Born nurturer hates people

That's what my personal ad would say.

So, yesterday during a massage with a client who is a teacher, the client was telling me another ridiculously awful story about the quality of students in her english class; how everyone is looking at a phone constantly, no one does assignments, people show up 40 minutes late or leave halfway through, even a story of a guy who couldn't understand why the teacher didn't get his text saying he was going to miss class (her response, "the office phones are landlines, they don't get texts." WOW.)

She said some of her students want to be nurses (including the guy that abbreviates registered nurse as NR) but all universally say they are not interested in science. She says they will have a wake up call when they can't pass anatomy and physiology.

I told het that it was my first anatomy and physiology class that convinced me I should go into a medical field, because I was REALLY good at it and knew it would earn money, as opposed to the other things that I was really good at, like English, which would just put me on track to being a poor teacher who hates everyone even more than i already do.

She laughed wildly.

Then she asked, if I hate people, how come i seem to enjoy my career as a massage therapist so much, and am so good at it?

So... Huh. I have thought of this before, but never come up with really satisfying answers.

Like, "I appreciate helping individuals but hate groups."  Or "I just do it because I want praise."

Yeah, both of these are true. But i really do feel like each person that gets on my table, no matter how i feel about them as a person, is a child under my care that i need to nurture, heal and protect.

But damn, i honestly dislike the majority of humans that I know of. I don't hate most people that i meet, I just don't care about them. It takes someone really special for me to feel like, if you disappeared from the planet right now, I would miss you. I only have a small handful of people i would consider good friends.

The flip side of the coin is that i have a jillion acquaintances, because I'm so eager to please that everyone likes me to some degree. I don't care about these people at all, but i have to make sure they like me. For some reason.

And the few people that I know personally and hate, I wish slow death and suffering upon. These are also the only people that I don't try to please.

Perhaps my choice of careers reflects emotional damage when I was a kid in an abusive elementary school; trying to stay out of the sight of bullies and being extra nice and charming so no one would want to hurt me, but LOATHING everyone around me with the burning hatred of a thousand suns.

Take away message; if your kid doesn't hang themselves or shoot up the place because of school bullies, they'll probably make good health care professionals.  (I KID BECAUSE I LOVE.)

Live, damn you, liiiiive!

I can safely ay that 100% of the diaries, journals and blogs I have ever kept have died for the same reason. I suddenly suffer some major gap in time, and after that point even if I have things to write about, I suddenly feel awkward writing them without explaining what I've been doing with myself in the mean time. As if I need to catch up an old acquaintance or something. As if my journals judge me. (Stop judging me!!)

In this instance it is not only the awkward gap in time but the fact that I am now forced to do most of my typing holding aloft an iPad, which is... So... So... Horrible beyond description... (Incidentally, please forgive any typos. I promise you they bother me way more than they bother you. You know how your typing program highlights every error in red? That's my whole brain.)

Usually the gap in time happens after some major life event occurs. I'm not entirely sure why I find it tedious to write about major life events in my diaries... Perhaps I've written so many letter and talked about it using so many important words already that to rehash it one more time for something that simply amount to "posterity" feels trite.

Maybe I only like to share thoughts that I haven't previously shared. "Private" thoughts that I hope someone cares enough about to read.

In any case, i've had too many random things I've wanted to say to let this blog languish any longer. So I bring you back to life, written words of mine! *BOOM*

Here is a summary of my life and why I have not done any upkeep here.

Got married. On a farm, with a corn maze and squirt guns and a bonfire. It was THE BEST PARTY EVER. Got pregnant one month after that. Oops! But I always knew I'd have a baby at some point and figured I wasn't going to get any younger, so alrighty then. At least I got married first - yay life going in the correct order! Had Lydia on July 5th at 1am, and could still hear fireworks outside the window. Did, and have subsequently done, everything as naturally and mother-chimp-like as possible based on the fear that if i don't there might be the smallest chance I'll be turning my baby girl into one of the thousands of people that I think are a waste of skin and resources. Since I don't know what it is that turns someone into a worthless human being, I don't want to accidentally do it. It's a crazy theory that I'm afraid to not abide by. Which is not to say this has been easy. Lydia is eighteen months now and literally tests at three year old intelligence, which i'm not saying to brag, but to beg commiseration. She is CRAZY sauce, barely eats but takes eight mother's worth of energy to keep up with, but I do my best somehow, even though i feel like I live a shell of a life. I'm told this will change... At some point... Maybe... (Yaaay). We just bought a house, my very first since my childhood home, in Oak Park, a. hoping the schools here will be what Bananas needs to stay sane, b. hoping it's as interesting and walkable as where we had lived in roscoe village so I can stay sane, and c. hoping it's the closest burb to Chicago so Paul can stay sane. None of us feel very sane yet. But moving never goes smoothly, right? (Stabstabstab)

So that should bring you up to speed, you damn judgmental blog you.

Now, on with the brainmeats.

Well, that happened. And I couldn't be happier.

For those of you that have not been tracking my bleary-eyed announcements on Facebook in the wee hours of this morning as sleep eluded me due to nervous excitement: ladies and gentlemen, yesterday I got engaged. 

In about five million ways I never really thought I would get married, in the same way I never really thought I would live past the age of 16, mostly because it's what I always wanted for my life.  Family is the only thing that has ever seemed truly important to me, and the nagging feeling that it was all going to come to a halt in my name was... well... 

Anyway, that's not what I'm writing about here.  Suffice it to say I've felt very surreal for the past 36 hours.  Like suddenly someone opened a curtain and said, "Congratulations, you won a brand new life!" 

That sounds kind of creepy and unhealthy, but please believe I have no other way of describing it, and I know this surreal feeling will fade into a normal level of excitement soon, but at this moment when it is all still so fresh, I feel a bit like I've been dreaming and tomorrow I'll wake up. 

The funny thing is, it wasn't a particularly fantastical moment, there were no unicorns, no chorus of angels, no swell of music, but somehow that made it exactly what it should have been for me.  And I'll explain that statement at the end. 

I've been dating Paul for about a year and a half now.  I met him through Wildclaw Theatre, that little horror company here in Chicago.  And this sounds dumb, but it really was sort of immediately right with him.  I'm not going to gush about how I've struggled in past relationships for the smallest shred of pseudo-happiness and how easy it has been to find myself completely overjoyed with Paul all the time, so let me just say that I feel great.  I met this guy and immediately thought I would marry him. 

A year and a half later, we have our own apartment together, our two cats are learning to get along, and we joke about getting married so frequently it's like we're already married.  At least I thought it felt like that.  Until I actually heard the words and said yes to them.  And then suddenly it was like a brand new relationship.  I said to Paul tonight, "Do you feel like we just started dating, somehow?  Like everything is completely and stupidly new?"  He giggled really hard and I knew he'd been thinking it too.  I joked, "Hell, we should get engaged every year!" 

So, like I said, we'd joked about it.  A lot.  And lately it had been not so much joking as "Hey, wanna go ring shopping on Saturday?"  That was from Paul, met with my mock horror, "No, that takes all the surprise out of it!  You're supposed to surprise me, dammit!"  Of course, I secretly believed he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of actually surprising me because I can read his body language so well I would spot a proposal coming from a mile away. 

Saturday comes and the weather is amazing, so we decide to run all our errands on our bikes.  It's great.  We go to a frame shop, the dollar store, and then Paul says he needs to check his phone to see if someone texted him back.  He's usually not secretive in any way, so when I ask what he's hoping to find out and he pretends not to hear me, I figure something is up.  He seems pleased to see whatever he was looking for on his phone, and our next stop takes us to: 

A jewelers.  It's the jeweler that Paul's best friend used for his wedding rings last August.  Apparently the text he was waiting for was the address of the place. 

We walk in, the woman says, "Hi, what can I do for you today?" and Paul sort of stumbles out the words, "Well, I guess we should say it out loud: we're getting married!" 

This is the first I've heard of it as an official thing, so I'm slightly dumb struck, both wondering if that was supposed to be my official proposal and wondering if this is all just an elaborate joke. 

So we sit down and I'm pressed to design an engagement ring for myself.  After wading through several options, the woman finally cottons to the fact that I wasn't ready for this, and had my heart set on being surprised, so she suggests, "Ok, now that I know what you like and what you don't like, why don't you just let Paul come back later and he and I will finish the ring's design so you can truly be surprised by the time you see it." 

Perfect.  So, we make our departure and I'm all giggley and stupid and Paul keeps teasing me, saying, "What are you giggling about?  It's like you think I proposed or something.  Well I didn't, you know.  Maybe I'm getting this ring for some other chick I've got on the side that has the same size finger as you."  It's cute.  I'm still a bit confounded, but it's cute.  We decide to go about the rest of our errands. 

Toys R Us is next on our list, and we're looking for plastic Easter eggs.  After talking to a clerk, we're directed to them.  As I turn I hear Paul ask the clerk something about a ring.  He waves me away when I glance back, and I figure he's just going to put plastic jewelry in the eggs before we hide them for each other, just to be cute.  So I walk away to let him have his "surprise." 

The store is packed with hickish families of obnoxious children pumping quarters into rubber ball machines and dragging plastic dinosaurs around by the tails.  We check out, and suddenly, at the end of the check-out line, Paul reaches into the bag and pulls out a Ring Pop. 

And gets down on one knee. 

Right there. 

At the end of the check-out line. 

I am suddenly painfullly aware of everyone that has seen Paul make this very classic movement, and a red light goes off behind my eyes as my social phobias kick in. 

Before he can say anything I stage-whisper, "Nonononono, not here not here not here not here!!!!!" and literally drag him to his feet.  He's wearing a look on his face somewhere between just having maniacally shot a kitten, and realizing he's maniacally shot a kitten, and before he can protest I feel myself fleeing the store. 

He stumbles out behind me, as we're both guffawing, unable to breath we're laughing so hard, and his first words to me are, "I've been spurned!" 

Finally I collect myself and we go back to our bikes, Paul laughing and admitting that maybe not all his ideas are great, and as we're unlocking our bikes from the trash can they're chained to, he grabs me up and says, "But this time I mean it - Krista, will you marry me?" 

Before I can answer he's crying because he knows I will say yes, and when I say yes he's crying even harder, and we hug, his sunglasses fall off, my hat tumbles to the ground, and ten million years pass in my head as I realize I'm going to be this man's wife. 

Then to break the tension I say, over his shoulder, "I've just been proposed to over a trash can outside of a Payless Shoes.  This is the happiest day of my life." 

I put on the Ring Pop.  And suddenly I feel like a completely different person.  "I need a drink," I admit.  "My girl," says Paul, who is visibly shaking. 

And that's when it hits me.  He really DID manage to surprise me.  So much so, in fact, that my first gut reaction was vehemently negative!  That is the first sign for me that I had just received the perfect proposal.  Why hadn't I realized it before?  Of course the only way to surprise me would be an action so embarrassingly inappropriate I would never see it coming.  The perfection is as blinding as it is simple. 

We spent the rest of the day in a daze, texting and calling various people (our folks both already knew, incidentally, that it would happen some time this weekend, savvy as they are) and my second sign that this was the perfect proposal came when my two best and oldest friends in the world independently asked me in their own respective ways, before I'd even told the Toys R US/trash can story, if the proposal had been appropriately lame/weird/silly like I always thought it would be.  Mark asked if it had been over a flaming barrel.  Debi asked if he'd used a paper napkin ring.  The fact that I then got to tell a true story of a Ring Pop over a trash can filled me with limitless joy. 

Incidentally, my ring is strawberry flavored, and I spent the rest of the day nervously licking at it, so the remainder of my "engagement ring" is now in the freezer to prevent me from finishing it. 

This is as far as this story has gotten currently, and I'll update as we figure out details.  But for right now we're still clutching each other and giggling and turning uncontrollably red at the words "engagement" and "fiance."  Fun. 

I think I like this whole "life" thing.  It certainly makes for a good story.

WHEE

Oh, I'm so glad I just watched Toy Story 3 last night with friends and then saw this today:


http://disney.go.com/charactercalls/bigkidcalls/


I know it says not to enter a third party's phone number, but there's nothing that really stops you from doing that, so... heh.  I'm totally giving my friends little "presents." :)  Why does this delight me so very much?

In my room

Whenever I come home, I try to open up drawers that I haven't looked within in a long time, examine my old toys, look under my bed and in my closets... I couldn't tell you what's there before I see it, but when I do, it's like I'm dreaming, and memories come rushing back to me so powerfully I can't even express them.


My room has changed quite a bit since I lived here.  Most notably, my mother has filled it with HER toys and collectibles, which is funny, because it just makes it look like I had mass amounts of toys as a child, and in reality I did not.  But my furniture is still mostly the same, and the things I've left here are all still here.  Letters, pictures, things I taped to corners of door frames to remind myself that I had friends, maps, knickknacks... it's all still here.  I opened up a cabinet that's in my headboard last night, and found that's where I stored all my diaries and candles and special things.  The smell inside that cabinet almost brought me to tears.  I could smell the wax of the candles and the paper of the journals, the pencil smudges and rose water and incense that I never used but couldn't throw away.  Stuff back to when I was 13.  Stuff from England.  A large bound blank book that I used as a massive diary for my trip through England had this particular smell that made me immediately flash to how it felt to hold the pencil I wrote with in that journal, and how it felt to put it down every night before bed, and how special and spiritual and secret I felt holding it.


I've changed so much and haven't changed at all since then.  The smell of that cabinet reminded me of loneliness and hopefulness, social fears and private confidences, crushes and friendships and confusion and frustration, crying and laughing and wanting to escape and go back all at the same time.  That sinking feeling that everything used to be better, and the glimmering feeling that everything could still be ok.  Fearing I might change as an adult and lose something, and fearing I might not at all and would be stuck with myself forever.  I was right on both cases.


I haven't opened up my toy closet yet.  I'm almost afraid to.  I don't particularly want one of my parents to walk by and find me on my knees, worshipping some forgotten stuffed animal in a daze of nostalgia.  I know it's only been about two years since I was here, but still... two years.  And opening a closet is like going back in time.  I've dreamt of my room so many times in my life that when I think about my room the dreams and the reality become blurred, and when I see what's really there, it's like I'm dreaming all over again.  I kind of wish I had more time on this trip to just absorb myself, and at the same time I'm glad I don't have the chance to over-saturate and find myself back where I started as a child, wanting nothing more than to get away from the constant and unending me-ness of it all.  I wish I could go back.  The irony is in know the only reason I feel that way is because there's distance.

A random piece of shit

I want to write a blog for you,

even though you'll never see it.

I want to say sweet things to you,

even though you won't believe it.

I want to be with you today,

even though it's me you fear.

I want your arms around me now,

though to you I'm not as dear.

But maybe if I stay with you

and tell you one more time,

you'll figure out I love you so

you're in my heart, my mind,

my soul; and I can't quite you, love,

don't think I'll ever do.

So be with me and smile a bit,

and make this true love true.

I'm leaving you, Doctor Who

I just finally watched Waters of Mars and End of Time - the last two pieces of the David Tennant Doctor Who run.  And I'm done.


No really.


I'm done.


That was exhausting and I don't mean that glibly at all.  I'm never watching another new episode of Doctor Who again.  Ever.  As far as I'm concerned, the series is over. Sure, it's just started it's new season and I hear the writing is much better now and it's all kinds of fantastic, but for me, it's done.  It was a fucking trial and I escaped with my life.


I'm pretty sure no one else understands how I feel right now.  I don't WANT to see any more.  I don't want to think about it, I don't want to get involved, I don't want to know.  I'm DONE.  The entire run of David Tennant's Doctor Who was designed to see just how much sadness and despair they could cram into one character - to see just how far down they could crush him, grind him into the dirt, take away everything he loved and more, again and again and again until there was nothing left but numbness and dark.  By the end you just wanted him to die so he wouldn't suffer any more.  It was like praying for suicide.  Please... please, let it end.  And finally it has.


It was a punishment to watch this show.  I just wanted to see him happy.  The fucking show paralleled my life and brought me down at every turn.  I could be happy if only I could see this character that I loved feeling happy.  I just wanted to FEEL HAPPY watching a fun sci-fi program.  But all the show did was make me suffer.  Take and take and leave nothing but pain and emptiness.


For years.


I hear it's better now.  More enjoyable, and brand new start, a good jumping on point, etc.  And that's nice for it.  But I feel like I've been through just another abusive relationship.  I don't care how much it's changed, I'm done.  I can't forget, so I'm just going to leave.


Have a nice life, Doctor Who.  I will always love you.  And I will never forgive you.