Dreaming In Monochrome

If you would only lose weight, you would be pretty.

If you would only stop dressing like a boy, you wouldn’t have bathroom problems.

If you would only let your hair grow out, I would love you more.

If you would only stop acting so smart, other people would like you.

If you would only stop acting so gay, people wouldn’t feel uncomfortable around you.

If you would only be good, I would stop hitting you.

If you would only be normal and marry a man, I would be proud of you.

…

If you would only accept me as I am.

If you would only try to understand me as I am.

If you would only see me as I am.

If you would only stop trying to force me into a box I don’t belong in.

If you would only love me as I love you.

I have anxiety.

Really, when you think of all the things I could have come out of my childhood with, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anxiety are pretty “good”. I went for years hiding it, doing my OCD rituals in private (and enduring jokes about what I was doing in the bathroom for so long) and fighting off the anxiety by chewing up the inside of my mouth and quietly crying in the shower. Sometimes I don’t even know what triggers it, why suddenly I’m sweating and shaking and suddenly want to wash my hands or count things until it passes.

Sometimes I feel like it’s getting worse, and sometimes I feel like I’m fighting it off because of the safe place I find myself in. I’m no longer afraid to say, “I can’t do that, it makes me anxious,” whether it is finding a different restroom because this one is too crowded or asking to sit on the end of the row because being able to “escape” makes me feel better.

Last night I actually picked up a spider (by the end of its web line) and set it outside. I then freaked out and had to take off all my clothes and have SM look me up and down to make sure that the spider wasn’t ON me somewhere, but it was some progress. I kept asking her why I did that, why would I do something like that, but the fact is that I moved a spider out of my home without having SM kill it (or remove it) or breaking down into tears. I did have to wash my hands a few times, but I wasn’t crying.

A major trigger of mine is feeling that I have let someone down, or upset them in some way. “I’m sorry” is perhaps the two words I use most often, usually without even thinking about it because in my head I have a voice that tells me how stupid I am, how worthless, and how everything is my fault. To love me is to have me apologize to you, because somewhere deep down I do not feel worthy of your love and need to remind you how sorry I am that you have to put up with me. This voice is loud, and it is persistent and it never, ever shuts up. I win an award and all it says is, “Yeah, second place. Not good enough.” I get married and it says, “Yeah, but she’ll leave because you’re an idiot.”

This is why, if you are loved by me, you get a lot of text messages, emails, IMs, phone calls that say, “I’m sorry.”

And I am sorry.

I feel guilt for things that could not possibly be my fault, but it suddenly is my fault because I didn’t prevent it, or I misunderstood what you were saying because sometimes my mind can only see black and white, or I feel like I’m bothering you because I miss you and just want to talk. It’s nothing you have done to me, nothing you have said, nothing you have indicated is wrong, but my internal meter has gone off and told me what an asshole I am again, and so you hear “I’m sorry.”

I fight it. I try not to apologize for everything. I try to calm down and not need you to calm me down, try not to need that shield in front of me to protect my mind from myself. Sometimes it works, and I stop the “I’m sorry” before you ever see it.

Sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s out there to you before I can stop it.

I can be the biggest dog in the room, the meanest one on the block, if I feel like someone is threatening someone I love. The anxiety is gone, the OCD compulsion not to touch someone is deadened inside me by my rage. I am no longer afraid of anything, and I will do whatever I have to do to make you feel safe again. It’s hard to look in the mirror and know that this person, this strong person who would take on a mob is the same one who literally shakes in fear in a crowd, who cannot get into an elevator if there are “too many people” in it. Who stands outside of the bathroom and talks herself into going in because there may or may not be someone on the other side of the door who gives her a dirty look.

I know rage is not the answer. It’s a dangerous well to drink from, one that got me through junior and senior high schools, but has no real place out in the “real world” that isn’t a school yard full of bullies. I can’t just flip out and hulk smash whenever I feel the need to wash my hands up to the elbows.

I have to find my peace. I have to find that quiet mind, somewhere I can go to when I am alone and don’t have my shield at the ready. Everyone has a life, and it isn’t one spent waiting for me to have an episode and need a talking down. I get to this place when I’m going to be in pain, this place where I can focus and take my head away from what is happening. It just hasn’t worked so far with the anxiety or the OCD.

But I’m working on it.

I promise.

I want to be a better partner, lover, friend. I want to actually be the confident person you see me as. I want to believe in myself, as much as you believe in me.

I want to believe I am worthy of you, and your love.

All of you.

Thank you, for loving me. Warts and all.

I lived through the surgery.

It was a lot of build up for a literal five second procedure. There was a lot of talk about how this was “going to be a bleeder” and I was prepared to feel blood gush down my face. The doctor had his scalpel as the nurse held my head down. I faced out into the room, everything blurry and slightly dream like. I could feel SM’s heartbeat, hear the even rhythm of her breathing as I slipped into a Zen state, my muscles relaxing one by one as they got the message. I closed my eyes when he said, “Okay, here we go.”

I felt his wrist move, and then heard, “And we’re done!”

I opened my eyes as his nurse laughed and SM said, “That’s it?” He laughed and said, “Oh yeah! That’s it! Wow!” There was movement and he started to explain what was happening next, the cauterizing machine ticking close to my right ear. I closed my eyes again, matching my breathing to SM’s, her calmness washing over me in waves as my mind went elsewhere, hearing something else besides the ticking of the machine as it burned my flesh in tiny little bits to stop the blood. The doctor laughed and said he was giving me a “little haircut”.

They wrapped my head up so that I looked a little like I had been through a war – you know, the stereotypical “war wound” with the wrapped head, one ear covered. SM snapped a picture of me after we left (without the refills for my diabetes meds, something I didn’t realize until we were already gone).

I’ll find out in a few days what exactly it was. For now I am busy NOT touching it (although, admittedly, I have and it feels weird for there to be nothing there). I’m hopeful that it was nothing, just an “overgrowth of blood vessels” like the good doctor predicted it would be.

I don’t know why I cannot will that Zen mindset whenever anxiety strikes me. It seems to come over me when I know I’m about to be in physical pain (tattooing is where it really comes out) for a prolonged period of time. For a while when my back injury was fresh, I could Zen myself out for a little while. Then I just needed pain medication because my mind couldn’t do it for long periods. I need to work on that.

I can’t really express how wonderful SM has been throughout this. From the initial scare of “What the fuck is that?” to the cancer scare to the holding of my hand as I walked to the car dazed as been an unbelievable journey in trust and love. She never let me believe the worst, never made fun of me as I cried, and has been dutifully been changing my bandages. She is amazing.

In other news: I’m in an interesting position. I want to talk about it, because really, it’s a beautiful thing happening in my life and it deserves to be out in the light. On the other hand, it doesn’t involve just me and I’m not one to kiss and tell, so to speak.

There is magic in my life. This is a new adventure, a new course charted on an unknown ocean. I’m excited, and scared, and a whole lot of other things all mashed up together.

For now it lives in my heart like a sparkling jewel in my pocket. I put my fingers around it, hold it in my palm and feel the weight of it. This thing I’ve been too frightened to give life to, this thing that has always lived in a corner of my heart.

It’s going to be good. I can just feel it.

It started out small.

I thought it was an ingrown hair, or a pimple. It ached a bit, especially when it got bumped, or if I scrubbed too hard in the shower. SM worried that she somehow nicked me with the clippers while shaving my head. I couldn’t see it because it was just above my right ear, just far enough back on my head that I couldn’t contort enough to see it.

I forgot about it, figuring it would work itself out. Things like this always do.

Then it started to bleed.

The bleeding seemed to be random, but when it bled, it bled buckets. There are millions of tiny blood vessels covering your head and face, so it doesn’t take much of a wound to make it gush blood. I looked like someone had stabbed me in the ear. Each time SM would tend to the wound, inspecting it and shaking her head. She didn’t know what this was, but it wasn’t a pimple. So I went to the health center, and asked them to look at it.

The nurse frowned, poking at it. “Ow,” I said. She frowned some more. “How long has it been like this?” I shrugged, said it had been about two weeks since it first appeared. I told her about the bleeding, and she went to get a doctor. The doctor came in, and she poked it, too. “Ow!” I said. She frowned, too.

“This might be cancer,” she said flatly.

The doctor kept frowning as she pulled my ear down and pushed my hair out of the way. She sighed and asked if I put on sunscreen. I said that I didn’t normally put sunscreen in my hair. She laughed a bit, and asked if I had any other funny bumps. I shook my head no, and she instructed me to put an ointment on it, and see if it goes away on its own.

And she said that if it didn’t, I was to come in so they could remove it.

Two weeks ago I went back to the health center for my diabetes, and I saw the same doctor. She looked at the bump on my head and frowned. “This has become significantly bigger. We need to get this off of you and see what it is.” She kept looking at it, and said it wasn’t melanoma, but that it wasn’t anything good. I told her I had to wait until I had the money for the lab work and the anesthesia. She nodded, once, and said, “Do it as soon as you can.”

It’s so big now I can see it in the mirror. It feels like a leathery water balloon when I touch it. I can feel it when I shower, and it hurts when I brush my hair, no matter how lightly I go over it.

This week, I should have the funds to get it taken care of. I want it gone, but I don’t know if I want to know what it is. I keep telling myself it’s nothing. Just a weird skin thing. They’re going to take it off and I’ll have some stitches and it’ll be over.

Right?

I have nightmares.

The proper term, per my doctor, is night terrors. Most of the time, I don’t remember what is going on. I thrash, I call out, I bolt upright in bed. Sometimes I don’t wake up fully, and it isn’t until the next morning that I find out that something happened in the middle of the night. Sometimes SM wakes up to find me crying, still asleep. Sometimes she wakes up because I am cowering into her back, shivering and whimpering. She convinces me that there is no murderer lurking in the living room, no giant spider on the ceiling, no boogeyman in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed. I don’t remember.

I used to sleep walk as a child. Both of my parents have stories of finding me in random places, even outside. A few times they said I mumbled to them, something incoherent about something or other. When we moved into the two story house across town, my Gramma hardly slept because she was constantly listening to hear if I would get up, and sleep walk down the stairs. After a few months I guess she figured I was either going to walk down normally, or not get up at all.

I dream of spiders slowly descending from the ceiling onto my face. Of writhing bugs and crawling masses of maggots, of armies of ants swarming up the sides of the bed to eat me alive. When I am awake, I cannot look at a swarm of ants or a crawling spider without goosebumps rippling down my arms and my heart racing. Somewhere, deep in my brain, a signal goes out to run. Run and never look back, because they are everywhere, and they can wait all night.

I have a recurring nightmare of a faceless figure who chases me. The dream starts in a normal way. I’m eating. Watching TV. Walking down the street. Washing my car. Suddenly, I see a shadow from the corner of my eye. A dark movement. I am not afraid. Not yet. I stop whatever I am doing, and move slowly away from the movement. Sometimes it feels like I am moving slowly because I think it was not attract the attention of whatever it is, sometimes it feels like I am swimming through thick air. It isn’t until I turn my head (and I always turn my head) that the signal comes.

Run.

So I run. I hear the pounding of my own feet in my ears, feel the sweat run down the sides of my head as I look for a hiding place, knowing there isn’t one. My brains says I can run forever, just keep running until something, someone, steps out to save me. Where is Batman now? Where are the dragons who come in my other dreams? Why can’t I turn into a wolf and turn with sharp fangs to face whatever it is? Where is Gramma, the one person who was always there in my waking life to stop it.

I am alone, running. Sometimes it’s the neighborhood I grew up in. Sometimes it’s the street I lived on as a teenager. Sometimes it’s a place I have not yet been, not in this life.

I run.

My lungs are burning. My legs are aching. My feet are bleeding with the effort. I still run. I’m crying, wiping stinging tears from my eyes because they’re blurring my vision, warping trees into looming figures and cars into waiting monsters.

Sometimes, this is where the dream ends, because I am crying out in my sleep. Someone is holding my hand, someone is shaking me awake. That someone was my sister when we were young, leaping the floor between our beds to hold me and give me my teddy bear. That someone was my Gramma, hearing my cries from her room in the middle of the night. That someone has been my lovers. Sometimes they have not been gentle.

Now that someone is Shawn Marie.

She didn’t sign up for this – married to someone who screams in her sleep, someone who dreams of a faceless shadow who chases her, endlessly. I’ve ripped the covers off of her before, looking for a spider that doesn’t exist. I’ve leapt out of bed, ready to fight the figure at the end of the bed that fades away as soon as my brain wakes up.

But she stays.

And she never makes me feel bad.

Even when she wakes up because I am roughly brushing “ants” off of her.

Sometimes the dream doesn’t end there. Sometimes there is no one there to wake me, or I have not cried out loud enough, and I run.

I feel it gaining on me. I know my legs cannot last much longer. I know there will be no one coming to help me. No Batman, no dragons, no werewolves, no Han Solo. I hear the insect like buzz of it, the static friction electricity of it as it comes closer. I keep running, knowing I cannot look back.

Eventually, I look back.

It is then that I see it was right behind me all along, and I see the black hand reaching out to finally stop me.

I wake with fingers around my throat.

If I have not made a sound, the only one there is Ernie. Ernie always knows. I don’t know what I will do when there is no more Ernie to be there when I wake up, crying and sweating.

Therapists have said my dream means I am stressed out. Friends have suggested that it’s my father chasing me. I have dreams with him in them, and he never has that much power. They tell me to stop running. To turn and face it. To will the dragons to come from the sky and protect me. That I can conjure anything I want in my dreams.

It never works.

One day the nightmares will stop.

It wasn’t today.

Maybe tomorrow.

I’m tired.

See what happens when I get into school? I stop updating anywhere except Facebook, and even then it’s occasional.

This session I’m just taking Biology, a lecture and a lab. I was signed up for an English course (I have to re-take some core credits that I dropped out of when I had to leave college) but it didn’t work out because the professor was a gigantic asshole. The first week of classes my immune system took a vacation and I got so sick I was a zombie. A mucus leaking, achy, feverish mess. I struggled through the first day of classes, and then promptly died for the rest of the week. I emailed my Bio professor, who wrote back and was concerned about me. English? Nothing. His syllabus was basically, “Come to class, because I am not telling you what we’re doing.” I emailed him again, and nothing. Called his office and left voicemail – nothing. I dragged myself to class on Friday and the classroom was empty when I got there.

No sign on the door, nothing. Just a bunch of empty chairs. Where did they go? Was class canceled today? No one knew.

So I dropped it and vowed to not ever take a class by this jackass again. Life is way too short.

Biology is easy for me. I’m surprised at how much I remembered from high school and just general knowledge. I’m also surprised at some of my classmates, how people have changed in the ten years since I was at UNLV the first time. Girls wear hardly any clothes to class, everyone has a laptop (or a smartphone) and they are on it all the time. I mean, these kids are watching You Tube videos in the middle of lecture, and then complaining when they fail the tests. They don’t see the correlation between their behavior and the result. I’m seriously shocked at the entitlement.

I haven’t really taken any photos since my photography class ended. I am making noises about turning our second bathroom into a dark room, and SM smiles mysteriously at me when I do. Right now that room needs some work (the spare bedroom). We’re trying to turn it into a workspace for SM and I and have enough room to set up an air mattress for company, because eventually we’d like to have people come and stay with us. Right now, however, it has turned into an over stuffed closet from my youth, bursting at the seams with stuff that doesn’t have a home at the moment, or stuff that belongs in there but hasn’t been put into place yet. We’re working slowly on it, between school and SM’s job, we just haven’t had much time. Right now our big concerns are getting a couch that isn’t a piece of junk and a vacuum cleaner. I thought we’d hit the jackpot when someone on Craigslist was giving away a vacuum and a couch, but we got there just in time to watch someone else take both items. Oh well.

I still feel like my life is going in a good direction. I’m excited for the fall, and what is going to happen beyond that. My boundaries are still in place, and that feels good. I’ve lost a good amount of weight, and surprised at how good my clothes look now. My blood sugar is doing great. It is surprising how taking stress out of your life can affect your body and make you feel so much better.

It’s been good. Sorry I haven’t been around. I’ll try to update more often. Thanks for sticking with me.

In just a few hours, I am going to turn 34 years old.

One year ago, Shawn Marie and I were packing up our little apartment in Denver, hugging our friends goodbye and leaving our little plants in very good hands. We had no idea where the path was taking us, but we knew we had to go – knew that whatever may come, we would always be in the boat together.

The road between that birthday and this one has been filled with so much pain and depression, hurtful words and awful actions, but it has also been beautiful and rewarding and full of new adventures and a reminder that I am stronger than I could ever imagine.

I have learned to let go this past year. I have let go of a lot of fear, and anger, and hurt. I will never understand how someone can say they love you and then wound you so profoundly that for a moment you are unable to see through the pain, but I have let go of needing that understanding. I have stopped allowing fear to rule my life, to hinder my relationships and damage the people around me who matter most.

I have learned that sometimes friendship isn’t enough, and that I don’t have to keep trying to be someone’s friend when it’s obvious they have no interest. I’ve learned that I matter, that my feelings matter and they are important.

I said good bye to my Bub. I also warned Ernie that he is not allowed to leave me, ever. I go first. He agreed, and I’m making him stick to it.

I went back to school and faced the fear that all of those Can’ts and Won’ts and Shouldn’ts put in my head, and in going back to school I have made a friend. I moved back to Las Vegas and realized it’s not so bad. I let go of my father, and realized that he will never be the person I need him to be, and that I do not need that kind of pain in my life anymore. I let go of my sister, and hope that one day she will choose love over fear, too. I chose me.

A year ago I said that I had lost that feeling that my life is awesome. Last night I looked around at my friends, people so dear to me that I can’t imagine my life without them; I looked at my smiling wife, this force of Love and Healing in my life, and I realized that I had come full circle. My life is awesome. I wake up in the morning and I am happy. I have a little garden that I grew myself. I have a goofy dog who loves to see me, and a cat who cuddles up to me at night. I have a wife who supports me in every little dream I have, who makes my life a musical by singing randomly throughout our day. I have friends who love me, who understand me, and who come to my house just to celebrate me.

In two hours, I get a whole new year. I used to believe that I would be faster, smarter, stronger, or taller the morning of my birthday. I would jump out of bed and run down the hall to see if I could do it faster than I could the night before. Sometimes, it felt like I was just a second faster – an inch taller.

It was magic.

I have a feeling this next year is going to be a good one.

I already feel faster.

It’s almost 3 AM on June 20th, the day before my birthday.

I’m sitting here, in front of a pile of gifts, with a pork pie hat on. I’ve always wanted a pork pie hat, and the Universe brought it to me via Dad B., while he was visiting.

Tonight a bunch of my friends came to our little condo and celebrated me, laughing and joking and generally having a good time. Some of the people there I have known since I was half the age I am now, what seems like a lifetime ago. SM made me a space shuttle cake, and we all wore Darth Vader masks. It was magic and love and amazing things, and it was all for me. I feel humbled by the love my friends, my chosen family, show me. When they hug me I am reminded of how much I enjoy being touched, feeling connected to people and allowing them into my space.

The gifts are lovely, but it was the people who really made the night something to behold.

That and the awesome cake.

In the month since I last wrote, a lot of things have happened. SM found a job, working in a place that will help out not only with money but a discount on stuff we need to keep my art going. Her one woman show went off without a hitch (well, despite some technical glitches which were mostly user error and lack of communication with SM). I still haven’t ridden the bus, because we’ve had a lot of things to do and not a lot of time to do it. My Psychology class is going well, and I enjoy it a lot.

My photography class has changed my life.

I know how to develop my own film, from shooting to print, I have done everything. I’ve discovered photographers I never knew existed, and now cannot get enough of. I’ve learned to love film, to love the feeling of the paper under my fingers, and the excitement of seeing my work fade into life, ghostly and then solid, is more amazing than I have words for.

And then there is V, my instructor.

The first day of class, V smiled at me and I felt that tug. It was the, “This is one like you,” thing – something I rarely feel anymore, or rather, allow myself to feel. There was something about her stance, or her mannerisms, the way she talked – it just felt like I had Found Someone. Someone important, or at least, someone who was important to me long before this life. It was definitely an “Oh. I remember you.” moment.

I didn’t run up to her and say, “I think we’re kindred,” or anything. It was a gradual thing that looks to be blossoming into something beautiful. We have a lot in common, and she remarked that she doesn’t normally talk to students outside of the classroom but that she feels differently about me. She shared her private art with me, and it felt very much like she unzipped her chest, pulled aside the muscle and showed me her beating heart.

I don’t feel that way about many people – and I’ve tried to shut that part of me down after feeling wounded by a few I have let get close to me. She admitted she feels the same, and that she talks about me to her boyfriend. SM says she knew V and I would be friends from the get go, because I apparently came home and wouldn’t stop talking about her. V and SM met this past Friday, and V said that she didn’t know anyone in Vegas, and that it was nice to be friends with someone.

It is nice.

I get sad sometimes, to be honest. I get sad that there are people I feel this pull with that I cannot touch. I cannot hug them, I cannot hear their laugh, I do not know what it feels like to have their arms around me for a moment. It’s hard, and I wonder why we chose to be so far away from each other this time around. I know, eventually, one day, I will hug each and every one of them, but in the mean time it’s hard. Sometimes it makes me so sad that I find SM wherever she is, and just hold my arms wide and then hug her tight, burying my face into the side of her neck. For someone who does not like to be touched by other people, sometimes it is the only thing I can think of that makes me feel like I am really here.

This last assignment was self portraits. We were allowed to take photos of “extension of self” – people, things, places, that we felt represented us. I took pictures of a lot of things. Books, the Stormies, other cameras, Murphy. In the end, I chose eight prints. I was only in two of them. The rest of them were of SM, and she was in one of the two I was in as well. When it came time for me to talk about my work I said, “I chose these pictures because I hate my face, I hate looking at it and seeing my father’s features, or my sister’s face, because they don’t love me and in turn sometimes I can’t love myself. When I met SM I was depressed and felt worthless and that maybe I should just check out, see ya around, good bye. I chose these pictures because SM is the reason I’m sitting here, because she is so open and compassionate for the world around us, because she is my shield for so many things. She is the ‘face’ of our relationship, the one who makes me feel safe.”

I started to cry, right there, in the classroom, in front of 11 other people. The girl sitting next to me reached out and touched my shoulder, and when I looked up, I saw V was crying too.

Tonight some of my oldest friends came over and saw a few of the photos I took for that assignment. Later I was on Skype with a woman who makes me feel that same sense of love and family, and I held the pictures up to my webcam for her. Whole continents and oceans separate us, but for an hour or so, it was like she was right here.

I was supposed to go to bed, but I couldn’t stop thinking. I worry about a man who lives in New England who I wish I could hug – another soul who gave off that, “Hi there. I remember you.” I worry that he is okay. I was thinking about my friend Patricia, and hoped that her dogs were nuzzling her, and that she knew I was thinking about her. I was thankful that H didn’t think I was being strange for asking her to be careful because she was in a strange dream I had.

I said on Facebook that I wished they all lived closer. And I meant it. I love this medium, and I love the people it has brought into my life, however it makes me realize how very far away I am from the people I care about most.

It’s my birthday in New Zealand right now.

I still have Sunday ahead of me.

I should sleep. I have more pictures to shoot for Monday.

I took down this blog about ten days ago because I received an email accusing me of painting certain people in my life in a bad way. Considering that I don’t use their names, and unless you know me in person you probably won’t ever meet them, I don’t see the paranoia, aside from the fact that the truth hurts and they don’t want people to know that we’re not just a happy family.

The truth is I’ve missed writing here, even though I update sporadically. I’ve missed having this outlet for my venting and whatever, and I was pissed that I felt like I had to unplug from it because certain people can’t handle it. This is my space, and my story and if they don’t like how they are being portrayed maybe they should stop acting like assholes.

I don’t regret the boundaries I have put up. I think they are healthy and they are certainly making my life easier to live. I don’t feel like I’m walking on eggshells anymore, and if someone thinks that I’m “too sensitive” well… maybe I am sometimes however sometimes I am just reacting to someone being a colossal jerk and I am allowed to have those feelings.

So anyway.

We’re finally started unpacking with a purpose. We hung a lot of our art on the walls (SM is trying to get me to hang some of my photography, but I feel like that is such an arrogant move that I am resisting) and it’s nice to look up and see Catwoman lunging down at me. It feels like we really live here now. I know that’s silly, but there you have it. We need some bookshelves in a bad way – too many books and not enough open space. We sold our bookshelves when we left Denver, and I am regretting it now. I know we’ll find something, especially once we have some money.

We’re both still looking for work. The economy is supposedly picking up, but so far it hasn’t trickled down to us. SM has had some promising interviews, and then nothing. It’s frustrating, and even more so when she is upset because of the lack of response. I don’t know what their problem is, but they are really pissing me off with this BS. I’ve been depressed, seeing the jobs I’ve interviewed for come back up in ads. I think my school schedule is what is preventing me from being hired, because the jobs I have experience for tend to be during the day and that’s when most of these jobs are hiring for. I guess a night job is in my future.

Speaking of school, I start back on Tuesday. It feels weird, so sudden and yet so far away at the same time. I’m going to be riding the bus down there, and that, of course, freaks me out. The gas and wear and tear on the car would be outrageous for me to drive down there every day (not to mention leaving SM stranded here, and the fee for parking is hefty) and there is an RTD park and ride just up the street, so it seems silly not to. I loved the subways in New York and Boston, so you would think I would be on board for a bus ride. I know once it becomes part of my routine it will be easier for me.

Sometimes I wonder how SM puts up with my anxiety. It seems like it’s getting worse sometimes.

All in all, it’s been a rough ride for the past month and some change, but it’s getting better.

Awesome things that are happening:
I won second place in an art competition. SM is being interviewed by NPR, she’s giving a talk on Lesbian Fiction and doing her one woman show for the library. I have a few galleries interested in showing my work. I’m going back to school! SM is writing. I actually feel like taking photos. I am a PEN-fessional with Pentel, and get free pens to review.

I feel better every day, and I know that things are hard right now, but it’s going to be okay. It has to be. I won’t accept anything less.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Since I am not allowed to have my own feelings out in public, this blog is over.

Thanks for everything.