warning: grace needed

Right now I am raw. Aching. Open. Vulnerable. I feel judged. There are people coming to inspect our apartment this week. I will be judged on my mess. My writing group meets tomorrow for the first time in awhile. I will not be judged, but will still feel less than. My first piece will be published this weekend. That writing will be judged by strangers, along with the writing here on my blog which is mentioned in the bio for that piece. My writing will be judged by the friends and family I share it with, along with a judgement of how my life is going. I will be judged by semi-casual acquaintances when I share the link to my writing on facebook - who am I to ask that they pay to read my stuff? I will be judged, and am being judged, by several new bosses... every day. I am judged by my in-laws, and found wanting.

I am judged by myself every day, and quite harshly. I am working five jobs and trying to share my writing, in addition, but I'm never accomplished. I could be, should be. I am kicking myself and working, but somehow always in comparison to my wife. Is that my doing or her doing or my friend's doing or her family's doing? I am lucky to have her, I know that, but I work, too.

I don't think anyone has ever told my wife she is lucky to have me. I, however, hear about how lucky I am to have my wife on almost a weekly basis. And I am. This woman is a saint. She loves me and cleans up after me and listens to my lectures and laughs at my jokes. Am I deemed the lucky one because in my tales she is the one always taking care of everything - I've build my own prison? - or is that really the reality? Do people really believe that? Do they sit around and gossip about our relationship and say "Phoebe is so lucky to have gotten Selina. She's so difficult (or insert other negative descriptor)"?

I guess maybe someone will read this and hopefully offer some protests. But, are they meant? Sometimes I wonder how I appear to others - does my eternal damnation of myself make it easier or harder to be liked and loved? I judge myself because I feel un-appreciated, un-loved, and un-likeable, and I should be able to fix those things. Sometimes it's hard to be confident, to make yourself appealing, to put yourself out there, when you feel so utterly.... unlovely.

And, I know, how much we all hate a pity party. We hate the "woe is me". But at what point do we cross the line between pity and a true hole in our lives? And at what point can we offer another person grace?

updates

Somehow, I don't know, almost that whole month got away from me. And so I don't have anything written, in fact that blog entry was the last thing I wrote. Coincidentally, now I can't find my onion bagels anywhere.

So this is just a blog entry saying I know I am missing and I will try and come back soon - I'm hoping this week provides a re-boot for my writing - my writing group meets for the first time in a month this week, and I don't think I realized how much I missed and need it.

I have a piece coming out in this month's issue of The Phoenix Soul - link can be found in my sidebar right over there -------->. It releases the 15th, which I think is Sunday.

Spring is finally here in Richmond, and I am beyond overjoyed!

So, you thought you'd get some amazing writing today, and, the joke's on you! - you're not! Sorry, but I haven't forgotten this space. (I don't know who I am even really talking to anyways - maybe I imagine once my piece comes out in the Phoenix Soul I will have ten million readers - haha - welcome to this blog!)

onion bagels

Every morning I have an onion bagel for breakfast. I eat half a Lender's brand bagel, with Philadelphia cream cheese on top. It's always a half, unless I'm eating really early, and it's always full-fat cream cheese. The bagel is toasted until lightly burnt (medium brown, not black), and the bagel is allowed to cool for a minute or so before the cream cheese is added on top. The goal is for the bagel to be hot, but for the cream cheese to remain cold. The cream cheese is shmeared on in a semi-thick layer, not thin like butter, and not so much that the texture of the cream cheese will overwhelm the texture of the bagel. I always eat it off of a pink, plastic, heat-warped, sparkly plate that my wife acquired in college. We used to have more colors, but her college roommates slowly melted them all past repair by putting them in the dishwasher.

When I was a child I went through different breakfast phases. There was the cinnamon sugar Poptart with no frosting phases, the no breakfast phases, and the bagel with cream cheese phases. I never had cereal, especially not with milk, and I never, ever had eggs - I still have trouble eating anything except for hard boiled or scrambled eggs. When I was younger and would have a bagel, I would eat it off of one of the hand-made and hand-glazed plates my father had made for my mother. I'm not sure where they are now, but even after their divorce, I think my mother still has them. Back then, Lender's bagels were bought frozen, not refrigerated, so you first had to thaw the bagel, and then toast it. I often remember eating breakfast on top of the table in my parents' kitchen, the table that now resides in my studio, its beautiful metal top covered by my rotary cutting mat.

I still love something about the luxury of an onion bagel, even though it's neither a luxury nor a very good breakfast. It's something I miss horrendously when I have to skip, whether it be from traveling or running out. I'll eat any kind of onion bagel, esepecially the New York-style ones found locally(-ish) at either Ellwood Thompson's or Bodo's, even more so if they're found above and below an egg and cheddar breakfast sandwich. But, somehow, my heart still belongs to Lender's. I think it's the sentimentality of it, because I am nothing if not sentimental. Deeply, to my core.

My dad used to eat bagels for breakfast, too, occasionally. He would toast both halves until it was absolutely burnt, take it out, add cheese between the layers, and smoosh it. One of our favorite activities was to be able to make a "daddy bagel" - if we got to help, we were in charge of the smooshing. He would place the bagel between two pot holders and let us sit on it (the potholders were allegedly there to keep butt germs from getting on his bagel)!

Every once in awhile you'll still catch me making a daddy bagel. It usually happens when my wife has forgotten to buy cream cheese or I'm really hungry or I need something that I can carry easily. Havarti or cheddar are my two go-to cheese choices, the choice usually dictated by how much melting I want (I don't eat melted cheese that much). I don't burn mine quite as much, but I still love smooshing it.

Thursday morning...

Right now I am sitting alone on the cold tile floor of my kitchen. I almost want to lay down, or is it lie down?, and relax here. I don't know why, because it's so cold and hard. The sky is heavy, as if we will soon be delivered a soul-cleansing thinderstorm, but I really think it's just going to snow. I really should be eating, not writing, for my hunger is making me melancholy and strung-out.

Yesterday my wife passed out in the shower. She is okay, buy it was scary, although not as scary as one would expect. Today she is back at work, and I can still see her falling in front of me. She did spend some time on a cold tile floor yesterday, just her time was in the bathroom, not here in the kitchen with me.

I recently read something about how many of the pains in our lives are caused by assumptions. So here I sit, assuming away. I assume that I will be used up and thrown away. Or that those expectations were just BS anyway. I assume that I am being lied to, or at least over-promised.

A friend (or a friend of my wife's or an acquaintance or a former-friend, let me not claim too much of her) just posted a #tbt picture of herself on instagram from 1991. Her hair was still straight then and her beautiful jaw is somewhat softened by the face of a 4-year-old. The caption says something like "#tbt to 1991 during the fall of the Soviet Union. My father and I foraging for food in the Siberian woods." Can you imagine? I can't, but I want to give that beautiful, mysterious woman who is my friend a hug, even though I'm not sure that's what she wants or needs.

Today I will ask those questions. Today I will find out whether I'm really wanted and what it is that is needed. But first, let it all start with lunch, which I am grateful for and lucky to have.

Savor or Save-up?

I like to savor things. At least that's what I tell myself. In reality, I like to save things. I was the kid who would save the best Halloween candy for last to the point that it would go bad (or get stolen by my parents and brother). I'm the person, now, who spends an exorbitant amount of money on cheese and then doesn't eat it all before it gets moldy.

Why is this? Is it some trauma- (or perceived-trauma-) induced coping mechanism? Is it my personality? Am I saving up so that the last bite of Halloween candy I remember will be the best? Or is it that I can't imagine a world without said stash of candy or cheese or "nice" notebooks and "nice" pens or Toy Story stickers or this hand sewing project? Or, has my obsessive awareness of my own mortality somehow twisted itself around into saving up for the good times instead of having the good times?

I found myself thinking the other day "oh no, you can't submit that story because it's a special one and that will be one less special one to put on your own blog." To say that I find this statement irrational is an understatement. It's not like my stories will cease to exist like the end of a hunk of cheese, barring some horrific accident. My stories don't cost me money and they don't make me fat. In fact, if I made an effort and wrote more, I'd have a somewhat endless supply of writing and the reserve-stock of best-stories would become greater in number because I would become a better writer.

So what does this say about me and my ever-present lusting for good foods? Maybe that I really need to savor instead of save-up. So similar and so different. Enjoy the cheese while it's here. Know that Halloween will come again. Save for the big trip, but make allowance for the small expenses of enjoying your real life, in the weeks of here and now. Write. Write to savor. Write to improve. Write to notice the blessings and lessen the pain. And, most of all, savor the writing and share it freely, with love.

friday morning

What are you waiting for? What do you want? I am screaming this to myself, in my head, but not like I'm crazy or anything.
The room is otherwise silent. The sky is the grey of winter, even though just half an ago I could see blue.
My head is throbbing, the result of lack of sleep and sleeping curled up and contorted like a Mayan corpse due to the stress. I don't think even green tea can stop the throb. Maybe tea + ibuprofen + a nap. A nap, such a thing to consider at 9:30am.
I want to cry. To let it all out. Leave the pages soaked and runny. But the tears will not come. Maybe I'm just too tired.
Today is Friday. I really need to put in a 10 hour work day today. That sounds like so much time at a job that is killing me, even though it is my fault that I've stayed. But its future holds so much more than its present, even more than its past, so I hold out hope.
Why didn't she ask me? Why can't she say thank you? Why doesn't she want me? Why doesn't she love me? My jobs and my family and my marriage and my life are all becoming on big swirling vortex - mostly of questions and pain. The answer to all of those questions is: it's about them, not about me. I don't have to be this damaged, behave this way.
The truth is, my truth is, that no one can or will ever love me enough to replace what I've missed. So I need to stop. Stop flogging myself. Stop offering myself to anyone who offers me love or affection or praise. I need to love myself. But it's so hard to pull youself up, alone, knowing there's no one there to catch you if you fall.

transferring

Note: I've posted this here as a record of my transference, which I hope to do with all (few) of my previous blog entries once blog.com comes back up AGAIN.
So this just feels like another lame-ass excuse of my ADD brain saying "I see new, sparkly things, just over THERE", but the reality is, even though only one person reads this now, I'd like to start publishing my writing and sending people someplace to see my everyday though-process-soul-junk-or-is-it-art? So I will be migrating all of this over from blog.com to blogspot. You can find me at phoebeguider.blogspot.com. When I sell some stories, I'll act like a grownup and purchase my own domain.