anyone going to be in san jose in march?

info on the exhibition that will include my LTLYM photo:

The show is called This Show Needs You. All of the art exhibited relies on some kind of collaboration in making the work. The LTLYM project is a wonderful example of such a collaboration and I am very pleased that your work will be included. Other artists in the exhibition include: Linda Montano, Lori Gordon, Michael Smit, the Love Art Lab (Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens), and Sara Thacher. The exhibition dates are March 28-May 17, 2008. We will have an opening reception on March 28 from 6 - 8 pm.
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if you'll be in nor cal near the end of march, i'd love it if you went to see! i might even love you if you were to take a picture of my picture, hanging on a museum wall!

fighting takes too much energy

i spent part of my day yesterday, and too much of my night last night, upset about something. i'm sapped of energy this morning. the conflict was with a person i dated for a long time who broke my heart. it's been six months since i last saw him or heard his voice, and yet we still have things to fight about, apparently, and knowing how little he cares/cared about me still brings tears to my eyes.

you would think (like i have) that we could find a way to (really) forgive each other and move on, but you and i would both be wrong.

reclaim my game

so i'm feeling somewhat disoriented as of late. i'm no longer totally heartbroken (the crying only happens every once in awhile, when my mind happens across something that it shouldn't), but somehow i just haven't gotten back to the way i used to feel. back when i met him.

the confidence i had about myself and my worth and my appeal went missing in the midst of the worse with him, and i have yet to locate it and bring it back. i'm trying. i am. i'm trying not to go out looking busted, i'm trying to think about the way i react to people, i'm trying to be open. i'm making new friendships and new connections, working hard, and trying to be reflective. i think i'm doing what i can.

the difference between now and before, though, is that i always feel unsure. i've lost my key to my self-worth. i gave it to him. i let him have control over how i felt about myself. he doesn't want it. he never did. but somehow i think i've let him hold on to it. now i realize it's time to go out dorothy-style and find the wizard to get a ride back home to kansas.

where's toto when you need him?

me? quirkyalone?

maybe this is the answer to all of my recent angst.

i think, maybe, that the reason this whole simon thing is so hard for me to get over because i am a quirkyalone-- i don't enter relationships just for the sake of being with someone. i so very rarely find people of the opposite sex palatable (i have troubled relationships with men in general-- starting with my father. i just don't often find them tolerable. they can be funny, or attractive, or smart, but rarely do those things come together to create someone i can't get enough of. those people are almost always women.) that finding simon seemed almost too good to be true.

healing is difficult because beyond all of the societal forces working against my ability to find a partner, so is my personality! how do i move on after i found someone i thought couldn't be found to begin with?

the thing about simon is that he's probably as far away from a quirkyalone as is humanly possible-- the man is always with someone. it's probably (scratch that, definitely) not as personal as i feel it to be, but to me, the quirkyalone, moving on immediately means the person before had no significance. that's the only way i can move on quickly, and i don't understand any other way of being.

stumbling across the quirkyalone.net site today was like a huge revelation for me, crazily enough. i think i'd even seen it before, but today it resonated, like oh yeah.

i've been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. i met with a chaplain at an episcopal school uptown yesterday and she told me about a curriculum she teaches to eighth graders that is focused on the concept of "gardens of forgiveness." she talked about the reality of forgiveness, and the idea that forgiving someone isn't for the transgessor, but rather for the transgressed. that the pain of being hurt only holds the victim back.

these are things i knew. and i know. but to hear it from someone again brought it back to me. that i have to find a way to forgive him for hurting me if i ever want to stop hurting myself. not sure how to do it yet, because i feel so wronged, but i know it has to happen. i can't help but think that some force out there is trying to get my attention, trying to show me a way out of my sadness. showing me through a random meeting with a chaplain, of all things, who was supposed to be talking to me about a conference proposal, mind you, not forgiveness, that there is a way out. there is a way to let go. a way to be quirkyalone, maybe, or to at least accept my status.

one thing i know doesn't work-- going out with weird, funny-looking people from nerve because they say nice things about me. not it, joy, not it. :)