mb:  i'd edit that slightly... but that's the gist
me:  how would you edit that 
mb:  end the first part after "me."
me:  k  
mb:  start the second with, "also, just wondering whether 
        you have a sense of what you might be making a
        decision."
        don't do the "i'm sure you're busy"
me:  k
        should i sign it with love, or yours truly
mb:  sign it, "love to love you, baby"
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I used to love this song, and forgot about it. It appears that it was sung at Urbana, and I only infer this because I flipped through some photo albums on Facebook, and someone had a line from the song as one of the captions.

Make us a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred, let us love
Where there is wrong, let us forgive
Where in the pain there’s been enough

Love, help us be your love
Help us see you here
The peace that fights oppression in our world
This is what we are about
To know when we step out
The world would see your love

Make us a channel of your grace
Where there is darkness, make us light
Where there is sadness, make us joy
Where those in pain give up the fight

Sometimes we get caught looking only in a mirror
We don’t even see there’s a world that barely breathes
Sometimes we might be overwhelmed by the weight
But we know that you desire for us to be

I thought that when I looked through Urbana09 photos, I’d feel some level of cynicism about the whole thing, the way I usually feel when I move on from things or stages in my life and look back. But I didn’t. Looking through photos was kind of a blessing, actually, and I never use that word because it’s so Christian-cheesy, and harkens back to the days when I used to use lame, vaguely religious signatures like “Blessings, M” on letters and such. Jesus.

Anyway. I guess what I felt about the song and the photos was that yes, if this is what Christianity is about, then yes. I want to find this again. If it is about patient hope, if it is about loving the world, if it is about being a channel of peace and learning to forgive, that’s something I want to be, that’s something I want to live, that’s a God I want to find again, or let find me, or whatever. I don’t quite get the technicalities about the finding/being found, walking away/getting lost, but the point is, I believe in that stuff, and I could believe in it again, if that’s what this Jesus stuff is all about.

Is that asking for a God that meets my checklist? Is that me trying to customize Christianity? I don’t know. I guess at one point I was taught all these things and then got discouraged and confused and heartbroken and abandoned by people who told me bullshit about God, and that experienced just fucked with me, and I walked away and did shit I’m not proud of and have not made a turnaround since. Let’s be clear. I got fucked with, but it was my choice to react the way I did afterwards. My. Choice.

I got lost in the woods, and something in the woods changed me. And now that I’m trying to figure out what it is that I really believe, who it is that I really want to become (because the two are inextricably related), I’m hoping that the things I was taught about God really are true, and powerful, and real, and not just some bullshit religious psychobabble that’s the same as everyone else’s psychobabble, except plus this hippie Jesus dude.

Jesus I like. He was radical. He had a backbone. He didn’t like the religious establishment or religious people, and neither do I. He did good things for people, but wasn’t a people pleaser. He said things that they didn’t like to hear, things that weren’t feel-good and fluffy, things that didn’t make him popular. He had enemies, and he didn’t try to fight petty fights with them. He just fucking let them kill him, because he knew they were idiots and that loving them was the only way to reach any of their stony little hearts, if such a thing was even possible. I don’t know, I just admire that. I like Jesus. Plus he didn’t call gay people an abomination, which is nice. He made the outcasts of society feel loved and accepted, and caught a lot of flak for it. And he was biased toward the poor and said rich people would have a hard time getting into heaven, which I think is fair. Jesus is a guy who makes a lot of sense to me, in all his counter-cultural ways.

His followers, on the other hand, confuse me. How can we disagree so much? How can we seem so hateful to other segments of society? Why must some of us appear so goddamned dumb? How can we claim to hear things from God that cause (at best) so much unintentional pain and (at worst) serious historical clusterfucks like the Crusades? How can we ensure that these things never happen again? How can liberal Christians not hate conservative Christians for representing us in such god-awful ways? How does any of this work out? It’s exactly as Ghandi said. “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

I just have so many questions.

On New Year’s Eve–actually, in the early hours of New Year’s Day–I was having a most curious conversation with my roommate Chester, proud pagan and believer in, I don’t know, bourbon. He’s one of the best people I have ever met, though, and he always gives me good advice that these days makes so much more sense than the “I’ll pray for you” bit or the “Have you found a church yet?” bit that is supposed to be the answer to all my problems, according to Christian people. Not to downplay the importance of prayer or community, but you know. Sometimes it’s just refreshing to hear something besides that.

Anyway, I think we were all a little tipsy–S, Chester, and me. We’d just gotten home from a NYE party and I don’t know how, but we started discussing H. Chester kept saying he was a goddamned idiot. S kept saying he was a good guy, but yes, an idiot. And I just kept saying, “but– but–” and finally, “I guess.”

The funny thing was this. Chester, whilst snacking on BBQ rice chips, kept harping on the fact that I shouldn’t let some goddamned idiot and what he says God told him misdirect my faith, or to change my belief in God. First of all, I was surprised that he even knew the state of my belief in God. Maybe he was tipped off by the fact that I hadn’t gone to church in ages, but it’s never something I talked with him directly about. I was never like, “Chester, you non-Christian you, let me tell you about how I don’t understand God.” I don’t know how he picked up on the fact that my experience with H had changed my relationship with God.

Anyway, I was tipsy and in no mood to argue, but Chester  just kept saying that over and over. “How can you let an idiot and his idiotic claims about God change what you believe about God? How does that make any sense?” He just kept saying that over and over, and I actually started crying a little–TEARS WERE LITERALLY COMING OUT OF MY EYES–because this completely non-believing roommate of mine was telling me about God, and not because he had a religious agenda, but because to him it was the only thing that made sense. And that touched me somehow, and touched some wound that I failed to cover.

The conversation went on for a while. Chester continued on calling H an idiot, and S semi-defended him, and I oddly enough had nothing to say about my own ex-boyfriend, so I declared that I was going to bed and immediately  followed through by doing so without so much as brushing my teeth first. It was an odd way to pass the first few hours of the new year, being nudged toward God by my overly opinionated and utterly non-Christian roommate in a conversation about my the only boy who has ever broken my heart.

The next day, or a few days later, we were sitting around talking, and out of nowhere, Chester said, “I feel bad that I made you cry.”

For an instant, I had no clue what he was talking about. Cry? Was that a joke? Did I cry? When did I cry? What’s he talking about? And then it hit me, oh my god I DID cry. I had entirely forgotten the conversation, but by the time I remembered, I’d already said aloud, “What are you talking about? I didn’t cry.”

He looked at me knowingly. “Yeah, you did cry.”
“No I didn’t.”
“You got teary.”
“Okay, I guess I got teary. But that’s not your fault. I’m always like that.”

And I am always like that. But it’s odd to me that the conversation that prompted it even took place, and in the first hours of the new year. Is the universe conspiring against me? I don’t know, but hopefully the year ahead brings some resolution to these questions I have.

I’ve said so many times, I’m starting over. I’m starting anew. It’s a new day. It’s a new beginning. Sing a new song. I’ve tried so many times to will myself into renewal that I’m skeptical about my ability to actually do so, and I’m skeptical that change will happen based on an arbitrary calendar year. Oh it’s January! I will resolve to change, and it’ll happen! I don’t think it works like that. But part of wanting something is not giving up, so I guess I’ll hold on to faith, and to those too-good-to-be-true promises: That if I seek, I will find. If I knock, the door will open. If I ask, I’ll get the answers I’m looking for.

Because if God is love, and love never fails, then God never fails, and and will never fail to love me.

Back to the chorus. Love.

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"Get your ass in gear," he told me. "I'm saying that as your mentor."

"Okay," I said quietly. He was being hard on me.

"Now I'm saying this as your friend. Get your ass in gear. Now I'm saying this as the guy who thinks you're hot. Get your incredibly cute ass in gear. Okay?"

I laughed. "Okay." Maybe he wasn't being so hard after all.

mb says I'm not allowed to wallow anymore. He's allowing me one more grace wallow, and then I'm not allowed any more. (This is unfair because he wallows to me ALL THE TIME, but I did not point this out.)

We had a long talk today, for about an hour this morning. We both had the day off, and we finally made time to talk. About me, about him, about the weird beast that is us.

He's trying to get me to act, after I bludgeoned him with my unhappiness yesterday--unhappiness with life and career and myself. And I know he's right.

I need to act. I need to change. I need to make it what I want. Starting today, and going forward.
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"... But more, I've been lucky to count you as a great friend, someone who accepts me for all that I am and all that I likely will never be. No matter what transpires in the coming months or years, I want you to know how much I treasure who you are in my life and whom you let me be in yours."

An email he wrote me, the day after Thanksgiving.

Articulate men are such a ridiculous turn-on. I particularly go weak in the knees at the word "whom." Not many guys would have gotten that right, but goddammit that is kind of hot. And perfectly written, perfectly played.
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When I woke up, I had a one-paragraph email from mb in my inbox. One paragraph to my seven the night before.

He knows where I'm coming from, but he feels like I'm hurt over something he didn't do, and he's hurt by what I said. And he's still furious, but he'll get over it. That was the summary.

Something about the note gave me the impetus to block him on gchat. Both my accounts. Block and block. I didn't reply, and I felt better. If we weren't talking, I wanted it to be by MY choice.

I went to church. I laid flat on my stomach in Dolores Park and spent a leisurely few hours reading a book about the UN Oil-For-Food Programme. I walked along Mission and did some grocery shopping, some browsing for Halloween costumes (Still no ideas. I refuse to spend $60 on a cheap piece of fabric constructed to turn women into eye candy, although I suppose that's what the cool kids here do.) Anyway, I had a pleasant afternoon. I didn't hear from him, and I didn't expect to.

At 7:41 pm, I get a text.

"Night. Sorry and miss you"

I don't know why, my heart suddenly beats louder, like I'm nervous or something, but I'm not. If I ignore him and keep him blocked, perhaps I will be the hypocrite, after I railed on him for avoiding me. But what now? The options run through my head.

a) keep him shut out.

b) respond now, but be curt and cold (i.e. "Night")

c) respond tomorrow, but be curt and cold (even meaner)

d) respond, with a conciliatory tone (i.e. "Night. Hope you get the story done.")

e) respond like a spineless pile of mush (i.e. "Miss you too.")

I don't know. I'll have to eat something and think more about my strategy.
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The fight, fini 10/25/2009
 
   mb and I just had the biggest fight we've ever had. And it was ALL in text messages. My heart is seriously racing right now. My blood is boiling. But for the first time in a long time, I said something to him that I needed to say.

   "You know, id rather know the truth about where youre at/how youre feeling than be ignored," I texted him this evening.
   "Huh?" he texted back.
   "I feel like you are being distant on purpose. And it makes me sad. just tell it to me straight please."
   "Tell you what? Haven't heard form you either"
   "I texted you today and heard 2 words from you. No answer to my second text. Youre never on gchat, and i am not deluded enough to think that suddenly you have changed your online habits just because our relationship has changed."
   "My feelings haven't changed. Just trying to handle them better ... For both our sakes"
   "So you are avoiding me?"
   "No more than you are me"
   "I'm not avoiding you. My habits haven't changed. its you who is MIA."
   "Here I am!"
   "Im so frustrated. You cant possibly not know what im saying."
   "Stop. I miss you tons."
   "Why are you saying that? If you miss me stop avoiding me."

   No response. That pissed me off.

   Whenever we fought, I had never fought unrestrainedly. I had always reined myself in a little, with him, partly because I sensed his conflict avoidance and partly because it was never intended to be so serious with him that it was ever worth becoming unpleasant or too riled up about.
   The relationship itself--it just wasn't something that was meant to last. It was simply meant to be good while it lasted, and good did not mean fighting. It meant that you just said as much as you needed to put your concerns out there and get them addressed.
    I had never let loose on him in a fight. I had never needled him. But the fact that he didn't respond, and the fact that we were now a non-relationship and he was avoiding me just made it seem, well, like some response--even if I had to make him mad--was better than none at all. I gathered the courage and pressed send.

   "? Exhibit a. No response, plus your fb reflects you are currently on aim. Nowhere to be found on gchat. I dont know. I feel hurt, and a little used."
  
   Instantly, his reply:
   "Omg"

   My blood rushed to my head. I knew I risked seeming like a stalker from looking at his facebook and from jumping to conclusions, but I didn't care. It's how I felt, and how I felt was legitimate.
   Besides, in all those texts, he had never addressed the issue of his non-response to MY texts, or his being missing on gchat. And he had never directly answered the question, either, of whether he was avoiding me. Which clearly, he was. And is. So I stood my ground.

   "What? Can you blame me for feeling this way?"
  
   His reply, once again, was almost instant.
   "Pretty sure i've been logged into AIM all weekend cuz my computer is on at work. As for feeling used, that just makes me furious. Goodnight"

   My blood was boiling by this time. How could he be mad because I felt hurt and used? How could he be mad because I FELT a certain way?

   "To be clear, im not saying anything about your intentions. im only saying this is how i feel. And i only feel this because i miss you. And bc i wished you missed me enough to want to be in touch. Goodnight."

   I'm so disturbed I don't even know what to think. I know my feelings are legitimate. In any relationship or friendship, when one person cuts it off and imposes distance, it's so natural to feel hurt and used, because it implies he didn't really want to be friends. He had only been interested when there was the potential for more, and once that was over, it was all over. This isn't the first time I had felt this way, but every time, similar situations have also had the effect of making me angry and resentful.
   I don't know what to do. I just talked it over with my roommate, whose tough-love talk helped. And just moments ago, I clicked send on an email to mb. Lord knows what will happen, but I have said my piece, and as a result, feel the slightest sense of... perhaps, peace.
   Come what may, I suddenly feel. I cannot force him to be my friend. If he opts out, maybe I didn't want him as a friend anyway. My roommate reminds me that I can afford to play it straight from here on out. I'm smart, I'm good at what I do, I'm doing well, he says, and I can (and should) live transparently, so that I will never have any element of my life that I wouldn't want anyone to know about. And this is coming from a non-Christian. Somehow, it sounds better coming from a non-Christian. It sounds more like common sense, less like a moral baseball bat. When he said this to me tonight, I knew he was absolutely, 100 percent right.
    Sigh. It's been a learning experience, if nothing else.
    Time for bed.
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Shortly after 7 this morning, I got a text from him, telling me he had the flu.

My heart stopped for a moment. After all that had transpired yesterday, here he was, still texting me first thing in the morning. Had it not been enough, after all? Were we just going to stay in our same routines? Yesterday it took all the strength and willpower I had to sever the "special" aspect of our relationship, and if it wasn't enough, if I had to draw those lines again, then maybe all the tears I'd shed the day before had been useless. And maybe I wouldn't even be able to do it again.

As I got dressed and left the house, we texted back and forth a few times. It was enough so that I was checking my phone compulsively, until fed up with myself, I threw my phone into my purse and didn't let myself check it again until I got into the office. Nothing--just a text from Grace asking if I was okay.

But when I logged into my email, there he was, at the top of my Gchat. We ignored each other for a good half hour, maybe even an hour, and finally he messaged me and we talked.

He confided that he'd been feeling sad and crying all morning. It was strange to me, to picture him crying. I do know the sensitive and insecure sides of him better than most, but STILL I couldn't picture him crying--mb, who always had it together. mb, who strikes up conversation with strangers in the elevator, unabashed, as if he was absolutely ensured a positive response (and as far as I have seen, he has always gotten them). mb, with the custom suits and custom cologne and the airs of someone used to getting his way in the world, if not for his charm, then at least for his six-figures and his willingness to pay for whatever he wants. mb, who won practically every journalism award there was to win this year. mb, the man my friend K described as speaking "like he's in a Shakespearean monologue." mb--my mb--so quick and smart and proud.

Crying. Sobbing.

Because there's that mb too, the face he doesn't show to the world. The mb who cares too much what people think of him. The mb that periodically needs reassurance, and to be told that everything will be okay. The mb who gets down on himself, and down on his life. His word for it today was "bleak."

"Sometimes, my life seems so bleak to me," he told me. "I just think I've let my life spin out of control for too long and I feel .... I dunno . . . I'd like to be a better person."

I don't want to presume that my decision to put some distance between us sparked this current wave of sadness and introspection. Maybe he realized I was right to do so, maybe he suddenly wondered what he was doing with someone like me anyway. In any case, we agreed to work on being good friends, which I think is something we're both happy with--or happy enough with, given the circumstances.

It breaks my heart to think of him so sad, so lost.

It's not that I'm any less lost, but somehow I feel I have some primordial compass that he lacks, in all this. And that is the faith that I have ignored for so long, the one that assures me that nothing can separate me from the love of God, and that whispers to me that I'm worth something even when I have no money or accomplishment or good deeds to my name. The faith that speaks to me, even in the darkness, telling my soul that hope is alive, that healing is possible, that nothing in this world is too far gone for redemption.

What's been difficult about the faith--and why I've ignored it for so long--is that it has been little more than a concept that I've subscribed to, intellectually. That there MUST be a source of good stronger than erratic human altruism, and that for there to be such a cry for justice ingrained in humanity's DNA--without any of us having ever experienced a world in which things are as they should be, how do we know to ask for it? It's all conceptual. It's all just a belief to get me through the day, but it's still very much a part of how I see the world, and when I am in need of hope and meaning and goodness, I still believe it must be found there, if it is found anywhere at all.

Sigh.

I try to make good mental decisions. To push thoughts of him out of my head, to give us some distance not only in our interactions, but in my thoughts of him. Do I think about how, when I woke up in his arms, he told me I had been dreaming, and that he knew because my little feet had been kicking? Do I think about how he held me in the heat of desire and whispered words in my ear? Do I think about the fact that all weekend, we held hands inside his jacket pocket? No, no, and no. I shouldn't.

But I do, sometimes.

And I miss it. I miss him. But that's the way it is, sometimes, in life. You want what was, but there's no going back. You make decisions, you reel from their consequences, and you keep going on, you keep trying to untangle the beautiful mess.

I still feel so lost. But I know that somehow, in letting him go, I'm untangling my mess a little more, and I'm getting closer to freedom.

I hope to find my way home soon. I just really hope he finds it too.
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The day I cried 10/11/2009
 
The day I cry over this, I have always told myself, is the day it's over.

I never thought that day would come.

I've been fighting tears all morning, ever since the door slammed closed behind him. I crawled into bed and lay back down, still smelling his cologne on my upper lip from when I kissed his neck. The bed suddenly felt cold, the room suddenly felt empty, and everywhere there were traces of him, but no him. No solidity, no warmth, no labored breath.

Stay, sleep in, he had told me. But I could do neither. After an hour of pressing my eyes closed, trying to warm the bed and squeeze out persistent thoughts of all that was missing, I gave up, got dressed, collected my things, and left--my hat pulled low over my eyes as I walked down Powell in the morning fog. Why had this goodbye been harder than all the others? It scared me.

Only recently, I've developed a propensity for riding waves, with no idea where they will take me, and never any clear idea of how hard it will be to hang on. My most recent wave was moving here, with just two suitcases and a shrug of the shoulders. He was an earlier wave, still going. When we met in the summer, I let myself fall into his arms, thinking circumstances would keep this contained, would keep me in check, would keep me protected. It was a distraction. A relief. A spark. It was easy to fall into, and it would be easy to end. Yes and no, I am finding.

Randomly, I dreamed about H last night. Even while lying next to mb, I dreamed about H. I dreamed we were on a bus, and there was an open seat, and H was asking me to take it. That's all I remember. I don't know what it means, and I'm not reading into it. But I find it strange that I have never dreamed about mb, for all he has meant to me. Only his wife, once--my subconscious guilt playing itself out in a place where I could neither suppress nor avoid it. It was a dream I never wish to have again, and I never mentioned it to him.

On the train ride home, I realized--with no small amount of despair--that mb has ruined H for me. Not consciously. Not willfully, but in the comparison that lives in my head. At times he makes H seem so lacking, even though when H and I were together, I had everything I ever wanted, or so it felt.

And yet mb will never be to me what H was--that was clear to both of us from the start. In part because he can't. In part because he may not want to. And in part, because we both know we live in different worlds. He lives on the map, and I live in parts that are not. He takes taxis, I do not. And he even likes fonts with serifs, and I prefer to go without. Of course opposites attract, and these silly things we tease each other about make for endearing aspects in a friendship or flirtation, but the truth is we are not set up for more, and I have never felt allowed--by myself, by my conscience, or by circumstance--to ask for more.

So today, for the first time, I felt a fear--I think, that most people feel, but that I have never truly felt--that maybe there's no one out there, after all. Maybe we're all just destined to jump from one person, incomplete, to incomplete number two, and three, and four, and fourteen, and when it hurts too much you just move on. Is that how it works? Will this be my life going forward?

A part of me wonders if I am trying, now, to self-destruct--if H's act of hurting me last year has led me to just find ways to hurt myself. It sounds so dramatic that I don't think it is true, but I also don't know that it's not.

I used to put my foot down about these things. I used to insist on my own worth. I used to insist on love, and the way I wanted things to happen. I used to be strong. And even post-H, I was strong, but now I find myself fighting tears again, and I don't like it.

A part of me knows what it needs to do. A part of me can diagnose myself. A part of me still knows where to find life, and find it in the full. There's always that promise. There always has been that promise. And as far as I've walked away, I still know that there always will be that promise. Because if there is any good in this crazy world, it is that. It is doing right by people, and loving people, forgiving and being forgiven. Cycles of hurt have to stop somewhere. I cannot pass on the hurt just because I've been hurt. And I think there is healing for broken hearts and empty buckets--healing in a way that doesn't involve distraction and diversion and feeding my own selfishness.

What scared me most is that when he left today, I needed him to stay. In a city where I have no one, I needed him. Not having him would hurt, and I am done with hurt. I am also done with fighting the tears. I fought, and when I got into bed and started to write this, I lost.

Today is officially the day I cried.

And true to my promise to myself, today it is over.

He was great about it, and didn't test my resolve. He just knew. He told me not to cry, he asked if we'd be friends, and said he'd have my back without condition. That was all I needed to know. I still care immensely, and I still miss him beyond words, but I have promises to keep, and if you don't keep promises to yourself, well, perhaps you lack self-respect.

So here I am, telling myself I am doing the right thing as if I was still sure what that meant. Today has been hard.

But I'm hopeful that when I wake, tomorrow will be clearer. Going to cry myself to sleep now. I need to put more distance between myself and him and this morning and last night and everything, everything since June.

It hurts.

"Bye," he just texted me. He must be boarding.

God it hurts.
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I am 09/14/2009
 
...effing crazy. And I know it.

I guess I just pray that ultimately, God's will wins over the choices I make and the scrapes I get into. Or do I have to choose God's will? Maybe that's it.

What the hell am I doing? One day I hope I will ask that when my life is straightened out again. I hope that when that happens, the answer will be somewhere in my writing. And I hope this time in my life will make sense one day.

Until then, I just keep going further into what one friend has referred to as uncharted territory. Half of me is afraid to chart any more of this territory, and half of me is irresistably curious. None of this used to ever tempt me, because I thought I knew what was better.

My how things have changed.

My life now is a constant negotiation between what I desire most immediately, and what I know in my heart of hearts is smart long-term. Anyway, even in this confusing negotiation, I know how to stand up for myself. No one's gonna make me do anything I don't want to do. That's an ultimatum, world. Take it or leave it.

Waiting for a the verdict back, via text...
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... that not all direct messages are direct.
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