TMI Thursdays

TMI Thursdays is a little trend I picked up from my good friend imerika at Refreshingly Honest. It's a day where you share a story that has, well, too much information. We bear our souls just a little bit more than we normally would to those amongst the blogosphere.

And since I don't have anything as of recent that's too raunchy, I decided to grant you all the pleasure of reading a REALLY old blog post. Yes, I had a blog before this. Yes, there was a girl before OAOA. Yes, this girl's story is one hundred times more epic and melodramatic than OAOA's.

I called her Firefly in previous posts on this blog. And yes, this TMI Thursday post is about her. It's a long one...but damn, it's a good story. :) Enjoy!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Day 1 (Holy Shit)

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

Ho-ly shiiiiiiit.

It's 7:35am right now, and she's still asleep, so now is about the only time I'm going to get to discreetly write a post. Not that I want to be sleeping. I'm awake because I'm wired. Day 1 went...well it went better than I ever could have hoped for. Or worse than I ever could've imagined, depending on your perception of good and bad.

All too familiar feelings washed over me when I arrived at the Vancouver International Airport. Man, have I been here before. Except this time it's not midnight and almost empty and I'm not dying from pneumonia. The place was MOBBED. Standing in customs for an hour and a half after I had just traveled for over nine hours was torture. All these people, hundreds of them, waiting to get past the gates and into the city of Vancouver. I wondered if any of them had stories anything like mine.

The customs person didn't give me nearly as much trouble this time as they did last, and it's probably because the line was long as hell and I didn't look like I was bringing the Ebola Virus across the border. Luckily, literally seconds after I passed through customs, my bag arrived onto the carousel. I snagged it and I fucking jetted out of that airport.

Only to find there was a line for Taxis. What? Really? A line? This country amazed me with how polite and courteous everyone is. A LINE! For TAXIS! Try making a line for a taxi at PHL, LAX, or JFK. There will be blood shed. Gotta love America. Most aggressive wins the taxi.

When I did finally get my taxi (which was a really nice taxi, by the way, with a really nice cabbie), I started on the final stretch toward the girl I've been waiting for. I asked the cabbie how long it would take to get to her house. He said around twenty minutes. Alright, not bad, I can handle that. She was in the vicinity of 10th street, and I found us crossing 50th street minutes later. I was like, "Really? 40 more fucking blocks?" Could the trip really take any longer?

All-in all, it took me about twelve hours of traveling to finally be dropped off in front of her house where the door was open. I couldn't see anyone inside. The cabbie goes: "Look. Door's open, waiting for you."

Yeah. It sure fucking is.

I was shaking as I took my bags out of the trunk. And when I looked over to the door one more time, I saw a head peak itself out, a head with a huge smile. I paid the cabbie, began walking towards her door, and like any cheesy, romantic movie of any kind, she comes outside, I drop my bags, and we wrap our arms around each other as tightly as you can hug someone without stripping them of the ability to breathe. We did not let go of each other for a LONG time. We just kept spouting out random bits, not really knowing what we were saying, but kinda saying what we re supposed to be saying: "Oh my god, you're really here. Oh my god, it's you. I can't believe you're here, it's so good you're here."

When we stopped hugging, we stared at each other, grinning, for a long long time. And this continual staring will continue to happen for the majority of the day, each of us not really sure how it's possible that we're standing in front of one another.

Her and I talked all day. ALL day. We always wondered if we could uphold conversations in person like we could on the phone. Our record on the phone was 8.5 hours. We broke it yesterday. We talked about everything and anything, and we never stopped.

The actual events of the day, aren't really that exciting (until the end). All we did was go get a cup of coffee, sit in a park, meet her roommates friends, go out for sushi, go out for beer, and then come back to her place. I mean, no, they're not exciting in and of themselves, but the fact that I was doing all of these things with her made them exciting. We gazed into each other's eyes any chance we got. We reveled about how crazy it is to see someone in 3D and not in a picture...to get to witness their subtle nuances. She looked gorgeous. She thought I looked gorgeous. And about an hour into being there, all I could think was "This was going to be harder than I thought."

It got to the point where we actually COULDN'T look at each other because we were too attracted to one another and we knew exactly what was going through the other's mind.

We got pretty tipsy at the bar, having shared a pitcher of beer, and she broke the ice (knowing she shouldn't) by letting me know that I have the most beautiful eyes.

As we were walking back to her place, I took her hand, and she held it tight. We both held it tight for a few moments before she spurted out "You're here for nine more days. Who the fuck were we kidding?" I have no idea. No matter how many declarations I had and she had over and over in preparation for this trip...it seems being in the presence of someone can nullify anything. We took our hands away from one another, attempting some form of restraint.

When we got back to her house, nobody was there, the music was left on (and we continued to leave it on), and we sat next to each other on the couch, pondering what to do next. We sat close. We knew what we wanted to do, the question was simply "how long can we go before we give in?" The answer?

Not very long.

For what seemed to be an hour, she and I held hands, rubbed arms and legs, put cheek to cheek, whispered things like "I remember your smell...", and "...we were never going to make in 10 days."

We were afraid to kiss one another. Seriously, genuinely afraid. We knew the consequences. I wanted to be good to her, and she wanted to be good to me, by NOT kissing each other. But this was vacation. And I hadn't seen her in 2.5 years. And I didn't know when I was going to get the chance to see her again.

So, everyone who's reading this that may be my friend or just plain doesn't agree with my relationship with her...I'm sorry. But I'm really not sorry. I kissed her. Which brings me, once again, to the first line of this post.

Holy Shit. I've never had a kiss that was as hot as this before. Not even with her. This topped it. This topped anything. We went nuts, right there on her couch. We practically tore each other's clothes off. I was halfway between ecstasy and halfway between hysterically laughing because she was right. Who the fuck were we kidding? This was so predictable and so downright awesome at the same time that I was laughing.

We moved it to her room, and, well...yeah. Officially, I've gotten more action in the past week than I've gotten in the past 2.5 years. And this girl tops her own record for best sex I've ever had.

We did end up stopping halfway through at one point because she was so nervous and felt so guilty about what was happening, and just plain needed a glass of water. This girl, though...nobody has ever looked at me and my body the way she does. I felt like a god damn Abercrombie model standing in front of this girl. She would look at me and practically cry before saying things like "Jesus Christ, do you have any idea how hot you are?"

Um, no, I don't, so thank you!

This is how hot I am, apparently: When we went to get a glass of water, I was standing nearby in my jeans, but lacking a shirt. She fills her glass, holds it, turns to look at me, and she freezes as her eyes admire my shirtlessness. Then, because she couldn't handle it (and she verified this, so it's FUCKING AWESOME), she dropped her glass. It shattered all over the floor, water everywhere, and we were both cracking up because that had never happened to her in her life. I am so hot to at least one person that I can cause them to lose control of motor functions. That is downright phenomenal.

We ended up laying with one another, holding hands, caressing, kissing, talking and reminiscing until about two in the morning. We went on about how unique our situation is and how we've never known anyone with a situation like ours. We tried, like many times before, to pinpoint what it all means. And still...we have no idea.

For the sake of I dunno what, we slept in different rooms. Maybe to just redeem ourselves a little. But I didn't get any sleep. Despite having been awake for almost 24 hours yesterday, I'm wired right now after five hours of sleep. I couldn't sleep because I was so happy. For once in my life, I couldn't sleep because I was HAPPY! And for all the pain and despair...it's pretty worth it. Maybe that's just the self-masochist in me. But if you knew this feeling...I think you'd know where I was coming from.

Today, it's going to be 90 degrees, so we're heading to the beach. The nude one. It's gonna be a good day.

I still can't predict what's going to happen in the remaining nine days and its finale. But if all manages to go to hell, which I know it certainly can...yesterday alone was worth it. It really fucking was.

Stay tuned. 

I hope you all enjoyed today's rendition of TMI Thursdays! G'night everyone!

(Or good day. I got a whole freakin' work day left.)

-Spontaneous K

My Uprising

If there's any age that's most appropriate to have a quarter-life crisis, it would be 25. How 'bout that, I'm 25!!

This post isn't meant to be me boasting. It isn't meant to shine any pride I may have. But today is a very important day, and I have much to be happy and grateful about.

For a decade I fought anxiety and depression. I was struck in vicious circles and never-ending negative patterns that I couldn't recognize, patterns I believed would bring me optimal results and continued to bring me pain. I had faith in them so I kept feeding the patterns, like a gambler, hoping just one time, just ONE TIME it would work, nullifying all the times it didn't.

Comparably, I didn't have an awful upbringing. My teenage years were bright and so were my college years. But they were haunted by negative thought patterns and distortions. I had very close friends, friends who had similar patterns that I did, but my patterns started destroying relationships around the age of 16 and continued to do so up until very recently. And with each relationship they burned, they burned worse. I was a failure more and more each time.

I always saw myself as a good person. Someone who tried their best in everything that they did, someone who treated every human being with as much respect as I could muster, and for that I couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't like me, or worse, why the people I loved would turn on me.

Well, growing up has taught me at least two things. One: No matter what, there are going to be people that don't like you...they might even hate you. This applies to the people you want to like you. And two: The people you love might stop loving you one day.

I'm not going to list the throngs of hardships I've been through since college. But they hit me like bullets: relationship problems, financial problems, living problems, health problems, until I finally collapsed under the pressure several months ago and found myself living at my parent's with no money and the danger of developing agoraphobia due to post traumatic stress.

I truly thought things were over. No matter how many times my family, my friends, and my doctors told me this all would pass, I thought my life was over and there wasn't a whole lot to do to stop it. All I had worked for, all I had dreamed of...the love of the right woman, a family, children, great works of writing and film enjoyed by the masses, traveling and experiencing the world...I thought it was being stripped from me.

And now I'm here. Where is "here" you may ask...

For two years I struggled trying to find a job that would pay me enough to cover my bills. I was either unemployed or underemployed, working for psychos or serving coffee to psychos, 3000 miles away from the dreams I had left in Los Angeles, lost in a cloud of uncertainty. I was 24 without a direction, without any money, living with my parents, nothing to show, nothing to offer a woman...I truly hated myself. I couldn't move on from Firefly, and then OAOA came into my life only to replace Firefly with the same problem I had before. It was a glimmer of hope that ended up being a repeat nightmare.

Two months ago I developed debilitating symptoms that made every day a struggle. Every day they were the same, persistent, and showed no sign of letting up. OAOA wasn't there to comfort me, my friends didn't understand, and even though I had finally landed a temp job that was paying me enough money, I could hardly make it through the day and I was out at the doctor's so much that I feared my job, the only stability in my life, would leave me too, and then I'd truly be fucked. I didn't have the energy for another loss like that.

So here's why today is important. Today, I am no longer at temp. Today I become an official employee at Comcast, where I'll be getting paid more than I've ever been paid in my life, where I'll have benefits that I've never had, where I'll work in the biggest building in the city, and where I'll have the opportunity to create a career in the arena where my dreams lie. I stand up tall because through everything...through the nightmare that was OAOA, through my sickness, through the greatest economic recession of our time, through the mental warfare that life put me through, from standing at the bottom of the deepest, darkest hole I'd ever stood in, I reached up to the light and said "No, I'm not giving up."

And I succeeded. I have a wonderful job. I have a place of my own with wonderful roommates. My symptoms are subsiding. I feel secure without OAOA. I feel secure on my own. This blog itself has given me structure and motivation. I have regained faith in my dreams. I'm writing every day, I'm developing every day, and I'm growing every day.

I feel renewed. I feel rejuvenated. And I welcome the possibilities once more.

2010 started off as if it were the end. The rest of 2010 is just the beginning.

-Spontaneous K

My First Steps Forward

I ran the full range of emotions last night. I ran the circle from depressed to denial, to anger, to bargaining, and after it was all said and done and time to go to sleep, boom...acceptance. For now.

From what I understand of myself, and even what some others have told me about their experiences, it's always a little numbing after something like this happens. The initial shock wears off rather quickly, and then you feel okay. Relieved even. "That wasn't that bad!" Until a few days later when the realization kicks it that this really did happen and it's going to be harder to deal with than you thought.

Well, I'm ready for that. Wouldn't be the first time. I did something stupid last night after OAOA and I said our final, final goodbyes. I contacted Firefly because I wanted some console. From the bottom of my heart, I know I wasn't trying to reignite any flames...I just wanted to talk to an old friend that would understand. Unfortunately, even in times of need, those you want to be there won't always be...I haven't heard back from her and most likely won't.

I was able to speak with one friend who is going through a bit of a break up himself, my boy Edward, who was like an older brother to me when I lived in LA. After listening attentively to each other's woes, he gave me the greatest compliment he's ever given me:

"Y'know why I like talking to you? Because you're so comfortable with how you feel that it makes me feel okay to feel what I'm feeling."

This calmed me in way you probably can't understand. As a guy who has difficulty masking his emotions to the outside world (often why I get called a girl...or gay), I've always been self-conscious about it. My feelings are way out there for everyone to see, whether I like it or not. I always viewed that as being vulnerable or melodramatic. But apparently to Edward, it's confidence and trust...it's acceptance. I am feeling how I feel and I'm okay enough to share it with the world. At least that's his perspective. I like it.

Moving onward the best I can, it's time to seek out a new cast (or let one come to me) and enjoy what I've got. Great friends, a great job, great family...not much else I could ask for. The love life will come. I just need to feel a little more comfortable in my own skin. Neediness, says Edward, is the greatest opposition to attraction. Once I'm fully confident and secure with myself on my own, that will be apparent to others, and they'll come to me.

I know this blog only has a view subscribers thus far, and I'm not even sure if they're reading it regularly...I just know that I've found myself really looking forward to writing a post each morning. I know someone will read this, even if it's just me down the line looking back, and they'll gain something from it.

I take my showers at night because I have trouble getting up in the morning. This morning I managed to get up to take that shower. I underestimated how refreshing a shower in the morning makes you feel.

I pick up the keys to my new apartment after work today.

Onward Ho! :)

-Spontaneous K

My Sleepless Nights

The subconscious mind is a tricky thing. Even if you think you're telling it wonderful thoughts to send you off to sweet dreamland...it knows what you're really thinking.

Last night was one of those nights for me. One of those nights where no matter how many times you wake up and fall back asleep, you find yourself in the same dream. About the same person.

I haven't been quite right since I saw OAOA last Saturday. She threw me for a loop, as women do, and I interpreted her actions one way when they...as I'm finding out with much disappointment...meant another. And while I wanted to deny any emotions of dependency or need for this girl, my subconscious mind was not about to have it. "YOU WILL KNOW THY TRUTH! YOU SHALL HAVE YOUR EMOTIONS EXPRESSED!"

Oh, did I. (My subconscious mind doesn't sound like God. But maybe it should. Or maybe not.)

I spent my eight hours of rest caught in a whirlwind of dreams all revolving around the same premise: I need OAOA and she's no where to be found. I want her attention, her compassion, in some way shape or form, and she's either ignoring me, or I'm panicking and running all over the place, looking for her or asking people where she is. And after eight hours of foggy meandering, my search came up fruitless. Each time I'd wake up from the dream feeling exactly the way I felt in the dream. Hurt. Lost. Abandoned. Betrayed. Without Value. Oh, and out of breath.

What's unfortunate about the matter is that the dream isn't a whole lot different from real life, and I think its message of a fruitless search is extremely important. The mind and the body know what's good for it, and the dream wasn't there for no reason. In fact, this isn't the first time I've had a series of dreams like this with someone.

In My Great Disconnect, I mentioned someone I spent eight years trying to convince our relationship was worth it. For the sake of anonymity, I'll keep with the nicknames, and I'll call her Firefly.

Firefly was a saga in my life. (I even plan to write a book about it.) It's not just a tiny little piece, right now it accounts for an entire third of my existence. It was a period that forced me to learn, the hard way, what it meant to love someone. And when I had fears that Firefly was going to leave me for good and I'd be left alone to my own hurtful thoughts and emotions, those terrible dreams would nag at me, specifically at times like this. Times where we just started interacting again and aren't sure where it's going to lead.

Now that I'm awake and have more control over what I'm thinking and feeling, it's apparent that I'm once again making the same mistake I made with Firefly with OAOA. But at least I'm realizing it a lot sooner.

It sucks. Every time. Having feelings for someone that doesn't reciprocate never gets easier. Sometimes it gets harder. But the more it happens, the more we come to realize that true happiness comes from within ourselves, and we're the only people responsible for it in our lives. That doesn't mean it's easy to provide it for ourselves...

...but do we want to take the easy road and leave our fate up to others? Or do we want to take our happiness into our own hands?

I'm up for the challenge.

-Spontaneous K