Manifesto?

Since no one really reads all these blogs, I figure I can go ahead and have a full fledged pity party.


As many of you know, I am single. I have the worst luck with men. I have stopped trying. I have started a new job (about 5 months ago) and am convinced that I am no good at it. I always feel like a failure, insignificant in a very narcissistic way. How, you ask? Well, I feel like I am always being talked about, and thought about, but not because of good things. I feel like people talk about me because they hate me. I feel like everything that I ever thought I was sort of good at....not really. It's hard to write all of this, but I have been struggling for a while. I am nothing special, and as I approach my 32nd birthday, I realize that I am nothing. I thought about this the other day, since I tried a little experiment. there is exactly one person on the planet who would call me if she didn't hear from me first....Allison. I love you.....my best friend (no I am not drunk!). But if I never called my parents, weeks could go by. If I never emailed my brother--- weeks could go by. By the time they realized anything had happened to me, I would be floating in the bathtub while my cat ate parts of my flesh (because no one would be here to feed her). Does anyone else ever feel like this? I feel that the sense of futility has evaded my life.


Now I don't want to alarm anyone. Nothing bad will happen to me, mostly because I am too chicken to do anything. I just wait for things to happen. I am not a catalyst of change, as I often admire in other people. Instead, I await the next shoe to drop. It sounds oppressive, but it's not. It's just there- hanging around my head much like the smog that covers Los Angeles. Am I grumpy because it is hotter than Hades outside, or because my boss broke his leg and now hovers in the office and makes us all miserable? Am I sad because I don't know how to assert myself without an apology. All of the self advocating I have done over the last year, pretty much a lie. I feel okay some of the time, and I mean it when I say that I LOVE not having to sleep with anyone. Not that I am saying that I don't want sex-- let's be honest, this is one of a handful of things that can be really good and free (though when you look like me, it might not be free and it certainly doesn't happen without a boat load of anxieties about being naked and having unequal boobs with nipples the size of silver dollars). I do love to have a whole bed to myself without worrying about moving too much (did you know that restless leg syndrome REALLY is a syndrome?) or about farting too loud or about what happens when I can't regulate my body temperature. I am pretty sure that the road to most divorces starts with people being sleep deprived because they are sharing a bed.

That aside, I am lonely. I am lonely for contact, yet when someone asks me to do something I typically flake out? What is that all about? There are a few that I will go to no matter what- because I have reached that comfort point with. Joey, Tanisha and Michael...Jill; some people in Colorado, Andre.... But typically these are the people who are too busy. They have lives, people who love them and demand time from them. People whom they enjoy spending time with; yet in order to spend time with most of these people I have to pull teeth.

And then I think about other things, and feel guilty for feeling sorry for myself. I think about Chris Gonzales, about my age, who died over the weekend. I worked with him over the past few months, and found him to be delightful. I don't know how he died, but I know that he died. I think about all of the people who I have lost over the past years.....I think often of Julie. My dear aunt Julie. What would she say to me? She would tell me to smile, that there is someone out there to love me. She would tell me that there is a community out there for me, where I will feel important. That was Julie for you. She had so much adversity in her life, but she was the happiest person I knew. She led a simple life, loved her family, lost her little brother to a serial killer and her older brother to heroin. Her husband and two kids were everything. She used to read tea leaves and believe in magic crystals, she used to smoke pot and looked for love in everything around her. She found Jesus and was born again- not necessarily my path, but she found meaning in it. She never judged me for not accepting Jesus, for not going to church. She never looked down on me, she only loved me. And she died, at about 45 years old, in her living room; three weeks after Tom and Marianne died in a plane crash.

Julie was like a mother to me, a best friend who I knew I could call in the middle of the night and would never be too busy for me. She understood when I was needy, and understood when to tell me to buck up and get over myself, and when to listen to me and give me a shoulder to cry on. And I am not a cryer, I am a yeller. I get angry because anger is easier than sadness. I could be who I am with her, I didn't have to pretend to be noble or have integrity or character. I could be weak, dumb, simple, angry and sad, and she didn't make me explain it. More than that, she didn't do what my own mother does, she didn't try to "one up" me. She never would listen to my tales of woe, or tales of success, only to chime in how her life was harder, or she was smarter, or smaller, or better. The competition wasn't there. I felt accepted, and she died. So I feel abandoned, like I feel that my family has abandoned me. I feel that many friends have left, because there were too man other more important things to do. I feel, alone, exhausted, scared. I am tired of being scared. I am angry at myself for being scared, fear is weakness and in my family you can't be weak. You can be mean, selfish,cold, and hypocritical, but you can't be weak.

So, I am out in LA on an island, though I have family a mere 45 miles to the south. I am left by my parents, who never really connected with me because they were and are too busy with their own lives. My brother, though he has made tremendous strides in the last few years, still is unknown and absent to me. The four people I moved to LA for- Tom, Marianne, Julie and Geoff. Three have died, and the other was a horrible relationship error on my part.

What's left?