unexpected

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yesterday i referred someone to a post on this blog… it was an old post but somehow seemed better than making similar comments from my current perspective.  i’d probably say that about “spark” or “things i know to be true” as well…

anyway it took me a minute to find it and i forgot to close the tab (to anyone who has seen my browser window this is not news) and then today i came upon this old home and i started to read the front page.   read back far enough to see a photo of my niece and have tears brought to my eyes…

read enough to realize that the woman who wrote this blog had some real talent with words… but needed to self edit more (*snicker* this will ever be true)

read far enough to start to wonder why i stopped writing.

i don’t mean that i stopped writing words on the internet, there are facebook status messages and myriad comments on myriad pages.  heck there’s even a website i hang out on… but i don’t blog anymore.

i even have a hard time writing posts for the blog that drives traffic to my business website!  i mean i blogged for six or seven years, pretty steadily although i did sort of peter out towards the end… at one point i believe that i had three active blogs and was commenting on a lot more.  i don’t believe that i write less on the internet than i used to.

and then i think about irc and usenet…

internet relay chat for those of you who don’t know, mirc for those of you who just think it was something like msn messenger… which it wasn’t.  it was a way to chat before the internet had pictures.  we would gather together in “channels” or “rooms” in groups of two to two thousand and talk about whatever.  there were channels called #windowsnt or #harvard or #sex or #bdsmforbeginners or #gor or #tolkien or #cooking or #social or #jokes or #surfing or or or anything you cared to make up and join… heck a common greeting when you entered in the REALLY early days was “A/S/L?” which eventually became rude to ask (age/sex/location?)

usenet is still around but people use to use it to communicate instead of just to share torrents.  i used to hang out in a group called alt.books.anne.rice until we got trolled to death.  heck we had whole clans and stuff it was hilarious and fun and a great way to play on the internet.  that’s about when i built my first webpage… on a freenet.

but i digress, well not really.  i used all sorts of things in the early days, things that don’t exist or are anachronisms now.  i mean i can still hop on irc and find a small core of the group i joined in 94 or so… but most of us are on facebook now.

is that what happened to blogging?  the world moved past it?

or at least mine?

i might have thought it was starting to teach.  learning to use a lot of my words to my clients perhaps, but when i look at my history i blogged for a very long time after i started to teach full time and this last year as i’ve been rebuilding my business i’ve probably only been teaching two thirds anyway and i still havent’ been writing.

i guess i’m just changing, but it’s kind of weird to not be a writer anymore…

thought patterns

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i once met a man who (within days of meeting me) had read every public word i had ever posted on either of my blogs and who then decided that he knew me.  it seemed that no matter what i said or did he could not get past the words i had written in the years before him.

his reading of my words caused him to stop seeing the real live woman in front of him.  he started telling me what i was thinking and arguing with me when i informed him that he wasn’t actually reading me correctly.

he had somehow missed one of the essentials of the blogging phenomenon; that blogging is essentially a past tense activity, that posts tend to deal with completed thought processes.  very few of the posts that i’ve written were current.  almost always they were oblique references to the patterns in my life but very rarely were they questions.

well, rhetorical questions and wishes to the universe on occasion but not really looking for direction.  often looking for input and an increased understanding through the eyes of others but rarely a plea for someone else to do my thinking or make my decisions for me.

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sometimes when people meet me they see what i look like and immediately project a personality on to my cheekbones that has nothing to do with the woman in front of them.

they make assumptions about who i am and who i will be in their lives that have everything to do with their desires and very little to do with actual me.  it never ceases to amaze me the things some people will say to me with an utterly straight face.

i remember one man telling me, when i commented bittersweetly about the unlikelihood of my dna being propagated, that he would give me babies as long as i was hot like i am.  so of course i commented that after having said babies my body would likely look pretty different whereupon he felt okay saying that that was okay since he was a trainer and he would put me back together.

this, by the way, many months after he had blown his any chance with me by being a putz.  he assumed that i wanted to go out with him again even though he hadn’t even bothered asking.  it was as though my wants weren’t relevant because he had decide the universe meant us to be.

he felt comfortable telling me he wanted to find an alley and ravish me before ever ascertaining my willingness to romanticize him.

i wondered if my feelings or needs were relevant to anything in his world.

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telling me that you know what i’m thinking (obviously if you’re joking around it’s not the same thing) and never bothering to even wonder if i might actually disagree with you?  my own sentiments not relevant or worth pursuing or even hearing?

how does that happen?

i know that not everyone has been raised to consider the effects of their actions on other people.  i see it even with simple things like the rules of the road.  no one is considerate anymore when they drive and suddenly the world is a less pleasant place.

so if we stop looking at our effect on the world, if we stop caring about any needs but our own, don’t we then get to a place where others thoughts become irrelevant?

the very fact that you need me to be a certain way for you means that i will be because that’s what you want and in this world we are raised to believe that we can have anything we want.  that we can do anything we want and the consequences be dammed.

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this has affected my life in so many ways both profound and inane.  from the man who knew me better than i knew myself because he read some completed thoughts on a blog to the man who loved me on sight to the man who believed that because he felt blissful when he was around me and i didn’t return the favour that i must be evil incarnate to the women who hated my guts for what?  i still don’t know.

by the end of those and many other such interactions i have come to a point of great caution and slow moving approaches.  i wait now and watch and see if they react to me or to imaginary me.  if they care what i’m thinking rather than telling me.

if their assumptions are correct and continue to improve or if instead they seem less and less relevant to our actual interactions.  if they approach situations with positive or negative expectations and if they think and want the best for themselves and for me… and they don’t assume THEY know best for me even if they want to share their ideas with me.

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and yet then i consider the people i’ve tried to suggest things for and my response when they haven’t followed my suggestions and i just hope that i am more gracious.  i like to believe that i would only ever get upset with folks disregarding my advice IF they didn’t even consider it.

if they simply shot me down without ever listening i think i might perhaps have been belligerent but if they listened and then responded with further discussion and the ideas evolved or they asked me to drop it i am fairly certain that i would let it go.

where does what you think someone needs or what you want to do for them become an imposition of your own desires?  a doll making if you will.

at what point does help become oppression?  where do you lose the clarity of vision and the ability to see the person in front of you rather than the filter of your own host of assumptions?

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i don’t know, i just know i’m a little more leery of encouraging folks to read my *whole* blog.

hmm

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i haven’t been *here* in a while.

if you have me on RSS you might know that i’m posting again.  if you love me you’ll find this eventually.  if you hate me and use my blog for ammo?  i’m hoping you’ve left.

i haven’t felt like saying a word to the internet for months.  at least not from my own pulpit.

i’ve been exploring and wandering and dating and making friends and hanging out on blogs and using facebook a lot (ack!) but here i have not been.  several loved folks have bitched at me, snide remarks have been made – and felt; but still the urge to write it did not visit.

lately, lately i’ve been having ideas again.  not a lot but a few…

and it feels kind of like watching a plant grow in the spring.  you want to help it and clear away the things hampering it but if you do it too soon the frost will sneak in and kill it  and you might just pull out healthy wanted plant while you’re at it!

so i’ve been letting it slide.  letting the ideas melt into other ideas and feel the pool filling up again.  interestingly, i never really stopped having ideas to write about, it’s more that i stopped caring to write them.

don’t worry, the ‘other’ blog got a little ignored as well  :)

anyway, it’s spring… maybe there might be some plants stirring in my writer’s soul

wtf

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if you think this is about you?

then it is.

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well a vanishingly small infinitesimal part of it is.

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the rest?

that’s the culmination of years and years of my life and some stuff i want to discuss, get rid of, whatever that well, no one wants to hear about anymore.

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i have, for a long time, been the kind of person that inspires things in people.

sometimes they imagine me to be someone they need me to be, other times i am their perfect love and still others i am an evil bitch.  i like it better when i am what i am, a teacher, a guide, a woman and a flawed crystal just like the rest of us.

and you know, like anyone i am a pretty fucked up human being.  i’m a narcissist and an asshole and an inconsiderate person who is so busy trying to get herself ahead that she steps on people on the way by.  i make mistakes, i hurt people’s feelings, i dwell on things and tell the same story a hundred times and i’m overly sensitive to boot.

what i am most assuredly NOT is malicious.

i do not hurt people intentionally nor do i take joy in the pain of others.

i try not to say mean things although i confess that, again like many others, sometimes my family style teasing can cut a little close to the bone.  it’s one of the hallmarks of a human who deflects with humour after all.

my sensitivity has increased to the point that i have difficulty watching the news.  i have difficulty watch *fictional* forensic shows.  i can barely handle whole categories of jokes.

and somehow through this has come a small series of people who communicate using weapons.  who tell me that i’m negative or condescending or intentionally malicious or hurtful or poisonous and then expect me to apologise to them.

now i understand that i can hurt your feelings.

i understand that i can grievously wound you with no intention of doing so beyond my own hapless inability to be perfect at all times.

i understand that i can and will do things that will seem like the greatest of cruelties to anyone not living in my head.

what i cannot understand is how people who claim to care for me would assume such things of me without ever for an instant considering that just maybe i wasn’t actually trying to be a jerk.

that maybe i’m just not perfect after all.

i further don’t understand, and have never had successfully explained to me, how anyone could lob such words and more besides at me and then expect me to take them well, change my ways and beg for forgiveness.

don’t misunderstand, i hear every single one of the words and i try to learn from them… but that isn’t the point of this post.

when you hurt my feelings i don’t believe i craft insults the likes of which i would not hurl at my worst enemy.  i don’t think that i plan revenge.  i try desperately not to attack but i don’t succeed all that well when i’m wounded.

i try to just tell you how/why you’ve hurt me from my own perspective and wait for you to explain.  i’m getting better at this but still have a tendency to hide and lick my wounds for a while before i deal with things.  yes, this gets me in trouble.

i asked my most serious ex (tr) if he would have described me, at the height of my post car accident crazy or during our breakup [simultaneous], as intentionally hurtful and he said no.  i am giving him this one.  [when asked if i hurt him and said horrible things to him?  i am certain he would say yes, but that wasn’t the question.]

i used to, when fighting with boyfriends, tell them what i thought they were thinking before they could tell me… one of the worst ways to fight imaginable.  you see when told what you’re thinking by someone else, most especially when you are insulted in the telling, it’s almost impossible to stay rational and not get het up with rage.

i used to date a man who would say “if i say something and you can take it two ways?  assume i meant it the nice one” and he’s RIGHT!

the moment that you start to assume that your friends are trying to hurt you, that your friends don’t have your back, that your friends don’t care about you?  that moment?

that’s the moment that you make it impossible for them.

if you think i’m being mean to you on purpose i could tell you i’m going to be late for dinner and you could decide that i’m being late because i know that you’re starving and i want to hurt you and make you hungry and miserable… or you could assume i got held up at work and will be along as quick as i can.

we still get to dinner late but in the second scenario we might just still be friends by dessert.

i always wonder, when in receipt of such pleasantries, why whoever is telling me what a terrible person i am wants to be my friend at all.

and i still don’t know the answer.

well sometimes i do, obviously sometimes they don’t and they have to make sure i know it.  they have to hurt me on the way out the door and tell me all sorts of “hard truths about myself for my own good” to make sure that i will never come back.

those ones?

those ones hurt in a special kind of way that never entirely heals over.

but the other ones, the ones who want to be friends… why do they insist on treating their friends like enemies?

hello world

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an interesting thing happened to me on the way to old age…

my little sister had a baby.

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they talk about how you can’t understand unconditional love until you have kids.

they tell you about the overwhelming feeling of helplessness when babies cry or fuss.

they warn you that you don’t understand how protective you will be.

what they don’t tell you?

this feeling exists (to a lesser degree i’m sure) in the family AROUND the new baby as much as it happens to the parents.

my sister told me she was having my niece.  my sister told me her name.  my sister told me my niece was born.  all of this left me relatively unfazed (with the interesting exception of making my own need to have children diminish significantly)  until i actually held her in my arms (or lap) and watched her sleep.

the simplest and least complete thing to say here would be that i could not tear my eyes away from her and nothing (but her need for one of her parents) could pry her from my arms.  i could have sat there until my arms went to sleep if it meant that she could sleep a little longer.

in fact one night i stayed up over an hour later than i meant to because she was asleep on me and BOTH her parents were getting a little much needed rest.  this is the time i perfected my “move sleeping baby” technique which is, by the way, even harder than moving a sleeping cat.  it’s amazing what having both your arms go to sleep will do for your willingness to risk moving said sleeping infant.

but none of this conveys the feelings.  i’m not entirely certain that words can actually.

i sat there and watched her sleep or sorta fuss around on my lap and was amazed at the waves of sheer emotion that poured through me to her.  i know that the word humans describe this feeling with is love but that word feels trite and overused.  it feels… it feels somehow less than the emotion it describes.

people love their cars and their pens and the colour of the sky and the way their hair looks.  how can a word that sums up my feelings toward chocolate bonbons in any way explain the overwhelmingness of looking at a being for whom i would cheerfully step in front of a bus?

how can that word mean those two things?

what can you say to represent how smitten you are the second you gaze at someone like your new child or niece or grandchild or whatever?  i have the funniest swirl in my gut as i look for words to describe the feeling that is best felt by my abdomen and not my words.

how can love be enough of a word?

i guess there just isn’t one.

thank you lia and jeff for making an ada and bringing her into our world.  i will do my best to protect her without sheltering her.

greedy guts

i have, in my life, dated and friended people both generous and selfish.  in many ways you don’t notice the difference at first but you always do in the end.

i know some folks who truly believe that the world owes them something.  that they are entitled to some kind of free ride or something simply because they exist and consider themselves awesome.

and at first it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all that someone is generous or selfish because people are always on their best behaviour when they first make new friends.  so you don’t pay attention to or see the nickel and diming or the failure to give of themselves.

but then the relationship grows and you start to notice things. 

whether sexually or otherwise these people don’t share or maybe it’s that they don’t give.

it’s like the difference between people who like to give gifts and people who like to receive them.  personally i LOVE when i nail it with a gift; when i actually manage to surprise someone with something perfect whether it’s expensive or not.

and yet some folks prefer to count what they get.  to try to count what they give and what they get and think about whether the scales are balanced or what you owe them.

but what the counters don’t realise?  the crucial thing that they’re missing?

when you count you miss the fun part.  the part where you give without counting and receive with thanks and good grace.  where everyone gives what they will and tries to please the other without worrying about who owes what.

when people give without thinking, without worry as to the reward they make it easy to give in return.  so then what you have is a relationship between two people who take care of each other without regard to debt or payment or owing  and without demands.

and if everyone is generous with the people they love without thinking about a bill?  suddenly you have one of those magical lifelong friendships that nurture you when you’re down and hurting.

when you most need the world to take care of you someone actually might.

and if you do that with everyone in your life? 

give them the nice thoughts you think and the love you feel for them?

well then you have a circle around you to keep you glowing inside no matter what happns in your life.  people you love who love you back and care for you as you care for them.

there are some old proverbs out there that really do sum this up;

every thing you send out will come back to you three fold

and it harm none, do what thou wilt

do unto others as you would have them do unto you

say the nice things that you think and try to swallow the nasty ones

yes, that last one is mine. 

of course you have to be careful with your generous friends too.  it’s easy to get expectatious toward people who like to give of themselves and their things.

you can see how easy it might be right?

well you know … if he knew i wanted it he would make it happen right?  i mean what if i just drop a little hint?  what if i drop a big hint?hey why isn’t he getting the big fat hint that i’m dropping?  damn ungenerous bastard!

expectations, deadly things aren’t they?

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hi leanne

i was really sorry to hear about the fire at maitland street but i don’t seem to have your email address.  i assume that both you and faust are okay?

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i don’t seem to be blogging here much anymore, make sure to rss me instead of wasting time checking back…

i have a more adult blog, if you want to read it send me an email.

25 random details i posted on facebook

1. i can’t stop buying books; this was okay until i developed the
accompanying shoe fetish.

2. i am madly in love with my two cats: harriet and mouse. i am still
madly in love with their predecessors (athena and sappho) but it’s a
more mature and faded kind of love.

3. i am terrified of having a kid by myself… but far more terrified
of not doing it at all

4. i think a lot of these memes are lame but this one has been awesome
so far and i’ve really enjoyed reading them all.  i will, however,
fail to tag at least one person back.  furthermore, i think it’s possible i may have been tagged 25 times already on this one

5. i like myself a lot more since i started paying more attention to personal grooming

6. i really, really, really love my job; i just wish it had benefits
and steady pay

7. working in my living room is the best thing ever… and it sucks
because my space doesn’t belong to me alone

8. i’m trying to cook at home more but it’s really hard when good,
cheap, made by others food is *right* there

9. i love blogging but i’m doing it less often

10. i would like my next boyfriend to have a hot car/motorcycle… and
let me drive it

11. recently i bought a floor length skirt made of fleece. of course
i can now wear almost nothing else.

12. i try really hard to be the best person i can be but i still catch
myself thinking the nasty thoughts more often than i care to admit.

13. life really is what you make it. i know this and still i sit back
and miss so much of it…

14. i tried out for the canadian national swim team. it was,
unfortunately, one of the lousiest races i ever swam. ah well, i was
particularly young for my age at the time.

15. recently i was forced to toss my antique car (93) due to excessive
rust. said car corners like it’s on rails and got over 14km/L on the
highway (around 33+mpg) last summer. unfortunately the body is
totally rotten. so i have a new car BUT the guy who was supposed to
buy my old car for parts kinda bailed and i can’t seem to make myself
write the auto trader/craigslist ad.

even though i have a new car i can’t throw out my old one. it’s sad.
i’m sad, i expected it to last 2-5 more years.

16. someone kissed me recently.

17. i love my family more than anything… and they’re the hardest
people to be around sometimes. funny how that works isn’t it? the
more you love something the more it can get to you too. ah buttons.
ah family. ah loved ones. can’t live without them though, life
wouldn’t be worth living.

18. people in my family have no idea how often they are quoted by me
when i am asked for advice. it goes like “well, i have no experience
with this but my father/sister/mother/best friend/etc says: …”

19. i got played. i got played perfectly and i’m not even upset about it.

20. i want to buy a small but tall house that is within five minutes
of a downtown subway and then i want to put my studio in it.

21. i have a hard time saying no to people that i love. this is okay
except for when it breeds resentment. what’s not okay is the ones who
push me after i say no. saying no was hard, telling you to fuck off
for pushing? not so hard.

22. mostly i’m a shapeshifter. this is great except for dating where
it’s a problem. sooner or later real me reasserts herself. problem
with being a shapeshifter is that you often don’t realize that you’ve
done it until your real shape begins to reappear.

23. i eat carbs when i’m sad or depressed… and then it takes longer to recover because i also feel physically messed up by all the comfort carbs.

24. this (things i know to be true) is the best thing that i ever wrote… maybe :)

this (sticky fingers) is the followup
this (spark) is almost as good, or better

24a. i really want you to go read “things i know to be true” and maybe hang it on your fridge!

25. i was married once.

sweet sadness

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well, it’s official, i have a new car.

okay not entirely official as i don’t take delivery until this afternoon but you know what i mean.  it’s paid for (with some help) and the plates are off my old car and sitting in the windshield/back window.

i may have driven my old honda for the last time and i’m abjectly sad about it.

i understand that i will love my new car just as much and that i will be just as broken hearted when my mechanic says “it’s time, your car is dead” but that isn’t any consolation to me now.

there are a few reasons i’m unhappy about this transition, not the least of which is that i expected to get another five years about of my perfectly tuned, corners like a bmw, gets phenomenal mileage accord.  expected in vain because the body rotted out from under me with very little warning.

in fact i’m a little bit pissed off at my mechanic for not making me understand what was happening.  why was i fixing a rotten car?  why wasn’t i made to understand 3-5 years ago that i needed to spend some money on the body?

how was this a SURPRISE?

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there is something so *wrong* about throwing out something so perfectly tuned.  i know the body is rotten but the engine has another 200,000km in it EASY.

ah well, i think i found a guy who is going to find a solid body and use my parts to build a car… so at least he’s getting something out of it.

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so here i am all broken hearted right?

all sad about the passing of this beautiful machine…

and yet?

and yet there’s a little joy here.

i’m getting my very first NEW car!

not new to me, NEW.

as in no one but me has ever driven it (okay, on and off the truck and the broker is driving it to my house but you know what i’m saying) and i have to break in the engine.

as in i get to be the only person who cares for this car and i will know implicitly every bolt that gets changed and fluid that gets dirty and if it dies it will be entirely my responsibility.

it will be *mine* from the day it got sold until the day i sell it or my mechanic looks at me mournfully and says “it’s time, get a new car.”

and that’s cool right?

i should be excited to own my very first new car and i am… i mean i’m totally stoked and i am fully aware that i will fall madly in love with it in time… it’s just i’m having a hard time getting past the senseless waste of it’s predecessor.

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oh you wanna know what i got?

2008.5 mazda 3 sedan, five speed with no air… cause i like don’t like the air and the power anything…

i do like the ipod plug though… kind of an improvement over the tape deck

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in other news, what is with these idiots who get high performance cars in an automatic?

or worse, with a manual transmission and NO IDEA how to WORK IT???

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only thing worse?

porsche sport utility vehicle…

i mean really, isn’t that an oxymoron?

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oh wow oh wow oh wow

my car is almost here and the plates are off my accord…

god i’m sad for my accord.

man i’m excited about my very first new car…

wow wow wow.

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and for those of you who know how much i love old things?

yes, i really did basically buy the new car version of the old car i’m throwing out….

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anyone wanna buy a really good engine?

winterlicious

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i am having the strangest week…

not strange bad, more in the sense of all over the place and utterly unpredictable.

for a long time my business has had one source of referrals other than my existing clients and this has bothered me; not enough to advertise or get a job in a gym but enough.  i never like being dependent on one thing because there is always the risk that the person doing the referring will suddenly decide that they don’t like me anymore.

i haven’t been particularly worried because i tend to be extremely competent and this leads to less trouble than the average self-employed pilates instructor might experience.

you see my clients send me their wives/husbands/best friends and with that kind of loyalty my business can do nothing but grow.  it might grow slowly but it will grow nonetheless.

anyway this week i met a gynecologist who asked for my card and promised referrals (one of my areas of specialisation happens to be post partum women with pelvic floor/incontinence/sexual health issues) and a personal trainer client asked for a stack of cards and in fact referred someone to me already.

so suddenly? 

i went from one to three referral sources in a week!!!

this is truly awesome, not to mention that my clients send me more and more clients each year.  hmm maybe i can stop working at seven thirty in the evening someday…

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in the meantime…

on thursday night i had dinner with a being who can make a million dollars on a ten minute phone call from a lounger on grand cayman (married, hush y’all)

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on friday night i met a woman who runs her own company and happens to be getting arthritis in her feet.  what does this mean? 

that none of her 40 years worth of shoes fit her anymore.

why does this matter to me?

i have TWENTY ONE!!!!! new pairs of high heels (well a few are flats) to add to my already ridiculous shoe collection. 

i was like a kid in a candy store i’m telling you!

god you guys some of them are SOOOO sexy.

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and on saturday?

on saturday my father enlisted my help to dig a hole. 

this would not normally be worthy of mention except for two or three little details:

it happens to be a measly nineteen below centigrade today (a mere minus two fahrenheit) and has been at least that cold for days.  it’s not traditionally known to be good hole digging weather.

of course we *were* in a steel structure, that raised the temperature at least 0.1 degree by removing the wind chill so it was really positively balmy in there…

furthermore he wanted us to dig the hole down several feet… (we gave up at the two foot mark and decided to wait for spring)

and still none of that would be worth mentioning except for this:

that is a real grin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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is that not the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen?

no like ever?

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the tragedy of my life is that i found hacking away at a frozen solid piece of earth with my father to be ridiculously fun.

best part was after we got down a foot or so he carefully positioned a space heater in the hole, covered it with a tarp, and headed in to the house for lunch.

i was sure the whole place would go up in flames but nope, back we come to a hole that is frozen solid except for three inches of mud.  you can see the mud in the pic.

even funnier is that about fifteen minutes after this pic was taken the hat was off, the scarf was gone and my jacket was hanging open… but the camera was frozen ;>

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i was *going* to do some cardio (aka ride mom’s stationary bike) but i decided that two hours with a pickaxe had to count and said screw it.

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and then tomorrow?

off to go skiing….

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you have to admit, it’s been kind of an up and down week…

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well mostly up.

oh yeah, i bought a car!

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for those of you who guessed that this ENTIRE post was so i could post the picture?

smart you…

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that may be my best fashion crime this year…

greetings

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lately i’ve been thinking about trust and it’s applications among the intimates of a person’s life.

i’ve concluded that, at first,  most people either trust fully and wait to be betrayed, trust not at all and wait/ test before trusting or don’t trust at all.  personally, i’m more of the first category.

sometimes, like when someone has done me a nasty, i find myself wishing that i was the kind of person who didn’t live her life like an open book.  that i knew how to keep myself hidden away and protected rather than out there and open to anything.

but not for long.  i’ve just had so many wild and wonderful experiences that came nearly directly from my willingness to trust my instincts and the universe and the people around me.  yes i understand that this is ostrichlike behaviour.  no i don’t care to change it.

it gets harder to remember this when trust is betrayed at a later point in a relationship and real collateral damage ensues.

i recall the time a woman i had been friends with for several years and i had a falling out.  we were having a bad patch you know?  both of us in terrible life places and not taking care of each other properly.  anyway we got mad at each other and stopped calling.

our friends knew we weren’t hanging out and that we felt hard-done-by but that is all.  we didn’t really talk about each other or fight through our friends we simply ceased to hang out.

eventually, some guy on okcupid wanted to date us both at once and we reconnected with each other.  seriously, that’s what happened.  we are now fast friends again with really no harm done.

in fact maybe we’re better friends because we ‘broke up’ and ‘got back together.’

we’ve been really shitty to each other and we’re still friends; this adds a level of trust that wasn’t there before.  something about knowing we’ll come back you know?

the reason that we can still be friends is simple:

.we did not share each other’s secrets

.we did not say shitty things about each other to mutual friends

.we had told each other our grudges to our faces (or at least on the phone)

.we heard each other

.we genuinely like each other

.one of us actually told the other that it would be nice to hang out again

i’ve had friendships end in other ways, ones that involved significantly less pleasant behaviour.

i’ve had people announce my secrets to the world and others trash talk me to every single person we had in common and then wonder why i no longer felt that friendship was possible.

it’s simple really, i can’t trust someone who didn’t keep my secrets when they didn’t like me anymore.  especially if i kept theirs.

she and i? even though we weren’t friends anymore we had each other’s backs.  we would still have defended each other to others and been mildly offended if people were saying nasty things about one of us.

i think that that is somehow an essential truth, this having of someone’s back.

the idea that you won’t fuck with someone’s life regardless of how fucked your relationship with each other will get.  i stopped speaking to one of my exes for three years but all i ever said was that we had been cruel to each other and that i missed my friend.

okay i did some bitching too.

but never to *his* friends.  only to people who had barely met him if anything.  what i didn’t do was spread rumours and try to fuck up his life.

so i still trust him and i still trust her and i still trust a lot of people that i haven’t spoken with in years.

but those others?  the ones who have rendered themselves incapable of being trusted?

what do i do with them?

what do you do with someone you love but don’t trust?

how do you have them in your life.  how especially do you deal when they’re there and you have no choice but to have them around?

what do you do when you miss them but you don’t feel like you could ever have faith in them again?  like you can’t trust them with the truths in your heart because they won’t cherish them?

was the friendship always just imaginary?

trust… it’s a funny thing.