Open letter

I picked up and left town in a hurry. I never really explained myself, so here's a go at it.

Tired. I was so, tired. Not of San Diego, so much as everything that San Diego had to offer me, or had offered me over the past years.

I had run my course at La Jolla Playhouse. Half of my work experience was from there, so I'm not going to say it wasn't good for me. I was proud to work there for several years. But no one had any interest in getting me out of the box office. I was passed over for job after job, and the pay was so far below industry average that I grew more and more frustrated as my work load became greater and greater. It ended up being more fiscally responsible to move WITHOUT a job, than to stay at LJP.

You know what, I've been planning on writing this for weeks, and I had all sorts of grandiose and clever things to say, about LJP, about my family, and about money. None of that is really relevant. I moved because it was time. When I decide something, I make it happen as soon as possible. I moved because of family. I moved because of money. I moved because I didn't like my job.

It's been 6 weeks. It's a lot better here.

This is an email from my mother. There are no words. I did not respond.

Hi,

I changed my mind about your calling (and calling, etc...) your doctors. They obviously aren't helping you feel better, or get healthier. On the contrary, I think they are making you feel worse. I have been thinking about your situation, and praying for you a LOT, and I think I have some advice (from the Lord) that will help. Of course you can take it or leave it, but why not try it, as nothing else is working. 

My Suggestions:

1. Take a B Complex AND a Vitex EVERY morning, and EVERY lunch-time.

2. Finish your card of contraceptives, then STOP taking them! They are NOT helping to regulate your hormones, they are making them worse.  

3. Drink lots of water!

4. Try not to eat pasta, bread and rice. They are just like eating sugar, and do not give your body the healing nutrients it needs to keep up a busy schedule like yours. Protein, veggies and fruits are the best!

5. Don't give up on God, or prayer! Read your Bible and pray (for others) when you can't sleep.

6. If you have a concordance, look up the words "sleep" and "rest" and write out all the verses and post them around your house/room to remind you. (I thought I bought you a concordance, but if not, I will.)

Well, that's plenty to start with. If you decide to try it, don't give up! Keep doing it until you see results.

I love you SO MUCH! I pray for you OFTEN! I am praying for a wonderful trip/mini-vacation for you. Call me anytime!

Mom

"I lay down and slept; I awoke, for Lord sustains me."  Psalm 3:5

It's not that I'm against it on principle

I'm pretty open. You know, in general. I like people who aren't assholes.

TANGENT. Alright, I do in general like people, but I'm in Key Largo right now, and YES it's a gorgeous place to dive but I swear to god it's 90% humidity and at 7am it's 86 degrees and it keeps going up and up and up until it's 93 and you want to die. Then you dive and it's awesome. But I don't like people when I'm outside. Too damn hot.

Anyway. I get why they made "Friends With Benefits." Haven't seen it, not going to, never would have. But why is it just being made now, 2011? FwB isn't even hip anymore, it's been around so long. I remember it being the rage back in 2003. I might even have been in a FwB situation, you never really know when you're in one I think, or at least I didn't. Eh, if I was in one. Who knows. Anyway, that's about a decade old. These days the kids are all about true love (again) and getting names tattooed on them (seriously, saw a 17 yr old girl today with ANTHONY <3 on her arm. Might as well have gotten "No Regets") One night stands are more the thing than FwB nowadays. Sure, people still do it. But as a concept? It's hardly fresh.

Summer Blockbuster? I think not.

Aw, Shucks

Diane went out to lunch with an old friend today. She told him about me and he said I sound like a unicorn.

"She sounds so awesome that she couldn't exist."

Editing at 1:32am. Never a good idea. But I can't sleep when Diane isn't here.

I'm watching a show about couples in therapy, and I realize, I'm shocked. It seems so hard for people to be together, and so easy for us. It seems wrong somehow, that I got to find my girl at 24 when people all over are still looking.

Gold Stars and Misconceptions

I never know how much lingo people know. And in general I don't know a lot (I joke around with text-speak, and I try to keep up on my drug references, as well as standard pop culture, but that's because I think it's important as a theatre artist to know what's going on around), but I make it a point to be pretty well polished on my lesbian references. I live in fear (not really) of being out-gay-referenced by a straight friend, no one in particular, and everyone in general, so that keeps my ears perked for any new phrases that may come along. And there's this thing in the lesbian community, possibly gay too, though the two gay guys we were with Friday night had never heard it before, called being a Gold Star Lesbian.That means you've never slept with a man.

Most lesbians have. That might seem too general, but in my research, it's pretty standard.

The thing that nobody in the straight community seems to get is that having sex with a man doesn't make you straight. It doesn't make you bi. The most it means is maybe she didn't say no. Hardly a declaration of passion.

I go back and forth. Not on the gay thing, being gay suits me a hell of a lot better than dating boys. Dating boys was always kind of a train wreck. But on the "do I wish that I'd never slept with a guy?" bit. And honestly, it's tricky. When you're raised in a society and culture, mine in particular being so conservative and religious, that doesn't allow for the possibility of anything other than monogamous heterosexuality, there's a good bit of confusion that comes with that. For me, I always knew that girls were pretty great, but it didn't really seem fair to myself or guys to completely remove guys from the pool of possibility without at least a test drive. It might be really nice to have only been with girls. To never have had to manage getting through the hetero process. I certainly didn't have a grand time, but it's also just as certainly given me more confidence in the path that I'm on now.

And for some people, it's because they feel like I did. For others, it might be out of loneliness. I've known girls who didn't know any gay women until they were in their twenties.

Like I said, I go back and forth, but I really don't think it's right, giving a girl a Gold Star just because she's never been with a man. Seems like the rest of us should get a star because we DID have to go through it.

They took away my rainbow.

There's always been a little bit of gay in the USA. Like, more than what you'd think when you think of gay things. It's been fun to, every time I flew, see the rainbow of how things are going in the county. That guy up there.

But now, they're taking away my rainbow. I'd really taken the rainbow to heart. A friend and I have even started rating my back pain based on it.

Now all we have will be:

ELEVATED
IMMINENT

What will I DO?

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.

I was getting coffee at 7-11 this morning. There was a guy there, I'm not sure if he was working or if he was a customer, doesn't really matter to the story, but he was REJOICING over the death of everybody's hated terrorist, Osama bin Laden. "It's a fuckin' great day for America. It's a fuckin' great day for England. It's a fuckin' great day for the Middle East. It's a fuckin' beautiful day. Fuckin' amazing."

Rubbed me the wrong way. I don't say he didn't deserve it. Course the fucker did. I'm just saying that evil doesn't have a face. The world is one person smaller, but not less evil. We needed a face, ten years ago. We needed a face to say, "You. This was YOUR fault." And yeah. It was. But that wasn't, isn't the whole story. Not by a long shot. And something as simple and final as a bullet isn't going to suddenly fix everything.

My auto-response was, "Handy that they managed this just before elections."

Family

I just saw a commercial on Hulu for Disneyland. "You'll always remember the moment they stopped being siblings, and started being friends." And regardless of the fact that it's a commercial, and it's on an internet site for streaming mediocre television, it's an interesting quote. And one with which I completely disagree.

I am fairly well known in my circle for having an odd, but very calm and pleasant relationship with my immediate family. I don't get very upset with them. I manage to never fight with them. When they say or do things that I disagree with or dislike, I say nothing to them, let it brew, maybe complain to D about it, and get over it. You have to get over it, because really, what are my other options? And believe me, I know that, really, there are other options. But those options either involve talking about it, or distancing myself from them. And I like 'em, all in all. I don't want to fix issues through avoidance.

And as far as talking goes, talking to my family is worthless. It's like talking to a person who speaks only Japanese. Sure, they can see that you are talking. They can gather a general impression of your mood. But they can. not. cannot. understand what you are saying. It's not the same language. The language doesn't even have common roots. And it doesn't matter how long you try, or how loud you speak, or how desperately you may want to say something. You will not be heard. Because you don't speak in a way they can understand.

Period. Full stop.

That's something. I mean, it's a definite thing. And it's something that I think a lot of people do not understand. Or try to not understand. Pretend it's not true.

Because we can pick our friends. Based of anything from common interest, to common locale, to latent attraction. But we do not get that luxury with our families. We get to chose if and who we want as a partner in life, but we're stuck with what generations before us chose.

I don't talk with my extended family at all. I might get a birthday email from my Aunt Sue once a year. She's one out of 24 aunts and uncles.Why the disconnect? Distance. When you have a chasm of an entire continent, you really find out if there is anything more. There probably isn't.

Girltalk

I joke that I have girltalk with my friends (who are guys) more than she does. We talk about how we're feeling, chat over a meal, catch up.
When D talks to her (female) friends, they have guy talk:

"Is the sex still good?"
-"Yeah."
"It's REAL good with us too."

That sort of thing.

The following just happened:

D: "Why can't I come to girltalk?"
-"Because you'd just want to talk about boobs."
D: "...What's wrong with that?"

I say fuck a lot

I might even joke about it.

"Hey, Jen, why aren't you a Christian anymore?"
-"Eh. I fuckin' curse too much."

Shit too. I say shit a lot. It used to be my least favorite. But I did a 180 a couple of years ago once I realized how versatile it is.

Anyhow. This is an Easter post.

Yesterday was my first non-religious Easter. It felt great, to sleep in. To go buy candy. To visit a friend. Take the dog to the woods. To have sex.

But I can't deny that there's a sense of loss. Realizing that there is no god. Realizing that to enjoy a day I need to veil my true self from my family. I'm actually still sorting out what exactly I'm missing. It's not religion, so let me assure you of that, my christian friends. It's a little pang I feel of I guess...being dirty. Being not accepted if I told the truth. Being wrong for just being me. I don't feel that way most of the time.

I'm kind of kick ass and I'm doing okay in life. It just kills me that, in my family, that isn't enough.

3 Blogs

I have three blogs. You probably already got that. One was just for the month that I spent in NYC a couple of years ago. The other one is just a bunch of drafts. This one is from May of last year:

The Girl.

She catches me as I dance around the room. She pulls me into bed so that I can get lost in her, instead of just lost.

We'd been dating four months. It's been nearly 16 now. And it's still true, in that I've always just kind of...wandered. It's good to have an anchor. Back then, I was still just so in awe of how much another person could mean to me, that those 26 words were literally all I could come up with to express myself. I've always written in my little journals, notes, blogs and posts, from a place of angst and, not loneliness persay. I've always had the abnormal trait (a gift I'll describe at a later date) of not needing others much at all. But because of that I've definitely always been just outside of all social spheres, just sort of peering my way in to see what all the real people were up to. Calling myself a Misfit Toy. Remember? From Rudolph. My general state of being has typically been "Eh." I've always enjoyed being my Not Goth and Not Emo but Kind of just want To Be a Plant personality. Or at least felt mild and indifferent about it.

It's taken me the past 16 months to get used to "Happy and in a relationship." I mean. It's weird. I'm not "that girl." I'm not the girl who gets asked out on millions of dates, or ever did. I'm not the girl who always looks put together. I'm not the girl who wanted all the domestic shit we're taught to want. I'm the girl who lost her virginity real late. I'm the girl who used to have to get drunk to have sex. I'm the girl who had a harder time coming at as atheist than gay. I'm the girl who still hasn't come out to her parents. I'm also the girl who met My Girl. I found somebody who loves me, and the rarity of that gift doesn't escape me. A friend mentioned that she makes my emotional sine wave much more stable. It's true, because whatever else happens, it's very comforting, grounding, to be able to think, "I've got that girl who loves me. She's waiting for me back home."

A lot of people behave as though they've discovered something when they are in love. Like since they found it, they know something you don't know. I call bullshit on that. If you're in love. Be goddamn happy about it, because true people and real love are not easy to find. In my experience, love is luck. You happen into a great relationship. There are as many awesome people who haven't found love as there are terrible people who have.

I feel fortunate that I've not had to wait until I was older to find D, but what matters is I found her. I want her love forever, but even if that doesn't happen, it's still an honor to have had it.

We run into hiccups every so often. Not for lack of love, not for lack of compatibility, just for...growing pains I guess. We know enough about each other that we're past all of the superficial shit people talk about for the first couple of months, but in the grand scheme of life, we've got a long way to go, and I think we have a tendency to assume that everyone thinks the same way as ourselves. It's jarring to realize, "Oh, this is different. I must adapt." And we do.

I've always been more of a 'cut and run' sort of girl before D came along, so this jazz is extra hard for me. She doesn't like me to talk about that, because it seems like a threat. I don't mean it that way, it just means that my learning curve is extra steep. I can do it, I'm just gonna break a sweat and complain about it and we'll all be a little grumpy till it's over.

We never fight. And of course, never is untrue. But we've maybe gotten into two? three? arguments where one or both of us actually raise a voice or got angry. Our tiffs are usually quite productive. Strangely so, actually. We tend to get into a discussion about a situation, and one of us will get worked up. Usually me. And we talk through it. And it works out.

We want what we want. I think the dominant issue for both of us is...what is that?

Still, I love the shit outta that girl.

A kiss is just a kiss

Went to a goth punk show. I mean, there were really just a few goth elements, it was basically just a punk show. In a punk/rockabilly bar.

That's cool. Given the way I dress/act/am, really the ONLY places I fit in are going to be theatres or a very laid-back lesbian bar. So in the joke "A girl walks into a bar..." I'm usually the punchline. Something I'm used to though. And I'll wear my cleavage shirts and I'll show my back tattoo, and I'll say 'fuck,' in the hopes of blending.

I do what I can.

You've been to bars. You know how people get drunk and sloppy. You know how couples will be all over each other? We don't do that.

Turns out we can't. Even a kiss, as we sit in the far back corner of the bar, by the pool table that's not been in use since we finished our last game, even that's too much. I didn't say anything. People would say I'm blowing it out of proportion, maybe. It's not like someone came up to us and said something or asked us to leave.

Still, it's not fun to be glared at. It's not fun to be made to feel like you're something dirty because you love your girlfriend.

"I want to fuck your mouth"

"Stick it in your tight, little pussy."

That's what the gentleman in the truck next to us said while we were in D's car, at a red light.

I'm not a lesbian because I hate men. I'm not.

But I hope that asshole dies of syphilis.