{"id":75430,"date":"2014-01-07T13:51:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=75430"},"modified":"2016-07-18T11:08:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T15:08:35","slug":"snapshots-63","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=75430","title":{"rendered":"Snapshots"},"content":{"rendered":"

— Got together with my friend Jen the other night. It’s been a while. There was so much to catch up on. I miss her! Of course I had to fill her in on Supernatural<\/i> (which she has never seen), and at one point I said, in a determined tone, “I’m gonna start doing re-caps.” There was a pause and then Jen said, “The way you just said that made it sound like you were saying, ‘I’m gonna free those people.'” We laughed until we cried and I am still laughing. <\/p>\n

— One good byproduct of going through two crack-ups in four years is that it burns away that which is inessential, unimportant. If you survive it, that is. Unfortunately, good stuff can be burned up too, which is what happened in 2009. In a way (and I didn’t at all see it at the time), the script I wrote is about what it is like when everything good gets burned away. I had no idea that that’s what I was doing, I was just writing a love story, and it was a fun creative escape. But I can see all sorts of shit in there now that I wasn’t going for consciously. But I’m getting stronger now. And the “good stuff” in my past is slowly being restored to me, and it looks different, better. It burned up in the maelstrom of 2009 but turns out it can rise from the ashes, like the phoenix, like the phoenix tattooed on my back. In the maelstrom it seemed that my whole history with men is that I have been used, mistreated, taken advantage of, and pushed around. There certainly has been some of that. But there were two meaningful exceptions, and I tried to kill them off too in 2009 but it didn’t “take”. They just wouldn’t be painted with the same brush, and believe me, I was throwing paint at the both of them (metaphorically, for you literal types out there), but it didn’t work. There was Michael. There was M. I’ve written before here about them both (and here<\/a> at Roger Ebert: it was writing that piece that made me start thinking about all of this more). They are the only ones who let me freakin’ BE (and that includes during arguments, they never treated me with contempt or shut me out, even when they were yelling about something I did that annoyed them) and never hurt me (on purpose, I mean). They are still out there, and when they think of me, they think nice things. This matters. This makes everything look different. Michael was kind (albeit hotheaded and in-my-face about how it drove him out of his MIND that I looked both ways before crossing a clearly empty street: he would literally yell at me from across the street about my bullshit caution and how it was holding me back in my life. My response would be something measured and mature like, “Jesus CHRIST, Michael, shut the fuck UP.” He wasn’t the only hothead in town. Then we would go out for breakfast and talk about movies. We didn’t hold grudges. It was awesome.) M. was kind too (albeit insane and cranky-tough with dangling cigarette, beat-up car and drunken shenanigans involving dignified scenes of me struggling with him for his car keys in a snow bank). Both men were there for me, even when I was weak or scared or shut them out (I am a handful and skittish as hell. At the first sign of trouble, I am GONE and you can’t even get me on the phone. Nobody ever said PTSD was charming.) But they hung in there with me, waited it out, didn’t take it personally, and kept coming around, so that I could see that they were on the level. That’s what it took to be with me, and I guess they thought it was worth it. I sure as hell couldn’t have done it. But I was there for them, too. Once I trust, it would take a grenade blast to make me be disloyal or betray that trust. I treat love like war. If you’re “on my side”, I’ve got your back for all time, I’ll take a bullet for you, and I’ll wait out YOUR bullshit until you get to the other side, because that’s what it means to be loyal. In a way, I would say that M. knows me better than anyone else in the world. Seriously. That’s intimacy. And he was worthy of that trust, lunatic-chain-smoking-pool-shark-cranky-pants though he was. And somehow, whatever went on with those two guys, the relationships we had, a small SPACE was carved out for me where I could actually fucking BREATHE, and in that space tenderness was possible. It’s a fucking cold world out there and I’ve been treated pretty rough. Not a lot of tenderness. That’s why that Otis Redding song makes me cry every time I hear it. But I do have memories of tenderness with those guys, and those guys alone, and when we have any interaction now (and we do have some, in emails, and FB), that tenderness is still there. They remember nice things about me. They look back on their time with me with fondness and humor. AND they don’t judge me or shut me out for feeling the same way. They know what it means. So I guess I’m saying I feel lucky, because some people don’t even have THAT. It’s taken me four years of a tyrannical scorched-earth-policy towards my own past to even begin to figure this out. Probably none of it makes much sense anyway. How’s that for burying the lede.<\/p>\n

— I am currently reading Mark Twain’s gigantic essay about Shakespeare and it is making me cry with laughter. My favorite line so far is: “Maybe he did do all of those things, but who would hold the horses during that time?” Can’t stop laughing. <\/p>\n

— I’ve been feeling a bit of that old wanderlust again, although that might have something to do with cabin fever due to the hellish weather we’ve been having. But from 2010 to 2012 I took a lot of trips by myself, even just weekend trips, and it’s something I love to do. Ebert Fest is coming up (well, sort of), and I am looking forward to it. <\/p>\n

— Somehow, without even really trying, I’ve lost 25 pounds. Well, that’s not true. I have tried. I cut out sugar, all alcohol, and I started running again. But it’s been about health, as opposed to losing weight and body insecurity so it doesn’t feel the same as the “trying” in the past. It started because my doctors put the fear of God in me, but I used to be a runner, I used to run races on the weekends, and have missed it, and it didn’t take long for me to get back in the groove with it. And yeah, losing 25 pounds in the process does not suck. I have more to lose, but it’s good to see results. <\/p>\n

— It’s someone’s birthday tomorrow. <\/p>\n

\"tumblr_m1z8s5EFEx1r4fbz5o1_500\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dude, maybe you want to have that veritable BOIL on your wrist looked at. But no worries, I know you’re busy. And I’m sure the girls don’t care anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— Got together with my friend Jen the other night. It’s been a while. There was so much to catch up on. I miss her! Of course I had to fill her in on Supernatural (which she has never seen), … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[2095,600,204,1367,2263,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75430"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85471,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75430\/revisions\/85471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}