bitterfig

In Alan Moore’s Promethea when Barbara and Sophie, two of the mortal women who incarnate the divine Promethea are on the Chesed level of the Tree of Life their guide Boo-Boo (who’s a younger version of Barbara as well as her guardian angel says “Existence loves us.  If it could, it’d stop a bullet for us.  An’ it works #%$@*& to put bread on the table for us an’ to keep a #%$@*& sky over our heads.”   

 

This line really struck me when I was reading Promethea but I dismissed it along with a lot of what the series imparts as something that’s a lovely sentiment but not really the way things really work. 

 

Yet there are times I can almost believe it’s true.  Yesterday for instance.  Right after I posted about being a complete loser and generally sucking I went to work.  Because I’m somewhat obsessive compulsive I always get to work 45 minutes to an hour early so I was up in the break room drinking Kombucha and feeling miserable when my #1 crush deli-boy tapped me on the shoulder to say hello because he hadn’t seen me in a while.  It has been a while (about a month).  I actually had thought he’d left the store but it turns out he’s only working Saturdays now that schools started again.   

 

Sigh.  He’s so cute.  He looks just like a more diabolical version of Jon Heder in  Blades of Glory.

 

It’s sort of silly but seeing him and especially the fact that he made a point of getting my attention really made me feel a lot better and it just came at the perfect time too, that’s why I thought of the quote from Promethea. 

 

Pessimistic as I am I’m glad I can still appreciate the occasional blessing the universe bestows. 

 

I sent out about half a dozen resumes today for jobs advertised in the Chicago Reader and on Craigs List Chicago.  In an attempt to stay positive I’m trying to keep in mind that at least I’m not unemployed like I was the last time I was looking for a job. 

Maybe because it’s cooled off and I’m sleeping more deeply I’ve been having some fairly strange, vivid dreams. 

 

On Saturday I had a dream where I was going to a party with Deli-boy.  Naturally I was beside myself with delight but when he came to pick me up (at my parent’s house in Upstate New York) I looked out my bedroom window and saw my former best friend Vivienne outside. 

 

Vivienne and I have a rather tangled history.  We met when I was a Junior in college and she was a Freshman.  We were extremely close for several years even through we were living quite a ways apart but we lost touch.  I was struggling with anorexia and working full-time, she had serious health problems, panic disorder and was going to school on and off…  Still, we had a lot of similar interest in politics and the arts so I always sent her a copy of the zine I put out between 1997 and 2002 and when I started my blog I e-mailed her a link.  Then in early December of last year I stumbled upon her myspace page, which led me to a blog she kept on yahoo 360 which contained entries from my blog slightly rewritten, articles from my zine and even a Beyond the Valley of the Dolls inspired poem I wrote in college.  All of these were presented as her own work.   She was also using my pen name, Bitterfig, as username on a World of Warcraft forum.  I e-mailed her and got no response though most of the content of her blog was taken down. 

 

I never got angry at Vivienne about these things, instead I’ve always felt like I did something wrong that made her cut me off so when I saw her in the dream I immediately went to her and found out she needed my help but then she sort of faded away as people do in dreams and I remembered the party I was supposed to go to and I had to get ready for the party.  By the time I got dressed and everything Deli-boy had gotten tired of waiting and left without me.

 

So I had to go to the party by myself.  It turned out it was in this huge building and even after I was inside it took a long time for me to find the party I was going to.  Along the way I got sidetracked by attending a yoga class after which someone gave me a glass of red wine, which I accepted.

 

I finally found the party just as Deli-boy was leaving.  He did pour me a glass of champagne, which I accepted and explain that he had only come to the party with me because his girlfriend (Sasha, an old classmate of mine who had dated a boy I had a crush on in high school).  After that everything sort of dissolved and it was the next day and I was reading on someone’s blog that I was the only one who had gotten drunk at the party. 

 

I’m sure this had to do with a conversation I had with my sister and brother-in-law back when my father was visiting.  Somehow my drinking habits came up and I was saying that I don’t drink often but when I do I tend to drink a lot and my brother-in-law, Dean,  suggested that maybe I ought not drink at all, because of my medication and my tendency to loss control.  He prefaced his statement with “I know you don’t want to hear this but…” and it’s true, I don’t want to hear it.  I don’t want to lose the option of getting drunk even though I realize I do abuse alcohol and that whenever I start drinking I’m seriously risking disaster.  To me never drinking again means never eating chocolate again, never feeling relaxed or sexually confident again.  It means the losing the small degree of adventure and spontaneity that exists in my life. 

 

Intellectually I realize that this is not true, that I can have these things without drinking but emotionally I connect them so strongly to being drunk that it feels like I’m going to lose them forever if I make the commitment to not drink anymore.  The irony is that it’s not at all difficult for me to not drink.  The last time I had a drink was at Renee’s show back on July, 11.  Drinking really plays no part in my daily life.  I’ve quite literally gone for years without a drink but it was always an option.  Still, I know Dean’s right.  I’ve come close to getting in trouble too many times and my binges take too much of a toll so I guess I have to get used to the idea that alcohol consumption is simply something I can’t do anymore.