| State of the Luxie Address |
[Jan. 2nd, 2012|04:02 pm] |
Ten years ago I had a lucrative career and a beautiful fiance. He died. People threatened to harm me. My brother died. I packed on forty pounds. I lost my job and my independence. And here I am. Fat. Destroyed.
Eight years, one career and two serious relationships later, I still have a day, maybe once every few months, when I just can't do it. Everything is repulsive. Nostalgia is everywhere, chasing me, but it doesn't comfort me-- it just makes me feel sad and sick and pathetic, like I'm living in the past and trying to lie about it and nobody is fooled but everyone's too nice to say something.
I just can't. My hands shake. My mind seizes up. I can't stop crying. I feel like there's a hole in chest, like a bullet ripped through me and I've been bleeding just enough every day to keep it fresh. I'll never make it back to warmth and oxygen. I feel like everyone's staring at me, everywhere I go. It might be true. I'm odd-looking.
Curiously, there's never been an instance where I was unable to pull myself together if someone was looking. But alone? No.
Sometimes it goes away by itself. Sometimes I read his old letters and reassure myself of what was real and what was evil; sometimes that helps and sometimes it makes things worse. I don't read his blog. I wish I had a positive, healthy friend I could meet for lunch. I wish I had a job so I could go out to lunch. I wish I had the discipline to not eat an entire pizza and down an entire bottle of wine, but it makes me feel better. All the usual solutions don't apply to me. I hate sweets; I don't drink soda or eat fast food. I still dance now and then.
All I ever seem to do is make things complicated for my loved ones. I was born to a nice mother and a criminal father and every time she sees me she sees his face. That family wants to talk with me now, and it's fucking my mother up mentally (suddenly I make her cry) although my curiosity is understandable. I made my poor first fiance's life with his mother and friends difficult. I'm a big fat cultural problem for Zorro. Everyone at my last two offices hated me because somehow, over the course of this journey, I became one of those Difficult People to work with. Hell, I'm probably hurting my office chair!
I have no idea how to regain control of my life. I don't even know why my life would be worth saving. Why are any of us important? I'm just draining everything around me.
Don't worry. I've dealt with this long enough to know that I don't have the chutzpah to off myself. I'm going to go bury myself in Ministry of Sound videos and try to figure out some kind of goddamned weight loss program I can live with. Lean Cuisine worked a few years back, but I can't afford those anymore and I know it's not the healthiest option.
Stay off motorcycles. |
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| skylies |
[Nov. 10th, 2011|09:08 pm] |
I've decided that the third month is the hardest. (I hope.)
You'll have burned through your savings a while back; you'll deposit your birthday money and pay for necessities with it, but you'll still remember what things taste like.
You'll forget later, and then it probably won't be so bad, walking through the store.
I had a long interview today, and everyone was talking about Skyrim, which comes out tomorrow. I had preordered it, but I cancelled my preorder for food a month ago.
I told them how excited I was. I lied. I don't know why. I could have just acted like it wasn't my thing. But I acted like I still had it preordered. I just couldn't rip that thread of my normal life off. Four damn years, I looked forward to that game. Jones and I really loved Oblivion, the last one.
And then ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) hamsterhuey goes and gifts it to me on Steam the next morning, and I felt really silly. You're an angel of gaming, mate.
But everyone would do well to remember...
Whoever you are and whatever you do, there isn't much space between me and you. |
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| miles to go before I sleep |
[Nov. 9th, 2011|09:07 pm] |
What's the point?
If everyone who ever hugs you stabs you in the heart, why let anyone hug you?
If you work and pay taxes your whole damn life, from the day you turn 14 until you're 34, and then you're standing in your pharmacy, having called ahead, in front of 20 strangers, and have to leave empty-handed and make the long drive back home without your medicine because you suddenly can't afford it (something went wrong with your plan and the relocation), although the pills were sitting right there on the counter and you're feeling shaky already, what's the point?
Metaphorically speaking, everyone I ever teach to swim tries to drown me later. The logical course of action is to stop teaching people how to swim, but for some reason my integrity won't let me.
If I build my "brand" and maintain my "positive outlook" only to win a bunch of prizes I never wanted in the first place and lose everything that mattered and end up crying into my chicken-flavored ramen most nights, remembering my mother's baked chicken, so far away... what's the point?
If I get this job tomorrow, this THING everybody wants, will anyone want me back in their life? I'm not sure I can even afford half the rent here. This place is way more expensive. But if I can afford to have a life, will things like kindness and manners start mattering again? Will I stop learning important things through Facebook? Will I not be alone on this road anymore? Will I hear shoes behind me? Will the threats to my future stop? Do I ever get my dreams back, or were those non-refundable?
I know it's up to me to find the point. I know I've worked with less. But what if there isn't one?
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| the truth |
[Oct. 27th, 2011|02:33 pm] |
I thought everything would be better if I were back in LA, but I overlooked the fact that I have no friends or family here. I've been horrendously, chillingly, hauntingly lonely. Between job-hunting things, I wander the house all day until Zorro gets home (really late) and remember. Nobody calls, writes or comes to visit. Even the IMs have dried up. I tried to get people to come up for IndieCade, which I worked, and nobody came-- not even the people who are really into games.
I didn't write sooner because I'm really embarrassed.
I'm so lonely that trips the store are exciting (not that I can buy anything I want, mind you) and I was happy to see Jehovah's Witnesses at my door yesterday.
I wish I could call Richard and tell him all of this, but it's such a drag. I wish I could call my mother, but she's been really difficult and emotional lately. Aaron has so much going on, and it's not like anyone can actually help me, so there's no real point in making a phone call. I'm not even sure it would make me feel better. My grandmother called and I kept steering the conversation away from myself. +100 to Evasion.
Really, all of this should be spurring me hard toward finding a proper job and making new friends (always easy for an adult female in a strange city whose main interest is gaming, right?), but I've been trying, and God damn it, it's my goddamn 34th birthday (and his deathday) and if I want to sit here and cry and play Bastion and post a lot of curses in my blog and eat an entire motherfucking bag of cheesy poofs, I bloody well CAN.
So there. Eat a wang. =( |
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| Something sinister needs food. |
[Aug. 20th, 2011|12:07 pm] |
It was love at first sight, me and Los Angeles. I stepped off a train and looked around in 1985; I didn't know my way around, but I knew it was Home. My first entertainment job was there, an internship at a radio station. Later, I got into porn art there, thanks to some friends I met in the early days of the Internet. My first grown-up apartment was on the Westside, a little $500-a-month studio on top of Chinese Food OK and a laundromat near Pico and Robertson; six Russians lived in the apartment next door and were always asking for cigarettes and tarot readings. My first fiance died in Azusa.
Eleven years ago, back in LA, I wasn't a very nice person. I was a cheater. I even left LA to chase a boy, but it didn't work out. I kept working there, straddling the county line, until I just couldn't do it anymore and retreated to southern Orange County. I've built a new career and made friends here, and the cut-off parts of my heart grew back when I met Zorro. Some bad things happened here, too-- my wonderful career fell apart and I stopped writing.
We're moving back to LA in two weeks. It's a return for him, too; he was born there, on a sofa in El Monte. I'm so happy I could cry.
Walking down vaguely familiar streets, I saw my reflection in a window. So much space between 23 and 34! It snarled back at me, and something sinister stabbed me with its sharp, rotting, infected talons. I saw something that would have triggered a word-hemorrhage years ago, but this is the third time I've sat at this keyboard to write about this and this is the first time anything's come out.
Nothing matters if you're not writing. Why'd you let them take your tongue? Why did you let them do that to you-- did you want that, secretly? Ain't no sunshine when you're gone, and you ARE, Whore of Babylon.
I hope it goes away before I move into the lovely little hardwood place. I don't believe in ghosts, and ghosts of living peoples' other selves are a damn creepy concept. Maybe it's just hungry, but I don't remember how to operate the machine anymore. I'll try. |
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