So many years, so many tears, and now a smile...
It's been a couple of years since I stopped blogging here regularly, deleted the old content, and became a sparse if not completely non-existent contributor to the blogiverse. Luckily, some of my friends saved the content for me and e-mailed it to me after it was deleted, so at least it's there for me to look back upon, even though everyone else is shit out of luck. The last couple of years were very tumultuous for me. That beautiful boy who I loved intensely? He is out of the picture. It lasted 2 years and 9 months, and I wouldn't trade it in for anything, even though it fell apart. I learned a lot through the mistakes that we made together, and am still able to call him a friend, even though a distance of thousands of miles separates us now.
What happened? I screwed up, but that's definitely not the only reason that it fell apart. We were far too alike to be together - much too similar in all the worst ways. We were both overly emotional escapists with a lot of baggage that we tried hard to suppress. We tried to hide behind a chemical fog so that we wouldn't have to live in the real world. We created our own little universe, with the two of us as its only inhabitants. For most of the relationship, we were snorting meth like it could save our lives. I don't regret it - lessons can not be learned without making mistakes. But I would never, for anything, choose to do it again.
We escaped that. We moved away together to Montana, to start fresh. Things were okay up there, I suppose. I was planning our wedding. He was working a lot. We were clean. But I was holding on to a secret, and my guilt spun around in my head until it expanded to the point where I figured, "I already fucked up - I might as well go all out and ruin us beyond repair so that he will see that I am not the girl who can make him happy, so that he will finally set himself free." Bad logic, I know.
So my eye wandered. And my lips wandered. And I made yet another mistake.
And then I revealed to him all of my misdeeds one night in July, told him that after I said what I needed to say, I knew we would no longer be together. I told him that shortly before we'd moved to Montana, I had fucked our neighbor/friend who lived two doors down from us in our apartment building. And I told him about the boy next door to us in Montana who I had sort of a thing going on with and who I was starting to develop feelings for that I didn't feel comfortable having while still calling myself L's fiance.
What ensued was exactly what anyone could have predicted. We were over.
The day after the breakup, I had a breakdown.
I spent a week in a psychiatric center in Montana to be treated for depression after 1) I ran into a forest and dug all over my arms with sticks, and 2) sat on train tracks with a train coming towards me.
The hospital stay eventually ended and I took a Greyhound back to Nebraska to stay with a friend. Her life was falling apart in similar ways, so we moved to Washington for a month to clear our heads. We found clarity, decided we wanted to be home again, and returned to Nebraska in October.
And now? I am happy. I am calm. I like myself. I am in a comfortable, healthy, NORMAL relationship with a man who loves me for who I am. I love him. It happened quickly, and we're going with it.
I know now how not to hurt the people I love. I know how to recognize my warning signs. I know now that even though I can't control my thoughts, I can control my behavior by stopping it at the ritual. I know that nothing comes easy, that life is compromise, but that it's not just everyone else who needs to compromise, it's ME as well. And I know what not to settle for. I know that I deserve good things, and that I need to allow myself to accept good things when they come my way. Accept rather than push away. Embrace rather than destroy.
So in a nutshell, that's what you missed.
I cannot begin to convey how nice it feels to type these words and know that this blog will receive them once again. I may become a frequent blogger again, I may be sporadic, or I may never post again. Only time will tell. I try not to think too far ahead anymore. I'd much rather enjoy the present.
Back from the dead...
Titles are pretty much unnecessary, aren't they?
It's 7 am, and I am, at this time, smoking a cigarette, petting my kitty (no, not that one), waiting out an alcohol buzz that is slowly (but not slowly enough) dissipating, and awaiting my second one-hour session with my therapist, which I can't cancel this time, because I already did that last week. The Boy is asleep in the other room - when I left him in there, he was mumbling unintelligible sentences. One of the sleep-utterances I was actually able to understand was, "But death might hurt." Somehow I'm thinking we won't have to deal with that one anytime soon, though.
It's been almost 19 months of "togetherness" by now, and this relationship is actually working out, which is something I'm happy about, yet still a bit unsettled by, because relationships are not typically something I'm good at...
I want to try to blog more often, now that I've identified my main roadblock. I've often been a very public person, and that ended when I became involved with The Boy, who is highly private about things that I wouldn't normally have qualms broadcasting to the rest of the civilized world. Whereas I have sometimes seen this relationship as repressive in certain minor ways, I'm lately thinking that it isn't. Most of the things I would want to write about, anyhow, are things from my past, since my present is pretty calm and uneventful. My past is MY past, and doesn't involve The Boy, and I don't feel I'd be hurting him by writing about things that are still affecting me from a time in my life that I've long since abandoned (though am open to revisiting, at least in the introspective "I want to blog about these things that once mattered to me and still fill up my head on occasion"sense)...
I feel it's time for me to start letting loose again. As I've said before, this was once an important outlet for me, which I think prompted me to evolve in many powerful and positive ways. I think I'm at a place now where I'm finally ready to let that evolution continue, and see where it takes me. And so...let the blogging commence. This time, I truly mean it...
It's sad...
This seems to be where I write best. Yet I rarely ever write here anymore...
Someone give me a kick in the ass to make me remember how great it felt to be a blogger all those years ago. I miss the girl who produced multiple posts every day...Any suggestions as to how I might revive her? She's been in a coma for quite some time, but, somewhere in there, she knows she wants to come back...
Anyhow - life. I'm still with The Boy. A year and a half on May 6th. I quit stripping once and for all, and now work for an evil mass-retail corporation, in which I observe the masses and the odd combinations of items they choose to buy. Actually, I'm paid to HELP them, not WATCH them...but I get through the days better if I tell myself it's a sociological experiment. Especially since I have a lot of qualms about working for this particular employer, as I disagree with a lot of the things they stand for. But, one must pay the bills, and this sure as hell beats being ogled for folded up one $ bills...
Twenty-five, still alive...
It's been one amazingly eventful year, in terms of both ups and downs, milestones and setbacks, but I think the defining moment of the last year of my life had to have been turning 25 a couple of weeks ago. My "I'm turning 25" psychological crisis began about three weeks prior to my birthday, and included a couple (yes, only a couple, truly) of hangovers of the type and severity I hadn't been witness (let alone participant) to since the month following my 21st birthday. For me, 25 has always been my "scary age" - the age where you have to have done something or at least BE actively in the process of doing something - and while I've been an adult for far more years than I'd like to admit, I was stilling feeling like, well, an unaccomplished, wet behind the ears, tiny little kid. But, now that the dreaded birthday has come and gone, I am able to clearly see that although I am not anywhere near where I hoped to be at 25, my adulthood hasnot been entirely wasted, because I have learned so much about myself and ablout the world. I've served in the military, and been jailed for being AWOL; I've been married and divorced; I've given birth to three beautiful children, been a mother, and have given them up to parents who can truly provide for them the way that they deserve. I've had a cuple of truly great loves; one unrequited which ended in heartbreak and abortion, and another love that is mutual, comfortable, healthy, and still very much alive and full of possibilities after 16 of the greatest months of my life. I've been published, and although it's only a book review, it's still a big step in my journey to becoming a writer, and will soon be reviewing a documentary. I've made friends of the type I never knew existed - unconditionally devoted and supportive. So my 25 years has not been all bad - in fact, all of it has been amazing in one way or another, I've felt every emotion in the spectrum, and I've learned more from my own mistakes than I could have learned in a lifetime of schooling. All in all, I've LIVED my 25 years, honestly lived them with al of the passion I could possibly draw from within. There are a few decisions I definitely regret, but not many, and nothing that can't eventually be made right. And more than ever before, I look forward to seeing what the next 25, 50, 70 years has to offer me, and what I have to offer others in that time. It's been a quarter of a century of self-destruction and escapism, of lookng fr a way out from everything, most of all breathing, but no more - I'm at peace with myself now and just want to wake up everyday and live, for as many days as the world will have me.
Everything is perfect, and perfection is a myth.
It's impossible to love the life you've always wanted with the person you've always dreamed of when you figure out that even the perfect is tarnished and even the attained dream consists of moments that make you wish you could wake up, because when everything seems right, something has to be wrong. It's inevitable. So we must grow to expect it, accept it, and get used to loving it anyway. We're all giant flaws anyway - who said flaws should be ostracized from the warmth of reception of love.
Breaking it in...again.
A place I always come back to. Stepping into skin that doesn't exist. A name that has no meaning, even to me. At the moment I am being Layla, but only because I am typing in this location. In life, I am not Layla. I once thought I was - perhaps I was right, for a moment or two. But right now, I can barely remember who Layla was or why I became her. And I don't know that I want to. Remembering can be worthwhile, but it can also be a waste. Forward is so much better than reverse. Times that were empty aren't worth dwelling in. Acknowledging what made them empty is a good thing, I think, as well as figuring out why you wanted to believe that they weren't. The best thing about past is that, if you're lucky, it only happens once. And there I go again, babbling. So be it. It's what I do.
I'm intact. My absence was due to lack of internet access, not to lack of life, as some would like to believe. I've lived more this year than I did last year, but it's been real life, not the sad form of living I was once accustomed to. I'm not the same girl, woman, person I was before. It's been more than a change, it's been absolute death followed by complete rebirth. But not really - rebirth alludes to repeat, it seems. Simply birth. New. Never before. Something different, better, seperate. And I like it.
Characters from that other time still surface now and again, and it is as if they never mattered to me, never were a part of anything I was at all connected with. As if they were fiction characters, never truly having existed yet still viewable through a pair of eyes. Mythical creatures. Paper dolls I once attached meaning to but now see as flat, lifeless, disposable, dull...or simply don't see as anything at all. An odd thing to say, but even odder to feel. Complete strangeness where there was once familiarity. Feelings
can die. Sometimes only the memories of the feelings remain.
Nothing is as important as we want it to be. The only thing making it important is the choice we make to attach importance to it, a personal choice that has no meaning for anyone but the person who believes in it. My life is not important to anyone but myself and those few others who decide that it is. My life can cease to have any meaning at all if I decide to make it so. But I don't. I want it to matter, if only to myself. I can't explain why I want it to, I have no good reason other than because it's mine, it's what I have, and it's what I want to keep. I want to make it grand, even if my ideas of what is grand do not match anyone else's. I'm happy there's someone beside me who believes I matter. It makes it easier to believe it, myself. And I'm happy that he matters to me, and that I can show him that every day. Maybe our only reason is each other. But that's enough of a reason. It saves me when I start to drift or lose focus. I make myself matter so that he has someone in the world who sees that he matters. Having someone I care about has made all the difference in the world. I am convinced now that loving may be just as healing as being loved. Finding someone to care about at a time when you had stopped caring about everything, even yourself...it can rescue you from the ugliest of hells. Without something to love, what are we, really? Without loving, can we truly appreciate being loved? It goes the other way, too. Without having been loved, can we truly appreciate what our love does for others? Some people never love, and I wonder if that makes them unable to BE loved. Is it harder to love someone who's never loved anyone themselves? Furthermore, what in the fuck am I talking about? Nothing important. And so it ends.
Man that was lame.
Our Laundry, Ourselves
The Boy gave me a goodbye kiss and went to work this morning; he always wakes me for that kiss, and I always notice, even if I'm still sound asleep. Today I was more coherent than usual, having fallen asleep around 11:00 last night. So I grabbed his pillows, used them instead of my own, and lay awake in the bliss of a silent apartment (silent except for, of course, the sound of two kitties playing) for about thirty minutes, before myself arising and entering the land of the living.
I then wandered into uncharted territory. I've been in the basement of The Boy's complex before - many times, in fact - but never without him by my side. I have a thing about basements, you see. They scare me, when alone. But this morning I needed to throw in some laundry, so I made my way down the two flights of stairs and faced my silly-little-girl fears. A dark basement filled with dark corridors - myself blindly fumbling with my fingers to flick on the light switches, wandering through the maze of storage units, and finding the small laundry room, also unlit.
It was too quiet down there. And the washer wouldn't start, so I had to spend more time than I was comfortable with. I could feel the panic setting in - the hyperventilation about to begin - and then a beep from my cell phone (yes, always cautious, I take it with me, even to the basement - one can never know for sure what dangers may lurk) notifies me that I'm now roaming. I fuck with the washer a bit longer and finally it starts up.
As I'm leaving the laundry room, I turn off the lightswitch again. I run through the corridor, past the storage compartments, and open another door, switching off another lightswitch behind me before bolting up the stairs as fast as I can as if there's someone chasing me. On the second floor, I arrive breathlessly at the apartment door, open it, shut and lock it behind me, and collapse on the floor. The kitties look at me like I'm nuts. I laugh out loud and think to myself, "When did I become such a pussy?"
And it's a valid question. Have I become so accustomed to the security of a man beside me everywhere I go that I am unable to enter a basement alone, in a secured-entry building, nonetheless? Or is it something else, something that's always been there that has absolutely nothing to do with The Boy not being by my side? Either way - what does this fear say about me? If I figure it out, I'll let you know...
Until then, it's back to the basement to transfer my clean clothes to the dryer...eek! Maybe I'm just afraid of ending up in the land of lost socks...
I was stuck in the nightmarish realm of my subconcious from about 2:00 am until 3:00 pm today, as I slept and repeatedly, unsuccesfully, tried to wake. The nightmares centered upon a location that used to pretty much be the center of my existence, though in the dream, the building was much different, as well as the city the place was located. Basically, it was a slaughterfest. People I had considered friends, even lovers, were being massacred by some murderous mastermind that was always one step ahead of me and the rest who made it out alive. We would think we had it figured out, and then there would be another body, or another cryptic message. It was perhaps the most unsettling dream of my 24 years. I'm still shaken. The main recurring images of the dream were broken windows, rooftops, dead grass, cement stairwells (both indoors and outdoors), and ice. I did not like this one - not a bit. I'm still looking over my shoulder...
Curiosity killed the cat...luckily the cat has nine lives.
Because I'm far too curious, I googled "Layla X" to see if my old blog had been referred to anywhere. I came upon
this. It's always interesting to see how people perceive you. I had never thought of myself as such a downer. I guess we can never really see ourselves the way others see us...different lifestyles, different backgrounds, different beliefs all factor into how we see other people. That's what makes life so fucking interesting - learning about the differences between "I" and "insert name here."
And what a long way she's come...
One year ago tonight I was slumped on my couch, having to use my chin to push buttons on my phone to try to call a friend for help after I snorted a pile of what turned out to be (and this has finally been confirmed, after much confusion) heroin. It was my low point. A disaster of my own making. Two days earlier, I'd conceived a child with a shitbag that I loved, and didn't know it. Two months later, I would have an abortion. All of that was in a past life.
Now I'm good. I'm happy and healthy, on my feet, reading a lot, contemplating anything and everything at all hours of night and day, and trying to get my creativity to kick back in. My one source of stress is lack of income - I work one short day shift a week, and only bring in about $800 a month - that's not good. But with no work history or references, there's not a lot I can do to change that. Hopefully, writing will be my salvation.
If not, at least I'm smiling and have a supportive, caring partner by my side - perhaps the first time in my life I can say that and not be deluding myself.
But, I know by now not to put all of my eggs in one cliched egg basket. Friends and lovers are grand, but they are not everything. Depending on myself, being resourceful, and trusting my instincts are the most important things I can do - I try to always keep that in mind now, after having had so many people who "cared" about me disappear with no goodbye and no return.
There's a fine line between trust and blind faith. Things often fail to turn out the way we plan them, and I finally accept that. When the moment dies, we must trudge on anyway, and find new moments to look back on.
Life has been great to me so far - every part of it. Even the bad was good. Sometimes the worst was the best, in that I actually learned something about myself and the world, and most of all, about human nature as a whole.
Anyway, today there's not much to say - I am heading into the shower to cleanse myself of sleep's residue. Yes, I slept all day - and I probably will tomorrow. But what's so wrong with that?
My favorite way to spend my time...
is with The Boy:
I've been with him for about 5 and a half months, and he hasn't been anything short of wonderful. It's nice to have found someone who is so much like me that he understands my mini-breakdowns, or even my major ones, and knows exactly what to do to calm or comfort me, whether it be with a big bear hug, or by making me laugh, or by simply giving me space and time to cool off. Yes, The Boy is definitely a keeper...
Resurrected:
And what better time than Easter? Yes, that's right, I'm back. So to all of you who missed this blog, formerly known as "Layla X: Diary of a Deviant" and then "Layla: Diary of a Life in Progress," before I killed it altogether...you're in luck because this address is the only location that seems to ignite my desire to write. I might not post often, but bear with me...I've been gone for awhile and need to put on my training wheels. The last time I was here, I disregarded the privacy of the people in my life...the aftermath was not pretty, and I am sorry for anyone who felt exploited by my writing. My philosophy then was that anything that happens in my life is fair game to write about. Now, I'm more about discretion and recognizing people's boundaries, whether they've asked me to or whether they're completely in the dark altogether about my writing - hence, the use of aliases and not too many telling details about the characters I come in contact with. I've come to realize that truth is still truth even when it's edited. For the most part, personal reflection is where I'm at these days. And so...let the blogging commence!
