big love

in a not-at-all-surprising turn of events just before my departure, I managed to get myself involved in a demented love triangle with my ex-boyfriend and the girl he screwed around on me with when we lived together. am on the fence regarding if I hate myself more than I hate him, right now. we are not equally at fault, seeing as he is a self-indulgent, two timing liar with no conscience, but I have been duped by him more than a few times. my gluttony for the are-we-or-aren't-we tango is as despicable as his forced fits of depression that he uses as leverage to weasel his way back into good graces after acting like a giant baby.

woke up this morning with a mascara marred face not even a mother could love and entertained a brief lament on the f-bomb riddled text messages I shot off to him in a fit of blinding rage last night, and then was jarred back into reality by the sweet sounds of bathtub sex that my hot roommate was having with his new girlfriend in the next room. seriously? seriously?! fuck roommates, fuck san francisco, fuck it all. fuck it.

my blood is boiling for how stupid I've been, but my reasons for repeated entanglement are all based upon the urgent need to love and be loved. stupid on so many levels, especially because I forget to love myself, getting lost in the valiant yet entirely futile attempts at rescuing other people. he needs to save himself as much as I do, and you can't slap a bandaid on a bullet hole. bouncing from one co-dependent disaster disguised as a relationship to another is no way to grow.

I am so fucking frustrated and I don't have anywhere to put it. why is it so god damn impossible for me to let it die? is this symbolic for my break up with san francisco? is this just another example of my flawed personality that I keep battering my head against jon's brick wall like pavlov's relationship retard?

it's not love, it's a sick addiction. it's inertia, it's gangrene of the heart. it's a tug of war with no referee. I don't see how I could be any more finished... I'm leaving everything behind me. I've got to remember this time. I have to learn. I have to remember this fucked up hellhole of a road to misery and know never to take it again. if I am old enough to move across the country and start a new life, I am old enough to halt the cycle of getting into situations where my heart can be used as a hackey sack by an immature boy who gets off on having two girlfriends at once. this isn't fucking utah.

nom nom nom

I am, once again, in my mother's new studio apartment in sonoma, after having a frenzied day of panicked phone calls to dentists and family members because of one of my capped teeth snapping nearly in half on a god damned french fry from orphan andy's at 3am the previous night. I half expected to be forced to run around looking like a methed out jack-o-lantern for the next 2 months for lack of resources as far as mobility to transport myself to the only dental office that allows me to pay as I am able to pay. surprisingly enough, once the phone tree was alerted, I received word that my estranged dad had willingly offered to drive me to and fro, and my emergency appointment had been scheduled a mere 23 hours later. it was heartening, to say the least.

and here I sit, clutching a bag of frozen edamame beans to my face in the dark, ironically (and painfully enough) not to the tooth that is broken, but to a different tooth that will require a root canal in the immediate future. toothache pain isn't comparable to any other pain I've experienced aside from when I had a nasty case of gallstones in my junior year. it's a pain that sears into your brain and halts any activity other than an insistent urge to ease the stabbing, gut wrenching horror at any cost possible. I have taken 4 advil liqui-gels and 3 aleve in the past hour and I'm only just now beginning to be able to see straight. toothaches have given me heart palpitations, deprived sleep, caused consumption of endless canisters of vicodin, and at times caused me to slam my head into a wall for lack of any options left. toothaches... ain't nothin' to fuck with.

the work I've had done in the past is mostly if not completely caused as a side effect of chemo and radiation that without a doubt saved my life. in the big picture, it's certainly a small price to pay to still be sitting here, motor skills intact, gently bombarded by the remarkable sound of thousands of crickets in the countryside on a warm summer night. but still, I can't help but be uneasy. the unsettling memories of cancer treatment that I prefer to leave in deep recesses that I only may visit unconsciously aside from inappropriate jokes at dinner parties, are presented in droves. I suppose I'm realizing that a large part of the reason that I haven't touched the organic beginnings of material for a manuscript all of these years is because I haven't been ready to truly process them. also, my relationship with jon was damaging in ways I was blind to during the throes, in that I was belittled and discredited for how far I have come from the bottom by someone whose respect I thought I had. I've never been in a situation where someone I trusted took merciless potshots at my jugular, and have never given so much of myself to receive nothing in return but callousness. (if you hadn't heard... I'm "weak".) I've got a month left sharing the house with him and my uncertainty and fully justified distrust appears to be a surefire one way fast track to bat-shit crazy, but I'm going to hang in there. I wonder what our future dynamic may be, if he wants one, if I want one. is it possible to remain friends after being smoked out of your beloved dream apartment like a jilted gopher? is it possible, after everything that has happened, and whatever the month of july holds? inconsequential, I guess... lovers come and go, but in my experience, it's 30/70. no man, no cry.

in more cheerful news, I'm in the process of securing myself an internship with wholphin dvd, a division of mcsweeney's publishing house. this is a-maz-ing. more news to come on this as it develops!

can you hear me now?

yesterday was actually mostly pretty lovely. a sunny spring day off from sushi slinging has been rare, and I was struck by the inspiration to hoof it all the way down to the ferry building, even despite having recently developed something I could only really accurately describe as carpal toe syndrome. once there I strolled down the pier and sat on the edge of a dock that I had to hop a fence to access, and I pulled out my moleskin to get some strife purged from my brain by way of some nimble fingers. I quickly discovered that I was without a pen. my next choice was to chainsmoke like a troubled eurotrash teen, but I had forgotten my lighter, too. my ill equipped fate aside, I was still enjoying the briny breeze and the me-time. later ended up at vesuvio in north beach later where I located a ballpoint, wrote for an hour or so and then started the trek home.
after bingo night at the knockout with zoe and her foreign neighbor friends, I returned home rather buzzed and missing jon something awful. I sent some test-the-waters texts and was informed that he'd just left the treehouse. immediately my brain was set ablaze with ridiculous scenarios of where he might be, perhaps in a hot tub at the hyatt with a bevy of hustler honeys who were stroking his tawny red hair and feeding him decadent blintzes and pink champagne through a curly straw. or, even worse, simply with that wretched ex-girlfriend of his. the higher likelihood is that he was with his work buddies having a pint two blocks away, but once I get started with paranoid delusions, it's difficult to stop.
needless to say, within minutes I was sobbing hysterically, face buried in a mountain of orange pillows that were soaking up the salt water and misery. (I knew I shouldn't have skipped therapy this week.) this went on for a little while when suddenly, I could have SWORN I'd heard my father's voice, albeit very faintly, from somewhere in my room. I sat up, looked around wildly and wondered if I had finally lost my damn mind. but then, clear as day, I heard him again saying, "christina? christina poo?"
I always hated it when he called me that.
I dug around in my purse for my cell phone, and saw that he was and had been on the line for two and a half minutes. horrified, I ended the call and dropped the cell back on the bed. I stared at it like it was a shrunken head. the phone had been closed! I couldn't have even pushed a button to make a call in the first place, and he's certainly not on my recent log, it just so happened that my phone became possessed and called the last person I would ever call in a moment of distress.
"fuck." I said. rufus meowed inquisitively. "shit, shit, shit."
I could only imagine having to explain to the other roommates why the cops had shown up looking for a big blonde in some sort of extremely dire trouble. I flipped open my newly cabalistic phone and called my dad back.
"hey, dad." I murmured, snorgling.
"christina? daughter? what the hell--"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, everything is fine."
"well I just picked up the phone, I mean, it's unlike you to call me in the first place, but it's the middle of the night and--"
"I know, I'm sorry, my phone..." I struggled for an explanation, "it's possessed. or something, I'm not sure, it just sort of called you by itself, I wasn't even touching it."
he absorbed this for a second, and said rather incredulously, "what's going on? it sounds like you're being mugged in the tenderloin. do you have a gun to your head? if you do, cough twice!"
"no, no. no! I'm just having a hard time."
"ah. yeah, the vampire?" this was a reference to my father having told me that most, if not all redheads were blood sucking occult worshippers.
"yes, the vampire."
"well, break ups are difficult, you know."
I sniffed in affirmation.
he continued, "it took me five some-eyed years to get over your mother."
"eight." I corrected him. "and you don't really seem over it."
"you may be right."
"I usually am." I replied, finally calming down a bit.
"... daughter?"
"father."
"maybe we should take this as a sign," he said, "that you should talk to your dear old dad more often."
"sure."
"how about you call me this week, just to talk."
"ha. what, you didn't enjoy me calling just to cry?"
"are you okay?"
"yeah, I'm going to bed. sorry, again."
and with that, the second conversation I've had with him all year ended. now, this is a man who I hear from on the odd holiday through an awkward voicemail that sounds more like a telemarketing ploy rather than a paternal outreach. it's really just bizarre, I have no idea how in the hell my phone did that. is it a sign? is it merely a sign that it's time to perform an exorcism on my gadgetry?
I don't know. but I'd better be careful, pay the bill and try not to piss it off in the meantime.