notthe9-blog

[notthe9-blog]

Been a little bit obsessed with bullet journaling lately. The first half of my book is bullets, the second half is my agenda. It's been a very fun and crafty way to kill time at the desk without staring at a screen all day. It's nice to be feeling creative again!

[notthe9-blog]

NO EXCEPTIONS

[notthe9-blog]

Sometimes I fear that I wear my heart on my sleeve. Which is strange, because I feel completely closed off at the same time. I think we’ve all experienced this kind of paradox though. 

I know that I’m crazy. I’m wired different than everyone. I have so much brokenness and insecurity that’s been beaten into me by everyone in my life for so long that I hate myself, but it’s with the axiom that the only person I can trust or love, then, is myself. So I hold myself to the highest esteem, because I am so fucking proud of how I’ve kept myself together and how far I have reached with the root-rot underneath me, but it always winds up overshadowed by doubt and insignificance. I know that even though I have come so far from the grave I was born in, it will probably never matter in my lifetime.

So then what? I have children and hope that my improvement from the wrongs of those before me will give someone else the chance to grow up with the love and support and financial stability that I did not? It seems like a pipe dream considering what wreckage I have to deal with. If I loved my children at all, I’d abstain in hopes that they are born to someone who grew up with a white bread life and gets to live a life free of shame besmirched by their insane mother. 

My pain comes with strange arrogance. I feel like the trials I’ve been through usurp those around me. There are plenty of people around me who don’t have any strife, or their strife seems so trivial by comparison, that I just wind up loathing anyone else who complains, although that’s all I ever do. It feels petty and naive that I’m still mad at my mother after 12 years without her. The man who killed her is still walking free. That doesn’t seem fair. It feels petty that I still hate the man that took my innocence when I was 14. He has a wife and children now. That doesn’t seem fair. 

And I know with humanity comes error. I know that Christ has compelled me to forgive them. And I have. I forgave the individuals. We’re all just broken doing whatever compulsion strikes us during whatever stage or point of strength or weakness we stand in any particular moment in life. I don’t think hardly anyone does evil or causes malice because they want to hurt someone. I think we’re all just selfish momentarily and wind up causing havoc and destruction to those around us.

I think the funniest line is that we “hurt the people we love.” No, the ones who get the worst backlash are the ones you don’t love, but you destroy in the process because you don’t think about them, you don’t think about how the carnage of your actions involving more than just you and the person you interact with. The man who killed mother certainly didn’t love me, the woman who stole my husband certainly didn’t love me, my boyfriend who I just caught cheating certainly doesn’t love me. We don’t hurt the ones we love, no one is a monster like that, we hurt the people we don’t consider.

So I guess I wear my heart on my sleeve. I get hurt a lot. Because I think that pain is normal, I accept that no one is evil, and I try to forgive everyone no matter how deep the wounds are. I wind up with a broken heart at least 10 times a week. I wish people were more empathetic. I wish the pain I feel were negated by the love I try to give. But it isn’t. It will never be. I’ll keep giving, and everyone else will keep taking, and I’ll just be butchered again and again until I die one day. Maybe with children who live on and have to recover from the damage I left for them. But hopefully not.

[notthe9-blog]

On Wednesday night, I was watching TV with my roommate and a friend when I got a text from the guy I’m seeing that said “I have a girlfriend, don’t text me anymore.” I immediately called and a woman picked up and started yelling at me that I was nothing, that I didn’t matter, that I was just a side bitch, and that she had been dating him for five years. I had no idea what was going on. I could hear him yelling in the background. 

She followed me on Instagram and, sure enough, there were dozens of photos of them all the way back to 2014. Photos from recent weeks. 

He didn’t come to my Halloween party because he said he was working. We didn’t hang out a few weeks later because he said he was at a bachelor party in Palm Springs. Everything is a lie. Just last week we were discussing how we shouldn’t go to the office Christmas party together because he thought it would be overexposure and thought that dating me publicly would be problematic with work. Everything is a lie.

I called him again, he picked up and told me with a cracked voice “I can’t talk right now, I can’t talk right now.��

I didn’t sleep. Around 6am I went for a run to clear my head. She messaged me a few times on Instagram prying into the nature of our relationship. I told her we were dating for a few months, that I had a lot of stuff at his house, and that he has a tinder profile and has definitely hooked up with other girls before me. She wasn’t mad at me, she apologized for yelling at me the day before. I stopped around the 2 mile mark and asked her to call me. We chatted, I just wound up crying. He called me in the middle of it. 

After I was done talking to her, I called him back to hear whatever it is he was preparing to butcher me with next. He said that he was so confused and didn’t know what to do and that he fucked up and was so angry with himself. It was Thanksgiving, and his mother’s birthday, so he just wanted everyone to shut up for a day. 

I didn’t eat or sleep for another day. 

On Friday I asked him to call me. He wouldn’t say whether or not he intended to see her anymore or what he wanted from me, but he said that he wanted to fix things, that he was sorry he hurt me, and that he wanted to talk when he got back (which wouldn’t be for another week because he had to make a work trip to New York immediately after the Thanksgiving weekend). I told him I was mad that he wasn’t answering my questions.

I didn’t sleep or eat again, but I got really drunk. I haven’t stopped smoking since this happened. I can’t stand being sober right now.

On Monday, I realized he blocked me on snapchat, so I messaged him and asked why. He freaked out and said that he didn’t do that, and after looking into it realized she blocked me and a lot of his guy friends (even ones that he grew up with). He started calling her “chick” to me. He called me and told me he felt like he was at his breaking point and didn’t know what he wanted or what to do, just that he wanted to survive his work week and that we’d talk when he gets home. 

It’s Wednesday. He doesn’t come home until Saturday. I want him to come home so bad. If it’s over, I want it to be over. If there’s any shred of reconciliation to be had, I want it to happen now. I’m not mad, I’m desperate. I want this ordeal to end. My head and heart are in flames. I want to talk to him so bad, I don’t know what to do. I’m a mess. A horrible mess. So much of me says to cut and run, so much of me wants to heal him, so much of me wants to love him., so much of me is sick and hurt. I don’t know what to do. 

[notthe9-blog]

The Writer.

My friend tried to kill himself this week. They aren’t painting it like that, but that’s what it is, I know him. He’s been battling alcoholism for a long time. He tells me all the time. He called me a month or two back crying because his life is in shambles and he doesn’t know how to fix things.

He’s a writer. I imagine it’s equally hard being any kind of creative, so I get how he feels in the nihilism that sinks in an artist. He wound up working for a dentist, I’m not entirely sure what he does for him, but he has this acute arrogance about everyone around him, thinks that any little slip-up means the people around him are complete dumb fucks. Which isn’t entirely wrong. I can understand it. A lot of the older generation seems out of touch and ignorant to people like us who are go-go-go-ers. Small-town people don’t understand the rat-race mentality, and it drives us all crazy trying to comprehend one another.

He goes to bars a lot. He has for the last two years. That’s his only pass-time. And at one point he fell in love with a waitress from a bar he frequented, and it turned ugly and awkward because he went there a lot to drink away his problems. 

His problems are so different than mine though. He can’t reconcile with his unstable parents (I’ve chosen that my love for mine usurp my hatred of their behavior). His parents pay for his rent, his car, his school . . . we’re just different. But he’s isolated himself from everyone in the world over the last few years, and I see it, and I’ve tried to encourage him to start jogging again, or start going to a social club. Just anything to make new friends. But once he sees the faults in people, he convinces himself he hates them and pools himself into this darkness again. And I don’t understand how I’ve stood immune to that, there are days and moments he’s even clearly expressed to me that he thinks I’m a dumb fuck too.

He texted me and told me he crashed his car, was hospitalized, and booked for a DUI.  He said he was way over the limit, that he doesn’t remember what happened, but that he slammed his car into a barrier wall then woke up in the hospital. He said that’s what the police told him, anyway. I don’t believe it. I know him. I’ve seen the darkness behind him. I know what he did. 

It may have been drunkenly-fueled, but he drinks every day. He knows his limits. I know that he’s been spiraling. 

I don’t know what to say. I’m mad at him of course, but I don’t want to coddle him. I’ve heard time and time again how the worst part about surviving is how nothing is normal after. So I just said, “I love you.” I don’t know what else to say. I sent him a meme today. Just said hi. I want to be something normal, but I don’t know what to say.

[notthe9-blog]

[notthe9-blog]

I've been going on dates with a sweet guy whose visa expires in 2 weeks and he'll have to go back to Canada. We kiss, we go out, and I've asked him not to have sex, and he still wants to see me. This week he came over and I put a Three Dog Night record on (since he hadn't heard them), and he told me "I have more and more fun every time I'm with you." I'm not particularly interested in him, but I knew he was leaving and he's good company, so I plan to keep seeing him. He said, "you're not like any other person I've ever met. You think differently." For a moment I was so excited, because for the first time I feel like someone noticed and acknowledged that I'm an outsider. But then the truth set in that I know I'm an outsider. Even if he could love and accept it, he wouldn't be alone anymore, but I still would be. I'm happy he noticed, but it hurt like hell to hear it out loud, the truth that I really am as odd as I feel. Beauty and success don't help you fit in when your head is a jumbled up mess. I'm too big for this life.

[notthe9-blog]

[notthe9-blog]

I haven't slept in 2 days. I'm scared I won't meet a deadline. I'm going to take a nap.

[notthe9-blog]

Hot Cereal

Growing up I had visitation with my father on Wednesdays and every-other weekend.  It always seemed like such a chore for both of my parents. Dad is a farmer, so it was often hard for him to be done by 5pm to pick us up and take us to dinner on Wednesdays, or he’d be working out in the August heat and we wouldn’t want to stay with him because that meant sitting under a tree while he was combining all day.  Of course, as an adult I’ve come to reflect upon those moments fondly and realize the dedication it took for my father to make himself as available as he was during our childhood. 

J was never good at parenting, so she’d always threaten us saying “I’ll call your father!” She always told us what a deadbeat he was, complained when he was late on child support, or demonized him when he couldn’t see us for visitation.  Naturally, this opinion imprinted on me for quite a while.  My mother had no discipline, so the fact that dad would spank us, or force us to go to school made it seem like he was some kind of tyrant. It couldn’t be less true.

Once J got really mad at me (I don’t remember why, I was only 7 or 8 at the time) and told me she was going to make me live with my father and packed a suitcase and left me at my dad’s for a few days.  Daddy hadn’t remarried yet, so it was just him and I in a big old worn down ranch house.  He didn’t have cable TV or anything, so we wound up actually just sitting and talking for the most part (though we did watch The Grinch on VHS, even though it was late spring).  The next morning was one of the defining moments of my father and I’s relationship.

J always had the hardest time getting me to go to school: I would kick and scream and throw fits and refuse to get dressed; the whole nine yards. Awfully and terribly. I hated the mornings because I hated school, J always let me stay up way too late, and my sister and I would fight over watching cartoons or VH1. 

Dad got me up himself, I didn’t have an alarm clock.  We sat at the table together and he made me a bowl of Malt-O-Meal (which I had never eaten before).  He had asked me if I wanted a bowl of “hot or cold cereal” for breakfast. I didn’t know what hot cereal was, so he made me some and taught me how to fix it up with butter, brown sugar, and milk.  Dad and I just sat and had breakfast together and he took me to school in his dirty beat-up pickup and J picked me up after school.  Of course she really didn’t mean that she was going to force me to live with my father, the whole episode was just a ploy to scare me into behaving. 

That day made such an impact on my opinion of my father. To this day, I can’t express what that meant to me.  He took the time to be a proper parent to me and didn’t yell or scream at me to do anything, I just did it and cooperated because I liked him and he treated me nicely. Two years later J left me on his doorstep and he and his wife became my legal parents. My father isn’t perfect, but I know he loves me. 

[notthe9-blog]

[notthe9-blog]

I keep hoping that I will be enough.

I graduated a whole year ealy from college and moved directly into a well-paying job. I constantly read, I study languages, history, stay informed on modern culture and events and pop icons.

People constantly remark on how cosmopolitan I am, and how conversational I am. I have always been keenly interested in fashion, and very flexible with how I use it to express myself. I am thin, but fit, maintain my blond hair, I'm 5'10", I can carry myself in heels. Cousins and aunties have always told me I'm the prettiest of my generation (in part because my first cousins and sister are all indifferent to couture or makeup).

I love cooking and keep a clean house, but I'm spontaneous and love to play in the dirt and run and hike. I love camping and try every opportunity I can to be outdoors (but still keep my nails well manicured).

I am educated and progressive, but I still have a strong love for Christ and a close, personal, daily relationship with Him. I make such an effort to be kind to everyone and hopefully make some sort of positive impact on everyone I speak to, and all I hear is constant praise for my smile and politeness.

I am so fucking alone. What the fuck is wrong with me.

I'm obsessive- whenever I like someone I latch on and don't let go until I burn them out- I speak too much and too often about things no one cares about. The books make me a nerd, hair and nails make me uninteresting, running and speaking German make me too interesting. There is no winning.

All men want is to fuck. All women want is to talk about the men they want to fuck. Or drink or Instagram. We're all locked inside these tiny boxes and it's rude or weird to interact in life, but no one second-guesses inviting someone into their photo-collage of everyone they know and everywhere they've been.

I'm so fucking alone. I don't know how I can live or breathe much longer. Beauty, intellegence, kindness, success all mean nothing. I beg God constantly to show me mercy and take me away from this. But what can I do? I am here to do His will and love others, and I do. I love myself, I know my worth, I value my effort. I still want to die. I'm tired of being trapped in my box and breaking my heart to make friends or meet a lover. They're all fake and full of lies. I don't believe there's a single person alive who understands this. I'm a mess. I just want to feel loved or valued, I'm tired of being a potted plant. I am worthy. Why am I so alone? Why can't I just keep my mouth shut?

But I'm a wallflower if I don't speak. And the second someone opens the door just a crack I come gushing out. I have so much to say. I have so much love. Why does that make me such a freak and so alone? I'm not 16, these feelings don't make sense. Why am I so unlovable?

But I can't kill myself. I know everyone would say "what a pity, she was so kind and nice," and while my whole life is displayed on the internet in 3 inch squares not a damn person would ask me why I cry listening to Mahler's Klavierquartett in A Minor, because they don't understand the depth of my empathy and how it tears my soul apart that this Austrian-Jew writes in a beautiful blend of French romantic, German militarism, and Jewish modality all in one piece. I feel what Mahler feels. And I wish I fucking didn't. I want to be dumb and happy and not worry about everything constantly. I just want to be a wife and be a better mother than my own. But I'm a fucking lunatic and I get so bottled up I have to conglomorate all of my lunacy into a post on the internet, in a blog of my memoirs, so that I don't drive out the few friends that I "do" have.

I don't want to live anymore. I don't want this. I just want simple. I just want to be loved by someone who doesn't want to crumple me up into a corsage or put me under their boot heel. I can't handle it anymore. I'm lost.

[notthe9-blog]

[notthe9-blog]

Identity

Somehow I’m the first person in my family in ten generations to be mixed race.  My father’s lineage is strict German: his family came from a small village in Germany (near Frankfurt) who immigrated to Texas in 1857, where they settled into a small German community in the hill country.  Little known fact: most of central Texas has heavy German influence; my hometown used to be named ‘Braunsville’ and neighbors former ‘Zanzenberg,’ Fredericksburg, and Boerne (all extremely German communities). Even after immigrating, my great great grandfather married a German, my great grandfather married a German, my grandfather married a German (they were the first generation to learn English), and my father just missed the memo.  

This only becomes apparent to me as my great aunt, a creole French woman, is ailing in her health. She is the only living non-German in the family, but with no natural children, has not influenced the family lineage. She and my late uncle adopted a daughter, sandy haired and blue eyed, who never married, but had one son: blond haired and blue eyed. He is now in his mid-thirties and has no children (knowing him, likely never will). He is the only male in our generation, and presumably the end of our family name.

My mother was adopted in Louisiana, so I don’t know much about her family or their ethnic origin, all I know is her mother’s maiden name was ‘Mendosa,’ a very Spanish-sounding name.  I’ve seen photographs of her biological siblings and they all look very cajun to me: olive skin, straight dark hair, large brown eyes.  I would still venture to say my mother is ‘white,’ although I  can tell from photographs that her family is heavily Hispanic-influenced. 

Consequently my sister and I are the only brown-eyed members of the entire family. We have no brunette cousins, or second cousins, or aunts or uncles even.  The entire family has red or blond hair and blue eyes.  It’s highly alienating at times.  And even still, the woman who adopted my mother (granny) was blond haired an blue eyed as well.

My first cousin is a quarter British- her mother was half English, but half German, so she still wound up with blond hair and blue eyes too (and has the most German sounding name you could possibly imagine). My father remarried, his second wife (who I call ‘mom’) is also English/German, having blond hair and blue eyes.

I had red hair as a child, but have been dying it blond for 10+ years, so I only really see myself as a blond. My sister on the other hand has auburn red-brown curly hair, a distinct difference from anyone else.  I think she got the brute of not fitting in the family photos: while everyone from both sides (even extended) is 5′10″+, she is only 5′4″.  Worse yet, while everyone is lanky as you could imagine, my sister is a stout, curvy girl (quite busty and has wide hips).  I can at least somewhat fold in: I am tall, thin, and (artificially) blond. 

I just find it very interesting.  There is no point to any of it: we live in America, the great melting pot. My family loves us, and has never pointed anything out, or ever even mentioned our unusual characteristics (obviously, knowing their origin). Still, I can’t help but feel like a black sheep from time to time, or feel pressured when someone asks how my two ‘parents’ (my father and his wife) could have two dark haired, dark eyed children. People notice.  I noticed. 

[notthe9-blog]

Château de Chenonceau, Indre et Loire

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[notthe9-blog]

There's nothing wrong with aspiring to domesticity. It does not make me less of a woman, it does not mean I view myself below a man.

I want a man willing to put forth the effort to achieve fruitful symbiosis. I want a home, a dog, and 2.5 children. My craving for a nuclear family or domestic life certainly does not detract from my feminist ideals, my strive for greatness, or my attitude in business. I am a strong woman. I am worthy of a strong man.

I fear sometimes my peers belittle me for wanting that. I don't want a wild romance, I want someone I can trust. I want a home. I don't mind the chores that come along with it. I want someone to share the load.

I know that's not for everyone. I don't hold anyone else to that standard. But it's for me, and I wish I weren't constantly on grill for it.