The · same · but · only,

I'm wondering when do I stop settling and start making demands?

I don't know where that thought just sprung from but I do know exactly what I mean.

Here's an example:

Dan is addicted to his computer. Each morning, there may be a shower or a shave, maybe even some teeth brushing, but there is always the loving, delicate packing of his laptop into his bag before we head off to work.

You should see the careful motions he makes when wrapping the power cord and sheathing the laptop. It's never like how I do mine, where I haphazardly grab up the cord and jam it in my purse, wedging my computer in at any random angle. It usually thumps and thuds several times before settling in amongst my cell phone, keys, and Diet Coke bottle. Dan would never put a liquid near his computer. Never. I don't even blink at it.

At work he runs data and makes code do things that code should do and he talks about it with his co-workers and he beams about it to me on the phone or even in person. He tries hard to express how impressive this particular snippet of letters and numbers and symbols is. His words come out in droves, piling up one on top of the other like piglets trying desperately to douse themselves headfirst in their first trough-full of ground up corn shavings and pickle juice. His words are that luscious, that fragrant, that overwhelming, all about his code. Meanwhile, I'm on the spitting end getting this piglet gunk of code love all over me, and not only does it make very little sense, but at the beginning, middle or end of any of my days, his code stories are of very little interest to me, if not very much annoyance. If I'm feeling sporting, I'll listen and try to ask questions that make me seem like I'm trying to understand this beautiful and spiritual thing that is code. I'll be very good about not looking out the window or turning up the radio. But that's only if I'm feeling nice about it. Most days, I tune it out altogether or do the above mentioned things or 0ust settle in for a hypothetical thought about what if I were rollerskating to this song and I were really good and I joined a team. Then, of course, there are the worst days when I'm tired or upset or just sulky, and then I don't want to hear about anything that has to do with the meaningless drivel that is gushing out the wide, code-shaped hole in his heart. Of course, then I don't mince words, at the first utterance of PHP or CSS or whothefuckcares I tell him just that, "Who the fuck cares, Dan. I don't even know what you're talking about. I'm sure it's very interesting to you, but I just don't care." And then I'm the bitch of course. I'm the cunt I'm known to be in less than two seconds.

But I'm going to defend myself here because the point is I'm damn tired of feeling bad for being second to an inanimate object and its inanimate creations, inanimate fucking charms. Blah-blah-blah this is such typical girl bullshit where I feel like my husband has no time for me, but I'm sorry all people I am paranoid of judgment from, my husband isn't out saving lives or fighting fires or killing Iraqis or making millions of dollars for himself and others; he's out there pushing data around a call center and making the most menial of tasks more menial and 10 minutes less time consuming for the retard that gets paid 10 bucks an hour to do them. My dear's great passion, his #1, amounts to very little in his hands these days, and yet I'm second fiddle to it whenever the choice arises. I'm second to the program that randomly generates a birth date or a name or an expiration date for a credit card number. How the fuck is that supposed to make me feel?

So, let's talks about home. While he’s at work I can't really blame him for being into his job. I'm into my job; hell, I dedicate off hours and weekends to my job. But when I get home, even when I'm in my hotel far from home, I'm still thinking Dan. Where's my #1 and what's he up to? So the part that hates me for everything I am says, "Wow you're clingy and pathetic. You need to get a life. What a typical clingy, wifey you are." Yeah, it disgusts me. I wish I couldn’t give a shit. I wish I could put him second to something, anything. Religion, family, my dog, my car, my job, my health, anything. I've tried to do it. I've tried with writing, but writing and I have our own special relationship, and I really can't force that, so the only other thing that I could possibly care as much or more forced me into playing by its terms. But for Dan it's so simple to disconnect from me. He walks through the door after work, usually before me unless he condescends to let me pick him up, and goes through a similar ritual, except now he’s lovingly unpacking, loving unwinding. No, he doesn't come home and do work. He comes home and stumbles from web site to web site, with no goal in particular than finding something mildly amusing. More amusing than I could ever be. More amusing than any alive person could ever be.

Sometimes he does more productive things, like play World of Warcraft. This is a role-playing game where he can pretend to be a superhero with a different name and appearance and do all sorts of super cool super awesome super totally rad quests that make him the super greatest person on the fake earth. Let me just put in perspective for you right now. My husband would rather spend time pretending to be someone else in world that has never and will never exist than spend time with me. I'm #2 to even his fake life.

So where does that leave me? Frustrated. All the time. Lonely. All the time. Annoyed. All the time. I hate myself more because I find myself to be so utterly uninteresting to my husband. Fuck! I'm saying it: I'm not pretty enough or smart enough or cool enough or interesting enough to demand more interest than a 600 dollars worth of metal and plastic and a fake life.

But I try to be so good about it. Because I try to talk to him, and I've tried to walk away, and I've tried to be nice and be mean and be fake, and some work better than others so that for maybe even two or three weeks it's better. I feel like I've climbed the ladder, like I've taken space 1 back from all that un-aliveness. But after those weeks, it all goes back to normal. Back to how it should never be, and I am running out, have run out possibly, of things to try and to say, without resorting to bowing out for good.

So at this moment there's only one more thing left to say to him, left to ask him: "Why don't you ever talk about me, like you talk about code? Why don't you ever take care of me, like you take care of your computer? Why don't you ever look forward to me, like you look forward to your fake life?"

I know his answer: silence. And then I have to drop it or go from zero to cunt in 2 seconds. Ultimately, achieving nothing every time.

Current Location:	The swan chair.
Current Mood:	Stunned if sniffley.
Current Music:	Thankfully.

I've been saying it for six years. So while everything in my life has changed around me. Everything. My mind still remains tethered, bound to the hope, stuck on the dream, tolling on some days louder than others: why didn't you love me like you were supposed to?

I can't make sense even if I try.

Nights like these I remember, Les Matter.

Current Mood:

Affected by your existance.

Kiss my gelatinous ass, Les Matter.

Current Mood:

Mercury. That's what I feel.

I think that the young are referred to as idealists because they cannot be cynical until they have lived failed expectation to the point of their own ruin. Well, I hope the young have not experienced that. I suppose then that is why as oldness comes it becomes easier to accept the ritual, the normal, the quintessential because the spontaneous, the beautiful, and the unbelievable never come up to full fruition. You realize that fantasy is alive longer and better when only in your mind, when it has not made the perilous jump from day-dream to hope. Not to say that hope is a fantasy, but rather to illustrate that hope is a tangible form of the all those things you want so badly to exist in your reality. Basically, hope is the kindling of expectation, and within expectation lies the danger of disappointment. So, the young are filled with hope and the old are filled with disappointment and the in betweens are somewhere in between.

As you begin to learn that there is nothing more real than what you know from experience, the self-righteous attitudes of your youth quell and retreat. You begin to grasp that there is no real understanding without experience, and that without experience there is only the fantasy and the hope and the expectation and ultimately the danger.

I am not fully wise, I know I will never be, but I am wiser. I am older. I am more mature if not any more responsible. I will judge myself always, but I will also give myself longer reign. I wish you would do the same for me, but that is an expectation that will not realize, so I am destined to be disappointed. Thus, I am wiser again.

Time to be small, Les Matter

Current Location:	The thyme.
Current Mood:	tut.
Current Music:	A video game Dan is playing.

Ursula said, "Thank god for getting through PMS without crying." I wish I could trumpet the same success. Alas.

The pummeling last night was uncalled for. And I'd say, perhaps the verbal pummeling (I'm mad for using pummeling twice but I'm not going to crow about it) earlier about that OTHER Peruvian girl was, probably, also uncall-ed for.

A list of things to understand about me (hashed):
- Years, I'm talking at least 20, of self-loathing have created my impenetrable insecurity. Baby, baby, it's not you; it's really me, and it will probably always be. Let me do you this justice: if you can count on any one thing from me it would be this--there is not one possible mean/hateful thing you can say or think about me that I have not already said, or thought about myself. (IWIN!IWIN!IWIN!)

I guess that's the only hash for now.

SO. I'm apologizing...I think? I think that's what I'm trying to do. Or maybe I'm just hee-hawing so you'll cut me a little slack, give me a little lee-way, a little lay away (yeah, purchase me in parts!).

I don't mean to be suicidal sometimes, but let me just say, trying to draw even the slightest drop of blood with the sharp edge of a Garnier Fructise Deep-Conditioning sample tube is really impossible. I mean, it may just be that I don't have enough gusto to use plastic scrap to get through to the goods, but truthfully, I'm not shoveling around when I say that I'd be hard-pressed to find someone who could. I ended up with but a scratch here and there so don't get all gaggled on me because it was just for FULL EFFECT. Not for realZ. I saw the scissors on the counter later when I was shoveling bit fulls of pralines to get rid of the cigarette nose, and I only contemplated them for a second. About as long as I contemplated robbing a bank earlier today.

Incidentally, it's just not a good idea because the bullet will just end up bouncing back at you. Probably in the heart. Or the spleen. And then where will that leave you? Dead. (Think this: is it a better idea to try to kill yourself with the bounced back bullet or with the sharp edge of the Garnier Fructise Deep-Conditioning sample tube?)

My PMS makes me so dreeeeeary. I'd be in the commericial like, "My PMS makes me so dreeeeeary!"

I'm so sorry for everything, Les Matter.

Current Location:	In bed. I'm here like ALL the thyme.
Current Mood:	What is that? Gagged?
Current Music:	Talkin'bout the old style too.

Anyway, I've read enough of this journal tonight to realize that:
1. I was at one point an okay writer.
2. I'm no longer that interesting.
3. I will probably be in deeply in love with Jim for the rest of my life.

How pathetic is that?

I'm 22 years old, my house is half-painted and I'd go smoke a cigarette in my sweater and underwear if I didn't have two roommates.

Who can say, Les Matter.

Current Location:	In bed.
Current Mood:	How's that?
Current Music:	Joan Baez.

I dunno.
I suppose it was bound to happen. I mean it's not like it hadn't been forseen by others (earlier of course) by me (later because I'm perpetually un-with-it).

---

When I drove with my sunglasses to shield the reflection of my tears, hiccuping along to the words of Sondre Lerche, I looked down at my clenched hand, my clenched left hand holding on with might to the scarred gray of my steering wheel. Through my mulberry tinted glasses I still saw clearly the circle sending rays of shine from it's worn silver, and I was sick to see it. I was disgusted by it, the shackle. It went through the window swift and quiet, suspending as I took a turn just in time to catch the light and blind myself once more before I had a chance to leave it behind forever.
But I've left it behind forever.
By now it's settled somewhere in the softly bobbing waters of Tampa Bay under the bridge of Highway 580, settled down in the gray dunes to tain and sprout.

I didn't make it to the other side before I felt the weight of his too large finger on my neck. It became his whole hand, his whole body, his every pound of blood and organ and bone and tissue hanging from the too large loop at my neck. He had suspended himself from my neck with a frail chain that never could've held his weight. But I didn't admit it before because no one had before even thought to make me theirs, to take ownership of all the unright things I am. So I accepted the weight, but at that moment, my tears wetting his weight to something unburdenable I found the strength to tear it from me. It hurt, the little piece of the silver clasp that dug into the back of neck as I pulled against him and his weight and his terrible love. It really hurt when it broke the tiniest bit of my skin before I could yank myself free.
That's the funny part, in my hand his little trinket ring and my broken, still frail chain had no weight at all. When they flew into the air outside my car they fell effortlessly, and my arm with all it's thrust and anger and hate and disappointment and absolute ruin felt empty. All that strength expended for something that would've flown out had I just let it go without throwing.
Afterwards, I didn't even know why I was crying anymore. I felt hollow and faded and neither lighter nor heavier. If I were not bound by human life, I would have floated into nothingness even more easily than the chain and ring.

---

You could say, today is a bad day.
I dunno. You could say.

But I.
I would say otherwise.

<3 Leslie.

Current Mood:

It's a litle breezy in me.

Do you remember, oh, what was it, maybe two or three years ago? I know the years run together these years but try and remember.

You said the thing by the swing, "I love you. What can I do to show you I love you?" And then I coudn't find the heart to tell you what I wanted to answer you; so, I stayed quiet and instead walked away. I had on gray corduroys that night. I don't remember the shirt, but the cords were gray, and my hair was washed, and I remember because when with you, my hands spent a lot of time rushing through my hair -- nervous habit, twirling the ends of my hair and fluffing it like I'm some vain and shallow vixen. Sans vixen, of course. I've gotten better since then. Look at me, calm as a cucumber.

But anyway, I telling you what I wanted to say that night because I'm listening to this song called "Clouds" by The Long Winters and he says, "We are one kiss away from being dangerous." I'm also telling you because you won't ever find out anyway and because last night when I said goodness at the movie theater and you chuckled, I remembered the pathetic, "Goodness gracious," I emited when I was trying hard not to become sick on myself during the park talk.

So. (I heart so.) What I wanted to say when you asked was, "You could kiss me." If I had said it then I think I might have ruined what little we had, at least I could pretend I meant something, but then, had you told me the truth, then I wouldn't have anything. And now that I think on it, it might have been better, less pointless journal drivel, less aching heart whenever you're in or out of town, less pretending that I'm fully in love when I will probably never be able to as long as you're alive.

Now you and I both know, this means nothing now (not that it meant anything then either, but just saying), now that's it been, what, 2, 3 years; we both know that. I know it. You know it. Both know it. That's what both means; so, try not to get too hung up on it. I mean look at me, 2 or 3 years later, it's not like I am. I mean, anyway.

Except I don't know that because it still means everything to me. I still wish at all times that we could rightfully be we, and I wonder if you love me still now like you said you did then. And I'm very sorry to feel this way because it makes me sick, sick, sick to think all the love I still have for you when I love someone else too. But I'm going to say it to be very honest because I need it, if you were to ask me to love you with all my heart again, if you promised to love me back, I would. I would leave everything I've tried to create in absence of you because. Well you know all the because.

And for future reference, the longer you stay away, the better it is.


Remember or forget both are good, Les Matter.

Current Location:	The FEF of course.
Current Mood:	Joke's on me. Der.

Being ugly sucks.
Ta-da.

Yeah whatever, Les Matter.

Current Mood:

Mrrr.

I don't know if we're going to asunder ourselves. At this moment, I'm pretty sure we're not. But some days it's better, and some days it's worse, and for today, I we'll make it, pull through and all that nonsense.

My dear concerned:
Thank you for thinking of me in your last post. It's so much harder when you're two hours away then just twenty minutes. I do work so Spring Break doesn't really exist for me, but I'm making it a goal to see you at least once this year (and for a happy reason).
Love, Les.

Anydo, I love Dan. I can't even help it. Woop-da. La-di. Love. Let's stay together for the future house + my Tavist P.M. is making me drowsy.

Les.

Current Mood:

That's doped up to you.

This was a useless retelling, but it makes me feel better to know I have some resolve in writing it.

Les.

In other news, two things:
1. John Cusack spends a worrisome amount of time in the rain.
2. Let's stay together.

The same but only, Les Matter.

Current Location:	home
Current Mood:	pip!
Current Music:	Whether times are good or bad or happy or sad...

When I read what others have written I feel like Sunflower River Blues.

Rare is a beautiful word and if someone once said to me, "You are rare," I would take it as the kindest, greatest compliment I'd ever received.

I remember once in the last days of senior year, while I was sitting on the far left corner of my English classroom, listening to my CD player, probably 5 Songs in it, probably on Shiny, like I did most days while sulking through dumbed-down discussions of dear Fyodor's Crime and Punishment, I finally decided to say to Jeff Miller, who sat in front of me and who had once gone through an entire day of school wearing ear plugs, which I thought was incredibly poetic and masterfully sardonic at the same time, "What are those papers you are always writing on and have with you," because I'd always seen him writing in class while he sat in front of me, while I sulked and listened, and he replied by asking if I wanted to see it, and I, of course took the opportunity because I am a curious sort, and it was towards the end of class so I asked if I could take it with me and read it and give it back to him, and he said I could so I began reading it, and the bell rang, and I kept listening and reading while I walked out of the classroom, and I walked past Marcus who I usually met with after class to walk to lunch with, and I ignored him because I was reading something important Jeff had written about himself, a sort of manifesto, and he talked about who he was and why he thought he was a phony, and he speculated on his own salvation and explored the whys of his mind, and he wrote how he loved mountains and snowboarding and how he was tired of all the stupid, shallow cretins who surrounded him at school, who called themselves his friends, and he said how he was scared to turn away from them because he didn't know what else to do, and he told a story about they embarrassed him or made him feel bad about himself or how his supposed friends treated him like something cute and un-human, and he wrote about how he couldn't wait until he moved away to some place in the mountains where he wouldn't have to see them again. I read all of it, and the whole time I felt like I was bestowed the beating heart of the rarest person I had ever found. When I gave it back to him, I wanted to say something important and meaningful. I wanted him to know that I knew his mind and that he was rare indeed. But at the time I didn't know the power of the word rare so I all I could, "Thank you for letting me read it. I really loved it."
I was so stupid then. If could, I would go back and say, "Jeff, you are rare." And hope that he understood what a wonderful being he was then and probably still is now.

The same but only, Les Matter.

Current Location:	Weekly Planet
Current Mood:	sighing happy
Current Music:	Sunflower River Blues - John Fahey

Also.

The same but only, Les Matter.

Current Location:	Weekly Planet
Current Mood:	Naps.
Current Music:	Sound of my back teeth clenching and unclenching

Here's where I get realistic because I know I'll make it someday; I'll be an amazing writer who changes the world, but it's hard to believe it when the Zayas girl is staring at you in the face from her little mugshot where Susan's column usually goes. I can't believe that she is what people actually want to read!
Gag.

Other than that, I was also upset to see that City Times decided to change their Masthead, magninmously calling all of the underlings "staff writers" and giving them little mugshots of their own. This I am not so much jealous but resentful of because, you listen to me Mama Times, you should be ashamed of yourself, because unless you've given Elisabeth, Shannon and Jon the pay of staff writers and all the prestige you can go fuck yourself with your newly improved Masthead. Lies! All of you! Man, I'm creepy.

Sigh. I just get so angry because I'm 20 years old and I want so much more than what is at my fingertips.
Two solutions: 1. stop caring and give up. 2. Grow longer fingers.

The same but only, Les Matter.

So all of this comes together to mean that I am returning to this vehicle of thought and truth because I need to keep up remembering. It's too easy to forget as it is. And I won't stand for it.

The same but only, Les Matter.

P.S. Because how can I return to my roots without one, and also because if you're very astute you will notice my new sign off.
P.P.S. Because I might as well while I'm at it, and also because if you've been all the more astute you will have noticed the M. Ward theme of my journal and of this entry. Namely, "Right In The Head" and "Paul's Song."

Current Location:	Weekly Planet
Current Mood:	let's grow up
Current Music:	Paul's Song by M. Ward

Something's clicked again. Something's come back.
One of something's is me, the other is my beauty.

Outside, I won't argue with, but inside I am a sight to behold.

The same but only, Les Matter.

Current Location:	Weekly Planet
Current Mood:	on the up and bright
Current Music:	"Two substantive comments." - Wayne Garcia