The Break-Up, Part 73

It's my turn to move out this weekend. I'm in the process of packing up my stuff and moving most of it down to the basement. I'm house sitting for the summer, so I'm storing my stuff in the basement here. Of course, I'm going through some aspects of the break-up again, though luckily not as intensely. Right now, I'm thinking about why and how I got to this place, wishing I wasn't here, remembering the days when TM loved me.

Case in point: I still have the cell phone that I had before I got my iPhone. Since I'm in a big "get rid of it" mood, I figured I need to put the phone in the Goodwill pile. But I turned it on and looked through all the saved text messages. There a bunch of messages from TM telling me that he loves me, that's he so grateful for me, and that he never wants to take me for granted. There are private jokes and general silliness.

So now I don't want to get rid of the phone. It's like if I keep the phone and those messages, then he'll still love me. It will be like the TM that I knew back then will exist and the TM who's ready to start dating again...according to his social networking page...won't exist. I know, it doesn't make much sense, but I'm trying to remember that I don't have to right now.

I will get rid of the phone, but God I miss him.

And I Didn't Cry

I saw him tonight. It was only for a moment, on a doorstep. It felt good; he is still the one I want to tell everything to. I know he won't be ever again, but for a time, it felt really nice.

A Change of Pace

Though I need to keep posting about TM in order to process and deal, I'm sick of doing so at the present moment, so I'll share other news.

My mom is in Mexico right now!!! She's spending three weeks living with a family outside of Mexico City doing some community organizing work and taking intensive Spanish classes. And this is for course credit. Yes, my mom is in school as well.

This is the first time my mom has been out of the country in many, many years. All three of her daughters have been to some combination of Europe, South America, Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean...some of us have been to all five. She has only been to Jamaica, Bermuda, and Canada. My mom is the personification of making sure the next generation accomplishes more than the one before.

I am so impressed with her strength to keep learning and growing.

A Death in the Family

On my drive home from my S'mom's graduation tonight, I thought back on a recent encounter I had with TM. Did I mention that he moved down the street from our old apartment? We spoke very briefly, but that's not new. These days, we only have the briefest, most superficial conversations. Even when I called him to tell him that I finished my first year and to thank him for the part he played in supporting me...I made it clear that I wasn't referring to the recent past, which he made more difficult...he response was so official. So professional, like he was talking to a client or something, not someone whom he once loved.

Thinking about this in the car, I realized that I want to interact with TM, but I don't at the same time. I see the man I love and I want to talk to him, tell him about the end of my semester, hear about his music...ironically, I am/was one of his biggest supporters. But when I try, another person responds. A person who doesn't love me at all, who doesn't want to know me. It's like TM died the night we broke up. There is another man walking around that looks and sounds like him, but the TM I knew is gone. And he's probably never coming back.

I know, I know...this isn't news. But it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Congrats S'mom!

I just got back from a graduation, but it wasn't for one of my younger siblings or cousins. It was for my stepmom, who finished her Bachelor's after starting it decades earlier. In the interim, she's lived in New York City, worked with some fantastic artists, earned her Master's degree...arts school, what are you going to do?...got married, raised a child, maintained a lovely home, and has supported me as I have cried, laughed, ranted, complained, marveled, worried, and celebrated life.

I couldn't ask for a better second mom. I love her and I am so proud of her!

"Relax, Relate, Release"

Us children of the 80s and early 90s will recognize the title of this post. I had totally forgotten it and what it meant until this morning. I'm wishing I had remembered it earlier while I was freaking the f*uck out, but what are you going to do? With a new day comes new developments, new insights, and my Aunt Pee to help explain away the confusion.

Thanks for all those that put up with my digital primal scream yesterday. I think I really needed it. As soon as I posted it, I decided that TM's decisions were NOT going to tear apart my family anymore than they had already. If it meant that I couch surfed all summer, I would do it until I found a place that fit both my and Ella's needs.

Today, life is much better. I found an apartment that I can live in and that will take Ella. Not only have I found one, but it is convenient to campus, even closer to the cool area that TM and I lived near, and it's only with one other roommate. The rent is more expensive, but I'll more than make it up in the lower utility bills. There's a backyard! Did I mention the landlord has no problems with Ella? I can't move in until August, but I'll be house sitting for a friend of mine for the summer rent-free. Life is looking up.

You know how you don't realize how much burden you're carrying until it's gone? That's what I feel now. My fingers are tingly because my blood is flowing again. Of course, life is nowhere near perfect. I'm still sad, angry, lonely, and missing TM immensely. I just got an email that someone who was diagnosed with active tuberculosis was in a class I took this semester...I didn't sit near him, so I think I'm safe. But at least I have a place to live!

And you know what? I just completed one of the worst years of my life to get one year closer to getting my doctorate at Harvard! Hell yeah!!

NOW I'm Angry

This post is going to be a bit incoherent because I can barely express all that I'm feeling right now. But I need to release in some way and I can't scream because I'm in the library.

I am livid at this moment, absolutely enraged. The thing is I don't know if I'm mad at TM or at myself. Perhaps both.

I'm mad at myself for letting this man into my heart when I knew he wasn't ready to get down the way I was. All his talk about knowing what he wanted in his life...he's not even 30! How could he know that!

I'm mad at myself for letting this man into my living space without thinking through the consequences. Now it's the middle of May and I've been turned down from yet another apartment situation because I have Ella. Let's not even go into how much more limited my options are because I can't afford to live alone and the possibilities dwindle so much once you check the "dogs ok" box on Craigslist. When TM and I moved to this area, I didn't even consider the possibility that I would have to find a roommate situation that would take dogs. And now, even as I try to find that living situation, one that is close enough to campus so that I can walk Ella, affordable enough so that I won't go broke, and sane enough so that I won't have to sleep with a knife under my pillow...I'm still getting rejected for having a dog.

After almost three years, after spending lots of money in legal fees, and after promising Ella that I would take care of her for the rest of her life, I may have to give her up. And as sad as I am about that possibility, I am even more angry. TM could put my life in disarray; I'll recover. But his actions may cause me to have to give up my dog and I can't believe it. What's worse, I let him do this to me, to us.

I gotta go to work.

The Finish Line

• I am working on my last final of my first year of my doctorate studies at Harvard University.
• I have also been dumped by the man I wanted to marry, and I have no idea where I'm going to live next month.

Which one should I focus on? But, which one am I focusing on?

An Update on a "Cult Leader"

I don't know if you remember this, but right before I met TM I spent a lame weekend with a dude in Buffalo, NY. It was a crappy weekend, but I got to go to Canada and I saw Niagara Falls. Anyway, we spent one night with this "spiritual guru" that the loser guy was all into, and when I got home, I wrote about my reactions to him, which weren't positive. I went through a range of emotions that night, but ultimately decided that he wasn't for me. It wasn't what he was saying that was so scary, it was what his followers were saying that freaked me out.

I got a couple of comments from Bijan followers telling me that "I didn't understand." Whatevs.

But a couple of weeks ago, I started getting a lot of comments to that post; some of them pointed me to the story I'm about to tell you, others were rants defending him. It was weird because I wrote the post a year and a half ago. I am in the middle of finals so I haven't had time to look into it, but I'm wrapping up my 15-page statistics final, so to celebrate I went on a treasure hunt.

The source is here. This isn't the first time I've been quoted, but my blog is not big like tuckergurl's, so it's still a bit of a shock when I'm cited on a page I've never visited.

The reason: apparently that "guru" Bijan Anjomi was arrested last week on three counts of sexual assault to two women during what was supposed to be "personal coaching sessions" with the women. He's 64; the women were 27 and 37. Ick.

The fact that the narcissistic loser from Buffalo was drawn to this snake oil salesmen does not surprise me at all. In fact, I have come across more than my fair share of egotistical men who point to some "great thinker" to justify their selfishness. I'm sick of it.

I hope they throw the book at Bijan.

I Think I Saved Someone's Life Tonight

The first year doctoral students had just finished presenting our final research projects to a packed house in one of the school's largest classrooms. We were being treated to a reception in the Commons with appetizers and free booze!

A Master's student I knew, not part of our group, had apparently been passed out in the corner of the Commons for almost an hour. No one could see her face and no one thought twice about it. After all, it's Finals Week. Everyone is sleeping and not sleeping at odd times.

As the reception was winding down, I saw her standing by the food table talking on the phone. I waved at her and said hi. She waved back as I passed her. I looked back...she was still waving and staring at the space I occupied seconds ago. I joked with her: "You can stop waving now," I said with a smile. But she kept waving and kept staring into space.

So I walked around the table and stood right next to her. I called her name. She had stopped waving, but she wasn't looking at me and her body was as stiff as a board. The phone was still by her ear, but no one was on it. I pulled up a chair and she sunk into it like an anchor.

Then I remembered...seeing her in meetings for a conference we both helped organize. During those meetings, she would pull out a device shaped like an old school Blackberry, prick her finger with some sort of attachment, and stick the stick into the device. Then she would adjust a white rectangular pod on her lower back and press some buttons on the device. I don't know how I knew, but I knew she was managing her diabetes.

I had never seen the negative effects of diabetes...except for that scene in Steel Magnolias, but I was pretty sure she was feeling them at that moment. As I tried to stop her from falling out of the chair, I called out for help. Friends bought her orange juice and a candy bar. The phone that I had pulled out of her hands buzzed and I answered. It was her boyfriend; she had been trying to call him. I told him where we were and asked if what we were doing was okay. Other friends called 911. All the while, I held the cup of orange juice so she could drink as much of it as possible. Her body was stiff, she was speaking incoherently, and all the while I knew that her eyes shouldn't close. I didn't know why, but I just knew she had to keep awake.

A firetruck and ambulance arrived. Friends of mine stood outside directing traffic down a narrow one-way street and kept an eye on her boyfriend's car...which was parked illegally. Eventually, she could tell people her name and she knew mine. I left because she started to become aware of the number of people gawking. You could tell the crowd was making her feel uncomfortable and resistant to medical attention. Besides, her boyfriend was by her side at that point trying to make her finish her orange juice.

On my way out, I was shaking. I knew she had avoided something horrible, but I still couldn't wrap my brain around it. I was the only person left at the reception who knew her; almost everyone had already left or were on their way out the door. I'm sure the bartenders packing up would have noticed her odd behavior, but I was the only one in that room who knew she had diabetes. What if no one had put it together in time?

I got an email from her tonight thanking me for my help and telling me that I "literally saved [her] life." Apparently, if left on her own for much longer she would have gone into a diabetic coma. Based on my quick internet research, healthy blood sugar levels average around 100, with variance of about 20 points on either side occurring throughout the day. Her blood sugar level was 40.

Taking care of my friend was scary as hell, but so easy. I didn't hesitate to ask for help, to give information to the right people, to be there for her. And I'm so happy she's okay...at least well enough to send emails.

It was so easy to do that for someone else, but for the life of me, I can't seem to do that for myself. These days, I'm feeling like it's a matter of life or death for me as well.

Ay, There's the Rub

I'm being sad today. I showed TM a moment of weakness last night...don't worry, it was only over text message telling him I missed him. He responded by ignoring me...surprise, surprise. I guess I can't ever show TM my vulnerability again.

The thing is...everyone is telling me that I am so great and that I now have made room for the person strong enough to truly support me to come into my life. But I have proven that I am horrible at locating that person. True, TM was worlds better than Ex, but they were the same in that they were incapable of truly being there for me. What if I just don't know what that looks like, that I'm so blind to the right man that I'm doomed to never meet him?

As good as I am at lots of things, I'm clearly bad at picking partners. This scares me.

The Messiness of 70s Movies

On the whole, I don't like American movies made in the late 60s and 70s, the ones created by the new wave of filmmakers that portrayed the grittiness of life. I've seen the classics: Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, etc., and I watched them more because they were classics than because I dug them.

But I just saw The Great White Hope. It's a movie based on a play (often the best movies). It's a riveting story loosely based on Jack Johnson. The first black heavyweight contender (played by James Earl Jones) at the beginning of the 20th century and a white woman (played by Jane Alexander) fall in love. America responds by basically running them out of town and destroying their lives.

Surprise, surprise. That's not what's brilliant about this movie. What is so great is how it portrays the blatant racism of American society. It was(is) ugly, and the movie showed it totally bare bones. There was this one great scene that personified my theory of how the powerful stay powerful in this society. Jack is down and out in Mexico; he's a fugitive, no one will box him, he and Eleanor are living in the slums. A federal marshal shows up with the jefe of the Mexican village. The marshal barely says a word in the scene, but his presence pits the Mexican sheriff and the black man against each other. The brown men are ready to kill each other to protect their interests threatened by the white man barely saying a word.

This movie so couldn't be made today. White people are saying lines like a great white hope needs to win a fight with a horizontal n****r at his feet...it seems like only black people can say the n-word in movies today. Jack beats Eleanor with a shirt to avoid punching her. At the end of Jack's last fight, his bloody mouth guard falls out. It was a deep flick. Make sure you see it.