Goals

Kelli and I talked for 7 hours today.

She told me that she only wishes that she were as good a writer as I was, and while I don't actually think I'm all that awesome, it did get me thinking about my writing. I really enjoy writing, and used to do it everyday. I use to take time and make myself write, about anything. And usually the things that I wrote when I was stretching to find something, anything to write about were some of my best writings.

I miss writing like that.

I used to blog everyday. The earlies entries on this blog were not always about information that was needed to catch people up on what is going on in Amy's world, but were instead bright fresh meanderings in which you thought with me.

I miss writing like that too.

I used to sit and watch, write about those things that I saw or felt or thought. Writing that was an active process, and that the world around me was involved in as well as I was.

And guess what... I miss that as well.

The rest of my summer is supposed to be about getting myself ready for school. But when it comes down to it, there are some goals that I have set for myself, personally. I need to get back to finding the core of me. Unsurprisingly, I am not all that great at balance. I give 'it' my all, whatever 'it' is, and now is the time to balance that with getting back to those things that I find important, that I want to make time for, and that make me a more reflective and complex person. My writing is one of those things.

I know there are not many of you who read my words here, and I'm ok with that. But I feel as though I have things to share with you. Thoughts and processes that you could see if only I were to get back to what I know I can do: what I'm good at. If I would only open up and write. The last 2 years has been a lot about closing things down, changing to fit into a world that I don't easily understand. I have had to reinvint myself simply to be understood and fit in. But I miss the writing.

So I am setting myself a goal. For the next 30 days, I am going to write, everyday, about stuff. Things I see and hear, notice and feel. I am not going to write about things that are going on, those posts will ahve to be seperate and in addition. The next 30 days I am going to get back to the writing.

Wish me luck!

New Street and Memory Lane.

Update: We are moving.

We have been looking for a house to move into for a while, and it was getting pretty close on time. I was starting to get pretty worried that we were going to have no place to go. I started having dreams about houses being taken away from us at the last minute, and being homeless. Classic anxiety dreams.

As of yesterday, we THINK we have a house. It is smaller than what we are in now (that's good) and a lot less expensive too. Not too far away from where we are now. So it is easy to walk everywhere that we need to get to. Closer to my work, actually, though further from the Universities and Ash's school.

I actually slept last night without having dreams that involved houses. Nice.

Notice on the sideboard my little map. I'm quite excited to see where all of you are. If you click on the map, it will take you to a larger version, and from there you can even get more detail and see more accurately where everyone is. I have wanted a map on the blog for quite a while. Stephen-the-Computer-God made it happen. He is a nice man. I think I'll keep him for another day or two, anyway.

An old friend found me via Classmates.com. A friend whom I think a bout every now and again, as he was my first date, and my first dance. The 5th grade dance. I have a picture of the two of us at that dance. If it weren't packed, I would scan it in. Maybe later.

Anyway, talking to him led to his wanting caught up on all the time since 5th grade. That, and the letter from Linda Marie to Kelli that I found in my correspondence box. As many of you know, I don't have very many happy memories of those years. So this is a bit of a warning: the rest of this post is going to take a meander down my memory lane. It is most likely a little unpleasant. You don't have to read anymore if you don't want to. I won't be offended.

My only memory I have of my mother from when I was a child was when I was 5. She had the Carpenters on the phonograph in the living room. It was morning, and I got out of bed and went looking for her. I couldn't find her, and started to get scared. But then I saw her through the window in the backyard. She was cutting flowers off of a bush in the backyard. Small fragrant white flowers. She brought them in, wrapped them in a wet paper towel, and wrapped the paper towel in aluminum foil. She was going to take them to work. I remember the maroon carpeting. It was still thick then.

My first memory of me interacting with Linda Marie was of her throwing me against the chalkboard that Daddy had hung for Kelli and I in the hallway. I don't remember what I had done wrong, but I remember being shocked that she had hurt me. I still didn't know that children were for hurting.

I remember Kelli washing the dishes. I remember that she wasn't doing them right - she didn't have her hands completely under the water. It was too hot. I remember her crying. I remember Linda Marie throwing her on the ground and straddling her and punching her over and over again until I couldn't stand it anymore and I though I was going to explode. I remember that I screamed at her "STOP!" It was the only time I ever stood up to her.

I remember being told over and over that I was stupid and worthless and that I couldn't do anything right. It didn't matter what I did. I was a waste of space.

I remember the knot of sick that my stomach would twist into on Saturday's at about 5:00 pm. I didn't even have a clock. My body knew the time. She would be home at 5:30, and 5:00 meant that I felt sick and terrified, huddled on the couch holding onto myself. I have never been so scared as that since.

I remember not brushing my teeth well enough, and Linda Marie reaching across Kelli to slap me across the face to get me to do it better.

I remember not getting dressed fast enough in the 7th grade, and having to go to school in my pajamas. I hid in the library. The boy I didn't want to talk to and hated because he reminded me of me tried to ask me out on a date as I hid.

I remember a trip to the park with the family, in which we were supposed to fly kites. I had to go because I couldn't legally be left home alone, so I was not invited to participate. We had chicken, and I remember eating friend chicken on the blanket while the rest of my family played and flew kites in the park.

I remember the gun. I remember the broom. I remember telling Kelli that everything was ok, go back to sleep, don't come out. I remember hating that she had a half-door at that moment. And I remember that his telling me that I was his good girl after might have made what he was doing ok. Especially when no one believed me when I told anyway.

I remember having to apologise to him and his parents for lying about him. And watching him smirk at me as I did.

I remember Social Services' coming meant that there would be cookies baked. And that I would not get any of them.

I remember the baby bird I brought home. I remember hearing the squeal as it died in the middle of the night. I remember knowing that she had done it.

I remember her throwing away my Cabbage Patch Kid. Its name was Ruby and it had glasses and brown hair like I did. I loved it too much, so it deserved to be trash.

I remember being locked out of the house for 12 hours a day. I remember being hungry. I remember that 8 glasses of water at one time will make you sick, and that water really does not taste good.

I remember her screaming at me in the middle of the night, standing beside my bunk-bed, light on. I had not washed the knives right. I pretended so hard that I was still asleep. I prayed that she would not know that I was awake. She threw the knives in my bed so I would sleep with them and told me that I deserved to be stabbed to death while I slept.

I remember playing in the sandbox that Daddy built for Kelli and I in the backyard. I played cooking shows. Leaves and sand and locust shells became many things, all narrated for a live studio audience.

I remember growing maggots. I caught the fly, and kept it in a film canister. The maggots ate the body of the fly before they died, too.

I remember being told that my mother hated me, that she didn't want me, and that her family was evil. I remember being told that my mother had burned all of my baby pictures. That I was not important enough to be loved.

I remember being called a liar over and over by the people I told.

I am 33, and she still hangs around in my memory. I still don't know if I hate her or not.

The Old Man is Snoring...

It's raining!!!!!


Yay yay yay... and some more yay yay yay's. I LOVE the rain. I love it when it just sprinkles, when it pours, when it spatters or mists or gushes. I love the rain. It feels like a new start, every time.

The rain I am used to is often warm, very rare, and either very light or too powerful to actually go outside into it. It often involved hail, broken windows, and flooding. But this rain... this rain is steady and consistent. It is something to trust in. It is daddy rain. It feels safe, like I'm in a cocoon and the rain is the walls around me.

I don't exactly know why I love the rain so very much. But it calls me. I want to play in it, get wet in it, fold paper into boats and sail them down the gutters like I did when I was small. I used to play in the rain in the States. But I think this rain might be too cold. So I stare out the window at it and pretend that I'm in it.

One of the memories I have as a younger person involves the rain. It is a memory that is so lovely and precious to me that I have built on it, and I know now that what I remember is more than what there actually was. But it doesn't matter to me that my brain has taken it and made it more... it is a lovely memory. It is an important memory. I don't have to remember the truth. I don't want to remember the truth.

It was a weekend, probably a Saturday afternoon. The sky was dark grey and overcast, clouds hanging heavy over the top of me. It was raining, a persistent drizzle, perhaps a bit more powerful than what it is raining outside my window now. But it, too, was a daddy rain. The rain and the low clouds were an unbreachable wall between me and anyone and anything else. I was in my room, my pink room, my neat pink room where everything was perfect. There was no one else there. I was sitting in my window, on a thick cushion covered in pictures of pink Victorian roses. The light from the fixture on the ceiling was warm and yellow, the kind of light that pulls you into its arms and holds you close. It was just bright enough to define the walls of my room as the walls of the world... and past that was the rain.

I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be with. No chores, no homework, no yelling or fists, nothing. I think I was 10, perhaps 11. Maybe 9. Does it really matter? I was at that age where there is no other time in the world. What was right then would always be. Every moment timeless. I was not so small to have to wish that I was bigger, but not big enough to long to be grownup yet. I was just... me. I was in that moment, cuddled comfortably on the window cushion, leaning back against the wall behind me, with my feet tucked up and warm underneath me. I was holding a book in my hands, some old hardback tome which gathered the warmth of the light and pushed it into my hands. I was reading in spurts, in the tick tocky silence, interjecting the story with glances out the window to remind myself that the wall was still there, that I was really still safe, that it was real.

The smell of ozone that only seems to come with the rain in the Southwest was there, and it was a clean smell, one that didn't exactly fit in the warmth of the room, but instead emphasized how held I was by the safety of the warm light. It was good. It tingled my nose when I breathed in, almost painfully. I was alive, it told me. And the world was good. In the moment of my awareness of exactly how tingly alive I smelled, the dry musty scent of the book I was holding streamed into my nose. There was such a contrast between it and the ozone, such a marked difference between the crisp and the ancient, that I felt stretched across time, on fire with being alive and holding such ancient wisdom. It was a perfect moment.

I remember that smell.

Perhaps that moment is why I try to memorize the scents of things that are important to me. I try to memorize the smell of Tristan's hair, the scent of Stephen's chest, the tingle in my nose that is Ashley. And maybe that moment is why, when I get caught up in the depth of loving someone so much that I can physically feel it, the feeling starts in my nose, then moves down to clench in my stomach. Or why when I hurt or am sick, smelling hurts. Any scent is painful. Or why smells I have forgotten, then smell again, can stop me in my tracks. Or why I am led to investigate imaginary scents that only I can smell when we go for walks.

The rain is safety for me. And this light misty rain wraps me up and holds me close. It loves me, if you can understand what that means. And it feels like being home.

OK, FINE! In Which Amy Might Share a Little Bit... (Myspace Blog)

Summer - 1996. Amtgard. The Gathering of the Clans. I am hanging out with Kayrana and Spirit. Gwynna, Kayrana, and Spirit. Spirit, Gwynna, and Kayrana. We are a triad. Inseparable.
When we meet them I remember being stunned by their accents - so very British. So very sexy. Right proper gentlemen, they. Fang - and Azrael. Lovely, deliciously gorgeous slices of merry old England - here. In the woods. Alone. With us.

We coddled them. Went everywhere with them. Introduced them to everyone we knew. Taught them what a cloved orange was, without actually giving them one. Showed them who was cool and who was not. Showed them where was fun and where was not, what to drink, what NOT to drink, and where it was safe to pass out for the night. It was FUN. Fang woke from his alcoholic stupor the next morning with his contacts glued to his eyeballs from having slept in them. Azrael smiled a lot and was quiet.

The weekend passed quickly, and a friendship developed. Azrael and Gwynna - running into each other on the amt-mux, then wandering off together over IM. And the feeling snuck up - and never left.

I craved him. Running into him was a joyous delight that ground my day to a halt. Encounters were never often enough, always hours long, and full of wonderful conversation. I craved him and never asked too much. I never dug into the person behind the persona. But I never stopped craving him.

Soon enough, pictures exchanged, poems sent, packages of shortbread and other baked goods air-mailed, and letters and music cassettes and always 'I love you's when saying goodbye. And I meant it - but I didn't say that.

Conversations with his mum and sister - packages back and forth - and then nothing. Life went on. Splitting up. Marriage. Babies. Occasional emails to catch up, full of love and wishes to talk more, then fading into the distance of life. We danced around each other. Don't let him too close, Amy - love him from a distance or he might know - he might figure it out - and then you lose it all. Better to be peripheral friends. He is too valuable to lose.

Then, divorce. Big. And alone. And it is good, it is cleansing, but it hurts. Then it heals. Slowly. Time passes, and suddenly it is 6 months and he is still there, always there, has always been there and you never say anything, Amy, why? But England is so far away... and is it worth it to lose such a friend? An old and dearly valued friend?

Thoughts and conversations. We get deeper. There is a person behind the facade and god... I like the person even more! Agony... looking back and it is a slap in the face - READ the emails, Amy - years of them - and it is obvious. OBVIOUS. And I want to let that go? BUT BUT BUT...
Deep breaths. Take a chance, Amy. Take a chance. Does it hurt to move on and take a chance? So I close my eyes. I breathe in. I leap...



And find out that he has saved every conversation we have ever had.

I find out he has saved every email that we have ever sent.

Every 'I love you' - he spoke truly.


Panic - god oh my god - what do I do now?! England is so far it will never work everyone will laugh it is all online he is just a bounce back it's too soon i'm being silly what the hell am I thinking oh god oh god - and then it is 9 months of time alone... and how can 9 months be a bounce back? How can 9 months be rushing? For that matter, how can 10 years be a bounce back? How can 10 years be rushing?

And so.....

This is my Stephen,
and I am His Amy.
I have loved him for
10 years - and he
has loved me back.

And the rest is just details.

The End