X Marks the Spot

I'd like to make a graveyard for my ex-girlfriends. Well, not them - but for the ghosts of their past selves that I dated - I guess my ghost could go there, too. I would like to visit their graves from time to time to properly mourn or absorb the impact of their passing from my life.

Maybe having a place to go to mourn them would help with my fear of the end of relationships. It seems to hurt more because no one died.

I'm digging a new grave. I am terrified of the end of another relationship and I haven't been able to end it for the past year and a half in which I've periodically been trying to end it. I still have so much pain from my last relationship termination. I can't stand that I'm about to hurt someone I love in a similar way that I was hurt by someone I loved. I am scared that I won't follow through yet again, which will only hurt both of us even more.

I was madly in love with my last girlfriend (the one before my current) and we barely argued until the last two months we were together. It was a joyous, loving, sweet and relatively fun relationship (I was writing my dissertation for three months of it, though, and it was only nine months long.) It was the first relationship where I truly believed it would last the rest of our lives - I thought we were pretty much perfect together and I thought she felt the same. She didn't seem like the type to break up with someone - she had dated the girlfriend before me for three years and only broke up with her because that girlfriend treated her badly or it was a bad relationship, anyhow. It still angers me that she broke up with me so easily when she put so much time and effort into making the bad relationship work. The only thing that I could think that really explained why she broke up with me was that I moved to San Francisco (and she said she'd love to move back to SF after she finished her doctorate in Pittsburgh) - but I told her if that was why I would move back to Pittsburgh for her. I wasn't lying. I was that in love with her. She told me she didn't want me to move back to be with her, that she probably would've broken up with me had I stayed, too.

It's been five years since that ex and I broke up. She's been dating her "new" girlfriend for 4+ years now and she's been trying to get pregnant for over a year. They've lived together since she started trying to get pregnant. It hurts because her girlfriend is luke-warm at best about starting a family while I dream of it - and dreamed of having one with my ex. Everytime we try to have a friendship I end up having feelings for her that are so strong that I almost believe we could get back together - that she would somehow realize what she's missing in me and break up with her girlfriend and ask me to move back to Pittsburgh to start a family with her. It's near delusional. (Once she meant to call me delusional but she said something about enjoying my "illusions"... I couldn't help laughing - if I was a magician (or illusionist) I would've made her magically fall back in love with me!)

When she broke up with me, I swear I was truly just broken. I couldn't trust any feelings of love in me or anyone else - certainly not anyone else. I don't know if I've even gotten over that since I haven't really believed in my current relationship since about a month after we started dating when I started to detect some abnormal behaviors. But for that month, I truly thought I could believe in love again.

When someone dies, it's already understood that no explanation will really suffice - even if you know what happened that made them lose their life - cancer, getting hit by a train, heart attack, etc. If it was unexpected, like an accident, you usually don't get the chance to say goodbye. But a break-up is never that clean of a cut. Or at least, not usually - especially for lesbians, I think. First, you do get to say goodbye. Second, even though no explanation will ever really suffice, you think you could figure it out if you dig deep enough...and maybe, even, you could then "fix" it (as in, reverse it.) At least, this is how I've experienced break-ups. Except for one time, I've always been the one to be broken-up with (with maybe a couple of neutral ones where we both felt it was right to end it.) Oh, I guess there was another time but that was an abusive situation and I still wanted it to work but I had to end it because I was being used so dramatically. So I don't think that counts.

In any case, just about all of my break-ups have been messy and painful. Usually, the relationship is damaged beyond repair - or at least just damaged such that there is always the lingering unease if/when we run into each other. It fades with time and if there was any friendship in it to begin with. But even then, I think there's still this slight burn to the relationship like someone got hurt more than the other and remembers it. Usually, it's me. Some of my exes just didn't like me as a person - not hated but we weren't really friends and aren't now. I guess I don't like them that much, either. But it still burns a little to be rejected, you know? I haven't even spoken to or heard from or of the one ex I broke up with because I wasn't in love with her. She might hate me. I definitely hurt her. That was 13 years ago now.

I don't want to end this relationship badly. I don't want it to hurt - but it will. It's been really hard to even talk to her about how the relationship doesn't work well, so we haven't been able to address the issues except when I accept full blame for anything. I'm afraid she won't let me break up with her in as loving a way as possible. I'm afraid she will just clam up and shut me out immediately. In some ways, I understand that. I don't think I could fully accept a break up if it were done in a loving way - maybe it's harder that way. Maybe it would be easier for her to just hate me (and maybe she will) but it wouldn't be easier for me that way. And I don't hate her - I love her, in fact. I just don't think we should be together for many reasons that I don't feel I need to explain here. I don't really want to have to explain them all to her, either, since some reasons might be hurtful to her.

I did it. Tonight, on the phone. I didn't mean to - I meant to wait to talk to her in person - like tomorrow afternoon.  But I've been so anxious and sad about it that I started crying when she asked me how my week had been. I wouldn't tell her what is was about - just that I wanted to talk to her about it in person. Then she asked if I was breaking up with her and I said I just wanted to talk to her in person - then she knew.

Morning of January 29th: I broke up with my girlfriend last night. I'm hurting. I felt a little free for a little while and now I'm just hurting. I might feel free again but I always miss her in the morning.

Science Funk

I'm in a funk at work. I just don't feel like doing it anymore right now.

Does this happen to you? I know that writers get "writer's block" and artists sometimes struggle for inspiration...can I describe my science funk as similar to those phenomena?

Maybe I just need a vacation to release me. I think I'm over-worked and the pay-off is missing yet.

I worked a lot last week trying to collect the data from my first real experiment (that concluded two months of work) at my new lab/job - until midnight last Wednesday (over 13hrs), until 8pm on Thursday (11hrs) and until 7pm on Friday (9hrs). My analysis resulted in either an intermediate or no effect. The experimental design had some flaws, too, so it needs to be repeated. However, a collaborating lab got positive results using different cells indicating that I'm basically barking up the wrong tree. But I still have to repeat my experiment to get a definitive negative result (unless it isn't negative and then that would be more complex).

Not only that. But then there's just this constant feeling of swimming upstream lately. My boss - who I like - keeps telling me how I could be doing things better - which I know is her job but it feels crummy because I feel like I've already been changing things to make them better but I get no kudos for that because she didn't know me before and my old boss who did know me doesn't see my improvements and even if he did he isn't the type to give kudos (one of the reasons I was less fond of him).

I want to go to the beach and lie down under the blue sky. I want to feel the fine, white sand between my toes. I want to walk into the crystal-clear, still Caribean Sea until it reaches my chest and turn in circles, feeling the warm water gently ripple around me. I want to breathe in the warm, salt air. I'm tired. I want to be invigorated again.

Is it a burden?

Does it matter if it is? Do any of us have a choice?

My head is spinning since watching the movie about Facebook - "The Social Network". I definitely think it's an entertaining movie. I don't think it's "the first great ... movie of the 21st century" as it has been touted in previews. Actually, the quote is from a blog post by Lou Lumenick on the New York Post's website reviewing the movie and where I've written the "..." is inserted "fact-based". That's worth pointing out - it refers to the fact that the movie is still fictional, but closer to non-fiction since it is "fact-based". One would not need to describe a non-fictional piece of work as "fact-based" since it's already implied in the term and it would thus be redundant. In any case, that's something to remember and consider when thinking about the movie and any relation to reality.

I will try to keep it in mind, myself, while I write this post.

Many of the reviews, and even Mark Zuckerberg, himself, have been saying that the movie sheds a negative portrayal of Mark, the founder and CEO of Facebook. I, however, didn't find his character in the movie as deplorable. In fact, I kind of saw myself in him. The character - and I don't know if this is how the real Mark Zuckerberg acts and, in fact, it's likely that he doesn't act this way because I think it's probably more the actor, Jesse Eisenberg - talks really fast and self-assuredly which obviously implies he thinks fast and constantly. He has a brilliant mind - smart and fast. He even understands social situations - he just doesn't navigate himself through them well - well, at least in this version of the "truth".

Mark gets frustrated when other people can't keep up with him and the way he thinks. He gets bored with "small talk". They sound a bit arrogant, but I can understand these feelings. However, I have, in recent years, realized the necessity of disguising these feelings. I still get frustrated because I hate repeating myself and I feel like I have to do that a lot more with other people - not repeating myself because they didn't hear me, but repeating whole conversations because they didn't quite grasp it yet although I will have thought we came to the conclusion already - which is inevitably what it is but sometimes other people aren't quite there yet. I mean, I'm just quick at thinking, I think. And I spend all day thinking so I guess I exercise that part of me often so it's in good shape. (And I'm quick at learning - I only need to learn something once for me to understand it - most of the time. Sometimes I continue to understand something more and more with each lesson, but most of the time I almost fully grasp something right after be taught it the first time. At least I believe I do which I also think is part of the whole success thing - you need to be self-confident.)

Let me get to the point: I feel that in order to be a historically significant person - someone who can honestly be considered great and remembered for all time - you have to sacrifice social and domestic life. I felt like the character of Mark Zuckerberg was lonely and eventually all alone at the top. (I think this is one of the contentions of the real Mark Zuckerberg so I need the qualifiers). He seemed unhappy and sad. I also understand it is a bit of a caricature. In any case, I know there's some truth to it. And I feel like that's what I'm doing. I don't have much of a life at all. The more of a "life" I have (this is the personal, social and domestic parts of one's life to which I am referring), the less I have time to work and vice versa. I would like to think I have not made these sacrifices in vain. It doesn't matter, though, because I don't really have a choice now that I've chosen this path - which I didn't know would actually limit my choices rather than widening them.

I don't mean to open the whole "why did I get my doctorate" can of worms. I'll save that for another blog post. I suppose what I'm feeling that I'm trying to convey in this post is that being smarter than the average person, or feeling smarter (if that's all it really is - my own perception of superior intellect), I feel like I am burdened by it to do something great with it - this intelligence, you know? And thus, I must sacrifice the life that I thought I would have - the one everyone is taught they will have - in order to do this "great" something with my life.

The life that I am referring to, if you aren't fully grasping my point, is the one where you go to college after high school, get a job doing something that requires a bachelor's but not necessarily anything particularly specific to the subject of your college major, date around a little but then marry the person who you're dating by the time you're about 30, have kids soon thereafter, and then get consumed by the domestic life of raising a family - you get older, your kids have kids and then you die. Something like that - am I right? I mean, sure, we've been told the more glorified version, but that's pretty much it. And it's true - it happens all the time, like clockwork. I swear I had no idea that it was so predictable - the sudden massive onslaught of marriages that my straight acquaintances had to endure over a few summers between ages 28-31 (ish). Myself, being gay, only had to go to a handful of weddings (if that) - thankfully, to be honest! Weddings are stressful. My brother told me how he had to go to weddings every single weekend for at least one of those summers, if not two or three of them. Now those people are either getting divorced or having babies. Unfortunately, my brother fell into the divorce path - although it was not his choice and I will write another post about the biggest lie out there (about the nature of love) that is destroying people's lives (I am purposefully being dramatic).

Ok, going back to the burden that I feel I must carry out since I am blessed with my mind. I could just blow it all to hell and be a beach bum, you know? But I won't. I don't feel like I can, in fact, because I would get bored. And if I didn't get bored it would be because I was using my intelligence to do something - maybe to discover something, maybe to build something, paint something, etc. etc., and thus, using my intelligence somehow to do something that could be conceived of as "great". So then maybe it isn't a burden. Or maybe I have no choice and it doesn't matter either way if it is or not cause there's no way around it.

To complete my story - or blog post - I will now come back to the movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the making of Facebook. If I could talk to Mark Zuckerberg (the character from the movie), I think I would say this to him:

Hey Mark, yes, obviously you're very smart - some may even call brilliant or a genius if you believe in genius, but here's the thing: you gotta give everyone else a wee bit of a break. They're not as quick as you, but they're still worth knowing, you know? And caring about. So maybe you could slow down and take some time to figure out what it is about them - and the world you have taken for granted around you since you understand how it works so well and easily - and consider the things you cannot ever fully understand like beauty. And love. And inner peace. Then maybe you can find some humility and give yourself a break, too. You don't have to be the best, the greatest, etc. You can just be happy if you want to.

Those are my thoughts. I'm not sure how well this post fits together. I wrote it in several sittings. I'm not positive even if I have completed any thought whatsoever. I just saw myself in him (M.Z.) and so maybe it's really just about me and how I feel about me.

The Town

This is my first video post. It is a marionette tragedy in two acts. Although I have used some clips of copyrighted materials - notably "Mad World" by Gary Jules (cover of the original by Tears for Fears). If a significant amount of people watch this I guess I'll have to deal with that issue. However, I don't think it'll make any real impact. It's really just for fun. Enjoy!

Love Is an Open Wound

My family just told me this past weekend that one of my favorite beings - our cat, Sidney - has been missing for two weeks. She is either dead, foraging to survive or thriving in someone else's care. She is a gorgeous cat - a ten-year-old himalayan with long, white fur and grey tips - and she's incredibly friendly and sweet! It's highly possible that someone picked her up and took her home. Hopefully she is ok.

However, it is also possible that Sidney has passed. This possibility is, of course, the hardest to swallow. I bawled and cried and paced and panicked and had trouble breathing and cried and cried over this possibility. Then, after a few days of thinking on it, I realized that it is more likely that she is ok since my brothers have been searching all over for her and no one has found any evidence of her demise. She was too young and healthy to just die for no reason so there would be evidence if she was killed by some animal or some thing - a body, fur, blood, etc. After coming to that conclusion, I have been feeling somewhat more optimistic about her prospects. As soon as I get up to Portland, OR, where my family lives (they actually live about 20 miles southeast of Portland in a town called West Linn), I plan on implementing a huge search and rescue effort. I will not leave there after 5 days without putting in the best effort that I can possibly put in to find her. Because I love her.

I love Sidney, or Sidnerelli as I like to call her. Her disappearance and possible demise hurts so much - makes it hard to breath at times, even - because I love her so much. I was thinking about this fact about love - that when someone you love dies it hurts so much that it feels unbearable and I was feeling like I just can't do it anymore - deal with the pain of losing someone I love. I looked at my cats, Molly and Bates, who live with me and my little dog, Letia, and I couldn't even imagine what I'd be like if one of them had died or was even missing for as long as Sidney. It's not that I love them more than I love Sidney, but our lives are definitely more intertwined since I live with them.

In any case, I realized that despite the pact that I've made with my pets, it's highly likely that they will die before I do and thus, I will have to endure their deaths. That realization made me feel - for a moment at least - like I might have made a mistake falling in love with these beings, that I am now doomed to that pain whereas if I hadn't taken them into my life (or even allowed them to be born, as the case was for Molly and Sidney), I wouldn't be doomed to such pain. Then I reminded myself that of course I didn't make a mistake bringing these beings into my life, that they have brought me so much joy and love - how could I even consider not having them?

This brings me to the thesis of my post: love is an open wound. When you love someone, you are opening your heart to them and exposing yourself to certain grief. Of course, that's not all that love is - it is a wonderful joyous feeling and everlasting comfort and more than anything anyone can ever completely describe. But it is guaranteed to give pain because of its loss - either due to the love ending or due to the object of love leaving or dying. Unless you die first. But then your death will hurt the ones that love you. So there's no getting around it - the suffering will be there with or without you.

I also considered what I had thought previously - what if you never let yourself love anyone? Could you really avoid the pain and suffering associated with love in that case? I thought about this and came to the conclusion that no, there's no way around it - either you love and lose or you just lose and lose. There's no joy in never loving anyone or being loved by no one! I'm not even sure that's possible, but if it were I cannot imagine that it would be a pain,-suffering-and-grief-free existence. Therefore, it is preferable to endure love and loss, and, since love is an open wound, make sure to tend to it so it doesn't become infected.

Lesbians are gay too!

I realize that the majority of homophobia is from the male perspective - the fear of gay men and probably anal sex - although I'm honestly not 100% sure of the underlying issues. However, I am so tired - so sick of - being ignored as a gay woman! If we're not discriminated against, we're the subjects of male fantasies - although not really women like me, the more masculine type of lesbian. I don't know which is worse - the discriminiation or straight male fantasies!

I'm writing this blog post because of, yet another, homophobic line of reasoning put forth in a question to Ted Olson, one of the Plaintiff Attorneys for the Federal Unconstitutionality of California's Prop 8 case, by the anti-marriage equality group ironically called the National Organization for Marriage (NOM):

"Do you really believe that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that gender is irrelevant to parenting? If gender is really irrelevant, why do self-described “gays” insist on having a male sex partner? Why isn’t a really masculine woman just as acceptable as a male sex partner?"

Well, actually, some gay men do like masculine women - I've been hit on by more gay men at clubs than gay women! (I hope that's because women just don't hit on anyone as much as men do!) Not all gays "insist" on having a male sex partner! I insist on having a female sex partner - but more than just a sex partner - a loving partner!

Strangely, I find it offensive that all over the media the most common homophobic remarks and blatant fears are regarding gay men and not gay women/lesbians. Obviously, the homophobic remarks are offensive all in and of themselves - but I guess my point is about how everything's from the male perspective. I also think that if straight men can understand how women can be gay (maybe because they are less afraid of women or threatened by their sex), maybe they could then also understand gay men in the same way that they understand gay women and realize it's not about sex - it's about a loving relationship that does not threaten them, their masculinity or their sexuality! If anything, straight men should be thankful for the existence of gay men - it reduces the size of the male pool of heterosexuals without reducing the female pool! Straight men should feel more threatened by lesbians cause we do deplete the female pool for heterosexual men! But really, neither of us do because the pool size of heterosexuals is always the same since if we're hooking up with them then they aren't heterosexuals!!

Book-ends

I recently read the book, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. It is about a young 22-24 year old man that gives away all his possessions (donating $25,000 to charity to end hunger), then travels the western US by hitchhiking and working odd-jobs, then makes a final "ultimate" journey to live in the Alaskan bush for 3-4 months, where he ends up dying from starvation. It's a true story and the book is basically an investigation of how this boy/man, Chris McCandless, comes to this end. It's the type of book where you know the basics of the story from the beginning - that he will die by starvation in the Alaskan bush. However, I still wanted to read it, I suppose because I am a bit of a voyeur when it comes to people making life-altering or, ultimately, -terminating decisions. Also, he died only three months before my sister died in 1992. I can even recall where I was when he was dying - I was in Spain, having the worst trip I ever had because I was having the very first major depressive episode of my life.

There are a lot of synchronicities that I am having with this particular book/story at this particular time in my life. I started reading the book on the plane returning home from Spain - a second trip to Spain 15 years later, but this time with my family and having been in treatment for my depression for 15 years and now stable, non-symptomatic. I was 15 when my sister died, and now it's 15 years later. I have been thinking of this trip as a sort of book-end to that period of my life. However, maybe it's not this trip that will be the book-end. I have also started going to a group called "A Year to Live" which meets once a month for a year to "practice dying," as the facilitator says. In a year, we will meet one last time on the day we "die". The premise of the group is to really try to live this year as if it is the last year of our lives - to try to do what we might do if we found out we would die in a year, which we might, anyway. We could die on any day, at any moment. I started going to this group right before I left for Spain.

Both my sister and Chris McCandless lived fast lives, but seemed to achieve what they'd always wanted in the last year of their life - Chris spent over 100 days "living off the land" in the Alaskan bush and my sister had a baby (and a fiancé and a home of her own.) Chris was 24 (or 25, don't know) when he died and my sister was 19, two months shy of 20. I don't believe either of them wanted or believed they were going to die when they did. At least Chris knew he was dying in the last few days of his life - he even wrote a short goodbye note and took a photo of himself waving goodbye while holding the note. All it said was: "I had a good life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and God bless all." In the photo, despite his extreme gaunt and almost skeletal appearance, he is smiling a bright, what appears to be genuine, smile. He is really at peace and happy, it seems. I find that so intriguing. How did he get there?

I have no answers to the above but it's what I am searching to find - that same peace or contentment with my life. I am haunted by my sister's death and now by Chris' story. I think he's a remarkable person, but I don't necessarily agree with everything he did as told in the book - he cut himself off from his family which really hurt them, making the death that much harder. At least by the time my sister died, I think my family had all come together and we all knew we loved each other. On the other hand, Chris made it clear that he was ok with dying, basically giving a re-assuring note to his death, that he was at peace and had a happy life. I don't know that my sister would've felt the same way - she was just beginning the life she wanted (almost) - having just had a child. All three of them died - my sister, her baby (my nephew), and the father (her fiancé). I'm sure she would not have been content at all three of them dying.

Another part of Chris' story that haunts me is that he was so intense and certain of how he thought things and people should be, and he lived these certainties - he really wanted to live life without the need for possessions or money. I admire that, but I suppose I also find myself feeling the dilemma that I don't want them yet I need them - for instance, I have debt to pay off from school so I can't just quit everything. Or I suppose I could, but then I'd be on the run from creditors and eventually the law, which is also not the way I wish to live. However, I suppose he was still young and hadn't come to have as many responsibilities. I think he would have. He was obviously extremely intelligent, just made a couple of mistakes that cost him his life. And in the end, he was ok with those mistakes - he accepted them - which is a type of responsibility.

I hope that my journey this year will help me get closer to that same type of peace that Chris felt. On the other hand, sometimes I worry that I don't want to be too ok with dying - cause then I might just die at that point.