I went to the park the other day with my non-girlfriend, girlfriend. I took a few pictures. I figured I would post them, since she is pretty important to me.

So, it has been a while since I posted anything, pictures or otherwise. I went the other day and took some pictures of things generally considered ugly in my home town. I feel like they deserve a chance to be seen in a different way. So many things are so dilapidated and look like they lack potential, but are really filled with so much wonder.

I was using this as a regular journal, but everything I say of any importance is on myspace so I am just going to start a photojournal. I haven't taken any recent pictures so for now I am just gunna put some that are important to me.


Fuzz Fuzz

Ichabod

My home town.

Me!

I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach like a parasite has infiltrated with one mission, to devour any and all positive feelings that I may have. School is about to start and I should be excited, but instead I am a nervous wreck. One thing after another has gone wrong. I bought all of my books online, one arrived with water damage, one was shipped standard mail when I paid for expedited, one was shipped just yesterday, none of the people I bought from actually sent me messages telling me when they were shipped. Then, there is this issue with my divorce. I have everything I need to complete, and yet I can't. I don't love him, and really want to be freed, but there is still something holding me back. My friends, I love them, and I should be happy they want to hang out with me, but instead I feel angry. The three friends who want to and have the time to hang out don't have licenses so guess who gets to drive to their house and pick them up, then drive us where we go, and then drive them back, and then drive back home? Yes, me. It is SO frustrating, and while I want to put my foot down I just can't. Oh, and let us not forget my wonderful step father. Perhaps I should be grateful that he even lets me stay in his and my mothers home, but perhaps not. All this man does is complain! In his eyes I can do nothing right. I grew up in a home FULL of negativity, and I was hoping when I moved here it would be different, but it isn't. Then there was this interview I was excited yet nervous as is to be expected, but after the interview it really sunk in that I didn't get the job, and instead of just shrugging it off I couldn't help but sulk. I am angry that I can't get a job. I have skills, I have many college credit hours, I have a license, I have my own car, I don't drink, smoke, do drugs. I am a good person, but no one gives me a chance. I am either overqualified or too inexperienced. It is crap I know people who drink and smoke, don't have cars or licenses and yet still they get hired. It doesn't seem fair.

Twenty years (nearly) I have been living this life, and people tell me, "It will get better." Here I am, I am waiting. Yes, I know there are some positives, but the parasite he is eating them away. I just feel like something REALLY bad is going to happen and I don't know what it is or why, and if this negativity is just leading up to something bigger. I may lose my mind in the darkness.

I can't even count the number of times I have heard about the puzzle pieces of life, but today I learned something new about these pieces. Slowly you get to put them in place, sometimes you guess wrong and stick non-matching pieces together. Oh, the problems that arise. There is a good side though. We also get another chance to move the pieces.

It has taken me so long to figure out that we get second chances if we say we do. As individuals we get to decide when we get second chances. How amazing?!?

That isn't all though. There is the whole...big picture thing. Piece by Piece you watch this picture come together, you learn who you are and where your life is going. Occasionally the pieces fall apart, but what else is there to do but pick them up and start over again?

My life has been a constant series of putting pieces together and taking them apart. The pessimist in me says it will always be this way, but then there is this other little voice that is screaming for me to run for the big picture. All of the pieces of my life are coming together right now, and I know they may fall apart. It is okay. I also know eventually they will start to come together again, and SOME DAY I will see the big picture.

What bigger reward is there than that?

Tonight I learned something. Love is awkward, imperfect, unpredictable, beautiful, and amazing. A lot of things in life we expect to happen a certain way, and they do, but love keeps you on the edge of your seat. This is insanely sappy of me, but I can't help but sit here in awe of what love really is. In movies it is often portrayed as this beautiful thing with this wonderful beginning, and no end in sight. In reality it is rocky, a pain in the ass, and sometimes enough to drive you nuts, but that is what makes it so awesome.

I have spent so much time thinking that I could go out and find love. I could make it happen. Part of this thought process was true. I could easily make people believe they loved me, but none ever did. At least not in the way I wanted. Perhaps that is the key to getting along with love. If we think it should be one way and it isn't then we will always be let down, but if we realize that love, just like all of us, is unique and has it's own face we can never be disappointed.

No one is perfect, so why should love be?

I read a story today about a woman who died approximately 35 years ago. I know, doesn't sound special right? Here is the catch, no one noticed she was gone. She was never reported missing. Her bills were continuously paid, and her life went on without her. (http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/16/croatia.body.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)

Could you imagine living a life with so little contact with people that they wouldn't even notice you had died? I hope that I never get that way. I have a tendency to alienate myself from people, but eventually I am always pulled back. This woman had no friends, just neighbors and acquaintances.

Reading this story I truly feel blessed that I have people in my life who won't let me just disappear.

How can real people say "just follow your heart" and mean it?? I have been searching for answers for so long that I finally just gave up, and have been hoping that clarity would just come to me. Yet here I am typing a blog confused as usual. I want to know am I gay or am I bi. It isn't that big of a deal. I can get so far as to say I REALLY like women, but do I solely like women? When I fantasize it is about women about 90 percent of the time. In fact I had to make up a hetero fantasy to  tell my husband when he asked what I fantasized about. Is that sad? I apparently send out this "Bi" vibe though, so maybe people are right. Perhaps I am just Bi. I can settle with that can't I? Is it possible that I only want to label myself as gay so I can be certain I have a good excuse to get out of my marriage? No, why would I do that? That would make my life even more hellish. I just wish that I still had the freedom to date and figure it out, but NO here I am trapped in a loveless, sexless, pathetic marriage. I know I put myself here, but I assure you it was for the greater good of man kind. I just wish it was as simple as rolling a dice or choosing left or right.

Okay how about this when I see my future say ten years from now when I am 29 almost 30 I don't see myself with a man, and I don't see myself alone. I am with a woman. That thought makes me insanely happy. Man I wish my counselor could just answer this question for me. I know it doesn't work that way though. I have to find my own answers.

This is going to sound lame, but last night my husband warted the piss out of me until I had sex with him. As of lately, I hate sex. I couldn't tell you why, but with men, it just doesn't appeal. Anyway, my point is, afterward I hurt so bad that my mind couldn't help but jump to the time I felt helpless beneath another man. After he had sex with me I went and took a shower and just cried, and cried. I had thought I was over that incident. It was something in my past. I tried to stop blaming myself, and I tried to move on. How can I move on though, when things like this happen, and cause painful images to creep back in? Will I ever be free?