Friday, November 20, 2009

So... I had this insane dream last night.



Lauren (my best friend/roomie) and I are living in this house in Berkeley, and she decides to have a crazy party without telling me. I wake up from a nap, and go into the living room, where I find a bunch of people I don't know. I'm kind of excited because I don't know what's happening. I see some people I think I know, and start mingling. The party gets bigger and bigger, and before I know it, Lauren is dancing on the dining room table, swinging a rope around in the air.

I go outside for a minute, and start yelling at these people for parking in the neighbors bushes. They tell me to "fuck off," so I shout back, "keep walking motherfuckers, I'm going to break all the windows on your car while you're gone." They continue to walk up the street, one of the guys flips me off, so I take a bat, which was conveniently laying on the sidewalk, and bust the shit out of their car.

On the front porch of our house, two guys from the party start fighting, I jump in the middle of them, and try to break it up. I'm holding one of the guys back, and am strong enough to push him back inside, as the other guy leaves the party. The guy I pushed back inside, keeps trying to get back on the porch, so I start kissing him. He stops wanting to fight, and keeps kissing me. After a few minutes, I notice my mouth is glowing, and the guy I'm kissing looks like he's about to pass out. I go outside, and start running up to random dudes, kissing them, and then watching as they fall down, completely sedated.

Meanwhile, down the street, a gang of gun toting break-dancers (no, i'm not kidding), are calling my name. I think I know them, so I run towards them. I can hear Lauren telling me not to go, but I just assume she's wasted, and doesn't know what she's talking about. The gang starts this insane break-dancing routine all around me, and then, all of a sudden, everything goes dark. I can't see a thing, but I feel someone grab me, and put there hand over my mouth, with a gun to my head.

The next thing I remember, is being in this giant auditorium with the break-dancing gang. They force me to take an "anti-gravity pill," which makes you weightless, and gives you the physical control of a beach ball. I start floating, and the gang begins this martial arts, ninja-like routine, where they kick my weightless body around the room. It doesn't hurt, but I have no control over how fast, or how much I'm spinning.

There's a loud boom sound, and the lights in the room begin to make a crackling noise. The gang disappears, and I see a white horizon line in front of me. I'm still floating in the center of the room, when there's another loud boom, and all the light around me, turns into these fractal combination's; my whole body starts shaking uncontrollably. The shaking turns into an earthquake, and the building falls to pieces around me. From my elevated position in midair, I look out into the distance, and as far as I can see, the whole city has been destroyed. There are no more buildings, no more people, total nothingness. There's another loud boom, and the sky goes dark, Everything is black. I feel something pull me from my shoulders, and while I still can't see anything, I feel a cool breeze on my face.

I have somehow been transported to the future, and I'm sitting at a metal table, across from a very large robot. The robot tells me there has been an invisible energy force killing humans everyday when the sun sets. My mouth starts glowing again, and when I begin to speak, colors starts falling out of it. I'm embarrassed by this, but the robot tells me not to be, because that is why he brought me here. I don't understand, so he explains that the energy force that's killing people, sent a message to him, saying that he will reveal himself, but only to me.

The robot says that the colors will kill him, and I'm the only one who can help. I'm really afraid at this point, but I agree to meet with the energy force. The robot gives me a map, and leaves. The colors are still spilling out of my mouth, and they get all over the map. The robot has disappeared, and  I start wandering the streets, hoping the energy force will find me. Everything in this world is metallic. The sky is metallic, the streets are metallic, and here I am, spilling colors out of my mouth, leaving a trail wherever I go. I see no people, only metal boxes and objects I can't identify. I walk into an open door on the side of the street. Inside, it's just a room. a dark room, with a chair, and a clock on the wall. I look around, and the door closes behind me. The room is very cold, so cold, it hurts my lungs to breathe deeply. I hear whispers, but can't make out where they're coming from. All of a sudden, there is another loud boom, and the floor falls out from under me. I don't fall with it though. I'm walking on the air where it used to be. I look down, and can see all the way to the center of the earth. the heat from the core warms the room, and I'm no longer struggling to breath deeply. The four walls around the room, fall backwards, like cardboard cutouts. I realize that I'm in a dollhouse that just collapsed. I start growing bigger and bigger, until I'm sitting on the table, on top of the broken dollhouse, in a library. I walk around the library, and realize I'm the only one there. I start to get scared, and just want to leave. I find the exit, but everything outside is so dark, I have no idea where I am.

I start crying, and buckets of colors spill out of my eyes and mouth. I end up swimming in a pool full of colors. I dive down deep because I can breathe underwater, and I see the robot, I swim after him trying to get his attention, but he's a broken, dead robot now. I continue swimming and realize that underneath me, there is a giant LCD screen, playing a video called "history of earth." It's going much too fast to make out everything that's happening, but dates from the future start flashing over the screen, attached to horrible events that have yet to take place. The screen goes blank, and the water starts swirling around me like I'm going down a drain. I see faces in front of me smile, and then frown. I can't control my body anymore, and I fall into a tube tunnel that pushes me so fast, my eyes burn from the pressure.

The tunnel shoots me out into space, and I'm once again weightless in the sky. The stars that are closest to me, are very tiny, and I can hold them in my hand. They wink at me, and whistle when I touch them. Somewhere behind me, there is a loud bellowing voice that says, "You can't be here." I try to turn around and look at who said that, but the tiny stars in front of me swirl around my face, giggling and winking at me, and say, "you have to go now... goodnight." There is a big flash of light, like a camera going off right in my face, and then I wake up.

No, I did not take acid before bed last night.

My roommate said maybe space Jesus was trying to contact me...

I'm not convinced that's true, but I'm also not ruling it out as an option.



love you mean it.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

I'm not ready.




Ready or not; there are moments in all our lives when we come face to face with everything that scares us; like a mirror reflecting all the imperfections of every decision we’ve ever made.


In my limited experience on this planet, I have learned that, "I'm not ready," is more often than not, code for, "I don't want to do that." My number one break-up line is "I'm not ready for a serious relationship." I realize that I'm calling myself out here, but "I'm not ready," is fucking bullshit. It's not that "I'm not ready for a serious relationship," it's that "I don't want to be in a serious relationship... with you."

"I'm not ready" is sugar-coating on the bitter pill of truth. No one wants to hear, "I don't want to be with you." So instead of telling the truth, we fluff it up, stretch it out, and massage it until the bullshit comes oozing out, and the whole nasty mess is right there in front of us.

There are only 3 circumstances where "I'm not ready" is an applicable and legitimate excuse,

1) Circumstances where a learned skill is needed in order to complete the task at hand. For example: Driving a motorcycle - Kind of important that you're "ready" BEFORE you take this on.

2) Physical appearance - I frequently utter the phrase "I'm not ready," to appease friends who are wondering how it's humanly possible to actually spend the amount of time I do, finding and putting on my pants.

3) Any and all forms of standardized tests - No one is ever ready for these, and saying "I'm not ready" before you put your pencil to that unforgiving scantron, is totally normal procedure.

Other than the above list of legit excuses, "I'm not ready" almost always means, "I just don't want to."

When you want something, when you really really want something, all the silly excuses tend to fall to the waste side. Ready or not, the things in life that we really, truly long for, are above the "I'm not ready" bullshit.

If you think about it, when was the last time you were ready for anything?

EXAMPLES:

Leaving the womb - Totally wasn't ready for that. In fact, I'm still recovering from the trauma of that event.

Learning how/where babies come from - At 8-years old, I was appalled, and actually refused to believe "sex" was how babies were made, until 7th grade. Definitely wasn't ready for that information.

First REAL crush - Lucas Austin... I was a 6th grader with the mental poise a freshman would have envied. He was an 8th grader with the intellectual prowess of tree moss. This might be where my attraction to older men started, but I digress... To accurately profess my love, I made Lucas a bouquet of paper flowers from my Pretty Petals flower making activity kit. I thought this was the "pimp" thing to do. I thought I was a genius, expressing my feelings so creatively. I was wrong. No one told me that this was the worse possible way to get a boy to like you. No one told me that boys were only interested in pizza and boobies. Since I had neither, Lucas and I didn't really work out. He went to high-school the next year, and I kicked 7th grades ass. I threw away the stupid paper flower activity kit, but not before I used all the scented paper to make my own paper flower boutique, which I very dramatically ripped to pieces in front of a stuffed animal audience. I was definitely NOT ready for the reality of junior-high lust.

Getting my drivers license - Those who have driven with me, might say that I'm STILL "not ready" to operate a motor vehicle, To you I say, imagine how AMAZING my driving abilities were when I was first learning! Within 2 months of getting my license, I managed to lock myself out of the car 5 times. One of those times, the car was still on. Ya, I locked myself out of a running car. I don't know how it happened, but it was further proof that I was most certainly NOT ready for the epic responsibility of driving around several tons of metal, resting next to tank full of flammable liquid.

In fact, it's shocking to most people that I haven't accidentally blown myself up; in a car, or with the help of other explosives/precarious circumstances involving flames.

Most recent example:

Graduating College - Hello real world, I'm not ready to make friends with you just yet. I still have a lot of fucking up to do. Would you mind coming back next year?

I wasn't ready for any of these things, and minus leaving the womb, and learning how babies are made, I wanted all of them. I wanted to make a grand gesture that exposed my 6th grade love, regardless of whether or not is was the lamest idea ever. I wanted to get my drivers license, even though I was terrified of totaling a car (which I actually did end up doing many months later, there was a trolley car involved, and I don't like talking about it because it's painfully embarrassing, so I'll have to save that story for another blog). And last but not least, I wanted to graduate college, even though it was ridiculously fucking hard, and adapting to the real world after being in school for what seems like forever, isn't exactly a cake walk.

Bottom line; "I'm not ready," is an excuse. Plain and simple. It's an excuse not to tell the truth. Because when "I'm not ready" is involved, the truth isn't that we're "not ready," it's that we "don't want to."

So, for the sake of being honest, I'm going to take this opportunity to divulge what I really meant, when I said I "wasn't ready."

"I'm not ready for a serious relationship." = "I don't want to be in a serious relationship... with you."

"I'm not ready to get married." = "I don't want to marry... you."

"I'm not ready to move in together." = "I don't want to live... with you."

"I'm not ready to say 'i love you.'" = "I'm just not in love... with you."

"I'm not ready to have sex." = "I don't want to have sex... with you."

I could go on, but I think I've exposed enough open wounds for one evening.

I feel like it's pretty safe to say that none of us are ever ready for any of the things that happen in life. Hell, if I could, I would totally vote to go back to the womb. The womb was cozy... warm... and connected to an endless food source. Since retreating back to the bubble of my formation, isn't exactly tangible without copious amounts of hallucinogens, I guess I'll have to settle for reality, or a version there of. I would say that "I'm not ready to become one with reality," but we all know what I mean to say, is "I don't want to become one with reality."

I think the hardest part about being human, is finding out that everyone else is human too; proving that, underneath the shells we define ourselves by, we’re all the same, completely vulnerable, unnervingly fragile, and likely to bleed to death when stabbed in a major artery.

I might not be "ready" for reality just yet, but regardless, I'm running full speed ahead into my future. I'm going to get lost, I'm going to misplace my compass, I'm going to try and fail, I'm going win, lose, laugh and cry, all the way into my coffin.

The first-aid kit is packed.

I'm ready to trip and fall into the abyss.

Skinned knees welcome.

Bring it Universe.

Hit me with your best shot.





love you mean it. 

Friday, November 6, 2009

Moving SUUUUUUCKS...



Moving sucks. Really really sucks. I had forgotten how much it sucked, because I haven't had to move in about 3 years. Now that I remember how badly it sucks, I have decided to stay where I am forever, or set all my stuff on fire when I have to leave. The whole "lighting things on fire" solution, might seem bit "drastic," but it would also be an ultimate resolution. Then again, I'm a mild commitment-phobe, and setting things on fire, is a decision you need to be committed to.

Anywayzzz...

I moved out of my apartment this past weekend, and while it did suck (see above), it was also quite liberating. I'm going to miss my neighborhood, and the people around there. I'm going to miss my roommates, and our late night chats/1am bar runs, aka: "Hey it's a random Tuesday night, lets grab a quick beer before it's last call!"

It feels so surreal that it's all over. This place has been my home through a smorgasbord of amazing nights, crazy bullshit, insane roommates, new best friends, relationships ending, new love sprouting, a hundred tears, and a million laughs.  I realize that it's not like I can't visit my friends, or go to the same cafés I used to frequent, but things have officially changed. No matter how much I want to feel otherwise, everything is different now. It might seem silly to have such an epic attachment to a building that's 80 years-old, and hasn't been renovated since the Reagan administration (mmm... asbestos), but it was my home, and it meant something to me.

It's so strange when you catch yourself growing up. I still feel like a kid in my head. A little girl, dreaming of what she wants to be when she grows up.

*News Flash Bridgette* - This is "grown-up," and there are no second chances, no do-overs, and no way to "take back" the years that have slipped away. It's full-steam ahead; now or never little girl.

I feel so small, so often, that when I actually witness myself doing grown-up things, or "taking responsibility," I'm always completely enthralled by my new found competence. But after that moment passes, I get a little uneasy, and start to feel this desperate ache in my belly for a "grown-up" to check and make sure I did everything right.

I don't know about you guys, but I feel like I was ill-prepared to enter 'adult-hood.' Sure, I knew it was coming, but I most definitely did NOT receive the handbook on "how not to fail at life." I can't decide if the realization that you might not being "doing life" correctly, and then accepting that fact, is, ultimately what defines the actuality of truly being, "an adult?'

I'm pretty sure it's a crap-shoot either way. 

I have decided that life, is simply a game of Russian roulette. Some of us are playing with revolvers, and some of us are playing with machine guns. I, on the other hand, am still having trouble turning the safety off.

I've almost got it though...  

A few more steps, and the gun will be cocked. 

Barrel to my temple. 

Ready. Aim. Fire.


love you mean it. 

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Love, or Something Lke it.




"Almost all the time you tell yourself you're loving somebody, you're really just using them. This only looks like love."Chuck P

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about love. What it means. Where it comes from. Why feels so good, and hurts so bad, all at the same time.

My roommate came home with her ex-boyfriend tonight. They broke up about a year ago, and were in a 6-year relationship prior to that. When I first met her, she was still wounded from the split. She thought this guy was the "one." I don't know the details of the break-up, but it was clear that he wasn't ready to "settle down," and things ended because of that simple fact. Seeing her with him, it was quite obvious her feelings were still strong, and while some time has passed since they'd last been together, it also looked quite clear that the reasons for their break-up hadn't really changed.

This got me thinking about the relationships I've been in. Most of my friends would say that I've been pretty lucky with the men in my life. I don't think luck has very much to do with it, but regardless, I have had some pretty awesome relationships. Granted, they couldn't have been "that" awesome, because, well... they ended. But overall, the guys who have been "lucky" enough to call themselves my boyfriend, have all been really amazing fellas. 

At some point, with all the men I've ever loved, there was a moment where I was so in love, I didn't think I could live without them. Deep down, I obviously knew that I could in fact, "live without them." I had been alive before they were in my life, and I would be alive after. But at the time, the love was so intense, it felt like I would just evaporate into the atmosphere without them. Not in the co-dependent, "l need constant attention or I'll freak out and accuse you of cheating on me while at dinner with my parents" sort of way. < --- (Yes. This totally happened to me. *NOTE* - Just to be clear, it was the GUY who freaked out at dinner in front of his parents and blamed it on love, it was NOT me). But in the, "You're so amazing, I just want to be part of your life" sort of way.

Thinking back, I can't help but wonder, where does the intensity of this overwhelming love go?

I've always believed that above and beyond everything, love is the only thing that matters. For the first time in my life, I'm not sure that's true anymore.

I still believe in love, but suddenly, it's become this massive black-hole of uncertainty, circulating in and out of my mind's eye. What if the person you love just stops loving you? What if the more you fall in love with someone, the more they start falling out of love with you? And what if, at the end of the day, above and beyond everything, love just isn't enough?

I know that everyone who has ever been in love, has speculated on the above questions, but this is the first time I've ever really cared about the truth in the answers.

Maybe it's that I'm getting older. Maybe it's that I feel a little lost. Or maybe I'm just starting to give up on all the bullshit that falls out of our mouths when we're trying to get laid, or simply want to feel close to someone without actually having to align our hearts, and attach.

Everybody is so busy trying to "find themselves," I feel like we've stopped trying to find each other. I'm not by any means trying to be judgmental here either. I mean fuck, I'm the QUEEN of "trying to find myself." But honestly, I don't think we ever really "find ourselves." I think we're a collection of everyone we've ever known. A mosaic of fragmented memories. Everyone who has ever touched us, physically, emotionally, mentally, is a part of who we are.

The tiny pieces all fit together in the most fucked up Picasso style painting, known simply, as our life.  We don't "find ourselves," we accidentally create ourselves through a series of mistakes, near-death experiences, and existential crises. 

But in the end, it seems like love is the glue that holds it all together. I realize how nauseating that last sentence is, but I can't help but believe in its validity.

So how far do you go for love? Do you block out the doubts, and love with your heart wide open, even though it might get ripped out of your chest? Do you trust someone who you know might just be as evil as you are? Do you move to another place just to follow it?  Or do you let it go because you're not sure how much you're willing to gamble?

And when love leaves us defeated and broken, lying on the bathroom floor, do we still believe that it was "worth it?"

Is it ever "worth it?"

In one sentence, Oscar Wilde bluntly sums up exactly what i'm trying to say:

"The secret of life, is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived." 

I don't know what happened with my roommate and her ex-boyfriend tonight. But if life were a Nora Ephron screenplay,  they would fall back in love, get married, have some babies, and live in a bubble full of happiness, topped off with an epic proposal on the roof of the empire state building. 

Tragically however, this is real life, and shit like that doesn't happen in real life.

Even if they did fall back in love, get married, and have babies, at some point, one of them would get restless and need to "find themselves" again. My roommate will become frustrated by her husbands long hours at the office, so she'll start flirting with the kid at the cafe down the street. The babies are stressing her out, and her husband isn't helping like she thought he would. They start fighting all the time, and the distance between them grows. She starts sleeping with the cafe kid, while her husband bangs his secretary on company time. They become ghosts of the people they once were, expertly pretending that everything is just perfect...

Perfect like it was in the beginning...

In the beginning... back when love was enough.

I think it's safe to say that I feel quite strongly their relationship won't be working out.

But hey... what do I know? 


love you mean it.

*SORRY* - I know, I suck.

Okay. I think it's safe to say that I FAIL at updating my blog with any sort of frequency.

BUT... I'm going to start updating more.

Considering the fact that there are only like 3 people who even read this, I don't think anyone really cares about the frequency of my "blogging," but either way, I'm going to write more.

Promise.

love you mean it.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Dear downstairs neighbors.


 
So... my downstairs neighbors have the loudest fucking sex in the world. They have the loudest fucking sex at 3 in the fucking morning, almost every fucking night. Now, I've had lots of really loud sex (sorry dad), not so much recently, but in general, if I'm going to be FUCKING really loud, I'll attempt to be considerate about the volume and time of day/night said fucking is taking place, since I live with roommates in a VERY thin-walled Victorian flat.

It seriously sounds like people are dying downstairs, and their bodies are being thrown against the wall, over and over again. More than anything, at this point, I just want to see what the hell they're doing to make so much goddamn noise. It's disturbingly loud.

Soooo...

Dear downstairs neighbors,

Please shut the fuck up. Some people actually like sleeping in the middle of the night. Getting awoken by your guttural moans at 3am, isn't really working for me, so if you could possible start the animal sex at around like 10pm instead, it would be greatly appreciated.

Happy Fucking!

- B


love you mean it.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

♥ Stephanie Michelle Proctor ♥

Three years ago today, my step-sister Stephanie passed away.

Despite the time that's passed, I can't stop myself from wanting to believe that she's just off at college, and I'll see her over the holidays. We'll go to the gym together, and make fun of my dad for wearing fleece zip-up vests and Birkenstocks.

It's fucking unfair.

Sometimes I feel like there's a perpetual dark cloud hanging over my head, and no matter how much light I'm surrounded by, this shadow is always blocking the warmth.

The self-centered little girl inside of me is constantly asking, "Why me? Why do these bad things always happen to me?" Truth be told, sometimes, I want to wallow in her words. I want to swim in the vast ocean of self-pity, but I choose not to. Because if I'm going to swim in that ocean, I better get in line. There's a whole collection of nations who have experienced more heartache than I could ever imagine. Families across the globe who know things about loss that I will never understand.

But that doesn't make losing Stephanie any less devastating, or any less important than the millions of other children who have died from circumstances that were not only preventable, but didn't need to happen in the first place. And while I don't believe in a heaven, or the fiery inferno of "hell," I do believe that the massive amount of energy that flows through each and every one of us, has to go somewhere once our hearts stop beating.

I don't know where the charged groupings of electrons escape too, but I would like to believe that they stick around and disperse into the air. I would like to believe that the energy from everyone who has ever passed, fills the atmosphere, and surrounds all of us in microscopic molecular patterns that can occasionally be observed in split second glances when we accidentally fall into the right frequency.

I'm aware at how insane the above theory sounds, but haven't you ever been in your head all day, and seen a shadow out of the corner of your eye that you could have sworn was a person? Haven't you ever felt someone behind you, only to turn and find that you're all alone? I'm not pontificating on whether or not “ghosts” exist, I'm talking about energy. I'm talking about that moment when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, because you feel a draft in a windowless room.

The brain is such a powerful generator, I suppose there is a more likely chance that these notions of energy interference are explainable by the great depths our minds will travel, just to cope with the intense emotional blender loss generates.

I don't care though. Right now, the rational juxtaposition is worthless to me. Because despite the facts, I want to believe that when I miss my mother, and I close my eyes to picture her face, that her energy is somewhere close, somewhere near me. I want to believe that when I focus in on the memory of her hand touching my forehead, brushing the hair off my cheek, the fragment of time where I can almost feel her next to me, is actually real. That when I think I can smell her skin, or see the outline of her frame, it isn't just my imagination, but a little piece of the molecular pattern her shell was constructed of.

So, whether or not it's “crazy,” or “stupid,” or simply “false,” I not only want to believe it, I need to believe it. I need to believe for that split second, her energy was there, and I could feel it because I fell onto it's frequency. I need to believe that it wasn't all for nothing.

I need to believe that when I'm driving down my parents street, and the wind hits my face with that perfect smell of fall on its coat tails, Stephanie is there too... spread out and dispersed in the atmosphere, circulating through the seasons, in and out of lungs across the world.

I need to believe it, not because it's necessarily true, but because it means something to me.

What is any of this worth if it doesn't mean something, if it doesn't matter?

So Stephanie, where ever your dispersed carbon and molecular pattern has floated off too, and whatever frequency you might be traveling within, I love you, and you are missed with every ounce of blood, bone, and sinew inside me.

You are missed with every fragment of every second that has passed since you've been gone.

You are missed more than any words from any language could ever accurately convey.

Stephanie Michelle Proctor
October 18, 1986- October 2, 2006