rosyxxx's journal

That my birthday is fun. That my car gets fixed without too many hitches. That I get over my desire for Blythe dolls, because I don't need any more crap in this apartment. That I hopefully can see the carpet in my apartment by Christmas, and that this desk can be moved so the carpet can be stretched. That someone (who shall remain nameless) really does bring me shrooms. That there are no more torrential rainstorms like the one this morning for at least three weeks. That my driver's license photo doesn't come out looking fruity. That I become financially solvent, and a wealthy entrepreneur someday soon. That I can get my Halloween costume together before Halloween... That I can find a hairdresser I like as much as Terry. That my bills are paid before the 28th, and that copious amounts of chocolate are in the near future.

You know what would be a cool 'frame' in a movie? An entire kitchen stocked with nothing but chocolate products: Chocolate syrup, brownie mix, truffles, chocolate bars, chocolate milk, chocolate-covered cherries, chocolate-covered ants, chocolate-covered raisins, chocolate Easter bunnies, Ghiradelli chocolate powder, Swiss Miss hot chocolate packets, Count Chocula cereal, Double Chocolate Stout (beer/ale), and then one little jar of vanilla beans.

Funny thing is: I'm not currently stoned. Heh. I just like chocolate that much.

Disclaimer: of course not counting the lovely conversations with my NAO friends[/shameless pandering button]...

Yes. I come home to try to sleep, and they are laying carpet. It's too much trouble to let me know that two adjacent apartments will be hotbeds of noise for 48 hours.

Then a day's break.

I have a wonderful time at work, smiling, laughing, having the blast that most people wish they could have out at a club every night...making the very few assholes smile, spinning around on the pole like a happy demon at the amusement park, listening to the hiarious antics of my co-workers. Every night now is like working at a comedy club. I love it!!!!!!

And then someone hits my fucking car. I now have more than the yearly inspection, and a new driver's license photo, which I'll be stuck with for six years, to take care of in relation to my car...Fuck. I have to get this stuff done before I can relax and enjoy my birthday on the 28th. I seriously hope someone is bringing me 'shrooms. Half-smoking...I mean joking. ;p

Then another day's break.

I spend the afternoon with 'a friend from the aforementioned stripclub (so it kinda counts...), walking around on a warm late summer afternoon, drinking tea, stoned off our asses, pressing our noses to the glass at the library, making bets that require payment in chocolate-covered blackberries from Karl Bissinger's chocolate heaven...eating gobs of ice cream and feeling deliciously sinful, while staring up at the hazy sky...

I get home safely with no bad things happening. Yay!!!

Then another day's break.

I go to work and laugh my ass off, cause one of my managers is walking around with a paper bag over his head with eyeholes cut out, and a bubble above his head that reads: "No!" As in, the ubiquitous 'no' to every stupid stripper request to go home because they aren't making any money. Literally. But no matter. We are laughing our asses off instead. The DJ has his face covered in silver foil, looking like SpeedRacer, and the two of them are having a blast harassing this muscle-bound freak-of-nature (or steroids...), who is good-naturedly putting up with it all. He even flexed for us several times. They did the whole Hanz and Franz routine, using the Arnold Schwarzenegger German accent....then my boss broke into a Scottish accent, a West London accent, a Jamaican accent, and finally for the piece de resistance, he started talking like our illustrious boss with the goofy Spanish accent.

He said that at Monday meetings, they ask him what he does to lighten the mood of his employees. He said he actually told our boss with the Spanish accent and the bad English, that at least several times a night, one stripper or another will come up and ask him to do impersonations of him and his Spanish accent. So he knows. And he apparently thinks it is quite funny. So....I am laughing my butt off...He says things like: "Why are those entertainers standing there like that doing nothing? I am so 'incinerated'!" While my manager says: "Do you mean 'infuriated' or 'enraged'? Yes, there are no bones in the sink...<I'll explain later>

But I get home and find the letter that a close friend of mine has died almost a month ago...I cry and cry, and look up pictures of him on the web, missing his smiling face, and wondering what I can do to be of help to his wife. I sleep terribly.

Then it is another happy, hysterically fun-filled night at work for me....(although apparently not so for my partner-in-stripping, who had some asshole stick his finger up her butt)...but for me, I was just having a grand old time, listening to my manager and the DJ cracking me up. There was no money to be made, so I made lemonade and whipped out my Pilates workout, and sat and looked at my girlfriend's pictures from Senegal. No money, but fun day. Still quietly grieving over my friend's death, though...

Then I woke up, overwhelmed with all of the errands to be run on my day off, pissed again about the car, feeling out of sorts, wondering if I should actually go into work on my day off, because...oddly enough I was thinking I'd have more fun there. I was partly right.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my non-stripper girlfriend's company, but the rude panhandler on the street pissed me off, and unfortunately I felt compelled to revert to old-behaviour and call him a 'schizophrenic bastard child' when he called me a bitch after I politely excused myself initially... Then the arrogant rich old bitter Republican ladies who sat next to us while we were dining were so loud I couldn't have heard a freight train, and then some creepy, creepy dudes tried to talk to us. I tell you, I literally felt like I was walking through the movie Ghostbusters getting slimed by ghosts and disincarnate spirits. I probably was...maybe. ;/ Generally speaking, I only get that icky feeling in the VIP room, with the arrogant, self-serving wealth that overwhelms that place. But last night it was all over the place, and I can't help but think that I somehow was just too vulnerable again, like I haven't been in months.

The best part was the faintest hint of my friend's laughter over all that commotion, and the fried bananas with caramel graham cracker cheesecake...But that wasn't enough, at that point, to cleanse my shitty mood.

I tell ya I ran my little butt right home and set straight to chanting. Now I feel fine, and my friend from work and I are compiling a list of hilarious stripper quotes to be published as soon as we amass more than a thousand. We plan to unleash our raunchy humor on the North American continent sometime within the next year. If all goes well.

Personally, I think I am handling my stress rather well.

I get up, I fall down (and sprain my ankle), I get up again and keep spinning on the pole...'As The Stripper-Pole Turns'...

I must preface this by saying that I have had absolutely no plastic surgery...

You know, I've never really looked my age, always looked about 10 years younger...until the last four years. Sometimes people would guess me close to my age, and others, they'd be maybe five years off. But lately, as in the last four to five days, I have had some bizarre experiences, as in these sorts of things haven't happened in half a decade.

A man at work swore I was not even 23. He got mad about it, and said I was lying. I met a few women out the other night, and they thought I was barely 21. I got carded at every bar I went to, which doesn't happen much anymore, and one guy was quite skeptical about giving me my ID back. He said it didn't even look like me. Then, I went to my friend's 50th birthday party, and while I was busy thinking she was 40 and gave her a card as such, which made her beam from ear to ear... two people came up and asked how old I was... they wondered why I sounded so educated, but looked barely past 23. Then, I went to the pharmacy to pick up two prescriptions. Neither of them were narcotics, so it wasn't crucial to have my ID, but the pharmacist was looking on the computer at my customer information and asked to see my ID. He said he didn't think it was me. He stared at it for quite some time. He grilled me on my birthdate and SS#. At work tonight, one of the waitresses thought I was somebody new. She swore it wasn't me. Two nights in a row, two of my managers just looked at me intently, and one said: "You look really nice, but different. Something's different. Did you dye your hair?" I haven't. Not since last month. And the guy at the grocery store who keeps trying to hit on me, walked right past me without even recognizing me yesterday morning, which never happens. He usually corners me while my frozen foods begin to melt.

If it were only men, or women who I knew were gay who had responded in such a way, I would think they just wanted to get into my pants; but, it wasn't. Both men and women who are straight were saying this, and some of them looked at me with such sincere, lingering disbelief. It wasn't like they were just being flattering or polite. Some didn't recognize me. Some were ready to kick me out of the bars for having a fake ID, and others just looked dumbfounded.

I'm not exactly sure what I attribute this too...except, truly, at it's core, I think it is the reduction in my stress level...and yet, that doesn't make sense, because last month was horribly stressful. Y'all don't even know. There is a secret I am keeping. Last month was awful, and I was stressed to new heights. Maybe it was that my friends and family were all there to help. I don't know. All I know is, I think I better bring my ID if I go to buy alcohol...and if I want to go out for my birthday at the end of this month, I damn well better have gone to get my license picture renewed, as my license is expiring.

Apparently, it no longer looks like me anyway. I'm not sure what happened, but I like it.

I expect that the downside of this is that I may get traffic tickets more often again, and women may be quite evil to me, and people may condescend even more, thinking I am just some teeniebopper; but I hope not. I hope people aren't ignorant about it...because along with this reduction in my apparent age has seemed to come a renewed vitality. Energy from nowhere. I love it! I feel like I could conquer the world again. I don't think I want to trade either benefit, even if people are rude about it.

My question is: What happens if this were to continue, and I were to look even younger? Would I have to falsify my license to a younger age, just to be able to use it? *you have to understand, this is partially tongue-in-cheek*...I don't quite believe all of this myself. It's so strange. I am reminded though, of Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume, where the central couple finds the secret to immortality, and they have to move from place to place before people find out that they don't ever age. Before they get stoned, or prosecuted, or burned as witches, heretics and vampires.

I am certainly none of the above. But this all seems a bit magical. And then again...it might be because I no longer drink alcohol, nor soda, nor coffee, very little chocolate...I eat primarily vegetarian, even my ice cream is soy, I drink boatloads of water, tea, wheatgrass juice, take evening primrose oil capsules, take Chinese herbs, get accupuncture weekly, do Yoga, and chant for two hours a day. I take baths as often as possible, just to relax. I try not to dwell on things that make me angry, or upset, and when I do...I try not to continue to obsess over them too much.

Maybe it is all just the stress reduction techniques...but I wonder. I wonder. Could it be that chant I started five days ago? For the very purpose of people being blinded to anything but the beauty within your soul? Does that mean my soul is that of a young woman in her twenties? I'll buy that. I'm pretty immature at times, but I do care very much about other people too. I must say, this is all quite intrigueing. I wonder what will happen next.

So much has changed for me sinced March. My life is changing dramatically. So many opportunities have opened up, so many gifts have come my way...and now it is up to me, not only to decide how to use those gifts, but to stay committed to what I have begun.

When people come up to me, literally yearning to be my friend; when my family seems to be coming around and understanding why I have been the way I am a little better; when friends that haven't been friends that long start standing up for me, and calling other people on their bullshit on my behalf...which just happened last week or so on the issue of the love of my life; and I find that the financial imabalance in my bill equations seems to work itself out; and my health is not only better than a few months ago; but vastly better than a few years ago; when I have the energy of a child, and my cynicism and jadedness are disappearing slowly; when I sleep well, with relatively few nightmares or panic attacks, unlike years ago; when I can listen to what other people are saying and pay attention; when my bosses and my co-workers and my friends actually enjoy my presence, and guys come out of the woodwork wanting to date me, and people invite me to all kinds of parties and get-togethers...most of all, when I wake up and feel alive and happy 95% of the time, as opposed to 5% of the time.........I know something drastic has changed in my life.

The reason that I feel like Cinderella, is that I know, without a doubt, what has caused these changes. I know. I should know. I began the practice for these very reasons. And now, there are so many times when I wish I could live at the pace that other's do, but I have my practice, both chanting and Yoga to keep up with. They come first, even if someone needs my help, those things must be done before the day is out. Or else.

Maybe not. But I don't wish to find out. I'm not interested in staying at the 'Ball' too long, and finding that my coachman has become a mouse, my car a pumpkin, and my dress has become nothing but rags. I don't wish to lose a glass slipper. No matter what anybody else says, this practice must be done every day, I feel 99% certain of it. There is but small room for doubt, and then I look back at the past year, and I know: I know that if I don't hurry home at the end of the night to finish my practice before I go to bed, if my practice isn't done on someone's living room floor, or in the dressing room at work, or wedged in the corner of someone's sofa, or in the car, or in the shower, then the magic of how my life has changed may stop, or not progress further...and I want to continue becoming a better person.

Someday, I may not have to be that committed to the changes, but right now, I do have to be. If someone tries to convince me that I don't need to do this, in my mind and my heart, I know they are inadvertently doing me a disservice, as well as a disservice to the one's I love. This practice has changed my life. Yes, I can still be a bitch (who can't?), yes, I can get way too angry at times, yes, I can forget about others needs for a moment, or even a day...but I can also now see where people have taken such blatant advantage of me in the past, that I had no ear for their ills, no energy left for them, and I took from them, because I had nothing left. I can also see where others are projecting their bullshit onto me, and accusing me of being the problem, because they remember how I used to be and want to pretend that I'm the only problem and they did nothing fucked up. They want to use my past behaviour as a rationalization for their bad behaviour, and what's worse, some of them know EXACTLY what they are doing. They know they've been draining me, while accusing me of being the one doing the draining. So I talk. Alot. But that does not excuse some of the behaviour I've come in contact with...you don't just suck someone dry because they needed a little too much at one time. That's selfish. It's hypocritical. I won't stand for it anymore.

This practice is making me stand my ground. I'm tired of being taken for granted. I want to be appreciated for the wonderful person that I am, and feel safe enough to appreciate others without them taking advantage of my kindness. They should be asking about what makes me tick, what I am doing with my life, while I'm busy asking about them; it shouldn't just be people telling me all about themselves, and then crying that I don't listen to them just because I talked about myself for more than a minute. Just because I used to take all of the time, doesn't make it okay for them to take all of the time...now. Two wrongs do not make a right. I expect that kind of respect. And I intend to have it. I also expect my loved ones around me to have respect for my practice. At least enough not to make fun, or light of it. If they don't believe in it, then that is their choice, but they best not be trying to dissuade me from it...because I will walk away. And not come back.

This practice has made me commit to eating primarily vegetarian and organic, drinking almost nothing but water, wheatgrass juice, and soy-based milkshakes that I find quite tasty. It's made me stop drinking. It's made me realize just how fucked up all the supposedly helpful medications for whatever 'supposed mental imbalance' were making me...and kept me committed to using the THC to keep things on an even keel, along with my chanting and Yoga. My hope is that soon, I will no longer need the benefits the THC gives, and can rely entirely on pranayama breathing exercises to ease my anxiety and help me to focus without having to take either prescibed pharmaceuticals, or drugs which are illegal inside the States except for California. My practice has also given me the capacity to have firmer convictions, without being nearly as abrasive about conveying them as I used to be...I can assert myself without turning into a raging maniac trying to defend my heart.

I have a wellspring of energy and love, that I can go to now...and I'll share it, but I won't give it away. I will share the bread, but not give away all of the 'sourdough starter'. And how I have learned to reach that point, feels like learning to ride a bicycle. I'm not ready yet to take the training wheels off...so any friends or lovers of mine, will have to understand that whatever else happens in the day........my practice must be done before I go to bed. I'm not willing to find out what happens if I quit. In fact, I know.

I began something like this practice back at the end of 1998, when trying to leave a bad relationship. I succeeded. Then I slacked on the practice, and I let the person back in my life, believing that they could help me, or save me. It took another year to leave, and then years of fluctuating levels of bitterness. So much work to get back here, because I gave up. The core of my daily life is my practice, and it has changed my life. People may not believe it can do that, but it has done so for me. I still have my bad days, and days where I lapse into old behaviour, but they are almost non-existent. I stumble, I sprain my ankle, I get up and keep dancing. Metaphorically, and literally speaking. I make more people smile at work than frown. My friends say I make them laugh, and smile. Even when I am bitching...they say that something has changed and even my miseries I convey in a funny light. I love this...why in the world would I want to trade it for a longer night on the town? Why in the world would I want to risk losing the magic of it all? To watch the coachman snivel at my feet for a piece of cheese with his mousy whiskers, or to have the light which seems to be coming out of me now dim itself? I wouldn't. This new reality brings love and light to myself and to those I love, even to some of those I don't really know. My neighbor told me that meeting me has changed her life. The suicidal impulses are gone, the depression has faded, and she is happier. And I know that it isn't just my presence that is doing it, it is the light coming out of me, as if I were a lightning bug and all of the chemicals in my butt were working synergistically now...for the benefit of more than myself.

Funny, my desktop computer screen is a photographic image of the colored light patterns that fireflies leave in the atmosphere after buzzing around in the dark. I always liked fireflies. Now I feel like one. I feel like a firefly at Cinderella's ball. A beautiful firefly with a heart that just keeps becoming more whole. If you run into me on a bad day, cut me some slack please... I am still learning to keep that light on as much as possible.

I checked my e-mail today, and found a message from harold_maude about how it makes her very happy to see people who are broken into pieces becoming whole again...to see birds with broken wings become healed and fly free again. I can almost feel her love and kindness radiating through the airwaves and thoughtwaves.

I must confess though, the last few days, it's been hard for me to give. Coming from a place of being overwhelmed by constant negativity...I became a little confrontational again. I'd just reached a place of 'evenness' when New Orleans was flooded. At first, I was just happy that my sister and her kids were safely here in St. Louis. And then I thought about my brother-in-law down there...yet, I wouldn't wish the catastrophy on him or anyone else...I'd just like to eat all the marshmallows out of his Lucky Charms box to piss him off. Heh.

At any rate, I then began thinking that all of my sister's friends were primarily in New Orleans, and wondering if they were okay. I knew she would be almost at her wits end. This is devastating. Though people had way more warning than those in the Thailand Tsunami, it still has destroyed lives. Countless. And yet, the outpouring of help and caring is there. I know this...and yet, somehow, selfishly, my mind wanders to my problems.........

And I become aware of the fact that I am on the eve of potentially ending what I longed for to be a second chance at what was once a beautiful meeting of minds and flesh. The breaking point for me came last night, almost synonomous with the flooding of New Orleans. And the first time something this devastating happened in this same relationship of mine, it's very undoing was on the eve of 9/11. Yet this time, I only quietly voiced my grief. Apparently these world tragedies seem to have a corellation with my own personal miniscule ones in comparison. Yet they dwarf my pain.

And I feel somehow wrong for complaining. I know the tears will pass, and all that stuff...but I'm almost positive that I can see the writing on the wall, and I have to go through this wall of grief. Grieving for what I may lose, and what I probably never really had, as well as worrying intensely about my sister and her loved ones in New Orleans. I find myself moving beyond my annoyance and distaste for her 'own' manipulative behaviour...to caring only that she is safe and alive. It's gotten down to brass tacks. It's come down to simply: 'caring'. And maybe, that is the message here AGAIN for me to take home. 'Caring' while being a little detached from the pain, so that I can see my way to being not only a 'help', but a force for change.

I had to not watch the news programs because it was making my eyes well over with tears. And as far as my own personal tiny problem in comparison, I can hope that this will be some kind of turning point that will bring us closer, but....I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. I have no gut instinct on this, and that is because I think that the decisions have not really been made by either of us. Everything may well rest upon what is said to each other later this morning. Or what isn't.

I am so full of anxiety that my heart is rattling in my chest. It's trying to get out. It wants to fly away from the pain. It doesn't want to grieve. And yet, I am. And when I grieve, I cannot eat. Shakes from Smoothie King go down, and I can eat in front of the computer, or with friends...but that's it. I want to just fall on the floor and pound my fists into it until they are bloody, and broken. But I can't. I just recovered from my ankle injury, what would I do with broken wrists? I wouldn't survive, and I'd be no help at all to myself or anyone. I can't drop anchor in that zone...I must forge ahead.

And yet, I only want to go back to the beauty of this past Sunday morning, where I was blessed with not one, but four wonderful occurences. I fell into the 'blissful zone' at work, and I just radiated love to everyone around me...then my love came home with me, and we listened to olive as we horsed around in the bathroom, and I stood on the edge of the tub to see how much taller I could be, and we fell into each other's arms holding on for dear life...it was so blissful, so beautiful, so opening for me. Like my heart was opening a little wider this time...and then I did my yoga while he slept. And the most beautiful thing was watching the candle flame sit perfectly still in a draft, no less, while my eyes never blinked, never teared, and the light grew into a column, and the darkness became hazy and everything was darkness with a core of light. I told him about it, but I don't think he understood.

Yet, I began to understand more, when I realized that Sunday morning was the last day of my practice of the "Om Mani Padme Hum" mantra. The jewel in the lotus of the heart. And this wasn't a 40-day practice. This was attainment of mantra siddhi with 125,000 repetitions. All that remains to do of that practice is a puja. And the rest of my 1 and a 1/2 hour practice continues...while my grief at the last few days' events grows. Kali is hitting me and everyone else over the head, right now. Kuan Yin was much kinder.

There is a silver lining in all of this...one of my cousins, whom I haven't spoken to in years, by default, called my father yesterday to inquire about my sister. None of the relatives knew that she was here now. They thought she might have perished in New Orleans. Thankfully, she did not.

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Postscript: Do you ever find yourself wondering if what you think about happening will happen? That if you reserve judgement the door is open wide for all kinds of possibilities? The short version of this would be the phrase: 'a self-fulfilling prophecy'; which works, and yet is an oversimplification. But then typing that last clause is ironic, because what it all boils down to is that I think I've been personally dealing with too much verbosity. Maybe I should simplify more...just not by hardening the future into the shape in the stone that I 'think' it will be.

I just want to be able to love without expecting anything, and being genuinely grateful and happy when things do happen that make me happy. I'm not saying being a dog, but just that I want to stop expecting that things should be a certain way.

Dad gummit, why does it take me so darn long to say what I really mean: I want to learn to go with the flow. To just be at peace.

Why do I always have to say it in a 1,000,000 words or more? I annoy myself.

This post was edited by rosyxxx on Sep 01, 2005.

I'll say this: someone else is reading a very long e-mail...maybe. But I think I should make some mention of the fact that things are a little rocky right now, though I expect it to pass.

So here goes...this is REALLY how I feel today:

You know lately, I've usually been so chipper. I know in my heart of hearts I am making progress, but the things I find most intolerable about myself are glaring at me like shards of glass spread out all over the floor between me and the door, and I have no shoes to get across. As far as my chanting practice...this apparently is supposed to happen if you chant to Kali for help. She is supposed to rip everything wide open. She is the path to change that happens quickly, but she does it by exposing everything you don't want to see about yourself, your life, and those around you.

I'm sure there are some people who think they have done just that for me in my life, but I think there is a distinct difference in opening my eyes to what needs to change about me, versus shoving my face into a pile of shit and misery, and making me pay for every insight with sex. At least Kali only requires the discipline of commitment to chanting. At least in my undistorted book.

There are no human sacrifices here. No animal sacrifices. No drinking of blood, or anything else that gets woefully attributed to Kali, by the miscreants who have treated the lore surrounding Kali like it were a cult. She's just the idea of the ruler of time, and everything I have ever hidden from myself because I couldn't bear seeing it is rushing forward like a freight train. It's definitely disruptive. I hope I will make it through. If she is destroying everything on the battlefield, then when my heart is finally like that of a helpless baby's, I expect she will raise her foot in a mock attempt to crush me, and then stick out her tongue playfully.

I don't want to chant today, but I am doing it anyway. I've had so many days like this...and perserverance is what gets me through. It's mostly what gets me through.

It doesn't help though, that my birthday and my sister's birthday are looming large in the near future...hers on the 25th of next month, and mine on the 28th. I'm not sure I want to see her either. I already told my father that I don't want to arrange a 'birthday meeting' through him. Last year was too awful for words. The air was so taught with dislike that the very molecules holding up the veil of Maya could have shattered and splintered into a thousand tiny pieces. Maybe they did. And maybe one of the shards fell in her eye, like it did in Kay's in Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen. Or maybe she just thinks I am too much of a grown woman not to either have my shit together, or to have babies as an excuse for not having my shit together...like her. The truth hurts for both of us...but I'd rather face my truth without her bad attitude. Even Kali's painful truths come with some amount of compassion.

I just hope that the other people in my life who are presenting me with the few truths about me that haven't come rushing in this month on their own, are doing it with compassion in their hearts, and not meanness.

I don't need people in my life who can only tell me the truth while relishing every bit with jealousy, and hoping that I'll lose what little I do have. Not the twentysomethings at work, nor the people whom I sincerely hope are really my friends. I need people who can be honest and care at the same time.

I've had enough of the above.

This post was edited by rosyxxx on Aug 25, 2005.