 2008 at 2:12pm


Nothing like some hard work and music to make you feel better. The office is coming along quite well if I don’t say so myself. As some of you may not know, when I was fourteen we had a house fire (due to an inhabitant of the attic who was an attractive lady of thirty who thought she was another fourteen-year-old, perhaps my twin sister in her eyes, but in mine... Well, let’s skip what I thought of her) that burned off half the attic. The part that burned wasn’t much of a loss to my family, just to the rambunctious inhabitant of the attic. She lost everything she owned, as well as all the things she “borrowed” from me and my family. The 8-balls, my favorite scarf, several pairs of my jeans, and so on. The real damage was from the smoke and water. What the fire didn’t do to the rest of the house, the water (from the firemen’s truck) did. The smoke got the rest of the attic in a thick coating of black soot, and the floors and walls on the second floor were completely ruined from water damage. The living room towards the front of the house, and my parents bed room, also at the front of the house were the only things virtually undamaged.

The dining room floor and walls, the father’s office’s floor and walls, and the hallway’s floor on the second story of the house all needed to be torn out, and rebuilt. And my crafty parents did this themselves instead of hiring a contractor to do it with the money allowed from the bank. Most of this money, unfortunately was spent on paying various cousins and friends ten dollars an hour to sit around and smoke cigarettes, eat our food and do a half-ass job of everything they were supposed to do. (Come to think of it, they did redo the walls in my parent’s bedroom, I remember Roy – my half brother – coming down to Buffalo to do it.)

The first floor of the house, the dining room that is, was the first thing to be done, which became my cousins bedroom while he worked. My cousin Trevor used to be a serious druggie at the time, but he seems to be doing better, no he’s engaged to some woman with a young girl in Texas, and currently my brother Roy is staying with him, now that he’s separated from his third wife, luckily he has no kids with this one. (Incidently he had to leave because of her kids disrespecting him, and her not stopping them.) Then the second floor was done, and the location of the laundry was switched with the location of the bathroom, and the laundry (the previous bathroom) is no longer really a room, but rather an open area conjoined to the upstairs hallway and front stairwell.

At about that point we moved back in from the temporary apartment we lived in for nine months. My parents moved back in a week before I did, and during that week I met Tre, and we enjoying living in “our” own apartment for a week. I felt like an adult then, I remember. When I moved back in I didn’t move back into my own room, and I’m not sure why. I don’t really remember the details of it, looking back on it, it doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.

I moved into a room adjacent to the dining room on the first floor, and made aspirations of moving into the attic, which was one thing that was not done at all. I aspired to more space, and more separation from my parents. My old bedroom was adjacent to my parent’s bedroom, the next door down the hall from them. Perhaps it was the lack of a door on my old bedroom? I doubt it though, probably was still under construction, but I really don’t remember.

It took another six months to move into the attic, and at that time I merely was able to throw a knee wall up (with some help from my mom) and lay some floor tiles (with some help from my dad) and throw some drywall up (with barely any help at all) and plaster (with a lot of help from my mom) and paint (with hardly any help at all) and to finally move my things up there (by myself of course) and pretend that I had more room. Of course I didn’t, and at the end of the floor tiles was boxes of who knows what, tools, materials, and all sorts of junk.

Slowly I’ve crept half way through the attic, the part with the higher ceiling. I have a makeshift bathroom that only gets hot water (which means it’s icy cold until the hot water arrives and then it’s steaming hot) because my Mom hasn’t had the time or energy to string another pipe for cold water to come up here as well. There is a tub sitting next to my toilet, but it’s not functional in the least, and it’s full of my cleaning supplies and other tools. Over the couple years I’ve lived up here two sets of shelves have been put up, and everywhere but the bathroom has floor tiles, and I’ve attained a large amount of plastic sorting drawers, two tall ones for my clothes, several half the height filled with gift-wrapping supplies, cleaning supplies, my stone collection, more clothes, sewing supplies, scrap-booking supplies, markers, tape, pencils, pens, scrap paper, sketches, printer paper and so on and so on and so on.

My room is organized, it’s livable, it even has a tiny office. The office consists of my desk (bought at a second-had store for forty to one-hundred dollars, I don’t remember how much, but it was a steal) which is designed for the times before computers, so it’s small and simple, and My boyfriend’s desk, which isn’t a desk at all but rather it’s made up of two of my mom’s old identical coffee tables sitting next to each other. You can’t get your legs under it, which is the real problem with it. This allows My boyfriend and I to be close while we’re at our computers, but it’s a rather pathetic and annoying set up.

But there is still one part of the house that has never been redone. We call it “the back” which is short for “the back of the attic” which doesn’t really mean anything, because it’s actually at “the front” of the house. It’s above my parent’s bedroom which is above our livingroom. It’s only “the back” of the attic because the stairs to the attic are located in the back of the house, making it feel the actual back of the attic is the front, especially since it’s where I live.

The back of the attic (I’m not going to start calling it the front just because it is the front, so from now on, just know that I mean the front of the attic in reality) was in total shambles when work began on it over a year ago. It was piled high with garbage, boxes of books, assorted tools and all sorts of other junk all piled high on top of each other. The worst part? All of it filthy with black soot from the fire. Even the inside of the boxes is covered with soot. It smells, and it’s dirty, and your hands turn black within five minutes of work, and your nose clogs up with black soot from ruffling things, and you blow your nose to find that the tissue is turning black, and you cough up black spit. It’s disgusting, and no one wants to do it.

Tre never really helped with any of the household work. He avoided it like the plague, and I don’t blame him for not wanting to do it, but I do blame him for leaving me to do it. Let the white girl who grew up in this filth deal with this filth forever why don’t ya? No, no, Mr. Strong Ninja Jamaican Man can’t put his manicured hands on that sooty old crap that belonged to my parents, not even if it would benefit him in the long run. (I’m actually snickering as I write this. The same guy that’s going to college to architecture and construction now...)

My boyfriend can actually see much more space we’d have. Our living area would actually double. True, the walls are slanted, but so what? That just means we walk down the center of the room and store things at the triangle-shaped edges of the room... The real prize is the area right above my parents’ bedroom. At the very “back” of the attic there is a flat wall, and the floor is much lower, creating more head room. That is where our new office will be. The entire path through the back of the attic at the moment has boxes or storage on both sides, but it used to be much, much, much worse. I can finally say that the soot is only left in about three boxes, and on one wall. That’s all that’s left of it!

My boyfriend carted out about fifteen, perhaps twenty soot-covered boxes last week, and about six months ago (maybe earlier, I don’t remember) another twenty to thirty were taken out. Now on one side of my future office it’s clean all the way to the very corner where the slanted wall meats the floor. I’ve painted the old shelves black after scrubbing them clean this week, and now I’ve moved my CD player back there. Yes, it’s moving along nicely if I don’t say so myself. Mark my words, I will have my dream office built before October.