Tyra

"Well hellooooooo dere!"

When Tyra was maybe four years old and we were living in Lexington, Kentucky, we took a road trip. We took numerous road trips during that time period and especially that summer, but the trip I'm thinking of right now took place in late-July, 2003. My good friends Tomas and Ro, along with Tyra and I, took a long weekend and drove in my 1989 Honda Accord hatchback known as "Big H" (his name was Horace) down to a protest in New Orleans, Louisiana.
       
Holy crap it was sultry. NOLA in July - my only experience with New Orleans thus far, and the only one I'll ever have Pre-Katrina, which changed the city drastically, we've all been told.

Of course Tyra was with me. The main event of the protest was a march against a Central American Free Trade Agreement. Check it out - I just found this news blurb in the archives of Indymedia.

http://neworleans.indymedia.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=15&category_id=3

The photo on this page - this photo:

Post-trip-and-fall-onto-Canal-Street-with-hundreds-of-people-watching

This photo was from that march. That's my best friend Ro on the left of the giant white banner. That's me on the right, nearest the curb. Check it out - we appear to match. For the first half of the march, I had Tyra with me, attached by her leash looped around my waist. If I remember correctly, my friend Tomas left his post at the center stick of the banner to walk Tyra off to the side a bit. This photo was taken after we turned onto Canal Street, which has massive metal grates/plates across it - a material that sweet Tyra had NO intentions of walking across. When the march crossed the first one, Ty went to scoot around my legs and away from the metal under her feet, and she ended up tripping me with the leash. I totally bit it and scraped my knee and elbows up. She was not hurt, but perhaps a bit nervous of the crowds and general hullabaloo. As it seemed to be bordering on too much for her, Tomas offered to take her and walk her separately, since the banner didn't really need three people to hold it anyway.


*sigh*

Oh Tyra. I'm sorry you ever felt even remotely nervous, though you did invariably steal the show and the hearts of all the hundreds, if not thousands, of people we met together.

I miss you, baby one. My little babushka. I expect to see you when I enter a room. I hold my breath when I wake up in the middle of the night, straining to hear your deep breathing that means you're asleep near me. That sound was the most comforting and sleep-inducing sound imaginable. A single minute spent laying near you and listening to you sleep and I was already falling, if not completely asleep with you. It was as if my soul knew it was safe to relax because you had. Let's face it, kiddo - you were the best parts of me. We were never separate. We still aren't.

But dammit I miss your face. I miss how soft the hairs on your head were, especially that spot between your eye and your ear, where I could kiss you and perfectly smoosh the rest of my face into yours and inhale your comfort. I miss the way you smiled at me, both with your eyes and with your grin. I miss how we could go anywhere - ANYWHERE - and no matter how many admirers were loving on you and giving you people food - the second we made eye contact or you overheard me say your name, even in talking ABOUT you to someone else -- you left your shining spotlight and trotted over to me, happy and eager to share your excitement and Love with me. You lived for me and made certain I knew it. You lived to make sure I was ok. You gave your entire self to me with no expectations and no reservations.

And you were FUN. Dammit, doggy. We had so much fun. SO much fun. Remember when you were still quite young and could easily run circles around me? The hours upon hours we spent in the car - me, rocking the fuck out to whatever music I was currently enthralled with, singing at the top of my lungs, talking out loud to you - you, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, leaning up against the door with your face in the wind, that blissful smile on your face, eyes slit nearly closed, nose craning upward to catch the finer points of the scented wind. And then you'd open your grin and the wind would flap through your doggy lips and your long pink tongue (with the black spot in the middle) would flop out and across your cheek. :) Generally by then, I was grinning right along with you, unable to sing through my giddiness, likely telling you how effing cute you are. You'd always respond to my voice by turning your face into the car, your entire being just beaming at me with Love.

You gave the best Love, Tyra.

And the most enduring. I am ok without you physically in my world right now only because you built me up and taught me how to be OK.

My family says Tyra was an angel. From God. Sent to me to protect me and help me and Love me through the worst times of my life. They sincerely believe - at least a few of them that I'm aware of - that I would not have lived through my mental breakdown without her.

I know this is true. I would not have survived. Tyra has been the singular reason for not committing sincere suicide at least three or four times. I just couldn't leave her alone. She did nothing but Love, and I was her world. How could I take that from her? I couldn't.

*BIIIIG sigh*



Oh Tyra. I did it again. I went off onto another tangent, losing the intended story entirely. We didn't even mention the ORIGINAL story I wanted to tell - the one about when we went to the Gulf of Mexico, that weekend we were in New Orleans. :) Oh well.

There's time for more stories. This'll work for a blog post, don'tcha think? See - I just don't work right without you. My pitiful ability to pay attention is even worse without you next to me. *more sighs*

I Love You, Tyra Ann Quick. I always have and I always will. Talk to you soon, baby.

<3,
~Q~

Nourishing Pain

I have no idea what I'd like to say, but I crave the outpouring of language. I want to hear the click of the keys on my little netbook and I want even more to mentally crawl into the comfort of words.

         Words make sense to me.
Words are wondrously delicious when they walk the wooden plank and dive into the pools of your deep retinas.

Three weeks ago, my guy and I broke up. I made a conscious decision to not run from the pain of yet another loss, yet another chance to learn from another human being I was blessed to know more than superficially. The risk we take, of course, when knowing someone deeply, is that the wounds they may leave are also just as deep. Therefore, many thoughts in these past three weeks have brought tears down my cheeks, even more left to pool up behind the retaining walls of my irises, colored blue by my father and likely his parents before him, and theirs prior to that.

In the past, hot gashes to my already hurt heart would have demanded an escape, would have screamed for Novocaine in the form of cutting, overeating, or getting fucked up all day every day until the immediate danger of feeling that awful was safely hidden under scar tissue, hopefully never to resurface.

              Do you have any scars on your flesh?

      Are you aware of the loss of elasticity contained within the damaged tissue?

                    Do you know that scars still hurt a bit, even after the skin has healed, when the healthy skin surrounding the scar pulls and tugs at the resistant entity which is forever stuck within trauma?

Because it does. It will always hurt just a little, I imagine.

I saw this tree yesterday when I went out to run off my lazy sleepiness. That tree had obviously been cut across its trunk at some past point, for the tree, much like me, still carries a scar for the world to see.

             It looks a bit like my arm, right?

When I saw this tree, I felt a particular kinship with it, and a fondness for what it showed me. I found that tree to be distinctly beautiful and interesting. On my good days, I also feel beautiful and interesting.

As beautiful and interesting and unique as our scars make us, I would like to see what it feels like to actually heal fully from this most recent pain; see if I can do it without yet another scar. The night we broke up, I sat on the bathroom floor, crying into the roar of the industrial-strength fan that was whirring on the sultry July night and a new thought occurred to me. I became very curious about the pain I was feeling and I realized that I was, I AM, at a point in my life where I am stronger than I've ever been. I've been through countless heartaches and traumas that make other people cringe when hearing about them. I've been living in an After School Special for at least the past decade. I wondered what it would feel like, what it would BE like, to simply allow the pain to do what it does and not do anything active to escape it. I know for a fact that I'm not fast enough to outrun it, nor wily enough to dodge it, but one thing I had not yet done with my suffering is simply accept it. See what it wants. See what it feels like to just sit with it.

                What would it be like to do nothing whilst my soul cried?

So I sat. I cried but when the tears began to fade, I didn't purposely think of something sad in order to bring on more pain and tears. I decided not to run to the kitchen for alcohol or comfort food or razor blades, though all of those things were fighting to be heard and acted upon. I decided not to even write about this experience for awhile. I wanted just to sit with it.

I sat and I listened. I heard my heart cry and she sang like the most beautiful stringed instrument I've never heard. She sang to my ears only, stretching my heartstrings tightly and cascading down agonizing lullabies and promises that could never have been kept in the first place. She wailed behind my eyes and she railed about misunderstandings and the unfairness of it all. When I still didn't run from her or even protest, she sobbed like a little child and I wanted only to hold her in my arms forever. She was sad and beautiful. She still is.

It still hurts to think of him, but it isn't a constant pain. Honestly, I'm grateful that it still hurts me, that it hurt me at all, for if it didn't it would mean I never really cared for him. That isn't the case. I loved him very much, and a part of my soul will always love him, even though he isn't the man I will spend the rest of my life with. We are inherently different at our cores, and our differences do not lend themselves to lifelong compatibility in that type of a relationship. As we do love one another, it actually makes more sense to let the relationship we had go because we really weren't happy living together. I've never been through a break-up like this, where I'm sad but not destroyed, where I'm missing him but happy at the thought of the growth we're hopefully both undertaking because of knowing one another.

It's beautiful - Love. It reminds me of autumn leaves, gorgeous even as they're dying and then falling to the ground to become nourishment for the next cycle of growth. I like to ponder that image quite a bit.

---------------------------------------

So here's to you, Good Sir, and the painfully beautiful nourishment you've given my soul. I look forward to watching how she grows in this next cycle of my life.

Love,
~Q~

Dear Sarah

Dear Sarah,

I Love You. I see your struggles and I want you to know that you are beautifully amazing. I'm impressed with your stubborn tenacity to not sink like the stone in your inner self, to find the strength where none is apparent in order to start kicking your way towards the crisp air and out of the swamp that repeatedly threatens your peace and your Life. I hear the lies that you tell yourself  - that you don't deserve any sort of happiness because you know you are flawed - and I understand that your pain is great. I want to envelope you in my arms and hold you in my heart and tell you that I Still Love You. I want to stroke your hair the way Mom has done while your tears dry on your soft cheeks and refuse to stop leaking out of your swollen and sore eyes. When strangers first return your smile, notice your arms and then grab the hands of their children and flash your scars a glance of fear right before shooting your still smiling face a look of contempt, I want to place your heart in a cloud that cannot be reached by more pain born out of misunderstanding. I want you to know that I understand your motives and I know that you have never desired to pass your pain on to anyone else. I want you to know that I don't even need to understand your motives in order to Love you and accept you in your entirety. I Love You. Period.

When you feel too weary to go on but don't know which extended hand to reach for - which one can hold the weight of your memories and the honesty of your perspective? Which one will be retracted just after you summon that last bit of trust and take the leap as high as you can, leaving you to fall further down the hole of darkness, other hands now even further away and even less strength to reach them? Whose words can you believe when your own spoken truths are only as real as the moment in which they are uttered? Who will never abandon you, or be unavailable to you when you need them? Who will always be interested in your Life, in your Love, in your Ideas and your Fears?

I will, my Lovely one. 

I will never leave you. I will always care. I will always be in love with your mind, regardless of how many times you change it or are angry with it or wish to escape it or try to do so. I will always know that you are amazingly beautiful, and I will always be here to help you through your struggles and your accomplishments - and I will always KNOW the amount of effort that you make in order to be the amazingly beautiful soul that you are. I will continue to be astounded and impressed with that stubborn tenacity and I want you to know that. 

You are Perfectly Imperfect and you Always will be.

Love,

~Q~

meeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Real-life relationships are too much work. Let's face it - real life ITSELF is too damn much work. I don't wanna do it anymore. I would like to check out and take a nap for however long it takes to wake up in a happy chapter in my life, where I'm happy 99.7% of the time. I'm only giving Sadness the required 0.3% of time in my life, just so I don't appear 100% crazy in demanding CONSTANT HAPPINESS. But honestly? I'd prefer the constant happiness. I don't care that it's not realistic. I don't want this reality. Didn't sign up for it, feel bamboozled and cheated into absorbing it, and consistently "cut off my nose to spite my face" in an effort to pretend that it's not as  horrible as it feels.

This does not work.

It's still out there, Horrible Reality. Outside of my mind, I see suffering and pain. And because I see this, I feel this as well. Or is it the other way around? Do I see suffering and pain because I feel it within my own person? Probably, yes. To both. And down we go.

Ok, so in an effort to stay away from HELL, I try looking at the positive side of life, attempting to REFOCUS and see things in a way that are beautiful and meaningful even within distressing conditions and situations. All aspects exist, so I should be able to find love everywhere, right? By love here, I mean happiness. I do that a lot, you know, interchange words as if they were true synonyms for one another when in reality, others don't necessarily even share the same natural connotations as I do. This gets me confused and misunderstanding and misunderstood. I do not like this.

But if truth is subjective, and reality is what you make of it, then why am I still stuck in a reality I do not approve of? Why can't I exist in a mental state that allows me to remain blissful and not constantly and consistently stressed out to near-breaking over finances and job hunting and relationships with various peoples in my life? I didn't consciously choose this shit. I do not want this shit.

Am I unconsciously choosing this shit? Why would I do that?

I'm going back on meds. I feel like a failure. Being in a real relationship for the first time since my traumatic marriage is really fucking with my head. I don't know how to act. I react more than act but I feel rushed through life, my reactions forced out of me at a much faster tempo than I would naturally act self-prompted. I HATE FEELING RUSHED and PUSHED. It's one of my least-tolerated stressors, by far. Why is that one of my worst? I sincerely cannot stand it. When I feel rushed and pressured to act, I am INSTANTLY engulfed within the dreaded Icky, Panicky Feeling that has taken me on a long-ass joyride around the massive canyon of insanity. I will do basically anything to escape that feeling.

You know what? I bet it bothers me so much at least partly because of my lack of assertiveness. I feel badly when I stand up for myself or tell anyone "no" or disagree with someone else's opinion. I can generally still accomplish it (while feeling badly), but this is far from a guarantee - I may just acquiesce, sometimes without even acknowledging that I'm acquiescing to what I perceive as a demand, as a stipulation of affection and love - and then I feel hurt and betrayed because #1 - I betrayed my true feelings by often not even voicing them and generally not standing up for them, (I have a hard time even recognizing my true feelings at this point), #2 - it doesn't occur to me that whoever doesn't know, intuitively, that I am making concessions and am therefore likely displeased with the actual outcome -- I often end up angry with the person I felt I couldn't stand up to and they do not understand why. Or they do understand why and find that it's still the best option for them - to do what they want even though it'll make me angry. I don't do things I want to do because it'll make YOU angry - why would you not change your mind or behaviors in order to avoid MY pain and anger? This angers me.

Dudes. I'm all sorts of a mess, hey?

Wanna know a secret though? I'm fascinated by my mess. I'm super absorbed by my own brain patterns and when I discover things like I just did -- some of my illogical truths - I just fascinate me. And I feel naughty even typing that, scandalous at the thought of actually publishing this post. Wanna know what else? Sometimes I like making everyone else awkward because I've once again been too honest and shared too much. It amuses me. Sometimes I simply regret these overshares and wish to immediately melt into the center of the earth, but on a good day, it makes me giggle to myself that my truth - which cannot be entirely exclusive to my own experiences, or they wouldn't have such an effect on others (or would they...) - my truths make people feel awkward. Or how I present them at times, maybe.

I like it when you feel awkward. It means I'm not alone. I feel awkward a lot. It's not generally pleasant, although it certainly can be. Why would I want to share my unpleasant feelings?

Duuuudes. This is my brain. She never shuts up. NEVER. I'm so not looking for advice here, btw, I'm simply verbally vomiting all over my own blog, because I can. Don't like it? Don't read it.

This has now become my attempt at being self-assertive. MEEEEEEEEEEE.

ugh.

A few photos from the dog park the other day

This is my goal for October 23, 2010 -- the Mankato 10k

turning around to see - ending up in a dance

**WARNING** There is quite possibly writing in here that could trigger someone into doing self-destructive things. If you are not in a good place mentally and this is an issue for you, please don't read it right now. It'll still be here later. I'm not trying to heal myself by triggering others or giving other people ideas for self-harm shit. It's a horrible, painful addiction and I will be quite terribly upset if I learn that my words have caused someone else any hurt.**

"Baby, when I call for you, I want you to come

And lay it out for everyone

Exactly how it was before any of this happened

And why I can't leave it behind"

-- Conor Oberst, "A New Arrangement"

I moved recently. It was probably 3 weeks ago that I began discussing my current situation and I guess about 2 weeks ago that I actually moved in. There were 5 days in there where I was not here, but up in Fargo with my family paying my respects to Grandma Quick's life and seeing her burial in tiny and all-but-barren Starkweather, North Dakota. Other than those 5 days away, I have been fully immersed in learning the ropes around this house, unpacking and rediscovering treasures from my storage unit, and adjusting to life in the countryside.

It just now occurred to me that it's been a lot longer than the 10 months of storage that I've not seen a few of my tangible memories. In the years prior to leaving Jason, now a little over 10 months ago (holy crap!), I didn't delve into many of these items. I left books on shelves and music in cases for many years without acknowledgement. Some of these things were untouched for so long because I was trying to let go, stop dwelling on painful subjects, and heal. I also left many items unexplored while I was falling in and out of love with my husband, which took probably 3 years. Half of me didn't want to focus on anything but my relationship with him and half of me wasn't allowed to retain memorabilia from my shrapnel-filled past without extreme measures taken to induce guilt, fan my self-hatred, and block any possible fond memories of Life Before Jason.

I no longer have most of my photos from any previous romantic relationships (except for a few copies my parents still had -- like formals from high school. He hated those photos.), I got rid of several CDs and tapes of and from ex-entanglements that I now crave (the music, not the entanglements), and I no longer have any paintings, drawings or sculptures made of me or for me by any male that I've ever kissed. That's sad to me. I've kissed some talented men and probably the only common thread amongst them is how their creativity moved me in some manner. Those tugboats of emotion are now gone. Sad!

I managed to escape my marriage before my journals were censored by a big fat marker or fire pit. Such heretical acts were on the docket to take place any minute for almost a year. I put up with a TON of shit as a result of "procrastinating" on this request, but it was worth every insult and mind-fuck and argument and sneer and threat that came at my stubborn resistance to erase all proof that I had a life prior to meeting the man I married. It was worth it, but I'll never put up with THAT shit again.

Gyah -- that really sucked.

The quote from Conor at the beginning of this post is from the song "A New Arrangement" on "Every Day and Every Night" by Bright Eyes. It recalls nights spent alone in my Powderhorn Park apartment when I lived in Minneapolis and driving to and from my job at the Heart Association, the last full-time job that I held, over my lunch hours when I needed to hurt out loud. I only went home over lunch if I wanted to cut my forearms or play with my unlit fire swings in my living room. Jeff Buckley was great for doing both, but mostly dancing with my swings. I learned that a few minutes of getting my heart to speed up with oscillating arms increased the blood flow and somehow made my purging of pain in the form of blood just that much more effective. Conor's music was always good for urging on the anguish, pushing me past a point of resistance until I felt real. Alive. Involved in someone else's pain instead of the crushing solitude of my own.

Hearing this particular music again ----- I'm looking forward to a summer filled with writing. Maybe not on this blog so much, but for my memoir. To finish the healing process and give legitimacy and create proof beyond my scars that I have been to Hell and I made it out. Turns out it shares the same physical space as Heaven, as well as Mediocrity, and our experiences within this life are entirely determined by how we see the world both inside and outside of ourselves. I used to hear those four lines:

"Baby, when I call for you, I want you to come

And lay it out for everyone

Exactly how it was before any of this happened

And why I can't leave it behind"

and in my mind I was singing about "how it was before any of this happened" meaning how life was before my mental illness hijacked my brain and "why I can't leave it behind" because I was trapped, completely engulfed in hot blistered soul sores.

Tonight I heard these four line and in my mind, "any of this" was now my current living situation -- the serendipitous events and souls who have changed my world for the better -- and I now can't leave "it" (my years of living hell) behind because I meant it when I vowed to do what I could to help anyone else who suffers like I have, and I think that if I can somehow explain what it was like and what I did to find my happiness - I think it could possibly help someone. It's worth writing for that possibility alone. If anything, it'll help ME, so there's my one person. :)

So yeah. Looking forward to delving back in, from a new perspective. I hope that down the road I'm able to share the full story with all of you.

<3

~Q~