Are you there, Blog? It’s me, Beth.

Ye Olde Disclaimer / Intro Thing: 

Breathing life into my old blog. I was gonna start one anyway, and then this dusty rag popped up. I’m gonna start posting more frequently for my own mental health but I’ve never written about recovery before and anyway I’m just compelled to state that I know a lot of folks are private about theirs, but I can’t be. I have to share, even if no one is interested. 

Sometimes I feel a little bit like some of my old bar friends might think I’m arrogant about being sober because I post about it sometimes? Trust me I’m not, and today sucks, so I’m gonna write about it in lieu of indulging because I didn’t have time to pencil a relapse into my schedule today, and whatever it takes to keep this forward momentum, I will do. I’m kinda figuring out that recovery is about learning to be the opposite of arrogant. Writing all about myself seems backwards on that theory.. but, again: Whatever. Gotta do whatever it takes. Gotta ramble. I’m definitely rambling now. This is a giant f*ing post by the way so good luck / beware.

I’m starting to type at 3:27pm.

It’s a beautiful Saturday in July in Montana, and I’ve been an irritable, unenthusiastic old sag for five hours. 

The only time today I’ve spent being agreeable with my surroundings was between noon and two-ish, when I was napping on my stomach, arms at my sides like a deadened torpedo at the bottom of the ocean.

Today marks 98 Days since I’ve had any alcohol.

Most of those days have gone pretty well. I’ve scooted around the house in a tidy little routine of picking up clutter, maintaining, and it’s felt good, it’s been good, I’ve been good, but I don’t want to write about that shit because I’m not feeling it right now.

This keyboard I’m typing on is about to become a punching bag, and this post is about to become super whiny and complainy to the reader, especially if the reader is having some normal lovely day and taking care of responsibilities, pausing for a measured five minutes to munch carrots and sip sparkling water and be perfect.

I woke up on the wrong side of the litter box and need to take a giant psychic crap on my dusty old blog. 

Psychic bidet at the ready..

Having to face reality on bad days that pop up out of nowhere is such a bitch. It’s a beautiful day! What is wrong with me!? Montana has like twelve summertime Saturdays, and I’m wasting a perfectly serene one by skulking around the quiet house wishing I could curl up into a ball, wishing it was February again so at least there’d be a better reason to feel like crap.

I make little collage notecards, and I just got about 30 copies made of different varieties and I got stamps and got change from the bank and I wanted to try and sell them downtown on the outskirts of the Saturday markets. 

I got down there and was filled to the brim with anxiety and fear and wound up sitting at a picnic table journaling with my cards out near me, just in case anyone wanted to approach me because I was too panicked to go up to anybody passing by. 

Why would I want to try that anyway? Most of the time I can’t wait to avoid people on the street selling stuff and coming up to me. They’ll be like “Are you registered to vote?” “Yah.” (I am.)

But they could also be like “Have you heard of the lord god our savior Skeletor?” And I’d be like “Oh yeah he’s my fave” and just keep walking. Head down. Evade. Whatever.

I’m kneading at the D’OH of this awful day and it’s taking me back to ~Fear and Shame~

I’m ashamed because I spent over $20 on copying cards and getting stamps, and I’m ashamed because I am so broke these days, I really shouldn’t have. I worked on my setup for like 3 hours after work yesterday and spent $27 ordering delivery cuz I was tired, and I really shouldn’t have. 

I’m fearful because I need a better paying job at some point, I need health insurance, I need something, anything saved. If I broke a bone or swerved into a ditch or one of my cats got sick, I’d have to ask my family for help and that makes me want to throw up everywhere.

Rehab is not cheap.

I am looking forward to remaining successful in sobriety so I can maintain healthy relationships with my family and myself, but when I have this sort of shitty day I definitely feel like an investment, like my mental health is the return that my folks are gonna get from the whole Treatment thing, and my mental health is not doing great today and the fear / shame thing is just bubbling up and oozing out of me all over the place. 

It’s like Ouroboros. Or PacMan. Or Alcoholic.

Facing reality is the last thing I’ve ever wanted to do.

98 Days Sober.

I have a big ol’ notebook full of -isms and mantras I wrote down from group therapy and meetings and stuff. It is super helpful.

A lot of people with over a year or so kept talking about this “pink cloud” they say you float on in early sobriety. I prefer to call it Cloud 9 because I don’t see anything serene about a pink cloud, it reminds me of a polluted sunset, and I think cotton candy is disgusting.

Lately I haven’t been to too many meetings, and I also don’t have a sponsor. Everybody’s like get a sponsor and I’m like I’m fine I don’t feel like it but then everybody’s like I thought I was fine and didn’t need meetings either and god dammit I am just like everyone else.

I felt pretty unique and glow-y and hilarious and creative when I was four drinks deep in under two hours. 

I feel like a burlap sack on the edge of tears and blinded by rage and fury at Day 98 Sober.

Pissed at myself for not getting help sooner - I was going through old journals (fuck I have like 70) and I was afraid I was out of control with drinking in 2011. When I was 23 I wrote that I didn’t want to be 30 and wasted and poor. This is what my mother would refer to as a “come to Jesus” moment. I’m kinda calling it a “have a ruined Saturday but then write about it and drink water and do yoga later” moment.  Ugh f*ck there’s another whole thing, the religious angle. 

Some people in recovery flip over and get hooked on phonics - er, hooked on Jesus. I am side-eyeing the shit out of that. I’ve prayed and meditated and the practices make me feel better but I refer to my god rather as Dear Impeccably Indifferent Universe..

Mental loops and fiery hoops can be absolutely insane. 

I have even felt pissed at my family and my closest friends. For the past few years I had been circling the drain with this addiction thing, my neuropathways were fried and frayed and whisky and beer were sabotaging my everyday life. 

I felt pissed at other people for not noticing! Well, I must have done a fantastic job masquerading as a somewhat normal person. 

I couldn’t ever have just stated, “I’m not ready to get married and I think I need to go into detox / treatment.”

Instead I just thrashed around and circled the drain and almost lost the most precious relationship I have in my life.

Why do people like me do that??

Why couldn’t I just ask for help? 

I think it’s because asking for help is so vulnerable and lame and piteous.

But making it this huge horrifying ugly emergency? I’d seriously somehow rather ruin my own life and die than ask for help? Was the downward spiral its own subconscious forcing of the issue? 

I’ve learned a lot about how to be vulnerable and honest with myself because I’ve had to.

My #1 coping mechanism is gone. Whisky and beer were there for me when I wanted to relax, cry, celebrate, chill, float the river, gain confidence to sing karaoke, fit in, whatever.

Then ten years later this past March I found myself having a grapefruit White Claw for breakfast, crazy mind rationalizing with a shrug, “I mean it’s pretty much juice..”

Whoo boy okay! I am pooped and I’ve aired it out and cried a bit. 

It’s a real thing, man.. At first and for the most part still I’m all “Hooray! Look at me I am sober! I am picking fruit in the backyard, doing great, keeping the house clean, calling my parents more!” 

..then on days like today, Day 98, the mirror reflects the horribly ugly person I was when the booze was all I felt I had. 

This is why folks are like ~cultivate good habits~. 

I can’t afford to be cynical anymore or to shrug off suggestions.. I was so busy rolling my eyes I couldn’t see the ‘right thing’ that was right in front of me.. now I’m rambling. 

Maybe I’ve been rambling this whole time. 

Again, a lot of people are private about their process and their recovery. I dig that and respect it. I’m just the other type of animal. I have to write. I have to share. I intend to keep it up as I trudge through this awful, terrifying and amazing, lovely, healthy sparkling slog of shit. 

notes on quitting... ... ...again!

So I started this blog at least one forever ago, and I started it when I was trying to quit smoking.

I am trying to quit smoking again.

I have had 9 smokes and 4 drags since May 2, six days ago. Normally I would have had at least 60 cigarettes between then and now... so I've come a long way... but I've tried and failed so many times, it feels unnatural to count on whatever optimism I may feel at any given moment.

I want to write about "whatever optimism" I've felt, because I as usual feel "really confident" about "this" attempt.

It's Friday.
Last Sunday, I had 0.
On Monday, I had 4.
On Tuesday, I had 4.
On Wednesday, I had 0.
On Thursday, I had 3 drags.
This is Friday.
I have had 1 smoke and 1 drag. I have been on yellow Spirits for many months now. I made today's One Smoke last for three light-ups, between like 9PM and 11:30PM., and just now when I put it out and it felt like too soon, I bummed a drag off my boyfriend's Parliament.

I've felt excited lately about how the occasional drags I've had have made me feel light-headed and woozy-weird.

I spent almost $8 on a big box of 120 dum-dum pops, which seemed like a stupid expense at the time until I remembered I was spending almost $8 on 20 cigarettes every two or three days. Wowza.

I haven't had a cigarette while driving for almost a week. Cutting out *that* smoke is imperative, important.

I have set a date for nixing smokes altogether: May 22.

Between now and then, I have allowed roughly a week of "less-than-five" and a week of "less-than-one".

I have done well so far and "this time" I feel more optimistic than ever.

I'm sick of smoking, and sick of quitting, and sick of guilt...

...and in many moments recently, during the days I've survived without any cigarettes, I have felt a peculiar clarity. Call it nicotine withdrawal, or whatever, but it's been a remarkable, *FRANTIC* clarity: like I observe the world around me through a bizarrely Present Hi-Def.

The trees here in Missoula bearing their new leaves look greener than they did a week ago.

I save myself from wanting to smoke in the car by flipping the radio station constantly or by listening to CDs I can't help but sing along to.

I harbor about a million separate, private fears, since I have failed at every other attempt to quit smoking.

...but there's, I'm sure of it....

... I'm sure there's something about this quitting.

There's something about quitting this time.

...Something, because this time, I am approaching ten years.

A decade in the garbage can.

Ten years smoking cigarettes.

I can look back and remember the day, the circumstance, the car, the lighter, the street, the feeling.

I was 17. I was with my best friend for-seemingly-forever. She was 16. She had been smoking for a while, and so had all our other friends, but I had 'held out'.

I was seeing some guy, and this day in the late summer of 2005 something had gone abruptly, terribly, horribly wrong, and I still can't write about it without feeling squeamish. Let's just say, if anybody needed or wanted or was desperately searching for a reason to light up and deeply inhale a cigarette, I had one on that day.


We were in my friend's burgundy Honda sedan, headed out from her mom's house and we had crossed her suburban street and were headed across another suburban street in our small VA town. This street was about a block in length, and I remember finishing my story of the day's horror and demanding of her, with a defeated sigh, "Gimme a cigarette."

"Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yes."

I was.

That was in the mid-late summer of 2005.
It's May of 2015 now, and I just turned 27, and I am livid about having become yet another slave to the tobacco companies...

They caught me when I was young.
That's where and how they catch everybody. I'm sure of it.
I was 17, starting to get into The Pixies, and Wilco and Fugazi, and Jane's Addiction, and I was 17, and nothing could touch me, and I was free, and I could drive a car now, and I was hot, and I was well-read, and I had big ideas, and I was smart, and I was never going to get older or smarter than I was already.





.......................well, now I am 27, and I want to snatch my life back away from The Cigarette and reclaim it as my own. It's astonishing, how pathetic one can feel when embarking upon the odyssey that is quitting smoking.
It's awful. It's like everything that you have ever known turns into something impossible.

How am I supposed to drive without a cigarette?
How am I supposed to get through a phone call to my mom or dad?
How am I supposed to sit outside with my late-morning coffee on a Saturday?
How am I supposed to celebrate a good song that I love?
How am I supposed to step outside of a bar where a good band is playing alt-rock?
How am I supposed to
How am I supposed to
How am I supposed to
How am I supposed to
                                      quit
                                                smoking
                                                                my
                                                                       regular
                                                                                    beloved
                                                                                                  phenomenal
                                                                                                                     cigarettes?




I have many ideas to try to help myself, because I need help, as do all addicts trying to nix the nicotine.


1: Be Better Than Everyone.

This one is harsh, but sometimes tough love works. Think: Everyone that's dicked me over, been a total irresponsible roommate / lover / friend / general douchebag. They all smoked cigarettes. Be even better than them by succeeding in quitting.

2: Feel Innocent, Accept Life

Colors are brighter, breaks from work are more serene, and little every-day moments spent in the Present are experienced with such clarity that I feel almost frantic while experiencing them without cigarettes. Smokes just rip me away from the purity of life.

3: Remember Being Small

When I was a kid and my dad was my idol, I was furious with him for smoking. When I was about 10, it was the afternoon at his house in rural VA and he was taking a nap after work. I knew where he hid his carton of cigarettes. I opened an entire pack, split open every cigarette, and dumped the tobacco onto a paper plate. I woke him from his nap proudly announcing that I had prepared dinner. He was bewildered and happy and came to the table to find the contents of 20 precious cigarettes split open and spread out on a paper plate.

4: Love Yer Own Damn Self

I want to respect myself, love myself, cherish myself, help myself.
Remaining addicted to cigarettes makes these things impossible.
In order to respect, love, cherish, and help myself, I have no choice but to do so by nixing cigarettes. Smoking only fuels the negative in my life. As a smoker, I don't respect myself. I'm guilty. In part, I hate myself. In part, I am embarrassed to be who I am. I don't help myself. I hurt myself. I am aware of this. I know that this has to change. The only way it can change is if I quit smoking.

5: duh

Smoking is bad for you. Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad.

Not smoking is like being an angel. Good good good good good good good.








I have been a guilty smoker for a long time.
Many people I know just light up on the sidewalk. I can't do that with a clear conscience. I mean, if it's 1AM and it's just the bar crowd prowling the streets with little coherency, I can deal... but if it's 4 in the afternoon and I have a lit cigarette and I see a man with his 6 year old daughter walking toward me, I will feel like a horrible person.


Yeah I care what people think, and maybe that's not really a good thing, but also maybe I don't want to be a smoker.
When I was a kid I saw adults smoking and instantly thought "EW!!!!"
Now, when I am an adult and smoking and I happen to see a kid nearby or half a block away, I think "ew!!!" toward myself. I feel their pending disgust. I try to hide my cigarette - fold it behind my hand, my hip, but kids see everything. I don't want little kids to see me that way. I see myself as that little kid and I see myself as an adult smushing out a cigarette butt and tossing it into a garbage can or ashtray and I see my lungs as they strain to inhale the smoke that my brain has been fooled into believing is necessary.....

...and I'm pissed.

....and quitting makes me irritable and even more pissed, but I'll get over it......
....god dammit.....



Why is it that smoking CIGARETTES is legal but smoking POT isn't!?!?!?!

and on a purely random note, Why is SALVIA legal at all?????!?!

why why why why why why WHY!?!?!


...whatever.
Hello, dum-dums.

Hello, interior superiority complex. I will use you to help myself quit smoking.

Be better.

Whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes.

that luxurious chardonnay lasted two hours

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love."  ...on the picnic table outside Kip's.

I'm with a man who gets drunk and quotes poetry on a picnic table with a red Sharpie he keeps in the kitchen uniform he's worn straight from work to the bar. Life is good.

I want to be alone and not surrounded by tourists or coworkers, so 4PM finds me at the bar I left just 14 hours ago.
Caught up with my sister earlier. From her concerned words I could easily gather that the whole family is worried about me. Sometimes, I worry too, but most of the time I live happily an exhilarated life.
At 26, if I were to be hit by a dumb tourist looking for elk in his Escalade, on my bike broken and bleeding out on the Sun Road half a mile from Rising, I suspect I would feel content with the life I'd chosen to live. I don't ever wish I had stayed at home studying political science, going to frat parties and meticulously selecting nailpolish at the CVS.

Quoth Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, "Slippin' and slidin', hey life's a rollerball."

That there is such ignorance and illiteracy in this country baffles me. Y'know, how people like text each other from the same room while they're both in it? Yeah.

Living in MT for so long now has made me feel like I'm becoming more authentic all the time. Practical. Down to earth, with less and less patience for trivial bullshit despite my naturally patient demeanor... Cut to the chase, don't be an idiot, leave me be if I ask you to.

The east coast is hell on my psyche after so much Montana, and while I look back romantically on my years in Austin I don't think I'd go back to stay.


So my family's worried about me, but I'm perfectly alright up here.
I think they've just had a hard time watching me slip away. For 15 months now I've been entirely out of their reach - not an hour's drive away, but 2500 miles away. I've had some serious hardships but I've been learning more than I ever expected to, and blossoming this summer into something really Content.

Missoula is a beautiful little city, and working in Glacier is a phenomenal way to spend the summer - are you kidding? I've made solid, good friendships, met such a kind (and smokin' hot) man, and I could turn a corner and see a bear at any given moment.
I relish in the moments I come to remember where I live, and how, relative to the 9-to-5ers posting on Facebook about their new washer/dryer. I don't mean to come across like an asshole - there are plenty of times when I want a more secure setup. I've just been hitting the gas and feeling defiant for about 8 years now - shifting around every 4-8 months or so. I can't recall my old address in San Antonio - sometimes I forget that I even lived there.

Quoth The Beatles:
"Oh that magic feeling - nowhere to go."

SO! Writing workshops.

bleah!

here's this thing I just dug up from the bowels of my computer, illustrating a little of the dark, dear bloggery...!  I don't always feel this way, I don't even often get down and out like this, but nonetheless.. whatever.. here's some whiny shit.




I think I am becoming a nihilist, if I’m not incidentally one already.

I manage to make a few plans and I manage to follow through with a few of them.

It’s 2014, the fucking world is terminal.

I am part of what’s called the human race. I am a sickness, and I am waiting around to die. I consume almost without much restraint. If I can get it, I will. If I can eat it, if I can drink it, drive it, use it, turn it on, smoke it, wear it, throw it away, I will. Oh don’t worry I drink a lot of water, too, and I have a bagel every morning, and I brush my teeth at least twice a day. I drive a car. I eat frozen pizzas but I buy the ones that seem healthier. Like sometimes the way a product is packaged? Makes it look healthier?

I want it to be the ‘50s, I want to be a housewife who writes and gets published sometimes, with a professor husband, and I want to make meals and clean up and live modestly.

It’s 2014.

Of course all I want to do is listen to music, read nonfiction, drink alone, stare at my face in the mirror and pluck blackheads from my nose with my thumbnail, be judgmental, project my flip-side winning and emotionally mature personality, marvel at how I manage to go about the daily routine, how I manage to do anything at all. 

April Skies

Took one of my spontaneous drives today. They're becoming a weekly tradition.
This time, a first! Drove 45 minutes east on I-90 to stop in the tiny town of Drummond for a coffee + Milky Way bar before turning back.
Followed the Clark Fork and the railroad. Passed the entrance to a railroad tunnel and when I saw clear thru it, I saw a green light on the signal beyond, and the lamps of a BNSF locomotive approaching further down the line.

Passed by an old dilapidated homestead - tiny house, old dark wood, weathered + abandoned - in a high valley near the Sapphire Mountains. The river was across the Interstate from the house but it didn't used to be...
I let loose my imagination and luxuriated in the thought of a small family of frontierspeople, pushing west - west - West - West -West - West, and coming to that one little spot, and the pioneer husband, the pioneer father, he stops and puts his hands on his hips and absorbs his surroundings, says something like "House right there, barn over there," and nods slowly.
I pretended that I-90 wasn't there even though I was driving 75mph on it, and I tried to see the land as it was so recently virgin - even 150 years ago.
I had to reel my wandering perception in for the crazy weather as I approached Drummond - high cross-winds from the north, and blowing sleet.
The tiny town looked like a typical Montanan tiny-town. Hardware store, saloon, one or two little cafes, and anti-meth messages painted on old buildings.

Going back toward Missoula the weather over the pass had become more exciting. My iPod shuffled to "Life In A Northern Town" by the Dream Academy, one of my favorite guilty pleasures, and produced by David Gilmour so don't hate! Hard wind swirling bands of big snowflakes coming down, blowing horizontally, swooping diagonally. It was so beautiful to drive through such dramatic weather - temperature plummeting, a freak fast and short-lived April snowstorm up in the mountains somewhere northwest of Anaconda.. like Winter knows it's dying but has enough desperate energy to spasm and wreak havoc briefly over Granite County.
Jaw dropped, eyes opened wide, the fluttering flakes flew in a grey frenzy against the stark sky, obscuring the mountains all around my little car, rolling swiftly sideways, & my breath was taken, & I turned up the volume for that song, & today's braided pigtails were worn with pride.

Springtime in Montana is here!

I didn't know, couldn't tell how much I was going to love it.
I ended my previous journal with the final dozen-or-so pages left blank. That journal was bleak and it ended well with winter's curtain call. Whup-de-f*ing Do. Bra-vo.

My new journal is ROBIN'S EGG BLUE!! and the sky above today was blue... and my sweater is periwinkle... and my bike is blue.
That's right, dear diary, my bike is here.
Saturday I dropped it off at the shop around the corner.
Picked it up yesterday evenin' and pedaled home - walked back for my car. It was perfect.
So as soon as I drove home from collecting the Beefmobile, I went on a ride around town. Aaahhh.
I did it again today after work despite a ten-hour shift.

All the way from Austin, my bike!
I got it (and its tune-ups) at Clown Dog... San Jacinto at 30th St maybe... and it became my best friend. We got to know each other at the house on Brookdale, on the east side. Over I-35 on 51st, down Duval toward Hyde Park where I worked.
We were together on Tisdale.
The studio on Woodrow. <3 Dozens of days of triple-digit temperatures. Parking at Spider House and stumbling in to the bathroom, shedding earbuds and sunglasses, to towel the sweat off my face and neck.
...Then two years ago, Glacier happened. I left my bike in CandEban's garage. I worked in MT, got a car in VA over the winter, and worked in MT again.

Just now I endured a long, cold, lonely winter (indeed, George Harrison) but, yes! here comes the sun!
and my bike is in Montana!
It's learning Missoula! We're watchful of rogue potholes!
For the first time I can coast through residential neighborhoods and look up to Mt Sentinel and Mt Jumbo, or to the Bitterroot Range when I turn westward to come home.

The crepe myrtles and grackles are down in TX.
Up here it's lodgepole pines and a skyline of mountains.

...and in June, my bike will be with me at Rising Sun. We'll be on Going-to-the-Sun Road together. Man oh man.

I'm beginning my 56th journal the opposite of how my last one began. This one? I'm remembering to number it for Chrissake, I'm beginning it happily and I'm single and it's not about to be winter; it's the very onset of spring. I do not feel stuck in any way - I feel free. I do not feel stumped, I feel thankful and I feel that good ol' "creative perception" kicking in again.

So now, again, I can make every day into a work of art by being open and happy, and able to embrace appreciation.

I'm not in a cluttered, boozey, dank basement apartment crying 3x/week because I can't believe the relationship I'd believed in turned out to be such a waste of time.

Things are looking up!
This is good.

blizzard March 2 snowed in fer days

It's a monumental day in a number of ways:

Julie and I got out of the house for like four hours! We walked to the mall! We walked around IN the mall! We sat down to a lovely lunch!

It was cold but pleasant to plod single-file down the game trail of pedestrian tracks down Johnson St... sidewalks, curbs still totally invisible. As above, so below -- the sky and ground matched starkly white all day and still do. The opaque strip of the visible world seemed powerless to wear any colors today. Even the red car I see across the street now looks grey.

It was 11:15 when we made it to the parking lot of the South Gate Mall -- desolate, a VW Beetle parked apparently for days, covered in a foot of snow. We approached one of the ends of the mall, so all we could see was the bleakness of the great brown wall with its humongous letters spelling out, "Dillard's".

As we walked ever-nearer, I stared up at it, and felt the great windowless box of retail looming over us. We were walking up crunchingly across the lot, and it was very quiet, and I was amazed and thrilled by the post-apocalyptic mood of the whole scene.

Julie & I shared nervous laughter as we approached the main doors around the corner.

Soon, and IN we were, and it was juxtaposition to the extreme. Suddenly there were regular people milling about all around us, with babies and old folks in tow, juggling their DQ soda cups and shopping bags, and carrying on just as if the world outside hadn't already ended.

My new bestie and I exchanged glances that may be exchanged before people step off a ledge with bungee cord equipment tied to their ankles.
First item of business: Find a bench and un-bundle. Gloves, scarves, hats, coats.

We are not people who go to the mall, but we've been snowed in for three days, and it's the only thing within walking distance in this cold. We're people who make thrift-shop rounds. Malls are full of Top-40 music, aggressive sales associates, bedazzled kiosks, and the types of consumers that nearly incited panic attacks within me when I was twenty.
64-oz Diet Pepsi, the sort of consumers who truly believe that, "The more you spend, the more you $ave!"

For the first few minutes the sensory overload was apparent, but we were determined to enjoy ourselves and try to shrug off the sense that we were in a zoo. "People go shopping at the mall. That's what we're doing. We are people."

First: A big shop full of randoms! Horribly cheap, creepy clothing. Montana-themed gifts. Lots of cool kitchen stuff in the back.
Potato peeler. Garlic press. Grater.
Postcards of Missoula for the fam'.

Alright, we can do this!

We'd approach a shop and squint. "Do you want to check it out?"
"I dunno if I should. Maybe. Do you?"
"Meh, I dunno, I guess."

My inner 15-year-old giggled at the sight of Wet Seal, and it was so full of ultra-cheap fun crap on Super-Sale, I found myself leaving with a hat and a floral crop-tip.

Trying on various dresses was the best idea of the day -- I haven't seen myself in anything but layers for months. I've been bundled up and thanks to how my recent relationship disintegrated, I've felt my usual Zip and Zap reduced to more Meh and Bleh.

Summertime is COMING! and I am still allowed to be FOXY! Can't wait to unearth the bicycle and tie the laces on a new pair of purple Vans.

I had a great time feeling 25 in the some stores. I have absolutely no clue what the "Kids These Days" care about in 2014. It made me chuckle.

Then I walked past the Coldwater Creek shop and half-cringed. Julie and I had the exact same thought: We've thrifted their clothes plenty of times, but can't bring ourselves to set foot in there.

We ate at The Mustard Seed which wound up being GREAT. They even had a vegan/GF dessert option. We gorged on delicious food brought to us by a real, live Server. So much more grand and appealing than our dissolving supply of rations at the house. I think both of us were tired of opening the cupboards at home after the long weekend.

Marveled at the thought: This, for both of us, was the first time either of us as adults had "chosen to go Shopping At The Mall," without a Mom or a family-venture involved.

We spent a surprisingly long time at the Gap rummaging through sale stuff, and I got a great periwinkle sweater.

"Recessionista Chic," indeed.

We walked home quietly. It was a good excursion.




How else is today monumental?




Matt returns to Kalispell.

Flipping thru the previous journal for a moment earlier, we had SO MANY issues. He was horrible, and living with that brought out the worst in me. I barely wrote, didn't call my parents the way I usually do, I slept way too late, and got so depressed I quit my job.

From June to December, I held on to what I 'knew' of Matt from last summer and last winter. I held on to June '12 thru May '13... and June '13 thru Jan. '14 were, let's get real now: Disastrous.

I wanted him to be .. who he made himself out to be .. but none of that person really existed.

He was a different person, and I couldn't believe it. I kept vigorously shaking my head, blinking my eyes, blinking again, and repeating -- trying to shake myself out of the nightmare of a relationship that was... actually a nightmare.

Of course I'm doomed to be empathetic forever so I hope he'll be OK, and well, but I can guarantee he's incapable of feeling that way about me, or about anyone, because he doesn't have real feelings.

People may disagree with that statement and think I'm being a twat, but it's a valid statement. He "thinks he feels how he thinks he should feel" about any given situation. I know this because I spent every waking moment by his side for 8 months, which in retrospect were the most confusing, grueling, agitating, stunning and heartbreaking 8 months of my life.

Guess I'm still learning! Yippee for that..

That relationship... It was like I won the lottery,
but the prizes wound up being not worth anything, and even though I still felt congratulated, I'd go to bed at night with Nothing, and I kept thinking its value would increase, but zero times millions is still zero.

Quoth my big sister: "Make him the last loser you ever date."

tim-berrrrr

he's on his way home from work
               on foot
    cuz I found
          more vacuous sex videos
                   that he downloaded
            on Sunday, only hours
        after I opened up
             and told him
                  how much
              his legitimate addiction
         was destroying
             our relationship,
         and my psyche
                    as
                  his
               girlfriend.


If your boyfriend hides his insatiable habit for the xxx-files in your apartment when you aren't there to see it, does it still make you lose your mind? If a tree falls in the woods, Matt doesn't care if it makes a sound or not because he's too busy at his laptop if I'm not in the room. Time to get out.

A summary from Cheyenne WY

I haven't updated in months, and after this post I will be working in Glacier again, so this blog is perpetually on Snooze. Finally on the epic road trip with The Mom, aka Badger.
When we pulled on to the interstate to leave my hometown in VA, I flung my middle finger high up out the window and hit the gas hard.



So much driving.. Back roads in Kansas and Nebraska, checking out Oregon Trail sites of interest like Alcove Spring, California Hill...
Train trip from Denver to Sacramento where Dad surprised me by showing up; we three rented a car and went to Truckee and Yosemite - two nights and then back to Denver for us, back to TX for Dad.
Drove here to Cheyenne last night and we have decided to take Mother's Day off and relax, stay here tonight too.

Been on the road since May 2 and haven't spent the night in the same place twice since, so we are WHUPPED.

Coming soon: A trip to the Guernsey Ruts and to Register Cliff; a night in Buffalo WY, a trip to the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Miles City next, then I will drop off Badger in Missoula on Friday and will head up to see Matt before going to check in at East Glacier next Saturday.

WHEE!

I made it!
I didn't die back east!
I will stay west of the Mississippi for the rest of my days, I hope!

<3

Little darlin, it's been a long cold lonely winter!

...and with another several weeks to go of winter proper, The Beatles have resurrected my juju.

As any introspective existential gal should, I've been up to my eyeballs in considering what I could be learning from these months of stagnation in my hometown.

Monthly I've dipped beneath the frozen surface of the wintry world and dropped a few dozen feet into the pit of lolling despair, and last night it happened again. I have old friends here but whenever I move away, they never stay in touch. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess - so really there's nothing on the surface that I can get out of being here that will be lasting.

So I slip beneath the surface. Get down in there. Shimmy into it. Wiggle into the sand. Let the tide come over. Feel it cracking above me as I try to move.

I was just about to leave my cell phone charging and on silent downstairs last night, but right before I went to bed I decided to take it with me. After an hour's sob-fest with my mother, I was reminded that she can be perfectly stoic and can take my sullenness in graceful stride. She helped, which was unexpected. We are so much alike - I didn't even want to let her in on how sad I've been being stuck here and broke all the time, because I didn't want to bring her down after all she's done to help me.

Anyway.

My cell phone rang around 4AM - Whiskers Welch! Montana Matt! Calling from Portland with a buzz and a case of missing-the-Beth!

We talked for about an hour and reminisced about last summer and both of us counting down to almost the minutes we have to wait until our return to the St Mary Valley.

Rediscovering my love for The Beatles on the way to town today, it's been decided that Here Comes The Sun will be my anthem for the moment I crest over and into the valley from Duck Lake Rd upon returning in May. The mountains will return to view and I will probably sob and sob and kiss the ground, maybe even roll around on it before I go to check in with GPI for this coming season.

Hwy 89 at Going-to-the-Sun Road will be my address once again. Here Comes The Sun is an appropriate return song for this gal.

Eleven weeks and 5 days till I leave.
Thirteen weeks and 6 days till I check in.
Fourteen weeks tomorrow will be my first shift.

...and in 33 weeks, I'll still be there.


Whew.

I can doooooo thiiiiiiis.

everything sucked yesterday

I have learned a lot, dear bloggery!
Like, that I can still feel feelings! And that I can fall in love and that my fabulous and ferocious heart is still intact enough to be busted up! And that I was right in my superstitious decision to swear off the Pisces boys some years ago! I won't screw up that promise anymore, lord knows, and I don't give a single F regarding how adolescent that might sound.

He was about to get hired with me and we were making plans to go out west in four months. Travel, music, creativity, all the time this hipstery space giraffe watching over us. People we met in the beginning, they just assumed we were together. He says one night, "I'm falling in love with you," and I freak out and spaz for weeks because he lives with girl-of-three-years. Says it's flat-lining, he's not inspired anymore. Says I enrich his life.

Then, eh, he goes [essentially] 'Nevermind'.

There are more cheap shots I could take than all the rail whiskeys at the bar right now.

I am mad as hell. The worst part about it is that it wasn't my idea. It was his idea! It was a sticky situation from the beginning. And, yes, I have learned. Looking back it's funny that I didn't figure it out from the get-go. How could I expect him to be an honest person when everything about what he felt about me was indicative of dishonesty within his life?

It's this fucking small town, man. There's nowhere to escape, all our people are at all the same places all the time. I can't vanish.

I didn't gorge on ice cream and watch sex and the city marathons.

I woke at 4:40am, rose at 5:45, wrote till past sunup, and took a sick day.

If there's anything this gal can do, it's bounce back with a buoyant brilliance. Seeking shelter at a cafe in Harrisonburg where no one knows who I am.

mine one won 3rd place for ACC's annual collection!

I see my generation

in need of identification.

We are pioneers

directionless,

and without destination.

Our world is a snow-globe:

Unnaturally compact.

We look in, are cozily detached.

Our frontier is mental.

We take our love inside,

where we take our meds.

There's an App for this,

there's a pill for that.

I am too new

to feel so old.

I want to know a world

without excess.

Diagnosis: Blindness,

our eyes trained to screens

instead of to each other,

our faces illuminated

by laptops

instead of by

the brilliance of compassion.

Keep 'Being Back In Staunton' Weird.

Here's an aerial image of my hometown. It's on the list among Durango, CO as one of the top twenty small towns in America. So it goes.. 

Went to the usual bar downtown with a book the other day.

Girl from my high school graduating class was at the bar with her boyfriend of a few years. I’m sure we recognized each other in a flash, and both decided to ignore it. 

She was being shrill, loud, and at least seemed fake when she saw another alum from the class of ’03. After the ‘hello’s and ‘You-look-so-good!’s, the girl from my class started out on a rant about how lame and weird her [our!] class had been. She went on about how our class just wanted to get through high school and sell drugs, and how most had been to jail. Haha! Then she raved about the woes of adulthood and missing the freedom of being a kid.

I was sitting there in grungy garb reading the memoir of Gail Caldwell, a woman who dropped out of college and traveled and spent a night in jail… and she, this drop-out author, she won a Pulitzer prize.

I’m a literate drop-out jailbird nomad, and I’ll probably never win a Pulitzer, but I’ll also never be an accountant and I'll never stop examining my life.

At this rate I’ll also never have a boyfriend-of-three-years… but my patchwork romance quilt is forever brightly colored with the very real love I hold to myself for a small handful of people, TX to CA to MT.. even for Austin’s M.P., because I got to see him through the gauze of his triple-Aries confidence. I knew I saw him, and so did he, and that’s a secret that will remain unstated between us forever probably.

I hope that girl from my class is happy in her world. Listening to her judge our class (and taking it personally), and just being around the judgmental culture borne of Valley boredom… I hope it doesn’t turn me into another gossipy who’d-you-see-them-with? kind of girl.

When someone at the other night asked what my goals in life were, what I want to do, I explained how I’m only concerned with going back to MT next summer. I don’t have any goals beyond that. I just want to live a happy life, and so far so good.

PS – How do the birds know how to quit chirping, all at once? In flight, how do they move in unison? They’re the epitome of a collective consciousness, and proof that everything is one, and that we can work together to benefit the whole.

Did that just happen?

Here I perch, at a smoking bar in my hometown. Virginia again. The last time I posted was from VA.

I have come back from a summer in Glacier Park.

How can such a season be summarized?

A too-close encounter with two galloping Grizzlies...
an adolescent moose crashing through the brush in front of me...
black bear with a cub on an afternoon stroll behind my cabin.

Bonfires, beers, a ride in the bed of someone's truck after midnight coming home from one of the only bars out in the plains on the eastern side of the Divide. 40 degrees, wrapped in a blanket.

First cliff-jumping experience while floating down the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. Sleeping in a snuggle-pile in the back of a friend's Jeep, crossing Going-to-the-Sun Road after midnight.

A mountain lion 50 feet away from me as I went to work in the eerie dark of 5AM.

Forcing myself to wade out and dip under the water of Iceberg Lake, the sense of my capillaries seizing and my lungs seemingly collapsing in the cold.

A couple good-hearted and easygoing love interests.

A few nights drunk and thumping down the hill in the darkness to my place on the bear trail. Such quiet nights - thickly quiet, like you could hear the wilderness watching you. I'd reach my door, place the key in to unlock it, and breathe a sigh of relief.

The Wind.

Twice in the middle of the night, the wind was wild enough to blow my locked door wide open and wake me up.

Granite Park Chalet.
Staying there overnight on a walk from Logan Pass to Swiftcurrent was the realization of a dream.


I arrived in MT too timid of the wild to go 15 yards into the woods.
I needed to fix that, and I did.

I learned a lot about the wilderness of the northern Rockies, and about the wilderness of my heart.

The people I met became my family, in an undefinable way.

"I'm going to Kalispell today, do you need anything?"

I became familiar with Single Shot and East Flat Top, knew their ways, and knew them to be coy on the days of low-flying clouds.

Tourists' comments: "We've been here five days and haven't seen ANY animals!"
"When do they let the goats out?"
"Is there a car wash around here?"

I am now 'home', in Virginia, and this past summer feels like a dream.

Rick Bass wrote in 'Winter' of north-western MT, that, It takes a long time to feel like you belong here.. but once you do, you don't really belong anywhere else.

I got a phone call last night from one of my best friends from this summer. He's a Montanan (lucky!) and mentioned that he was outside of a bar in Whitefish. From my place here in VA, I was melancholy to realize how far I am from that place. . .
. . . but I'll be back.

2013, I'll be back.

Friiiday morning at niiiine o'clock, she is far away...

Greetings from VIRGINIA!
Here I perch in my HOME-freakin-TOWN, feeling weird. Just about everyone here is white, there's no Cap-Metro, no Spider House, no Pride of Barbados bicicleta to ride around... just my beloved momma's car and a week for some much-needed R&R after the insanity of packing, storing, moving, flying, waiting, driving... Uff'da.

On Eastern time, y'all, and in a week and some change I'll be on mountain time. Montana time! Oh golly oh gee, once I'm out there this little town will seem gigantic.

God, seriously though, walking the couple-dozen blocks to downtown from where The Mom works today, I just felt so weird. Some kind of drug you can't take unless you've had the time to grow up in one place and come out of it in one piece. Mercy: Lord have it.

There's not enough Stereolab in the world to cover how it feels coming back here. I've got a grip on my own li'l interior love nest but woof, hello SVA, how are you.... white and weird, mkay.

Badger and I board the train next Friday. Whew.

Mom asked me last night once we'd settled at her house, "So does it feel just like coming home?"
I paused for a second with a little freak-out internal and realized and said, "I've lived in Austin for 5 of the last 6 years. I've just left home. So, no."             ...and 'tis true, it doesn't feel like home anymore. It feels weird.

Keep Austin weird? Um, otay. Keepin' up the weirdness outside of Austin? No prob y'all.

good morning starshiiiiine!

My apartment has my bed in it and some miscellane. Loading it all up, returning my keys, and taking off on a plane bound for VA tomorrow.

Haven't been writing toooo much, haven't taken too many pictures; been super busy organizing and getting/giving as many hugs as possible from the people I dig down here.

I've been absurdly PRESENT. Keeping it up.
My job in Austin is done! I don't have to work again till I start my job in GNP on the 28th!

NO MORE BAGELS SHALL I SLICE!! NO MORE! Ahhhh.... joy.

Five weeks left, Austin!

This evening I went through my clothes and made four arrangements: take to Montana, throw in storage, donate, and keep-for-now-in-TX-and-for-the-trip-west.

Do you know what that means??? It means it's getting REAL! I'm physically preparing! 

I am ecstatic. Musings continue.

So far like Carole King, my life is becoming a tapestry. It's a series of varied and fine vignettes, all across the spectrum vibrantly and violently. No wonder I am engaged to the wild country. Seen too much of some wild people. 

So I have Austin for one more month.

To the culture of twenty-somethings in twenty-twelve, I raise my glass, close my tab at Spider House, and laugh, "Give me a break!" as I prepare to depart. No offense, Austin and friends. I just am not learning or doing or seeing the way I want to. Time to go.

By way of the Blue Ridge first, of course, a detour to my roots.







Sometimes I think my perception is an outside element, that it betrays my honesty before I even realize it. What is more real, then? If perception overtakes meditation... is the gut more honest, or is it the deliberation? Is it the knee-jerk emotion or prolonged thought and subsequent realization? Logical versus Primal... gah. As I always say anymore, when ever you ask a big question you are going to arrive at a paradox.

So it's a toss-up, like everything else. What to expect!?
Accept that you may never feel totally certain about anything. (Dig!) Enjoy the chaotic comings and goings of social hives, of spiritual quests, of personal development, and do your best to keep the outlook (and output!) ultimately positive.

Products of a Sunday afternoon rambling at Spider House!

85 degrees and cloudless, under the patio's leafed-out pecan tree. It has been SO LONG since I baked in the sun. My spirits themselves are leafing out; the sun is beaming and I beam back.

On the bus ride down here I saw dozens of people spilling out from the baptist church on Speedway. I am by no means a member of any scripted religion; at least not one which involves indoor services, has a name, and is practiced across the globe by millions of other people.

The spires of my steeples are the candy-brittle peaks on Glacier's eastern front; Mt Gould presiding over Jealous Woman's (Swiftcurrent) Lake.

I want to do some studying, I've just now decided. I want to learn the proper names of locations around the park in MT. Names with stories and significance. It's a tragedy and it's blasphemous that these ancient mountains are called by names of various white men who 'discovered' them, or in some cases white men who hadn't even visited the area!
Considering ol' whitey from that era (and this one too, using that term as a metaphor), he is just an impotent, greedy, bossy, bratty child. With money made of paper and with an army and his bureaucracy, with words like 'civilized,' and with pamphlets and editions coming out all the time, dictating and manipulating, This is how people are supposed to live. This makes a life. I am disappointed in people in general when I go too far down this thought-track... Redirect! It's a beautiful day!

Back to the topic of church, I did match my cynicism earlier with a proper reverence and even a fleeting sensation of warmth. I will always recollect with fondness afternoons at the old Swoope house in VA - being a little, little girl coming home with mom + dad after church at Hebron Presbyterian. Fleeting images of Mom's old early '90s pumps, her big hair and her jewelry all over her dresser, my tiny feet in shiny black Mary Janes, Mom helping me into my tights, kneeling before me ready to catch my 'piggies' in them.

I think there is a sweetness in church, even if I totally disagree with religion as an institution. It's sweet for people to congregate and be reverent toward whatever greater power. Where's my church of philosophy? I am always grateful for life; I guess I pray every day, in my thoughts as I give thanks. I ask much, if anything, of the universe - I just think thanks. Being here and healthy is more than enough.

How could one ever just pray and ask for things? It's boggling my mind to consider that when people pray, it's often just with a long list of demands! "Dear god, I want this + this + this + this, and make everyone I know healthy."

Many prayers begin with "Thank you for this day," and then they circle the drain with the long list of expectations. Sheesh. If you're fed and quenched and sheltered, only offer love and thanks in return for the graciousness shone upon you by The Great Whatever.


Seems so many people are preoccupied. Wants and perceived needs make people disregard what blessings they already have, make them seem a given. It could all stop at any moment. Walk more slowly and with care while the world is cradling you, baby. Be gracious and kind and ask for nothing but always give thanks.

Being appreciative feels good and since I have started to focus on it, it's unstoppable. I'm compelled to notice things more than ever before. It is a part of the adult woman showing herself in my persona. I am on the edge of my self and I am thankful for the ways I develop.

This is my Sunday service - not from a pew with mournful voices all around, but in the face of the sun itself and with a jubilant internal orchestra.

-------     I took a break from writing to read more Muir, and very quickly in my book I came upon this amazing quote, so relevant!

"No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself."




I will be on Glacier's eastern edge in two months, and in three months I'll have been there one month, and in six months I'll have been there four months, and in seven months I don't know where I'll be, or who I'll have become, or what changes will have shaped my mind. . . . . and thank god!

   





   Yours truly @ Many Glacier, 2005, first GNP visit with Mom.

Good morning! Good morning! Good morning-uh!

Coffee and the GNP webcams before pedaling up to work.

In 6.5 weeks I'll be going to VA to reconnect. In 8 weeks I'll be getting on the Empire Builder, and in 9.5 weeks I'll be starting my new job... but who's counting down? Who's beside-herself excited? hmm..

SXSW with its chaos and its energy really reignited my affection for this city, and it's been fueled even more since SX is over and I get to relax and know that 'my' town is back to how it's supposed to be for now. The influx is over.

SX is almost like a miniature seasonal gig for those who come from all over the world. A couple weeks in a new place, the locals apprehensive - friendly, but wary anyway. I've seen shirts that read something like "I LOVE AUSTIN! Please don't move here!"

I'm thankful to have gotten my b-day gift from the Mother Badger early in the mail - my very own 2-hour Flip camera! They've been discontinued and I wanted to snag one for my adventures because it's so easy to use. Why would Cisco stop manufacturing something so popular? Tough to say. I suspect I have a greater understanding regarding the economics of ecosystem as opposed to the economics of contemporary business.

I am approaching the cusp -- I have been two months' waiting, and I have roughly two more to go. Whee.. Over the hill!  It's almost time to start making lists - almost time to collect boxes, look into storage units, deposit all my precious LPs with Dad for safekeeping!

I glance over at my beloved bicycle and I feel like I'm abandoning a beloved pet; it doesn't know it's going to be stuck in a storage unit for several months and I feel extremely guilty. It's just lunacy, to attempt to take it up there first somehow to VA and then across on the train.

If I do join the seasonal tribe, I'll have to save up and get a car..

And there you have it! Thursday morning all! 32 in St Mary currently and almost 60 here in Austin. I won't be missing the triple-digit heat this summer.

nicest evening ever / Andrew Bird weather.

Man oh man I am in love with what's happening right now. Damn.

SXSW was amazing and it totally wrecked me in a great way, but it's nice to be done with it now and to have a quiet, chilled-out night at the nest alone.

Get this.. after work I got groceries and walked ~20-30 blocks in the windy overcast atmosphere of 6:20pm or so.. a nice walk, great theatrical weather. Birds were flying without much apparent purpose, like scrambling to get some last-minute stuff done before the storms come in this evening.

At home I took out some garbage, did dishes, put up groceries, straightened up and organized.. oh man. I'm gonna make a great hippy housewife some day. I just really love to, um, -bake- and clean. [/gigglebox] Good God man, and tonight is just perfect Andrew Bird weather. 

Noble Beast is closing with 'On Ho!' as I type this up... ah, sigh. Something about the violin and the crazed wind prior to the thunderstorms.. oof! I love it!

That is all. : )