Don't Church It Up, Son.

Maybe now that I'm home with my dogs and cat and rat and house and things and stuff, I will be able to write out the gunk that's gumming up my mental gears.

I've been writing a blog post in the back of my head for days now. This is how it goes. I start becoming unable to focus on school or work or personal responsibility because I get this mental gunk, this ooze, or gum, or sludge, or whateverthehellyawannacallit, and it starts coating everything in my head until I'm incapable of finishing a thought or a sentence or a task.

Cleaning the gunk requires writing about it, and writing about it requires thinking about it, and the gunk is thought resistant. I start thinking about the gunk, and how to rid the gears of the gunk, and it's like my brain just stops firing. I'm giving it the commands, but it's just not making those connections. The gunk has to be diluted, scrubbed, scraped, and warmed so it will wipe right off that big ol' brain I've got.

Maybe a stream of consciousness will help

Things on my mind

Today, I started out my day with one of my partners insulting me, again. She told a customer, passive agressively, that I looked like a muppet. In front of me. Because I had to go outside in strong wind and move our outside tables/chairs to make sure they didn't get blown away.

Nope, that's not what I want to write about.

I was thinking about Joe Dirt for a long time today, about “Don't church it up” and how I am what I am. Teri and I were having a conversation about not being defined by the things you take part in, but instead, who you realize that you are. However, I think the things you do help to define that experience of who you are. John and I fought about this in our last big fight, the one that still has me living in my craft room instead of living in my bedroom with him. He really fucked up, and he wants to just label himself a fuck up and be absolved for any future responsibility for his actions. I told him that I don't think he IS a fuck up but he did, in fact, fuck up. “Are we not defined by our actions?” he said to me. I just told him it was self hate and I wasn't going to play. But now I have an answer: “Are we not capable of choosing which actions will represent us?” Everything is a choice, when you come down to it. Your actions do, in part, define you, but you choose which repeated actions will be interpreted as a representation of who you are as a person, your important values and examples, and the basis of what motivates you to get up each day. Each person that gets out of bed and goes to work or school or whatevertheydo each day makes that choice for him/herself, who they will be that day, what will they choose to do with/to the people around them.

Today I drank a cheap campus coffee and I ate a day old donut for breakfast. I walked through campus wearing my jeans with sequins on the butt, with flaky glaze on my face from said donut, and I did not give one whit about what anyone else did or said or thought of me. I went to class and I told the obnoxious girl to shut up, again. I went to the library and learned about microfiche and thought about my business and just tried and tried to think of things about myself that are worthwhile, that are unique and good and deserve being proud of. If I am not defined by my marriage or my business or my social group, then what I am? Who am I? What would I choose to tell people about myself?

I am the kind of person who wants a muscle car, like a 1977 Dodge Charger with a hemi. I want to fix it up and drive it around, all growly and big, in the summer. I want to own a house in the county and have goats and sheep and bunnies and chickens, and spin my own fiber. I want several kids. I want to teach high school science, and knit on the weekends. I want to really feel confident that I can close my eyes and breathe and back away from my coffee shop for a while without it falling apart. I want my marriage to get onto a set of tracks where my husband doesn't spend his time laying pennies down to derail us just for the hell of it, where I can be reasonably sure when I set us on a course of action that we will get there even if we have to stop along the way, without a wreck of twisted metal and fire and screaming. I want to keep wearing my mismatched socks and love my stupid smelly dogs and quote Doctor Who and sing along to the “Glee” Pandora and re-watch all the old episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” over and over and spend a whole day playing Dragon Age again in my pajamas while doing nothing but eating trashy food and drinking beer, and I don't want to feel stupid about any of it.

I like good coffee and cheap booze. I am the person who will gladly enjoy that $20 cheese plate with the fancy fancy goat cheese and the sliced fruit and the $18 bottle of wine, but I would be just as happy eating crackers with some kind of spread I got at Fred Meyer while I drink 3 Buck Chuck in my owl pjs with the wine stain on the leg. I love watching/quoting/thinking about Joe Dirt. I think it's hilarious that I have friends who get very drunk in my backyard at my summer picnics or at drinking game nights or outings at our bar and then they beat each other up or say really inappropriate things or vomit Manwich up all over my stuff. I love that my coffeehouse has had an event for years that centers around eating too many marshmallow peeps and then puking them back up, or that we had a giant community game of zombie water balloon tag, or that I got several people to show up and play video games on a big screen in my lobby that then played scenes from Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who while we were cleaning up. I love that I have had my heart broken, over and over and over, and it still hasn't made me a hard person, or a person who doesn't believe in love, or someone who is too guarded to allow anyone else close to me. I love that I will always take care of someone else first, that I know for a fact and without a doubt that I have many many faults but selfishness is not one of them. I love that my eyes change color when I am angry and that I cry at ASPCA ads and that I squee at snowflakes or Christmas lights or amazing science fiction on TV. I love that I know what the Hell I mean when I say “squee.” I am the person who will tell you that I do not and never have felt in any way beautiful, and I will not listen if you tell me that I am wrong, but I do secretly love the dip my hip bone makes in my side, no matter how much fat covers it. I sing loudly and often, and I know I'm good at it. I have quite possibly the stupidest dog in the world and I adore him to absolute distraction. I am good at science, even though I know my grades lately haven't reflected it. I love doing chemistry problems with stoichiometry, it's like a big logic puzzle I just have to find the key to. I suck at math but I keep trying. I used to be a dishonest person, in my adolescence, teens, and early 20's, but I worked hard to change my relationship with truth and now honesty is of absolute tantamount importance to me. I like movies where things blow up, and things covered in blood, and lots of cussing. I like it when all of these things are together in movies, especially if the movie is also playing Journey or Styx or possibly Guns N' Roses. I like to write and I love to read and I'm the kind of person that lately only wants to watch TV on DVD and only read non-fiction because I have a fascination with long running stories where I can get involved with the characters and the need to look up more information after I get done reading about a topic.

The gunk in my brainpan is starting to melt.

What is the point of all of this? I'm unsure. Maybe I just needed some kind of definition of who or what I am because right now I am starting to feel like I am lost again, like I'm floating around in some nebulous space where I am married, but not, have a close family, but don't, and knew my goals but now they are all changing due to the possibility of being on my own again. John is really the only one who will be able to change the situation that we are in, and it remains to be seen if he actually wants to change it or if this is just another lip service to a change he will refuse, in the end, to actually own up to or make. I don't even know how to tell if he is serious anymore, and when I look at him, I don't feel like I know who he is or what he wants. I'm not sure that he does, either. I don't really have the support network I thought I had, and his support network appears to forgive him whatever dishonesty he feels like living, all in the name of his disease. This last big fight, it was made crystal clear to me that while I may be cared for, the only one who is going to fight for me is me. John can continue to do what he does and will still have the full safety net of his support network, no matter what dishonesty he lives or what he does, all in the name of incremental progress. I am 32, and I have my own progress to fight for, and I am not willing to put my own goals or wishes in the freezer, standing by while he is fed the line that he isn't responsible for his actions or his choices. I won't enable him to live that lie.

So, for now, I'm living in my craft room and working to make myself care, about anything, at all, ever. I am trying to fit in self care and health and sleep, while I prepare for finals. I am talking and trying to laugh, trying to breathe, trying to forgive myself for the things I just can't do right now.

And that's about all I can do.