sometimes it doesn't matter what tricks i try to bring on some happiness, there is just no way in hell it is going to happen. is it me resisting my own natural state of being? if sometimes happy things make me cry, what does that mean i am really thinking about them then? sometimes they don't seem like tears of joy, but if anyone's around i can let them think that or tell them it's allergies, depending on the season of course. i never thought of myself as having social anxiety, but sometimes there are situations where you just can't help it really, like when you are the last one picked for kickball or the only one of your friends not invited to that party on saturday night or the only one without a date...not that i mind not having a date, but it's the look on other people's faces that's hard to take...like they are dumping their discomfort and their ultimate sorrow for you all over the place. sometimes it doesn't matter how sweet the tea is, it just can't do it's magic. why is that?

and then i made a brand new friend and in the discovery period it came to be known that he was the giantest cowboys fan of all time next only to my little brother! well, we were already friends and thankfully football season was over by then, so we just kept on friending along and then it got down here towards fall and i had to make a promise and the promise was that i would be a cowboys fan....if i would do it, then i could take my little brother to an actual game in that new "sexy ass" stadium at some point in the next 30 years. it would heal a lifetime of misery. i couldn't say no....(and honestly, who doesn't want to go into that stadium which really, really is a sexy ass one too?) oddly, as all this promising was happening, i was in search of a new cat and going around arranging meetings for me and my dog and looking in cages at all kinds of faces until i finally saw the face i wanted---i knew i would know it when i saw it---and then there he was. i pulled him out of his cage and loved on him and looked over at the info taped to the outside of his cage which said his name was "DALLAS" and he was found outside a mental health facility. SERENDIPITY! my fate was sealed. i knew i would be a lifelong fan of dallas. still, as we approach the last hour before the cowboys play my former beloved giants, it's hard for me to make the switch. yes, as my 7 year old friend told me with his hand over his forehead at breakfast this morning: it's for a FRIEND! yes, and it's for my brother too. but the picking of the giants was for me and that's saying something. i caught a bit of the bills and the bucs playing. that buffalo sure looked awful cute on their helmets. and i am the biggest fan of the dead weather song: cut like a buffalo.....maybe i can just be for the bills now.

whenever someone gives me a "mixed tape" i automatically think that every song, every word in every song, is a direct message from the mixer to me! so, if you put "violet hill" in TWO different mixes for me, i won't give a second thought to the fact that you probably don't remember that you gave it to me once before, i will only hear: "if you love me, won't you let me know?" and then wonder, when i tell you, why you have such a surprised look on your face.

i'm not a good loser. or maybe i'm a great loser cause i know so much about it. but still i hate it and so instead of waiting for something to just leave me, as i'm certain it eventually will, i push it away or ignore it until it goes away or do something to drive it away so i won't have to put up with the pain of waiting for it to leave me later. but not this time. this time i am holding you in my lap and telling you i love you and that i will miss you and thanking you for everything that you have done for me because i learned so much more from knowing you than i could have possibly learned without and it was SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH FUN sometimes too and no matter what was happening, you were always there and you were always willing to love me except for the parts when i was screaming like a banshee and you had to run and hide somewhere, but really, who could blame you or anyone for that. it's good to know when to run and hide. i am torn between wanting to run away and hide and wanting someone or anyone to come along and do i don't know what for me or just be with me, but because i'm not so good at losing, i'm not so good at asking either and it seems like i'm always asking the wrong people the wrong things and i know there are times in this world where you have to be alone and i know if you called me or showed up i would reject you because i may not like doing it by myself, but i don't know how to do it in front of other people. and what can you do for me anyway? could you hold me in your lap and tell me that you love me and that you will miss me and thank me because you learned so much more from knowing me than you would have without and it was fun sometimes even when you were screaming like a banshee and i had to run and hide somewhere....? everything changes and i am grateful i got to know you at all. and i really, really do love you, too.

oh words, inadequate words. how i adore the struggle of trying to get you to come out of my mouth in the same order i have rehearsed them adnauseum in my mind! it's so much like when you're high and you have one of those really amazing conversations in your head with someone and then later can't remember if you actually had it or not and usually it turns out not and then you can never remember the exact intention of whatever it was you were trying to say in the first place.

somewhere along the way i just got scared to say most anything involving feelings to anyone and started overusing the three strikes you're out rule but without ever letting anyone know, so i guess it was really more like three strikes i'm out, but with the same result in the end. well, it's not that i wouldn't say anything to anyone cause i sure do like to tell a tale and the taller the better, but it seemed like maybe i was always talking to the 50 people who couldn't possibly do anything about it instead of the one person who could. i didn't realize how good i had gotten at walking away...i knew i was a world champion at pushing people away, but i didn't see for real what a great runner i was myself. i'm always rubber when i need to be glue. or the other way around.

i didn't even know what misery i was living in-literally- what was causing it only barely conscious that i was waiting for someone to come along and take me out of it until he dumped his ipod into my itunes and it was so clear to me in that killers song i always loved that i really was "waiting on some beautiful boy to save (me) from (my) own" ways/fate/whatever/anything/everything. i thought this boy would do that, could do that, and then circumstances presented themselves so that i had to SAVE MYSELF. how many years ago i sat at the rosebud's bar reaching my hand skyward, waiting to be called on until my sweet handsome bartender looked up and i said: SAVE ME! and he said: save yourself! and i thought "i'm not drowning, i'm waving" and years and years and years and years later, it's still sooooooooooo like me to say i'm waving or really to actually BE WAVING as i drown like the titanic, UNRAISABLE! i can't let anyone save me, love me, fill in the ____________ me. i can only have me and then some.

"this is what you get when you mess with love..." i don't know, is that even what it says in that radiohead song? when i mess with it, or something like it, or what i think is it anyway, i almost always almost disappear. right down to skin and bones and dry dust nothing. i think maybe that's what happens when i'm aiming for the wrong thing and getting it or sometimes even not getting it, just the energy of the wanting and the aiming for something short of love because it's all that's available to me, the obsession burns everything else right up. then there's those long in between times where there's no dates, no love, no nothing like that, just a full fat life all bloating up in front of me. in the in between times, i eat love, i guess. it's pretty freaking sweet.

(i wish for a minute i could lose myself sometimes.)

I guess in the end it's about buying time and ultimately, I can't afford to buy any right now because I danced my way through my past miseries into a handsome debt and now have no reserves whatsoever. I can't afford to buy any time and I can't afford to spend any money like a soothing balm to cover the immensely intense pain I am about to feel either. In the dream my dog just looks at me and says: "I don't know why you people get so upset about death."

A long, long time ago, I found a cartoon on a post card which was just stick figures, but oh so good. One of them was lying on the floor kicking and screaming WHY?! over and over and the other just looks up and says: "Well, we come into this world alone and we go out of it alone, so I figure in between we're going to have to spend some time alone." I really got that, but I guess I wasn't banking on spending quite so much of it alone. Maybe that's why losing things is so hard. Or maybe it's hard for everyone. Maybe it's even harder to lose things in front of a bunch of people or just even one person. I don't know.

At the end of "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" one of the characters has an epiphany about her cat and his role in her life over which I totally teared up, not because it was so much a revelation to me, but because I have known this the whole time of knowing my cats (and my dog too). She says: "...I take measure of how the ridiculous, superfluous cats who wander through our lives with all the placidity and indifference of an imbecile are in fact the happy guardians of life's good and joyful moments, and of it's happy web, even beneath the canopy of misfortune." And I am so lucky to have and have had such amazing guardians. This sweet mostly toothless cat who stands up on his hind legs and puts his paws all the way around my neck to hug me; who will come from the farthest corners of the house and the deepest sleep to comfort me if he hears me cry; who for some unknown reason really responds to the words: "Oh, my baby! Oh thank you, Steve!" when his name is Ozzie, this amazing orange angel...how in the world will I survive without him?

ugh. love. i don't really know what it is. not even now. every time i think i do, it turns out not. is it really just about a magic moment or three and then working to string them out into a whole lifetime? sometimes it's like i realize i'm having a feeling and finally, it's a GOOD ONE, and if it's a good one, it must be love, right? i'm often falling into something and i still don't know what it is. last night i saw a bunch of people i used to know and that i hadn't seen in a really, really long time and that i also used to think were so gorgeously handsome and beautiful and i don't know if it was them or me or if i can even apply the "caesar costanza" philosophy to any of it, but a bunch of the shine had worn right off of them and i wondered what i ever saw in them in the first place.

in the beginning, there was me believing i needed to be punished for god only knows what and that metastasized into something else, which morphed into another thing entirely which then took total control just like any other disease and coloured every single thing in my path. but there were people around who either some how got it or didn't care and there was lynda barry in the free entertainment weekly paper doing a cartoon that was like publishing my actual life sometimes...well, more often than not. so years and years later, when i'm not so dyed through with the disease and dysfunction, i'm able to see things in a whole other way and these cartoons are my way of saying that and also saying to anyone who might be on either side of it, that it's okay. this was the first one, still my favourite. everything i cartoon about has happened to me, but is not necessarily still happening, or maybe didn't happen yesterday either.

right now i'm liberally applying the dog whisperer/george costanza philosophy of "it's not you, it's me" to everything and it's working out just great so far. it seems that ever since i was practically born, i've been sending out the wrong messages to everyone. i don't even mostly know that i'm sending messages, but i guess i am and they seem to be vastly different from what i'd like. i can still see the 12 year old version of billy p. down in the math lab standing next to the filing cabinet staring at me while he was pretending to sharpen his pencil, mouthing the words "i love you" over and over again. and sadly, the words weren't greeted with the thrill he might have imagined or even desired, only my horror because i didn't want him to be in love with me. i was trying to be nice. nice does not = love, at least not always, but it seems to end up there if i'm the one doing it.