"I saw that going better in my mind"

If I had a nickel for every time I've said that I'd be pretty fucking rich. It's not even so much related to dumb shit I've done, though there's been plenty of that. It's more, I'm a past dweller. I guess being a writer, I spend a lot of time looking back at my life, drawing inspiration for my writing, glossing over the truly painful to shape and polish my experiences into something someone somewhere may want to consume. Since that's not looking likely, I'm now just reviewing some of myself to determine how I wound up spending the summer of 2009 barely leaving the house, in pain almost constantly and planning for surgery over and over on my back.

I know the basics of how I got here. Move, job, lift, pain, return, heal. Along the way some miraculous things have occurred, but the emotional shift is a wholly different beast. Sometimes I'm sitting with Jon and I realize that the Erin he knows and loves is a completely different person from who I used to be. Or should I say from who I can be and try to hide.

Two years ago I was a force of nature. Occasionally I was a natural disaster, but mostly I was was a living breathing force that overpowered, destroyed and corrupted with beautiful nonchalance. It's the story I'm most desperate to tell, but really? I can't get it out. I never could. Maybe 2 years isn't enough time to heal. Let's face it, you know it's bad when you move away from home, suffer a heart break and still don't manage to feel anything fresher than 13 months away. I don't want to say that I didn't love anyone from August of 2007 until I met Jon in December of 2008, but the numbing freeze is quite possibly still thawing.

While I admit I love Jon with every fiber of my being, this isn't about him. This is about how I made the single biggest mistake of my life and spent a year trying to appease every one else so my intellectually manifested Karma would leave me to live a happy life. The amount of pain I subscribed to that years is impossible to measure. Not that I place blame, not anymore. But really, looking back, I think I put myself into situations that were both unhealthy and inappropriate to punish myself for losing what I cared most about. I wanted my soul black and blue from anyone else so that I could forget just how shattered my heart was. Did it work? No.

All it did was give me a years worth of bad decisions that I cringe over, thought they are admittedly less cringe worthy that the one that cast me into the downward spiral. So how do we weigh that? Looking back whats worse? A dozen stupid choices that cost me time, money pride and health? A few bad dates and gross me that I tried to give my heart to? Should I be more ashamed of the spiral or the fall over the edge of the cliff that precipitated it?

Is admitting my pain is my fault good enough? Is it enough that I take full and total responsibility for every ounce of pain in my life over those years or should I attribute some of the issues to people who had a hand in shoving the knives in my back? Should I despise the people who took advantage? Should I care if they feel bad for betrayal, lies and other things? Regardless, I don't. I'm an adult and I chose the path I took. I take responsibility for everything that happened to me. From the moment I turned around in Grant Park and looked at the sky line, I am responsible for every event that fell together like a grand jigsaw puzzle of anguish and conspired to turn me into a shadow of my former self.

I think that's what I resent most. That I couldn't fight 24 months of pain and come out as Airie. I couldn't maintain the schedule, finances, looks, figure and attitude I wore before that night. While that day started the free fall, it didn't encompass it so I can't blame my whole shatter on that day, though it is the bulk of the responsibility. I don't mind having gone through it. While there is pain, I have a platitude of good memories that occurred during that time. My problem is that those memories were made from my desperate and pathetic attempt to hide from the original mind numbing event. It was me trying to fight back, falling fully into a persona with no soul so that I could swallow [who'm I kidding, inhale] what was really bothering me. As life collapsed in on itself, I took solace in who I was, thinking it would live on as I hid in my head for several months.

It didn't work out that way. What happened is I feel like I've lost some fundamental, though flawed part of myself. I look at my life now, and really I wonder why I am unable to show that part of my personality to the people around me. Granted, Airie wasn't the easiest of women, but she wasn't all bad, regardless of what you've heard from those closest to me. In reality, if I was as bad as everyone claimed, why could none of them wait to be close to me?

It's a magnetism of sorts, the kind that draws people to great comedic tragedy. You may not have loved me, but you were compelled to follow me. When stars collapse in on themselves, few can resist the pull of gravity down with them. I think that why some of the weakest personalities tried the hardest. My collapse couldn't help capture me. It was some undefinable miasma of insanity that breathed life into the lamest of existences. You'd rather be attached to me in anyway that to stand your life on your own terms. I learned that lesson early.

I watched countless people flock to a select few just to be in the orbit we created for ourselves and we took horrific advantage of it. The meaner we were, the more we were loved. The less we paid attention the more the phones rang and the further out we pushed our cruelty the harder people fought for a piece of it.

In the end I can look back and admit that I was a monster, but I was fed and watered to grow into that by the very people who condemn me.

My secret? I'm really not the negative mess I'm accused of being. While I am fully guilty of all the pain I'm blamed for, I'm also a decent person. A month or so ago I stopped talking to someone I just couldn't bring myself to care about no matter how hard I tried. Since that moment, I've seen her rant and rave about how much better she is without negative people in her life and really, I can't image a better case of the pot calling the kettle black.

This is someone who never ceased trying to drag me and everyone else down with her. She's the sort who people just couldn't stand to be around because she does nothing but complain. There's no fun, there's no spirit, there's no life in her whatsoever. She may want to consider herself "sensitive" but in reality she's a desperate needy basket case who has no concept what it takes to be a friend. She is profoundly the lowest common denominator, the culmination of toxic behavior. She's someone who pulls the GLORIOUS card when she's dying inside.

Let me pause here and define the GLORIOUS card. On more than one occasion, I've had friends go through some sort of relationship disaster. Me, being incapable of EVER keeping my mouth shut, stepped up, acknowledged their pain and tried to be their, all the while lambasting their partners for the pain they were causing my friends. In every single situation I've had that friend turn on me. They take back their significant other and spend the next months broadcasting about how happy they are in their lives. They scream about how good everything is going, how GLORIOUS their lives are and how perfect said rotten bastard is now.

Eventually each and every one of those relationships have failed and my darling acquaintances have turned around and admitted they were using the power of positive thinking to will their lives into a better place. What they don't realize is how sad they sound in their false happiness. They don't understand that everyone around them can see right through their claims and while they can chant happiness at every turn, it's plainly obvious that overcompensation is a dead ringer for internal rot.

Anyways, back to former friend. Her having the gall to call me, "negative" really pissed me off since I put up with her shit for quite a while before I just got tired of her being in my life. I got tired of hiding from her phone calls and requests to hang out. I got tired of hearing her whine. In reality I'm not negative. I'm Airie. I sort of don't care about people who routinely return to abusive partners. I have no sympathy for girls who let me beat them, almost kill them and then spend months trying to win him back. I'm not the friend who will be by your side. I'm not made like that.

Maybe it's 10 years of Aimee. Maybe it's her brutal honesty in every aspect of my life that makes me unsympathetic to people around me who, basically, do dumb shit. Maybe it's having such a true and real friend that enables me to not give a shit about people outside the life I've secured. Granted, I have other friends and family I love intensely, but I don't need a new best friend. I don't need someone to grow in friendship with to the point we're blood sisters. I have that. I wouldn't trade one memory with Aimee for a million with someone else. I guess that's the price we pay in relationships.

My friendship with Aimee is much like my life with Jon. I'm so fulfilled with my life with them that I don't need a plethora of others to complete me. I've found the cream of the crop in my life and don't need to burden myself with the needs and wants of those who don't matter to me. That being said, maybe I was a bad friend to the aforementioned, but if I was, she deserved it and I couldn't give a shit less. I was a bad friend and apparently she was the loser who kept coming back. LOFL.

And that sums up the other half of myself. Greedy and self indulgent I was still a lot of fucking fun. I'm trying to get back to her. I'm trying to remember the Erin who loved her life, wrote and laughed with reckless abandon and ranted. I miss the Erin who could rant for 15 - 20 pages without fear and without stopping. I miss sitting down with a story idea and getting something on the page before I lost all desire.

In sad reality, I feel more like I've just gotten horribly lazy than lost my will to create. I think that's what scares me more than anything. I long to find the pleasures I had in the past. I don't want to miss out on telling a story that needs to be told, with all of the pain and brutality of living in included. I don't want to be reduced to blogging and note writing and be unable to find the completion that made me so happy when I finished the first book.

I miss my passions.