Thursday, October 27, 2022

Love in the time of Covid

One of the activities I let go during the pandemic was writing here on my blog. In part, this was due to being in grad school, in part this was due to issues with the blog (I think it had gone defunct because there was an issue with us paying for it to be hosted elsewhere) - at any rate, I wrote on FB. Many of us, I am sure changed due to Covid. While on FB, I wrote installments of what I fondly named "The Covid Chronicles". I am toying with gathering up those posts and putting them here, just because I've grown to loathe FB. 

This blog has always been a space for me to reflect on life, love and living in society. One of the constants for Colette's Gave has been love. Being in love, falling out of love, finding love anew. Because of Covid, we collectively (well most of us), were trapped in our homes. Many marriages, it is reported, suffered; there was an uptick in divorces. In my home, with my love, we survived. We grew together. We weathered the storm of being in closed quarters. 

My love is an anomalie. He's an introvert, yet he's not. He loves to entertain, he loves to talk with interesting people. I say interesting, not because he will not speak with dullards, but because he really lights up and shines when he can engage in intellectual pursuits. So, I think some of the pandemic isolation was hard for him, just in different ways. I had a harder time, I think in terms of my own internal struggles. Before Covid, I would have considered myself an extrovert. The pandemic made me depressed. even though I was able to participate in an internship with my local VA, serving veterans, it was a scary and lonely time for me, and I struggled with the lack of connection. Today, I'd consider myself more of an introvert, however - science and all - I am not sure that's due to the pandemic, or because I am getting older. Again, the constant in all of this has been my love. There are many posts I made, speaking to this, (including one titles the saem as this post), to being blessed to have him in my liife and still it remains. Perhaps we would have found this rythm regardless; I remain dubious of that. It took a global cataclysm to remind me of all the reasons I married this man. 

I saw an article recently, probably from the New York Times that was meant to help couples and roommates who struggle with divying up houshold chores. In reading this, it occured to me (again) just how lucky I am in my choice of mate. He does tasks all the time, often without being asked. As far as a fair division of household duties, tis I who lags. I don't want to make excuses, not even for my health issues (that definitely grew worse with the pandemic for various reasons). Lets just say again, my spouse is an amazing partner, and he has given me many reasons to feel less skeptical about a love that lasts a lifetime.

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Sunday, October 02, 2022

Poetry (in the works)

What inspired this was a re-connection with my love, in the flesh, and a ambient song title from today on Amazon Music. . .

Occaisional miracle

It's not an occasional miracle 
Our love 
My favorite journey 
Is finding my way 
Back to you 

It’s not the “I love yous” 
That pepper the space 
Between us 
Some caught 
Some left hanging 

It’s not the shared knowledge 
Our love 
My favorite journey 
Is finding my way 
Back to you 

It’s not the dark nights 
Lonely, yet together 
Between us 
Some needed 
Some,more painful 

It’s not the occasional miracle 
This love 
My favorite journey 
Is finding my way 
Back to us

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Tuesday, September 27, 2022

On writing and times past

 I am going to leave you with this tonight, prior to retiring for the evening.

Ghosts of New York’s Glamorous Past Haunt an Empty Pub

An article from the New York Times about The Stork Club came across my feed earlier. It reminded me of times from a bygone era. When people would really get all dressed up and go out to see and be seen. It also reminded me of how things die when they need to, perhaps because they've outlived their purpose, or their lack of understanding of how they need to change to embrace a new paradigm that ultimately leads to their demise.

I never knew the history of this club. I am always fascinated by the history of social clubs and society in general (as most of you know). I became nostalgic, not for those times that were filled with racist attitudes and practices, but for New York and for going out and hanging with friends in swanky places, or not so swanky places, drinking, smoking, dancing and romancing. I also became wistful, missing my parents and how they would have done this in their day, with their friends, in their places (that they could afford to frequent) in Pittsburgh, PA.

And as for the writing bit - how cool would it have been to be a 'blogger'/social commentator of that time - yet not for the 'standard white privileged set', but for the cutting edge, the progressive, all inclusive. anti-racist set of people who needed and still need to be part of the fabric of culture/art/everything hip.


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She's back...

5 Years! FIVE fucking years since I last wrote, well anything.

From what I HAD been writing at that time, it seems I was struggling. Perhaps because I was going through a rough patch. There's a lot that was going on and it would seem the path of love and life was (still is) a bumpy ride.

Sometimes, I think that writers need something that is akin to being in crisis or causing turmoil in their lives in order to write. There's no catharsis, per se, in the day-to-day minutiae of life. 

In those five years, I finished my undergrad, I went to grad school to become an MSW/Social Worker/Therapist and then, I BECAME a therapist. For a while, I guess I could have been considered a mover and shaker/minor player of sorts in the harm reduction field. The way I had to learn to deal with people in terms of my work has changed. Who'd have thunk that therapy would be something done over the phone or over a video - cerrtainly not moi. Oh yeah, and my husband and I bought a new home together.

COVID tore the world apart and turned every normal thing upside down. Everything I used to take for granted is gone or has changed. 

What hasn't changed (or it's changed, but it's remained constant), is that I am still married. To the SAME guy no less (!!!!). Our love has changed, it's matured and we have had to adjust. I don't want to compare it to a great pair of old shoes that's been lovingly broken in (how incredibly unromantic). Yet, it is comforting and that can mean so much when most of my romantic life had been nothing but turmoil. I guess in some ways, I learned to let go of that need to be on a constant roller coaster ride of emotional upheaval.

Further the last guy who was part of all that upheaval, and upon whom the impetus for this blog was based (in large part at least - gee thanks dude for giving me the gift of even more trauma) -  I was brave enough for one of my big round birthdays, to completely, and finally cut off (like as friends which we remained on FB - don't EVEN get me started on Facebook) - I gave myself the present of cutting ties. It felt freeing. I still want to ask his friends - at least the ones I've remained friends with - why they still are friends with him and did they know he used to abuse me, in front of my kids no less. I suppose though, we cannot tell people with whom they should be friends.

Anoter important, more practical reason for coming back to blog is that for a bit, my url needed updating and my new url was never set up. Plus (and this is big), I have been wanting to parse writing from here to perhaps work on a novella. That's the main reason for my triumphant (LOL) return. So much has really changed and perhaps now that I am writing here again, it will force me to reflect on those changes and how deep down, I've managed to remain true to myself.

And so mes amis, stay tuned. Walk with me, and lets' see what kind of fun we can have together, again. 

xx,
C~

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Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Should I stay or should I go

Too full, too full to ink to capture anything I really want to capture. My writing is broken, except for scholarly papers that I am tired of writing...

I just watched a documentary, two actually, that woke me up, and worked me up.

What do we become when we lose ourselves? Where do the lost pieces of us go to die?

Here I am - I am supposed to be doing work of some kind, housework, homework, work-work and alI want to do is write, but my muscle, developed from years of grief and loss is weak. This f-ing computer conspires against me, because the keyboard won't respond to my typing. Yet here I am trying.

I watched a documentary about Joan Didion, one of the great writers of her generation. Her generation that was not MY generation but from which my sensibilities sprang; the not a hippie/am a hippie mind set because it was my compass point; what I was spoon-fed from my elders, my cousins, those who shaped my outer sense of the world, my inner landscape, my rebellion against everything our parents stood for. Our parents who sought to protect us from the darkness lest we become contaminated. My mother trying to censor my world and hoping against hope that the last things I would be drawn to were the very things she never wanted me to see.

I watched a documentary about women, about how the media shaped us, much like our parents, in an image palatable. I knew growing up, I would never be Barbie, or Twiggy or any super-model. I knew I could use my voice for other necessities - pay no attention to the girl with bucked teeth and glasses, she may have tits, but who knew she had a brain - the necessities of rebellion, of  social justice, of claiming something I could not really reach, trying nonetheless.

And so, here I am again, writing, but not really writing, I am faced with so many decisions - whether to keep writing, whether to keep this blog, whether to see a family that is somehow insulted by my political views, by my voice, by my unwillingness to sugar coat my words, by my stance, by my brashness and my unapologetic crassness when they decide to chime in because me calling them out on their useless 'thoughts and prayers' is somehow anathema to who THEY are - or pretend to be. Whether to go on to a higher degree of learning, even though it won't pay, even though money does not matter, but I need money to survive, and I want to be a partner to my husband and participate, and help provide our sustenance. How to reconcile the part of me that wants to leave society, leave this fucking white-trash-uneducated-misogynistic-xenophobic country and go live in another place where living is cheaper - to the part of me that longs for comfort and familiarity and fears the edge of the unknown. How can I fear something I've never been? How can I give up what is in my nature? How do we find out voices when they are drowned out by the sheer ordinariness and complacency of the world?

Off to think (or torture myself) some more - for what good it does...

Thursday, December 29, 2016

The two passive-aggressive sisters

Once upon a time, dearest Colette was blessed with not one, but two passive-aggressive sisters.

They both felt as if they had to control every single aspect of every single event  in their families' lives. They both would say things like 'it's OK, anything you want to do is fine' but in the end the HAD to control the 'anything' and were never satisfied with the outcome unless they did so. This was not only true of their family events, but their family members as well.

Sister #1, the blood sister, also has a nasty habit of 'friending ' Colette's friends (whether she knows them or not, whether she is actually friends with them or not), reminding Colette of all the times she was forced to drag this sister along to play with her friends (because apparently the little sister could not easily make friends or some such shit made up by mother). Sister #1 is also known for making ever-so-lovely comments so that everyone will think that she is just full of love, and fun, and kind words for everyone - except she does not realize that the gossip she is forever spewing and has likewise instilled into her daughter is not only a 'sin' (because this sister is also so very devout in her religious following), but it is toxic and hateful.

Sister-removed, for she is not Colette's sister, has her own hateful practices in that she refuses to let blood sister know about any family gatherings or invite her to any which puts Colette in a very precarious position, that Colette is beginning to tire of, not to mention the above-referenced control-freak issues as well as the whole 'cruise-director' mentality that has to plan everything according to her needs. When repeatedly asked by Colette if she and her husband, Colette's brother, will join in an evening (or anytime) get together, Sister-removed is always 'too busy' or never responds.

Colette is really not trying to be mean and nasty herself, but has found a couple of things to be true.

1. Life is too short for this shit, and
2. Family is voluntary

Therefore, as of 2017, Colette is going to do her utmost best - other than perhaps trying to make peace and see those in her next of kin category that she actually cares for, namely her brothers and nieces and nephew - to completely avoid the passive-aggressive BS put forth by these otherwise lovely (one supposes), individuals.

Onward and upward mes amis.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Crossing enemy lines

(From so long ago...I can't even...)

Dangerous territory....

*HE* asks me to go to things with him, sometimes I help out. Sometimes I take him to places like the laundry or to other functions. This time he asked me on a picnic with other 'gamers' typically I'd turn him down outright - I figure they are going to be like him - but I remembered some of the people and since I AM trying to make new friends I figured I could do this and gain something.

And I did....

I ended up meeting some really cool, funny, intelligent people. More importantly, I ended up meet a couple of cute guys. And brazenly, I gave them my phone number. I NEVER do this - NEVER. But the one guy had me laughing all afternoon and the other one looked like Edward Norton ('nuff said - at least for me - I've always found this look kind of sexy) - plus there was an undeniable 'connect' between us - some electricity for sure.

So this morning, 06/25/06, much to my surpise 'Ed' calls me - I was totally floored by this...and we sort of fell into a conversation. Of course I hate things like this - I always don't feel like 'me' when I am on the phone with guys. I feel I have to fill in those 'silent' gaps. But hopefully, I didn't babble too terribly much and hopefully I will hear from him again...

Goddess sometimes I feel such the slut - I mean maybe that's what the problem is - I am not trusting my own re-awakening sexuality/or self (cause it does not boil down to sexuality entirely) enough to allow myself to BE loved (or at the very least lusted after)....

...more later...

Later...

There's like a 'rebel' growing inside of me...I am breaking all MY rules. I NEVER ever ask guys out NEVER. But the other night I DID - I out and out asked a guy out! I just sort of slipped it into the connversation as in: "Gee we should go get a glass of wine" and after talking for a bit - he said "About that glass of wine"

Score!

It's awful! It's not me - but it is becomming me (LOL becomming Colette)...to hell with polite society/manners and etiquette....

It's almost as if the idea behind the show How to get the Guy is about moving women into a more agressive approach when it comes to stuff like this. I don't like it - I don't like feeling as if it's a competition out there - but the truth is that it IS and if I have to embrace the tactics of Hugh Hefner so be it - but I am going to feel like Jekyll and Hyde the entire time - it's not really my nature to be so agressive when it comes to this stuff.

So to answer dear old Henry Higgin's question: 'Why can't a women be more like a man?' here I am Henry - give us a hug luv.

^_^

Momentum

(You know, I used to be a writer...once upon a time...)

It's coming - I can feel it. The rush of feelings - it's like a daemon on my back. The waves, an ocean of feelings taking me down - under and I am drowning. It enters into me, icy through my veins and surrounds me and I can't see, hear, breathe. It's anger, and hate, and it's tinged with desire and longing and fear and yearning.

I think sometimes I want to just be alone, to just be. To try to deal with all of this and get the answers that lurk just beneath the surface. So confusing and yet deep down I know the answers, I just can't speak them out loud to myself - like it's an ancient language and my tongue has lost the ability to use the words; the meanings are jumbled and incoherent to my mind. Life is impermanence and I should have know all of this - seen it coming.

I imagine other women, living other lives in other cities...big cities and there are masses of people - everywhere they look they see humanity - but they stay, alone. They go home to their walk-up flats and they eat TV dinners and they feed their one cat, Tinkerbell, and they curl up on their couches amid blankets and Cosmo magazines and channel surf trying to figure out why they are alone. Have they missed some important infomercial that will show them how to look better so they can attract that all important mate. Get married, have 2.7 children, live in a cape-cod with a picket fence and a dog named Beau (short for Beauregard) - because of course the hubby is a southern gentleman. Only to have the man grow tired and bored and run off with his 20-something secretary because the wife is too tired for titillating sex due to the fact that she is managing the house, taking care of the kids and working outside of the home...stupid, stupid women - who also should have seen this coming.

Doomed we are all doomed to live out this existence. The same thing our mothers and grandmothers went through, life after life, generation after generation. How do we break the chain?

Can I be that strong? Can I reclaim my inner Colette or Anais so I don't have to feel this pain? Or is that part of the secret - the pain that we all try to avoid, the never-ending cycle of suffering that only enlightenment will stop...

Perhaps the idea is to become a warrior and just live by a code that does not allow for such frivolity as love. To become mistress of my own destiny and never give up the ship that houses my soul. Only give away those parts of myself that I can afford to lose. I need a strong wind to carry me out to sea, to a deserted island when I can begin anew.

Life in the shape of decay (a repost)

(We do this shite on FB, why the fuck not - maybe re-publishing some of my old thoughts will help me find the keys or where I left this vehicle that used to be my soul...)

It all started with my friend Scott. Because we work at the same place we see each other from time to time – always greeting with a hug. This time as he hugged me and I asked after him he told me his dad was admitted to hospice...it’s been coming...the gathering storm...life in decay...

Work’s been blasé, stressful, and irritating…

‘This ain’t the summer of love’; ‘Love, love will tear us apart...’

People around me are imploding in their relationships…a frantic call from a friend who is barely hanging by a thread...listening to stories about others’ marriages failing...love in decay...

Last night was the concert at the Beachland Ballroom to see Ladytron. Mr. C and I went. Beforehand, I stopped at his friend’s (D~ who lives above a funeral home with his girlfriend S~) – to meet prior to the concert. D & S looked like death warmed over (pun intended). Both are doing the ‘student’ thing and seemed just totally lethargic.

D~ greeted me: ‘SO how’s the new ‘man’ thing?’
Me: ‘Ah….*shrugs* OK…today’s a bad day to ask...’
Him: ???????

As I was leaving he told me ‘C – don’t do the ‘girl thing’’

WTF?

So yeah there may be a little bit of trouble in paradise but what gets to me is that when you don’t answer in some sort of ‘glowing and/or incredibly blissful’ way about a new relationship, people think something is terribly wrong…

The concert was great. Got to meet Mr. C’s son – he was a riot – cute, funny, adorable, and affectionate. We had a lot of fun…he is a work in progress and it’s nice to meet that ‘Y chromosome’ from his set of offspring – he’s a great young man.

Amidst a venue of an old Croat hall there was music. First act was called CSS – the pint-sized dynamo who was the singer kicked ass. I really enjoyed them and their energy.

Then came Ladytron - music to decay by…intense, rhythmic, dark, trance/ambient/techno/Gothic/Germanic

Perhaps it was the beer, the clove cigarettes, the xtasy (insert drug of choice here) kicking in but after about 5 songs the hall was moving in syncopation, we stood close, you could smell body heat, you could feel people’s breath we swayed/moved in unison we seemed of one mind.

Got home called Erin, talked, went to bed.

Slept fitfully. Woke up upset, fretful, concerned.

Life isn’t smooth. ‘Fasten your seat belts, we’re in for a bumpy ride!’

I struggle with trust (rightly so I might add). I struggle period…don’t we all? I say and write things that cause me problems. I STILL think too much. I want to be reassured but there’s no reassurance when the problems lie within or when the things I perceive AS issues are ‘pooh-poohed’. (Keep telling yourself 'it’s JUST a relationship, it’s JUST a relationship' – Dorothy clicking those ruby slippers). Perception might be within the eye of the beholder but it’s still there – I was once told when studying psychology that YOUR reality may be flawed but it is the ONLY reality your perceive – sometimes it’s hard to move past your own limitations for whatever reason If it grows wearisome to the other parties so be it...I wonder what the point is a lot of the time...I’m not little Miss Mary Sunshine, and I never have been….I never will be which is fine. I am filled with joy and hope and sometimes my darkness over-rides the joy and hope, but to me that *IS* normal – I hate perky, plastic people (don’t you?)...yeah OK, I thought so...

I want to be the person I am meant to be – whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. It’s changeable. I am not the same as I was yesterday, or will be tomorrow. Let me share my decay with you, perhaps together we will be able to stop it...

Yeah...

I’ll leave you to your thoughts...

(From the 'Ministry of Silly Thoughts'...)

She's late for the big meeting, because she's running in heels to small to navigate her own ambition...

Mater Dolorosa

I just cannot do this anymore. There is barely anything left of me that I can look at and say 'look it's me'. It has all been subsumed into someone who fears every time she opens her mouth. Who has to tiptoe around for fear of offending.

I tried, I really tried. But I just cannot keep pretending anymore. Everything I say is suspect, everything I do seems wrong.

There are moments of happiness and joy, but there is this underlying dread. There is this sense of being lied to , of having things hidden because of fear from the other side of being honest. That is not love and that is not fair - to anyone.

You gotta love the having to beg for things that used to come naturally. You gotta love the total disconnect and then the sense of confusion when certain phrases are used (over and over) and they do not match the actions, or seem to just be said out of obligation - and perhaps it is me, that would not be necessarily a surprise, but there is a definite disconnect, regardless where, "I am just not feeling it" - it's like the Carole King song - "It's too late." It always feels like too little too later after hurt is piled upon hurt and how long can one go on being ignored or feeling like it's all a charade for appearances sake. Again, perhaps these feelings run both ways, and again if this is the case, it's not right for either party.

I don't know where to go or who to turn to. I am tired of being called names and then asked why I am crying. I am tired of dealing with BPD and ADD and there is never any attempt to get help. And, it's not like I am perfect. It's not like I don't get I can be stubborn or I can cause pain. But when the tables are turned, and I am pushed to my own breaking point and I finally lash out, I am called every name in the book and then 'recorded' or threatened, or called a whore, or holes are punched in walls, things that are important are broken, but hey, it's me who needs to be 'recorded' because I might be saying something offensive or abusive, except, usually, it is something taken the wrong way and it is a misunderstanding - but heaven forbid that is acceptable.

It is enough I think. Time to figure out where to go...sometimes I feel like a motherless child...
oh wait...

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Going, going...

gone...

I need to go, I need to get far away...

I just don't have the strength anymore to pull this all off and pull it all together. I tire of pretending. I miss so many things that the list is endless....

but mainly, I miss me.
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