other_plans belly fire Lately it seems like everyone has other plans and is too busy for the simplest things. Then there's me - all I seem to be doing are the tiny insignificant things of the day: ride through the car wash, picking up socks, reading, driving Kat to work. The worst part about it is how terribly lonely I've been feeling or, more to the point, how not-part of the world I've been feeling. 7 hours in the ER and not one missed phone call. A week goes by without hearing from even one person at home. As if I would have ever thought I could feel like I didn't belong in a place like the kingdom! I go to work, finish a million projects and make things look like-new and try to leave feeling satisfied but when I have to come in the next day I know I'll have to change it all again anyway. For a while I was bitter about Karen and Doris not giving me pats-on-the-back-good-job-Sam-I-am but I guess I stopped caring what they thought when Kat left. Now it's compliment city and I just wish they'd shut up and leave me be. Since you really can't please me either way now. I can't expect boy to comfort me or make time to listen to all the reasons I've been waking up sad lately - even if secretly I have been expecting that of people, him too. It's what I think of the most when I'm driving - which is pretty much all the time - and I've come to the millionth conclusion that it's not fair of me. I think that ultimately I just wish I could hear his voice or spend an afternoon quietly walking the halls together - but then, my conclusions about that aren't too positive either. I don't think it will ever get past the let's-talk-when-I-have-spare-time thing. I guess there's nothing wrong with that but it makes me feel incredibly sad. I wish I could tell him that. If my dad were to call me up and make plans...and drive all the way here just for that reason to find me not here, but off at some "class" or whatever, he'd be right pissed at me and call me irresponsible for not having the brain to keep plans. But I got a lecture from my mom this morning when I got mad about him doing that very thing to me. No mom, I can't AFFORD an oil change. No mom, I don't want you to lend me the money! The point is dad made plans to do this for me. "Well, Samantha, I'm afraid he made other plans." Boy says I'm down because I don't solve my problems. It's not as if I don't think about Deanna every other fucking day and twice as much when I work with Marguerite whose every mannerism is Deanna exactly. It's not like I don't see Amy's picture and wonder how I managed to fuck up that friendship - how she's had other plans for over a year now. But I guess that's more or less my fault too. I'm tired of having to make plans anyway. More often than not people break them on me. I'm getting into the habit myself. I mean, how hard is it to drive to Guelph to see Denise?! I won't cancel on her again, I promise. I'm so sad right now and I think it's because the world is learning to forget I'm here. All the people in it are busy making other plans. 030201 ... belly fire While nearly another year passes as much as I convince myself that I've changed I suppose I really haven't since all of this still makes so much sense to me. Do I get tired of flipping the channels to the same shows each afternoon to pass time before night shift? Yes. Am I lonely from fish company? Yes. Even an exciting Saturday afternoon running through the semi-warm Toronto streets on my way to the game has lost its lustre by Thursday. I sit in the Audit team room each night now, privately making my phone call home or eating my lunch, and realize that, yes (egomaniac that I am), the department goes on without me. I'm not so stupid that I can't see I'm a spare right now, being plugged into a back office to be kept out of sight until they find work for me. My night peels on with new faces and new trips to new areas with brand new Godzilla machines but it all has little affect on me. I'm just witnessing all the other plans the world is having over and over again. Why is everyone so happy to talk with me? Can't they see I'm not really listening? I still think about Boy and how we never talk these days. And I think about Korey and how his life is just carrying on. I don't think I'll ever learn to not take it personally that other people I grow attached to don't really think about me at all. That they just carry on...maybe I should stop making friends with boys. It takes so little to send me off balance. The fact that Trevor hasn't called today has set my afternoon completely askew. It feels so utterly wrong to be on opposite shifts. I feel as though my bones could break. My voicemail must sound so desperate to him. I'm so tired of feeling unattached from everything and everyone. This disconnectedness is unsettling. It is true now more than ever, I can't handle being alone like my mother can. So how could she possibly talk to me about it without getting mad? We go through these cycles, her and I, and I wouldn't exactly call them 'healthy' just normal when it comes to us. She'll have other plans until we come back around again. Until I come back around again. 040108 ... belly fire Two years later...and a newlywed of nearly a month now. My life has changed so much in the time that has passed since my last entry on this page - no more Toyota, now a homeowner, and a student - again! So many people have come and gone from my life in that time and I still think of them. Burlington is my ghost town. I go there only in memory now, though often. The relationships that I left behind feel like deaths - the kind of open wounds and lack of closure that only death can really bring. They do live on - only without me. These days I ponder my future career and motherhood. Maybe they are one in the same. I dwell also on my brother, growing into a man; my sister's life as an adult ready to leave home for the first time; and my growing love and respect for Greg. Days are growing shorter again and my world curls up for winter. Hello again Blather, I miss you. 061117 ... unhinged looks like i need to start making a contingency plan for the unrequited_longing that will seemingly be me and him in the near future. or maybe i might be able to coax this scorpion out from under his rock. either way, it's going to be a long slow road. 061117 ... belly fire In another month (and some days) we will have been married two years - laugh, and my parents will be celebrating thirty-eight. Dare I hope we make it to that kind of milestones? Oh, I hope. But I look back and wonder if there is any hope for someone like me who only builds things up to watch them fall down one day. I tell myself Trevor is the exception...and I'll stick with that. After all, have I ever loved anyone quite so much? No. The emptiness I once felt is nearly gone; I only feel it now when coupled with empathy for those who suffer it needlessly. I have learned what true desperation looks and sounds like, and it makes light anything I ever felt, or thought I felt. My work allows me admittance into desperate people's lives; I go on reminding myself that they call *me* and not the other way around. Some can wax poetic in their darkest hour and, sometimes, I wish those conversations could go on longer. My voice sounds so phony to me...but most people buy into it. Does that make me a liar? I had a 45 minute conversation with the male half of a domestic dispute - trying to convince him to turn himself in for beating his girlfriend. He sounded sorry, but I'm a poor judge of character over the phone. I caught a glimmer of Kat here not long ago - just a line or two - and my stomach lurched. No, correction - I saw her picture on Facebook and that felt like a fucking punch in the face. She's changed so much. (I wonder if she thinks the same of me.) I slip now and then, now and then, yes...and I get so angry at myself that I can't just move on. Most of me has, in fact, done just that; has there ever been a more pathetic attempt to recover from a lost friendship? I can't talk to anyone about this (except Amy on the rare occasion I blurt something out) because they just yell at me. Trevor, again, is the exception - he just grows quiet, and then so do I. We sit in silence together as I gather up the strength to drop the subject entirely before someone gets mad. He grows weary of this topic, I know. Yesterday, while shopping for Troy's 16th Birthday present, I found myself passing a mall employee - who could easily have been Kat, maybe 7 years ago. The nose, the dark wavy hair pulled back, the small set line of her mouth, the way she looked at me...I felt hot, suffocated, and made a beeline for the car so I could distract myself somewhere else. I hate how it happens like that - out of the blue. Makes me feel like I'm crazy. Last night I had a dream that I was in a golf tournament and, though I was in a group of 'new players', I felt utterly panicked because I had never played before. I entered a building and everything turned to glow in the dark mini-golf. My life is like that now, sudden panic to sudden calm. Mostly it's just leftover adrenaline from work. Looks like I've been bringing that high home with me lately. I painted the spare (baby) room a luxurious green last week (in my mind I've already decorated). Baby steps, Sam. Trevor seems just as afraid as I am but we hide it from each other well. I think I just know him better. I wonder if, after all this trying to get pregnant, we will finally find ourselves parents...and I will have a perfect combination of the two of us (more him than me) to love just as much. Maybe then the fear will ebb, just a little. I can hope for that too. Trevor is the source of all that I need daily. My muse, but also my grounding wire. Amy is that too, to a lesser extent, and it's nice to need her so much again. When she called to tease me about the old high school notes she'd found (that I'd carefully folded, just so), laughter came easily. These days I cling to our old friendship. Amy, who knows my limitations and loves me for them. We struggle together to know ourselves better; my little secrets don't seem so bad when I tell her. 080909 what's it to you? who go blather from