Campfyre Stories

Last week was a very interesting week, all told.  In addition to the "Dayum, you’re beautiful" comment that I got on Tuesday morning, I had a bus ride with a man who was making balloon animals (weird) and wound up having a random encounter with one of my dad’s oldest friends, and someone I hadn’t seen in many, MANY years.  It was quite fascinating.

The problem was that my head is all spinning and my thoughts were askew.  I’m all wrapped up in negatives and spent a tense couple of days in abject fear of having the wrong person push the wrong buttons that would lead me to flip the fuck out and say things that would probably be taken the wrong way and cause irreparable rifts.  It has all altered my mood for the worse and made me glad to be running away from home.

I’m not entirely sure if that would be a wrong move to make, but all of it required more thought and not an impulsive explosion on my part.

I played the open mic on Wednesday and found, to my pleasant surprise, that it is working and I’m starting, not only to develop a network, but to create new bonds.  Sitting at a large center table, all kinds of people were coming over to sit with me.  That’s always a nice thing.

Thursday also had some interesting moments, unfortunately, none of them are appropriate to blog about, and most of them make me look bad, even though my part in the whole thing was extremely minor.  Depending on what comes of it, I may write about it at some time in the future.

But the accumulation of all of it drove me out of town, which is certainly preferable to out of my head, and, while sorting through the random BS, I was also able to escape it and enjoy the company of good friends I haven’t seen in far too long (in large part, my own doing).

But that’s a follow-up for another time…

*beep*

Hi, you’ve reached the blog of the FyreGoddess.  I’m not available to answer your comments or to make any posts right now, as I am running away from home for the weekend.

Please leave your comment after the tone and I will get back to you when my head is back on straight.

*beep*

I attempted to wake up early this morning and failed.  I woke up on time and ran out the door, as usual, but not to a usual situation.   Dave, my morning "bus buddy" was talking to some guy.  They were exchanging contact information.  I stayed out of the way, but still at the bus stop when the guy turned, looked me up and down and said, "DAYUM, girl.  You are *beautiful*."

Now, I don’t know about that.  It seemed like a bit of a stretch, but, hey, at 6:30am I’ll take that compliment.  I will not be dating the guy I met on the sidewalk randomly, nor giving him my number, but I’ll definitely take the compliment.  It was a nice thing to wake up to.

Of all the things on my list, the only thing that didn’t get done was laundry.  In part because I was tired and feeling lazy, in part because someone (I don’t know who, but I have an unconfirmed guess) sent me a new game from Amazon Marketplace.  It’s trippy and bizarre and I freakin’ love it!

So…  party.

It was good, lots of people, lots of music, lots of really good food.  I saw people I hadn’t seen in at least a year, reconnected with people who had changed or grown up or whatever, met new people and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

That said, I’m rather disappointed in some of the people I consider my friends.  This is something that happens pretty regularly and, no matter how many times I go through it, it still takes me off guard.  I often feel like I am an exceedingly low- (or even non-) priority to people who claim to be my friend.  Not all of them, by any means, but most of them, and specifically, most of the ones who live in this area.

My friends who live out of state tend to be the most supportive and available, even if it’s only by phone.  Out of the people who live near me and I consider my friends, the ones who tend to be the busiest, the ones who I rarely actually get to see are the ones I know I can count on.  The rest of them just blow me off and do it without a word most times. 

It’s a problem I’ve run into over and over again most of my life.  It’s the reason I don’t throw parties - because few, if any people, actually come.  It appears to me that with some of these folks, they are my friend only under certain circumstances.  If those circumstances change, they may still consider me their friend, but, at the same time, they stop being mine.

Once again, I’m feeling like I need to do an emotional housecleaning and figure out what to do with these so-called friendships that don’t really seem to exist for me.  I’m well past the point of being the only one to make any effort, and I’m starting to feel like some of these are going to need that level of attention.  It will break my heart to lose some of these people, but I’d rather suffer a little heartbreak than wind up feeling like a doormat, or expending copious amounts of energy on something that is going to fall apart anyway.

I hate this part.  It seems like it comes around every year, generally close enough to my birthday to become a project with the birthday deadline.

It’s not even that I’m all that needy.  I can handle people canceling on me or not being available, but what really kills me, every single time is the repeated "yes, let’s get together" and then the complete and utter lack of communication and follow-through that happens.  It’s one of my own hypocrisies that I’ve battled quite a bit over the past few years, and I do not do it anymore.  If I don’t have time or energy, I don’t make those empty promises to "someday get together" and I ALWAYS at least make the point to let someone know if I’m not going to be able to make the plans that I either accepted or tentatively accepted.

Bah!

I’m really just tired of this happening so often.  And tired of having to weed through the people I want to consider my friends.

So tonight I’ll do my laundry and spend time with my boy.  Tomorrow I’ll have my regular movie night with the friend who I only see if we schedule the time with each other (which is why we do movie night).  Wednesday I’ll do another open mic and try to not care if anyone comes with (except for Slockin, who claims to have no good reason to bag).  And all the while I’ll start the sorting process and stop making quite so much effort.

Shopping
Dinner
Haircuts
Movie (the Incredible Hulk)
Home
Sleep
Pancakes
Cooking stuffed shells
Party - face painting, balloon animals and children
Party - pot luck, music, good friends, good time
Home
Sleep
Laundry

In that order. 

So there I was, minding my own business, shutting out the rest of the world, trying to get to my tattoo appointment.  There was this punkish/emoish kid sitting next to me and a mother and child in front of me.  A cyclist got on the bus and, you know, he *looked* like a normal guy, but it turned out he was a zealot.

He was handing out pamphlets to people who would make eye contact and trying to give them something that was fitting to each person.  To the mom he gave a pamphlet titled, "What Is A Mother?"  To the guy next to me it was one that said "I’ll Do It Tomorrow".

After the punkmo guy finished reading the pamphlet, the zealot started talking to him about finding God and coming (back?) into the fold.  He handed him a business card with a URL (CallHim) and tried to keep talking.  I thought the kid was receptive to the guy and turned my music up.

The punkmo kid put the card and the pamphlet very deliberately into his backpack and pulled out an old, gilt-edged book.  Being nosy and meddlesome, I tried to get a look at what he was reading, but all I could see was a chapter title of "HELL" and what looked like verses inside.  I figured that this was some kind of relligious book and that the zealot had somehow convinced the kid to pray or something.

He kept reading until the zealot got off the bus, at which point he pulled his backpack out and closed his book.  It was at this point that I was able to see the title, which caused me to "HA!" (and, unless you’ve actually witnessed it, you really don’t know just how loud that particular exclamation is coming from me, especially when it’s completely unexpected.)

He gave me a huge grin and a slight wink as he put away Dante’s The Inferno.

I’m not a sappy, sentimental person most of the time.  I rarely cry at movies, I don’t think I’ve ever cried over a book.  I’m outwardly pretty emotionally cold most of the time.  I remember when I was 9 and my grandmother died, I played the same sad song over and over and over again until it moved me to tears.  It wasn’t that I was unaffected, it was just that I didn’t have that outward emotional reaction.

Some would say this is unhealthy.

Sometimes it is.  Sometimes when things get really a bad, a good cry can do a world of good, but the older I get, the harder it is to force it if it just won’t come on its own, so I do the best I can.

But, I think, it only really applies to sadness.  I share my joy and laugh freely (as almost anyone can attest).  When I’m angry, I stand up for myself and remedy the situation.  I love with abandon, but…  I’m not allowed to share that with everyone because of the societal rules that are put on it.

I can tell my girls that I love them.  I can tell my family I love them.  With the boys…  not so much, though.  There are a couple I can say "…and that’s why I love you," but it’s more likely to come out as "…and that’s why you’re my friend."  Love is a four-letter word and its use is restricted specifically to romance among non-relations.

*sigh*

But I do love freely.  And when I say "love" I don’t mean "marry me".  It makes me wish that there was a wholly different word that means "in love" or "romantic love" because love is so much more than the boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife thing.

It’s hard for me, because every now and again, I find myself leaning toward that "in love" with people who I really just love, but can’t tell.  I think it’s something that’s been a problem in a lot of my romantic relationships - that the taboo of feeling love means that the only way to say it and feel it and have it be acceptable is to be lovers.  That sucks.

When I was a teenager, I adored the freedom of cuddling with my friends.  Of feeling like I could sit in M’s lap or lean against him with his arm around my shoulders and have it just be what it was.  It wasn’t until much MUCH later that I found out that he…   all the hes…  wanted it to be more, but were ok with taking what they could get.  I would have lived a happier, if more naive, life not having known about the "wanting more".

I probably only have one male friend now who I can stand next to with my arm around his waist and his arm around my shoulder and not feel like we’re doing something wrong.  He knows that I’ve "adopted" him as my brother and there’s no weird tension.  We’re both touchy-feely people and it’s not awkward, but he’s rare in my life these days.

And the problem is that my outlet for this lack of outward, identified, pure love for the people who are important in my life is to write love songs.  Romantic love songs.  Unrequited love songs.

Not written to the men who I wish I could tell in simple terms that they are important to me, but to men who I have created a fantasy of romantic love around.  I’ve fallen so far into this idea that I’m not even really sure what "in love" means anymore.  Not because I haven’t felt it, but because I’m questioning my own definition and the line between what it’s acceptable to say and what might make people uncomfortable simply because I have different parts.

I’ve realized that this is really my genre.  When people ask "what kind of songs do you write?" the answer is love songs.  Sometimes it’s not about a boy, or it’s some kind of departure, but fundamentally, they’re all love songs.  I may very well be in love with the concept of love in all its forms.

With one primary exception, I fall in and out of infatuation with people pretty regularly.  I fall for someone long enough to write a song about the feelings I’m experiencing and then I move on.  Sometimes it’s a friend of mine, sometimes it’s someone I only know a little, sometimes it’s someone I have created in my head, but it’s generally pretty brief and I get over it and move on to the next crush.

When I don’t get over it, it’s a little scary.  When I get over it for a little while and it comes back, it’s more than a little scary.  When it’s there so strongly that writing a song doesn’t even mitigate the feelings, it’s downright terrifying.  Since I’ve been really writing songs (let’s call it the past 4-5 years), that has only happened once…  and hasn’t gone away.

And I’m not one to be weepy and sentimental and gushing.  I’m a lot more prone to assuming that He already knows and isn’t interested or he would have said something.  This is stupid, I am aware, but it’s less stupid than losing an important person from my life entirely.  So what did I do?  Well, I wrote a song.  Not about him, but about my own knowledge of the risks of saying something and the difficulty of not saying anything and being resigned to never actually acting on the feelings that simply won’t go away.

And it’s pretty.  It’s another unrequited, romantic love song.  But some part of me can’t help but wonder if I could branch out from this niche I’ve locked myself into and stop myself from falling in and out of infatuation, if only it were possible to tell more of the people I love platonically how much they mean to me, in the words that define it in my head, and in my heart.

If you don’t like the job that you have, you should find a different one.  I mean it.  I’m not talking about a job that you don’t particularly like, I mean the job that you hate so much that, while you do it grudgingly, you take out your anger on the people you are supposed to be helping.

What happened yesterday shocked me and even conveying the story when I called to lodge a complaint, I was astounded by the enormity of the situation.  There have been very few times that I can think of where I have felt that someone should be REMOVED from their job, but this was certainly one of them.

I got to the bus stop and waited for about 20 minutes for a bus to come.  There was a broken-down bus at the stop, and I was pretty sure that, had it been working, it would have been my bus.  I wasn’t in a hurry, though, so I didn’t mind waiting.

Finally a bus came and there was a large group of us waiting.  I stepped onto the bus and the driver SCREAMED at me.  The gist of it was "GET OFF THE BUS!"  So I got off the bus, not really understanding why he had screamed…  it wasn’t like I knew he wasn’t running, or even that I had actually done anything wrong.  In fact, prior to attempting to board, the whole group of us were waiting on the sidewalk, so he could have easily said something earlier.

The regular driver went over and spoke with this guy and told him that his bus had broken down, so he’d need to take the group of us who had been waiting.  Clearly, the guy was pissed off, but he took a couple of drags off his cigarette and allowed us to board.

I shrugged it off.  I still feel that this was completely uncalled for, but a single instance, to me, does not necessarily make for a complaint-worthy situation.  But there was more…

This driver kept screaming at people, for no apparent reason.  When passengers needed assistance, he would slam things around and huff and puff.  He was tailgating cars in front of us, weaving in and out of traffic, slamming on his brakes and missing bus stops (both for picking up and for dropping off).  Never before have I felt UNSAFE while riding public transportation, but I certainly did then.

It got to a point where he just plain stopped picking people up unless he had a drop-off at that stop.  He would cruise past bus stops with anywhere from 2-8 people waiting and just not even be concerned with them.  At one point he stopped the bus, got off, screamed at the people waiting to "Don’t move!  Stay where you are!", walked to the back of the bus, got back on, closed the doors and drove off without picking up any one of the 6 people waiting.  Shortly after that, a kid got off the bus (half a block away from the actual bus stop when the bus finally came to a full stop) and took his bike off the rack on the front of the bus.  He wasn’t yet on the sidewalk with his bike when the driver pulled away, nearly clipping the kid.

I was astounded.  This driver was a menace and completely out of control.  I called the bus company as soon as I got home, giving them a full description of his inappropriate behavior, the bus number and a physical description of the man himself.  I also made a point to mention that I have not seen this driver before and that he does not usually drive this route, as well as to say that I have never experienced anything even coming close to this level of inappropriate behavior from any of their drivers.

I’m pretty sure that this guy is a sub, who only actually takes routes when there is a significant delay.  This means that most of his days are spent sitting around, not driving, not doing anything…  maybe reading a book.  I’m sorry, but if you’re unwilling to do your job when it needs to be done, you should be doing something else.  It must be nice to get paid to *not* drive a bus, but you’re not being paid to not drive, you’re being paid to cover when needed.

And good grief, I don’t want this guy to be on the road.  I really hope that I’m not the only person who called to lodge a complaint, because this guy should not be allowed to treat customers so poorly and to create a dangerous situation in rush hour traffic.

Outside and inside today.

After taking my only weekend off until August and doing absolutely nothing, today is very gray on a lot of levels.  To start the morning off, I got the news that Spawn’s best friend will not be coming with us to Falcon Ridge this year.  Apparently, there is drama.  I’m not looking forward to breaking the news to Spawn…

I’m not sure if there’s anyone else he would want to bring, or even who could go.  I don’t know his other friends (or their parents) as well as I know this friend and I doubt that stealing a different kid for a week would really fly.  Also, I’m concerned that it might be too late to get another kid in on the volunteer front.  *sigh*

This week I should start learning my new job.  The facets that have been suggested so far are very intriguing, since very little of it is anything I’ve done before.  I’m not sure when anyone is going to find time to start actually training me, but hopefully it will be soon, and will help stave off the boredom that I’ve been experiencing during the severe downtime that I’m in.

I’m actually pretty excited about the prospect, but until we actually get moving on it, I’m pretty much mired in ennui and, having lost my primary and favorite source of distraction, there’s not much I can do to get out of it.  At least not yet.

Then the sun came out, but it didn’t get rid of the gray and rainy inside.

I think that part of the problem is that there are no windows in my building, and the climate control makes it always feel cool and a little clammy.  When you start the day with gray and rainy, then you assume that it’s the same all the time…  even with the quick smoke breaks, you just can’t shake the idea that it’s still better inside than out, whether that’s true or not.  The weather of the morning affects the mental image of the weather of the day.

It gets downright depressing.

But, sometimes, just sometimes, the sun does come out.  Sometimes it only takes a few minutes of a good conversation with like-minded individuals, or maybe even just someone who’s already feeling like a merry ray of sunshine to take your clouds and scare them off.

Of course, when it’s this gray and rainy, the sun can only last for a short period before the sky opens up and the world seems like to flood.  For me, though, this is always a relief.  There’s something cleansing about a good, strong rain, as opposed to the light rain from a fully cloudy sky.  When it rains like this, the greens seem greener, not just in the moment, but for days afterward.

At least, that’s how I try to see it.

Sometime around when we hit puberty we form these definitions of "cool people".  They are the desirable friends, sometimes unattainable.  Certainly there are stereotypes, but it’s also very subjective.  The A/V nerds in high school, for example, generally didn’t crave acceptance by the jocks and cheerleaders.  The theater kids weren’t trying to get in with the rockers, but there were all different levels of cool, depending on where your interests lay.

I don’t think that ever goes away.  I mean, sure, not everyone gets into that state where they’re looking for acceptance from the "cool people", but the people who do tend to not ever really shake that feeling.  They identify the characteristics of the people they want to affiliate with and try their best to be included in their groupings.

But there are always some who just don’t fit the mold.  They may consider Group X to be "cool people", but they simply don’t fit in for whatever reason.

I’ve always been a fringe person.  I’m never going to really fit into mainstream society.  My background is very unusual and my experiences are out of the ordinary.  I don’t take to labels, I don’t fit in boxes and all of that tends to mean that other fringey people consider me one of the "cool people".  In this particular instance, I’m talking about the fringey people who are geeks, nerds, freaks, weirdos…  they are drawn to a combination of my unique upbringing, my intelligence, my math-based interests (technology, music), my hobbies and my quest to Know All Things.  Girl often refers to it as "flypaper for freaks", which is accurate, if simplistic.

And the problem that I find is that I have very high standards for the people I choose to consider friends.  I have high standards for intelligence.  I have high standards for levels of knowledge on subjects you claim to be passionate about.  I have high standards for levels of tolerance for things outside your ken.  I’m picky as hell about everything, and people/friends are included in that.

That said, once I’ve decided to let someone in, I will tolerate a lot, but the letting someone in part takes quite a bit of time.  Also?  Standards.

I don’t have a lot of patience for people unless I care about them, so if someone decides that they want to be my friend, and I’m simply not interested, it really only serves to annoy me.  The harder they try, the more annoyed I become.  It’s not that I’m adverse to making new friends, but I’m not going to lower my standards to be a pity-friend to someone I don’t particularly like.

I guess that makes me a snob.  I’m sure it makes me SOUND like a snob at the very least, but I don’t even add random people (unless they’re musicians and I like their music) to MySpace.  If I’m that picky about my virtual friends, how could I ever be less picky about real people?

You see, the people I consider my friends are people I can count on.  Not always for the same things, but if I am in real need, I can count on them and they can count on me.  I also know what, exactly, I can count on each person for.  I know who to ask if I need emotional support.  I know who to ask if I need a social boost.  I know who to ask if I need to just get out of town for a couple of days…  and in return, I like to think that my friends know what they can count on me for, and that they will whenever they need it.

The other thing about my friends is that they are also, generally, "cool people", at least within their own fringey niches.  These are people who are sought out by others and they tend to be rather selective about the people they let in, too.

Yesterday I was talking with a friend and a co-worker about how I was going to need help with learning something new, and, unfortunately, most my friends who are experts in this particular technology have moved out of town, so I don’t know if they can help.  My friend  said he’d help as he could, but my co-worker said, "Hey!  What about me?"  It took every ounce of my self-control to not say out loud, "You’re not my friend."  That would have been rude, but true.

Because he’s not my friend, and I don’t really think he’s going to be.  I’ll make nice, I’ll make conversation, I’ll go to lunch with him if he asks, but after about 20 minutes of his trying WAY too hard to be my friend, I’m over it and getting annoyed.

And the weird thing is that I don’t often consider myself one of the "cool people" because I’m rather strange, very nerdy, fringey, pushy, opinionated, etc., etc., etc.  I’m surprised when people seek me out and make an extraordinary effort to be my friend and it tends to turn me off when people try too hard.  I can and will talk to just about anyone, but unless they capture my interest, I’ll wander off, if only in my head.

Maybe this is mean.  Maybe this is snobbish.  But the bottom line is that it is what it is.  It makes me feel like a bad person to be so exclusive about the people I take into my inner circle, but I’d rather feel like a bad person than wind up surrounded by people who stress me out, piss me off or straight-up bore me.