Taken at Federation Square in Melbourne!  YAY!

Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you on this earth. Sometimes you catch them. They can be the hands of the people you love. They can be your pets- pups with funny names, cats with ferocious old souls. The thing that keeps you here can be your art. It can be things you have collected and invested with a certain sense of meaning. A flowered, buckled treasure chest of secrets. Shoes that make you taller and, therefore, closer to the heavens. A suit that belonged to your fairy godmother. A dress that makes you feel a little like the Goddess herself.  Sometimes you keep falling; you don’t catch anything.  Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you here. Sometimes you catch them. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes they catch you.

- Francesca Lia Block

It’s really weird waking up in a hotel room in a city so far from home.  I guess I didn’t expect that the safety of being at home -  in a familiar place -  was one of those things that made the day to day a little easier.  The routine made it all easier.  Wake up, work, come home, eat dinner, watch a movie, get online, go to bed.  That routine offered a comfort that I didn’t know I relied on until I found myself here in Melbourne.  It was, I guess, the familiar thing whereas now I am surrounded by unfamiliar things and I’m a bit afraid to let go because I don’t know what or who would catch me.  It’s a bit strange being around Janie and Monica, these two people who I have trusted more than anyone I ever have before, and to be so happy to sit around with them and just be and yet to feel so uncertain about who I am in their lives after everything that has happened with all of us.  It makes it so much harder to open my mouth and talk, to be who I am, because there is no safety net.  I’ve found myself clinging to Janie as the only familiar thing I have here and at the same time it feels like it doesn’t quite fit, like I’m relying too much on it, on her, on whatever we are in this moment.

When Monica and Donna dropped us off at our hotel last night and Monica hugged me goodbye she said “Please don’t be like this,” and the most frustrating thing is that right now I have no idea how to be any other way.  I feel like I’m trapped behind this barrier and I’m screaming for help but no one can hear me.  No one will help me and, worse, I have no idea how to help myself.  I feel small and insignificant in a way I never have before which is really fucking awful because I have spent much of my life feeling pretty fucking worthless.  There is a groundlessness to losing your partner that is unbelievably difficult and to add on top of all of that a fractured friendship is fucking mind blowing.  And I see Janie and Monica together and talking and I feel sad and lonely because not that long ago I used to be a part of that, I used to be important to them and now I feel a bit like I don’t exist. Invisible.  And as I sit and listen and watch and look at them I’m literally pleading on the inside – please fucking notice me.  PLEASE SEE ME IN HERE.  And they don’t.

In the beginning of this break-up I said that this would all be made harder by the fact that I’d have to deal with so much of this alone.  Maybe it’s putting that idea out there in the first place that is what bit me but it feels more true now than ever, the loneliness.  I’m surrounded by people who express concern, who try to help, who offer opinions and advice, who try to get me to open up but there is no one left who sees me.  Who sees beyond the obvious projection of who I am and into my heart, my mind and my soul and that is what makes it all so lonely, that’s what pulls the ground out from under me and I find myself falling, falling, falling.  There is no one left to catch me and I’m afraid I’ll keep falling forever because the people I’ve trusted to catch me can’t be that anymore.  They’re too far away and here I go, over the edge, and it is so far down and I can’t see the bottom.  I can only have faith that someone or something down there is strong enough because right now I’m not strong enough to catch myself.  I’m not strong enough to reach out my hand and say please help me, I’m dying.

Back in May I wrote a post called “This used to be a downward spiral” and I ended it with this:

What has for several months now felt like a downward spiral of lonely searching and heartache, of tearing myself down, has changed so drastically in the last days.  I now find that I am building myself up, piling on all the bits of goodness I found in the rubble and under the grime of years and years and yet more years of doubt and discomfort.  What I thought was an exercise in ridding myself of ugliness has turned into an exercise in self-discovery, in uncovering the beauty rather than tearing apart the beast.  This is completely new territory for me, and I know the journey I’ve just begun will not be as easy and as clear as it seems in this moment.  But what I have learned is that I am not alone in all of this, that I have a family of people who love and believe in me without end.  A group of people so magical in their collective goodness that it is impossible not to trust in them.  So with that trust, with that love, I let go and move on from this crossroads with a solid foundation of support beneath me.  I know they will not let me fail.  And that makes all the difference.

I just read that and it feels so unfamiliar.  I have no idea who that person is.  I have no idea what it means anymore and it’s disgusting.  Somewhere I stopped building myself up and started tearing myself down again.  I let ideas get into my head that I should not have.  I started to believe those old things I held onto so tightly, those same things I had used to build up wall after wall after wall to keep people out, away.  I feel like I’m back to square one and I haven’t learned my lesson.  I’ve stopped believing in myself and I’ve stopped believing in the goodness of other people.  I’ve been told twice in the last months, by people who have said some pretty hurtful things to me, that they felt they had no choice.  In my head I’ve rolled that around and around and around and tried to make sense of it and the only thing that comes out is…they had no choice because I’m that disgusting of a person.  They had no choice because I deserve to be hurt.  They had no choice because I’m just that bad.  And there it is, in a nutshell.  The concept I’ve ben fighting against for all of my fucking life.

I AM A BAD PERSON.

I do not want to be a bad person.  I do not want to feel like this anymore.  I have fought so fucking hard to be good and it feels like the moment I start to feel it could be true, it disappears and I’m slapped in the face with this idea that, hey guess what, you will never be anything other than awful. You’re bad.  You’re mean.  You’re worthless.  You’re a loser.  You deserve all this hurt and anger because you’re just no good. There is no choice.  You get what you deserve.

]]> http://uncouthheathen.com/2010/08/30/falling/feed/ 4 http://uncouthheathen.com/2010/08/28/melbourne-day-1/ http://uncouthheathen.com/2010/08/28/melbourne-day-1/#comments Sun, 29 Aug 2010 05:04:30 +0000 heathen http://uncouthheathen.com/?p=4371 It shouldn’t be a surprise that I ended up at the hospital less than 12 hours after I got here.  But not because Monica beat me senseless – though she has kicked me and hit me a handful of awful times even though I cried and protested and said NO NO NO you’re hurting me WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, is it because I’m so much more awesome than you are, because that’s understandable that you’d be upset about it, but it’s still not okay to hurt me you bitch whyyyyy!?  After we left the airport we went to lunch and after lunch we were driving somewhere.  I can’t remember where because ALL I KNOW IS THAT I WAS GOING TO PEE MY MOTHERFUCKING PANTS.  I had a lot of water.  A LOT OF WATER.  I had so many waters that Donna had to pull over to let me go somewhere, anywhere, and the first and seemingly only option was the hospital, so as I waddled my way in through the doors, Monica was running around trying to find the bathroom.  She went to the reception desk and asked for directions because her stupid American friend was about to pee all over the hospital floor.  So luckily we found! a! bathroom! and I peed the most amazing pee of my entire life. I will never forget the Melbourne Private Hospital bathroom and the beautiful time we had together that afternoon.

I feel like I’ve been here a week even though it’s only been a little over a day, but that’s sort of how life has gone lately.  A day is a week and a week is a month and a month is a year and a year is how long it’s been since there were dinosaurs.  But it is beautiful here and Monica and Donna are gorgeous and their awesome dog Tessa has fallen in love with Janie.  Last night we just sat around and hung out watching Pink concerts and I just sat over in the corner and thought to myself – this is retarded.  This is so fucking insane that I’m sitting on this couch right now with these three people and HOLY SHIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED?  I was in Seattle one minute and now I’m sitting here and OH MY GOD I feel, in some way, like one of the luckiest people in the world that I am here and these people are a part of my life even though I’m a retarded asshole.  It’s overwhelming in a way that I can’t quite wrap my brain around and I just feel a bit stunned.

This morning Monica, Janie and I hung out at the coffee shop that Monica loves, the same place she’s sat while we’ve chatted so many times before and it was mind-blowing.  It’s little moments like these where I feel this crazy sense of disbelief.  Several months ago we bought these tickets to come to Melbourne and on that day the three of us chatted online and went retarded with excitement at the prospect of the very thing we have here right now.  So so so much has happened since then and we have all fallen apart in many ways and come back together in some and things aren’t exactly how we imagined them then, but it’s still an incredible experience to be here, to be together and to look across the table from this gorgeous friend who I adore  and to see my amazing ex-wife sitting beside us and to all sit and talk and kick each other under the table.  I just wanted to cry.  I wanted to burst into tears because even though I feel a little awkward and I’m adjusting, I also felt like there are few people in the world as phenomenal as these two and how fucking special is it to be with them in the same place.

This is going to be one of the best experiences of my life.  I know it already and I still have so many more days to go.  I can’t wait to tell you what else we do, where we go, how we grow and laugh and cry together and how much luckier I will feel with each passing day to know I am among some of the best friends I’ve ever known or believed could exist.

Also, the toilet has two flusher buttons and I don’t know what that other one is for.

We’ll spend two weeks in and around Melbourne including a weekend road trip along the Great Ocean Road that Monica told me is a terrible, terrible idea this time of year because IN AUSTRALIA IT IS NOT SUMMER. It’s winter and rainy and bullshitty.

WINTER.

I know, right?  What IS UP with that?  I have no idea.

We’ll finally meet Monica and Donna which will be super fun even though we’ve been fighting like crazy – which is a bit of an understatement but WHATEVER.  I feel pretty certain the moment I walk out of customs I’m going to get the shit kicked out of me and I’ll spend the rest of the two weeks in the hospital while the three of them enjoy themselves and make jokes at my expense and eat pizza and candy.  The whores.

Did you see when I pushed her down?  DID YOU HEAR THE NOISES SHE WAS MAKING?  What a bitchy little girl.

I can’t even begin to tell you how fucking weird it is to be making this trip after everything that’s gone down in the last several months.  It’s just completely retarded crazy that Janie and I are in a space positive enough to be doing this together.  I can’t quite wrap my mind around it.  It’s been such a whirlwind of chaos here -  trying to get the condo ready for listing (which happens on Monday – OH MY GOD SHIT FUCK!)  and dealing with an intense wave of emotional shit from this divorce that the only plans made are hotel reservations and a car rental for the world’s most ill-advised road trip.  Janie bought a guide book but I can’t even remember what is in it.  I have no idea what exactly we’re going to do, which is pretty nuts considering I usually tend to have a strict Excel spreadsheet of plans made well in advance.  You probably do not recall that when I started this blog Janie and I were on a road trip to California.  We strayed from the spreadsheet near Pismo Beach and I COULD NOT HANDLE IT.  I lost my mind and cried in the parking lot of a strip mall while on the phone with my sister as Janie and her friend Shaelah ate sushi and wondered why I was so retarded.  Well, this is a new me!  This is me in therapy!  This is me on herbal anti-anxiety medications!  This is the new me smoking cigarettes to cope with the crippling pain of losing my wife and best friend in the span of several months!  THIS IS THE NEW ME WHO CAN DO ANYTHING BECAUSE IT CANNOT POSSIBLY BE WORSE THAN MY LIFE HAS BEEN SINCE MAY. I can plan or not.  Sure thing.  Do I want to go to the park?  I don’t know and it’s okay because three months ago Janie told me I was a terrible person* and it can’t feel worse than that!

(* She didn’t exactly call me a terrible person but it felt the same)

I’ll blog several updates while we’re away so you’ll know how things are going in that strange land I know relatively nothing about except that there are obscenely large spiders all over the place, some dingo ate Meryl Streep’s baby and they have a shit ton of crazy delicious candies the likes of which I have never seen and I plan to eat them all.  I’ll also blog about my thoughts and feelings about life and love and divorce and how to travel like a badass mofo.  Maybe there will be photos:  Photos of Janie ignoring me BECAUSE SHE CAN now that we’re divorced.  Photos of Janie and I drunk enough to do karaoke to the tune of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5 (we’ve agreed on the song ahead of time, yes.) Photos of me with a hangover, puking and peeing my pants uncontrollably (yes, hot ladies of Australia, I AM SINGLE.)  Photos of Monica and Donna beating me into a coma. Photos of me in a coma crying why why why but only on the inside where no one can hear my silent wails of pain on account of the paralysis and traumatic brain injury caused by enraged Australians and Janie who just had to get one good kick in.  Photos of Janie with her top on.  Photos of Monica calling me a fucking asshole idiot cunt whore.  Photos of me trying to drive on the wrong side of everything and dying in a fiery car crash.    GOOD TIMES, EVERYONE.  Good time ahead.

I promised Carrie I’d bring her a Bindi Irwin.  Who else wants a present from Australia?

TOO BAD.  We’re broke, son

Engaged in serious conversation about that tortilla chip.