Sometimes I feel like I'm in some sort of alternate reality.

Like I slipped on a sidewalk, hit the pavement, and when I stood... I was somewhere else. Maybe I'm off in a coma, and my brain is wandering around this alternate world where things don't quite make sense.

For example, for those of you who have been keeping up with my family madness posts, you might have noticed that a week ago this evening, I was sitting in the emergency room of a nearby hospital attempting to check my father into the psych ward. At this very hour, I was likely running back and forth in the hallways, attempting to keep my mother from breaking down, my father from escaping, and finding out the ways to get him restrained. The night before that, I was sleeping in a guest room across from my mother because we could not go home. And all those details I've blogged about.

Today, however, today we (my father) decided we were going to celebrate the Christmas we "missed". So I came home, slept in my own bed, and woke up to open presents.

And then my parents took me shopping.

And bought me a new car.

In case you missed that, here we go again:

And bought me a new car.

I didn't even copy and paste that sentence. I typed it again so you could feel the gravity of the statement. By gravity, I mean the "...wtf?"-ness of that statement.

I now have a 2010 VW Jetta TDI sedan.

Why?

I have no clue. I have no freaking clue. I've always had to work for everything, pay for everything. And suddenly: "Hay, here's a car!"

My brain hurts as life attempts to pack enough plotline for a few seasons worth of sitcom into a month and some change.

I... can't really even recount the events of the last month, trying to remember this last year seems even more of a feat.

But since I've yet to attempt this type of post before, let's go over some highlights:

In 2009 I...

~went to my first swing club and banged without mercy, squirted on an audience, showed a large group of onlookers how to really give head

~Snagged SFPlayboy, ended up spending some time in San Fran as well

~Did my first DP

~Picked up that delicious 6'9" cello player/stuntman

~Met GV8, learned more about myself and my life than I thought possible

~Flew across the country to follow a band for the weekend

~Moved out of the apartment I shared with Darkeyes

~Restarted my schooling, pushing towards entry into the Master's Program

~Let my hair grow long, near waist-length

~Broke up, reunited, broke up, reunited, broke up with GV8

~Chased a man for the first time in my life. Failed spectacularly.

~Finally found out the difference between "sex" and "making love"

~Made out with a hobo

~Got my right side tattooed in one eight-hour sitting, with three hours of touch-ups later

~Attempted to commit my father to a mental institution

~Had four friends kill themselves

~Almost had a nervous breakdown, which was stopped by GV8 a week after our final break up

~Applied to my first ever apartment not to be shared with another

~Lost 20 pounds

~Launched my car backwards down a hill

~Had my driver's side t-boned while driving through an intersection

~Spent 10 months couchsurfing

~Started this blog

~Helped a friend execute an emergency move at 2AM on a Wednesday morning that involved us balancing her bed on top of a minivan and walking it the x-amount of miles to her new place because we had no rope


If I wasn't feeling so tired and lazy, I would look up all those things that I forgot.

But it has been a long freaking week.

Monday: stayed in, cried, anxiety issues, cried more
Tuesday: apartment hunted, spoke with the boss-man, rescinded my two-weeks notice
Wednesday: found an apartment, applied (hoping I get it)
Thursday: came home to talk with the parents about my current life plan and their degree of involvement in it and then they bought me a car
Friday: cleaning, cleaning, cleaning
Saturday: packing, packing, packing
Sunday: sleeping, sleeping, sleeping

I don't want to go back to work on Monday. Save me.

So nervous about if I will get that apartment. So. Nervous. I hate when I want something really bad and I have to wait to see if I get it. Makes me jumpy.

Gyah. Going to bed.

Have a happy new year. I'm going to go sleep my way into unconsciousness.

Fall apart and start again...

How relaxing this weekend has been. I haven't even left the city.

I finished Exile in Guyville by Dave White this morning. God, that book had me howling in laughter in public places, people looking at me like I had lost my mind.

Started The Surrender by Toni Bentley, about half-way through now. Mr. Savage recommended it to me, said our writing was similiar. I've had people say that before, about other authors, but when I've looked at their work, I don't see any similiarities.

...but, oddly, Ms. Bentley's writing style and my own are similiar. We both do that listing word-flow, comma after comma after comma, attempting to catch that moment. It's been weird reading it, but there's enough of a difference in our attitudes so that I don't get too lost in the pages, wondering if I lived this life.

Fortunately, she's on this spiritual bent that I will never follow.

Faith in something... it's never worked for me.

The most faith that I have is in the theory that people will act in their own self-interest, neither good nor bad in nature. And it is with that world-view that I operate.

I did not spend this weekend with GV8. Usually, what I'll do is have a date on Friday night with someone, a date on Saturday afternoon, then go out with GV8 on Saturday night, which will translate into Sunday morning and afternoon, the two of us running around Hollywood, occasionally dropping into Los Angeles, until I drag my carcass home. We don't get to see each other that often because of his business.

So I stayed in town this weekend. I went to dinner with a friend, as previously mentioned, at a bar so now I know that if I feel like wrangling myself a tattooed rocker boy, I can drop in there. I do love a man with a lot of ink.

And I went to a semi-farmer's market thing this morning.

I haven't been spending a lot of time in this particular part of Southern California. Sure, it's where I grew up, for the most part, but I ejected out of the familiar fairly fast.

So I'm wandering around, looking at all these people, mostly dads and their offspring, and I walk by this girl.

Oh, look at that. It's one of the bitches from high school. Captain of the flag team, the all girl's choir team president... VP, whatever. Something. She went out of her way to give me as much crap as she possibly could... I still don't know what I did to offend her so much that she gunned for me all three years I attended that school.

She never left this town.

She married a guy who was a grade above her.

When they were dating, years ago, I overheard him trash-talking her at a Starbucks.

I see this girl who used to be so fit, so aggressive, with such a toned, athletic body and this healthy, wild, curly hair, and these sharp, angry brown eyes as she strode around the school, queen of the band nerds and colorguard.

She has not aged well.

It looks like someone took several pairs of nylons, stuffed the legs with waterballoons, and wrapped them haphazardly around her body. Her fat hangs and bunches in pools. She has a waddle around her neck, that wobbles when she talks, bulges when she lowers her chin. She's probably five years away, max, from having that pile of fat that some women store above their cunt. Her hair is piled up on her head looking like a tangled mass of hairy upchuck. She's wearing bug-eyes sunglasses, jeans that are making her muffintop, and double-layered tank tops that show every misplaced roll on her body.

It was pretty damn sad.

Her husband was with her. He has aged better. He was always nice to me, when we spoke. I never understood how he could tolerate her, find her essence, that of the Bitch, attractive. I just walked by them, no words.

I'm five, maybe ten pounds max, heavier than I was when I quit high school.

I'm travelling all over the place, meeting amazing people, doing things I never even heard of before they were proposed to me. I have friends all over the place, people I've met through various means, people that have become dear to me. I'm keeping active. I'm working on myself, working on my body, on my mind, constantly. I tear through books, movies, and music, searching for more to learn. I talk to strangers constantly throughout the day because interacting with someone new will teach you something, maybe about yourself, maybe about the world. But you'll learn. I'm going back to school, finally driving towards one of my dream jobs, and focusing so much on my writing. I'm recognizing fears and things that have held me back and I'm doing it for myself. Because I can be better. Because I should be better.

Never flatline.

Never stagnate.

You're in the moment now. You can sit and wait for something to happen, you can backslide, or you can walk forward.

I choose to go forward.

Because there is so much more I can be.

Just watch.

She's moving up slowly

Yesterday, yesterday I had one of those evenings where my mind was exploding and all I wanted to do was write. If I give into it, it's great. If I don't, I end up more and more out of my gourd and disconnected from the immediate reality.

Well, more than I already am.

I was unable to sit down and write.

I, instead, went out to dinner with a man I slept with a couple of times, who is now referring to me as his 'little sister' because I took our budding sexual relations and purposefully killed them last Decemember because I was seeing too many men and it was really, really starting to overwhelm me. If I didn't have the whole work/school/social life thing going on, it would be infinitely easier to handle five or six lovers, but, well, I do.

That whole "making something of yourself" thing can be a real drain on your sex life.

So we sat and caught up. His company was bought out a few months ago and, due to bad management, and illegal activities on the part of the owner, lawsuits have been flying. He's been busy as hell dealing with all the litigation crap.

It took me about twenty minutes before I stopped having to review in my mind the dialogue set before me. He would speak, and I would run through a list of things that may or may not be appropriate in response, and then adjust my facial expressions accordingly. This must be what autistic people feel like all the time. Social interaction must be exhausting for them.

Eventually, I mostly snapped out of it. Then, of course, I was distracted by a man at the bar. Good face, bad voice, bad facial expressions, midwest dress-style, wedding ring. The more he talked with the bartender, the less attractive he became.

Wanted to go over to him, put my finger on his lips and go, "Sssssh, just sit there and be hot. There's no need for this 'talking' business."

Glasses texted me earlier this week. Wanted me to go to a club I haven't been to in years with him and some of his friends, then go to some hotel suite he was getting near the club. I was up for it. He's gorgeous and brilliant, I can only assume his friends would be the same. Potential group sex, or at least a MMF or MFF? Sure, I'm down.

Wasn't coming together fast enough, though. Trying to set my schedule for the weekend is almost always a very intensive activity of calling and texting people, seeing who is doing what, when, where, and with who. Then you have to go through the freeways in your head for transit times. Construction? Holidays? Conventions? Concerts? If you're planning on hitting the 10/110/101 interchange, these are things you have to know. People wonder how I do so much all over the place, and it is because I take into consideration everything I can, and most people are willing to adjust their get-togethers in order for me to make it, or understand that I will be late.

So, when Thursday rolled around and it still wasn't set, and I had other people calling me for this weekend's activities, I decided it just wasn't worth it.

You've got two lines of thinking here:

1. I decide I will go to his club with him, which would, effectively kill my previous Saturday night plans and a chunk of Sunday day.

Then:

A. If things come together smoothly, that's great. I'd still be meeting his friends for the first time, though, so if I did not pull that off well, I could be boning myself for future encounters. Potential date-ambush.

or

B. Things don't come together. I end up cancelling my other potential plans for no good reason. And I look like I'm willing to bail on whatever activities I have going on just to possibly spend time with him. That's just no good.

2. I decide not to go with him. These leaves me with invites for multiple things in LA or San Diego, and I'm free to choose the weekend's hijinks. Yes, hijinks. Escapades? Capers? Shenanigans?

Two outcomes happen from this:

A. I never see him again. He wants a girl that will just fall by his side when he calls. I'm not going to be that girl, and if that's what it takes to have him in my roster, of things he is, worth it is not one of them.

or

B. I see him again. This would probably mean that either he was okay with me opting out on his plans, meaning he respects my individual decisions, or that he didn't care one way or the other. Of course, if it was the latter, he wouldn't have bothered inviting me at all, much less introducing me to his friends.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I get to determine how this is going to run by sending one text message and spending my weekend by going out and having an excellent time because whatever I decide to do, it will be fun.

If I don't see him again, it's no loss because he's confirmed to me that he isn't worth investing time, energy, or emotion into. If I do, it's excellent because he has confirmed that he is worth it, at least for a short time, depending on how things play out.

Either way, I win.

You can't control what other people will or will not do, but you can control how you react to the situation.

We might be meeting up on Sunday late afternoon, early evening. We'll see how that goes, if it goes. It very well might not. If it doesn't, you will very likely find me kayaking in La Jolla, as one of my ex-lovers has been trying to convince me to join him... for the last several months. It's an unsuccessful venture as it is hard to get me out of bed before 11 or 12 after a night of clubbing. It does not help that his bed is extremely comfortable and I tend to stay in it and groan at him for daring to wake me.

This weekend is shaping up to be rather crazy. I should be used to it by now, but... no, not really. I don't think I'll ever really get used to it. Leaping from place to place, party to coffee to club to book signing to art gallery to play to dinners to concerts to family events with so many different faces.

My mother told me recently that she never expected me to be like this. That because of my anti-social nature and bookworm tendencies that she expected me to be a homebody, and probably live with them the rest of my life.

If things hadn't fallen out the way they had, she would have been correct.

No one expected me to do the things I did, no one expected what happened as a result, and how the impact of those results would change me.

I should have been a librarian or an accountant. I should have been a frazzled secratary living in a one bedroom apartment with three cats and a lot of tacky art on the walls featuring kittens and cottages, shopping out of the Sears and Land's End catalogs, reading romance novels and dreaming of that One Guy that would see me One Day and See Me for Who I Am Inside, past the white cotton underwear and ill-fitting flesh-colored bras, past the tacky wardrobe and gold-rimmed glasses.

I love how no one recognizes me from a few years ago. I love how I run into people from high school and they have no idea who I am, even after I tell them we went to high school together, even if we were in the same classes, sat next to each other, since junior high.

I earned this life. It's mine, and it's good.