It's such a good thing that children aren't aware of the lion's share of what awaits them as they march toward adulthood.  Oh sure, there's the simple fact that trying to sit a child down to explain the vast and complicated concepts of life just wouldn't click by virtue of their sheer innocence.

But what if some sadistic parent was like, "Son, here's the deal.  Adulthood's a bitch.  You think you're hurting for allowance money now, just wait till you have to work your ass off for it.  Oh yeah, work, well you'll know what that is soon enough, heh.  And if you think the kids can be mean at school, you have no idea how fuckin crazy and douchebaggy plenty of adults are, often for no good reason.  I know you don't like it when we take dessert away as a punishment, but get this, you won't ever have to worry about that when you're in charge of putting a roof over your own head and buying your own food.  But you wanna know a secret?  This is the real hilarious part.  Even if those things go great for you, there's this safety switch that keeps everyone on the same playing field, and it's called love.  Love's gonna make you feel alllll kinds of things, haha.  But we'll talk about that one more later, you've got enough to think about without going into that right now..."

There'd be such an upswing in kids saying "Fuck it, I'm staying in fifth grade for a few more years."

This last month and a half I had the joy of dealing with two of adulthood's most fun 'privileges'; housing and (of course) love, although admittedly one of them was a debacle I had a hand in myself, so I can't just wryly rail against the adversity of maturity entirely.

Mere days after the girls and I sent off another year's lease agreement, we received a notice informing us that the owner's of our current house had decided to move back in, rendering our desires and complacency moot.  A few weeks of frantic, irritating, frustrating house hunting ensued, with the results of our searching taking the form of a cute 1920's Victorian house not a couple miles east of us.  While I would definitely prefer to stay in our current place, a part of me is looking forward to the novelty and "adventure" of discovering and customizing a new home.  I just wish one could enjoy that "adventure" without the searching, moving, and monetary loss aspects of the whole process, hehe.

While all this was going on, and after some time apart, I made the mistake of giving Austin my heart yet again, like the good-natured blinded-by-love idiot man-child that I am.  He held my heart tenderly this time, just long enough to inadvertently lull me into a false sense of security.  Small wonder that I was so ready to believe things were going well; after a year and a half of him being a histrionic bitch things were completely different these last several weeks.  There was peace, stability, enjoyment.  Hardly any fighting or disruption.  A sense of true romance and closeness, and the glimmer of a bright wonderful future together.  Buuut it turns out that it was just me perceiving all that, since he told a remarkably different tale.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me a dozen or so times, fuck you.

After all, this is the person who cheated on me twice, and broke up with me another three to five times (it's easy to lose track after awhile you know), always with the crux of it being that he didn't have the ability or desire to examine himself and simply grow as a human being by exercising patience, sacrifice, etc.  Given that, it's hard for me to feel much self-pity or wonder how this could've possibly gone wrong yet again, lol.  /sarcasm.  I guess when the histrionic behavior ebbed severely, I thought we'd finally made it, that all the crap had been worth it, but that's the classic essence of our relationship; my role as the patient, blind optimist who had eternal faith that we could overcome anything together, his role being the malcontent who could never just enjoy the sum of our parts if this one or that one wasn't perfect here and now.

One would think that the sheer familiarity of this situation would rob it of its impact, but being rejected by someone and broken up with blows regardless of the circumstances.  I've lost my best friend, the person who the last 600+ days of my life have centered around.  The reason and manner in which he quit this time are what will truly sting for some time to come too, because as usual there was no overtly fatal flaw, just a problem that he didn't want to cede could be solved with more patience, willpower, and hell, even good-naturedness.  As he put it, 'his feelings were changing negatively for weeks but he didn't want to hurt my feelings by being more direct and confrontational about the matter at hand'.  Well congrats, you still hurt my feelings but fucked the relationship over to boot.  For someone training to become a therapist, bottling one's feelings up until they're irreparably damaged and toxic in order to avoid conflict seems about the most asinine advice one could dispense, so I sincerely hope that if you ever read these words my conflicted paramour, you'll take them to heart.

It makes me think of how often we'd darkly joke about the saying "physician heal thyself!".  If I know him half as well as I think I do, he'll now be looking at the relationship with a keenly revisionist stance.  Alllllllll the ails and woes of his life will be attributed to it, and he will cite a resurgence of positivity and peace, as though it were the only thing holding him back from being his 'true self'.  Unfortunately, in doing so, he shortchanges himself yet again because he is looking at everything but himself.  The concept of genuine selfless love will remain that much further beyond his ken, but because he's been 'freed from the shackles' of having to give a damn about how his actions affect another human being, he will feel energized and optimistic.  Until of course, he takes the exact...same...baggage into his next relationship, because he never grew by learning to value patience and sacrifice.

As friends have reminded me though over the last couple of days, you can't own someone's else baggage, you can only constructively remind them that it's there.  And although I'm furiously resentful and hurt right now, it's not like I want to see the person I love suffer or face adversity.  He is one of the smartest, most engaging, attractive, humorous guys I've ever met in my life, he's just also got a long way to go before becoming a mature, solid partner.  With 3+ years age difference between us, I guess that shouldn't be so surprising, but it's easy to dream when you're in love.  Someday, I hope to be able to enjoy those wonderful attributes of his as a friend, without all the venom and drama that currently share space within him, but for the time being, for as much as I lament the demise of this relationship yet again, there is an increasingly large part of me that realizes it's for the best.  Even an eternal optimist has to acknowledge reality when all is said and done.

I'm doing my best to remember that although the last major chapter of my life centered around Austin, there's a vast wide world out there that keeps spinning regardless, and that joy, sadness and everything else in the world is not tied into how this one person is causing me to feel at this moment.  It's hard of course, but what's adulthood without a little trial by fire?
 
 

A most simple, lovely thing happened a short while ago.  I was reading my newspaper in Overlook Park, enjoying the game of hide-and-seek the sun was playing with the clouds, when a tiny red blur in the grass caught my eye.  It turned out to be a ladybug, struggling her way up a blade of grass, seemingly without much success.  Up she'd go onto the slender stalk, only to fall back down as it would bend under her, ahem, ponderous girth, hehe.  She moved onto another one and faced the same result, and continued on to yet another one.  I watched this endearing process, not understanding why she was going through so much trouble until she finally reached the top of a blade that didn't bow under her weight.  With a mighty flourish she spread her wings and I was like "ohh duh, of course", ooonly to watch her fall again, this time flat onto her back, legs akimbo.  I couldn't leave the cutest insect in the world scrambling like that, so I scooped her onto my finger and held her aloft.  After exploring the back of my hand for a few seconds, a nice breeze kicked up and whoosh! off she went toward the sky.  Watching her flutter away, I couldn't help but smile as the warmth of the sun washed down upon me and the chorus of birds chirping and children laughing sounded all around me.  Life is so beautiful sometimes...
 

Sooo much love for this episode of The Word
 

It's a lil' disqueting that whenever Sicko and I break up or otherwise have severely bad blood between us, the weather takes a startlingly noticable turn for the worse; Last week Portland was awash in 99 degree heat, now I'm watching the skies for dementors.  And it's been like that every single time something goes awry between us, it's bizarre.  Last time I checked, my X-Men persona was Mr. Sinister, not Storm.  Thankfully I dig dark weather, so it's all good, hehe.
 

Yesterday George, Miles and myself headed to Sauvie's for some berry-pickin, beach-combin cloudy afternoon goodness.  They'd been there a couple times before but it was my first trip to the actual beachy parts of the island, so I was rather excited to explore all the new naturey stuffs.  Turns out there wasn't much to explore; the strip of beach isn't exactly a pirate wonderland of treasure and hidden coves or anything, but it was beautiful and serene and if you squinted just right, you could kiiind of turn the gross bloated barges passing by into Jack Sparrow's Black Pearl.  But you had to squint pretty hard...and have the imagination of a 5 year old, which thankfully we do!

Since George and I aren't exactly sun-worshippers, there was much hemming and hawing about whether to frolick in the river, what with the toxicity and three-eyed fish and all.  Eventually, he led a mighty charge into the water, bravely smashing into its cold dept--- ok no, scratch that, it was more like he meekly started tip-toe'ing into it while whoopin and hollering about how freezing it was.  And granted, I did the same thing when I first got in, hehe, so we were both wusses.  But it got really nice shortly after our extremities got accustomed to it, and soon we were splashing around in the not-so-visibly toxic river having fun.  Even Miles, who said he totally wasn't going to let any of that water touch him, got in and frolicked with us.

After a while, we were all feeling a bit burny and winded from all the swimming and wrestling, so with sand in every orifice, mosquitos chasing us to the car, and big tired happy smiles on our faces we headed home, where copious amounts of soap and shampoo waited for us.  It was a great afternoon, and next week we vowed to do it again and bring frisbees and floatables and such!  The End.    ^_^
 


(Miles and George like wood.  It's true!)
 

So a month to the day after that last unpleasant entry, I find myself closing the book on the ex-bf yet again, who in this journal shall heretofore be known by the acronym Sicko (selfish, insecure, crazy, kawk-obsessed).  Over the course of the last month, we tried to set things right between us, but of course that's impossible when one person's heart just isn't in it, as I should've realized from the get-go.  I've always been a sucker for second, third, and fourth chances (and then some) so I have no one but myself to blame for giving Sicko what is, I believe, a sixth chance?   Some people just can't change, or at least, not quickly enough to make enough of a difference.  It's maddening, because we sync up so perfectly in so many ways, but we're worlds apart when it comes to how we treat each other and what a committed relationship means to each of us.

Ah well, it's the next guy's problem now, heh.

And besides which, there've been much happier things to dwell upon lately in life, such as meeting a lad who is practically the polar opposite of Sicko.  He's been a bright shiny beacon of happiness and stability and I'm enthusiastic about what may come to be between us.    ^_^

There was also the trip to the redwoods in California, which was great to be a part of.  It'd been way too long since I'd last gone camping, and even longer still since I'd been to the CA coast, so it was awesome to be able to do both in one trip.  Banana slugs, hikes through Ladybird Johnson's Grove, late-night wanderings through the campground, crazy coastal highway driving, and fun at the beach made for a thoroughly lovely trip.  This is my beachy rendition of Mordor from Lord of the Rings, complete with Mount Doom, The Black Gate, and the ever-watchful Eye of Sauron.  Ohh how I love being a nerd, hehe.



Yesterday the girls and I volunteered at the Portland International Beerfest, basically working three hours for free beer and a t-shirt, and it was *so* worth it, lol.  Knowing next to nothing about beer and having never poured a drop of it either didn't stop me from putting on a pretty good show for the Scottish brewer's tent I was assigned to.   It was a distinctly Portlandish experience, and we plan to do it again in a few weeks at the Oregon Brewer's Festival.

And tonight we're going to see Order of the Phoenix, which I've got mixed feelings about but am still totally excited for.  My mixed feelings stem from the craptastic performance Michael Gambon has given playing Dumbledore in the last three movies and the collective belief that Imelda Staunton didn't give a terribly fitting go at playing Dolores Umbridge.  Granted they're only two characters, but this is Harry Potter man, this is serious stuff, lol.

Serious stuff is what I want less of in life right now; I told myself I wasn't ever going to let Sicko deeply hurt me again as he did when I wrote that last entry and I'm stickin to that!  It's summer, every day is gloriously beautiful!  Now is the time for smiles and sunshine, for "out with the old, in with the new!", for ditching destructive douchebags and embracing ebullient energy and appreciating awkward alliteration!  To go uber-geeky and quote Auron, "This is *my* story".    ^_^
 

*sigh*

It's unfathomable that it's only been two weeks.  Your departure from my life feels like it happened years ago.  Each day stretches out with agonizing slowness or disorienting speed; when I'm kept busy things are managable, but the instant I'm alone with my thoughts dozens of memories of you, of us, come rushing in.  Late at night is the worst...I read or watch television to distract my mind, but when the time comes for me to lay my head on the pillow, your absence is a tangible pain, like a dull ache in my chest.  Not a day's gone by where I haven't dreamt of you, and envisioning a time when that will ever change seems impossible.

I miss you so much more than you can possibly know...
 

I haven't the slightest idea who's behind it, but some awesome anonymous person purchased a paid account for me yesterday!  So to you mysterious benefactor I say a mighty thank you!  Of course this enhanced wordsmithing capaibility also means that I'm going to have to be doubly sure not to let the journal lapse into a period of decline as has happened so often in the past, hehe.  In the meantime, I feel as content as our gronky boy here:

Best quote of the night (that I can recall)!

Nick, to me, after I drank half a fifth of vodka without much ill effect:

"Your liver is like a battered housewife that sticks around for 20 or 30 years until the husband says "Why did you stay this long?!" and the liver-wife responds "Because someone had to keep this together!"

lol, wtf?!!

Oh booze, you slay me.  Literally and figuratively...