i'm falling back to the origins of how i came to be here, when i first began writing online (to the world), and so many memories are just swirling all around me.
it seemed such a monumental, if not vital time in my life.
i was 28 and feeling fine. never knew that the future held such darkness.
i look at this, mesmerized and perplexed.
it was the calm before the storm. and even in the storm, there were some lovely moments, moments where i would've gladly been taken down to drown inside of these feelings.
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this is about me.
this is who brought me here.
i was scarlet beautiful, in the windy city.
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some piece of me still lingers- trapped between past and present.
you can change names, change landscapes but the soul still remains the same.
this is a part of me that has never faded or been swept away.
sometimes, i am still that girl.
lost in 1999.
http://www.playlist.com/playlist/12692454923/standalone
(my memories are everything to me.
i can still taste it all.
feel it in my heart, in my soul)
me in chicago- the windy city- december of 1999
(soulblueprint)
the story previous to this was scanned + uploaded online to share in this entry and was written by a good friend (penpal) i've had since i was a teenager. we met by way of a music fan club and were friends thru out all these years. he originally lived in pennsylvania and i, in florida. we continued to remain in touch even after i had married for the first time back in 1996 and had moved to the city of chicago to reside and attend the university of illinois.
during this time, our contact was sporadic. one day he wrote me via snail mail. i had not bought my first computer yet. this was shortly before i began writing on an online diary and during a time when online diaries and blogging was new, not really popular, and it was kind of looked down (only the lonely introverted nerdy or unpopular people were into it. it was not seen as cool) and i remember when i first tried to explain it to most people in the outer world in my real life- i was looked at kind of strangely and most really didn't understand or get the appeal of online writing, writing for an audience and people you had never met, connecting, making friends with strangers around the world but it felt right and natural to me and i embraced it. i loved it and thrived on it.
today, i still write but am a lot more reserved since then. the online world of diary writing has changed a lot. back then you could trust anyone. almost. nowadays you cannot afford to be naive or get too immersed otherwise you lose track of the real world and yourself.
i don't allow myself to take that plunge anymore. it's really not healthy but it is a vital part of my life, writing online and sharing - connecting with others around the world. i'm just more cautious.
anyway, it was my penpal/friend who had discovered a particular diary site on the net, one of the first out in the late 90's and it was him who told me about it in hopes of bridging some gap between us and establishing a closer friendship, i suppose. he gave me his diary name and i found myself lost in a new exciting world of words and writers, a place that was foreign to me but felt natural. i had always been a writer ever since a child and had kept journals upon journals all thru my life. i was between 27 And 28. it was the end of summer 1999.
in the beginning of joining the online diary site for my friend- i vowed to only read him and maybe make a name so i could communicate with him. i never envisioned being able to step out in front of a world of strangers which i admit was somewhat intimidating and scary but exciting. i never knew i would want to share everything that was a part of and inside of me in this new world but it would not be long before i would.
but then it happened. i couldn't resist and i created my name on this site and became very well known and developed a large following - many new friends and people who really cared about and loved me despite the fact that i was a stranger and we'd never met. you see, for me this was a godsend. someone so isolated in her real life and without much attachment or connection around her [other than husband and brother] and so it felt right indeed, perfect, just what i needed.
in the beginning, it was cathartic, euphoric and i was growing, expanding my horizons. it wouldn't take long before i got so caught up into it, that i was wandering, lost and falling into the arms of another man thru his writing even though i fought it and even though i was married [this earlier story is told thru bits and pieces in this entire diary ] and to elaborate would take days on end because it is far too complicated.
my penpal was someone i felt extremely close to and i believed he felt the same. he does still write but its strange in that, ive felt for years now that he didnt' really want me to have any access to his diary and up til last year, i had been on his "friend" list but unable to see his favorite entries. he then must have changed it to fave only which was a list i was not on and i began to notice i could not longer even get in the diary period. it was humiliating to say the least and it goes a bit deeper than this. maybe he feels too vulnerable to me or doesnt want me to know parts of his life. it hurts in some way but i'm not one to want to make a scene or ask someone to explain their rejection of me so i've kept quiet.
he now lives in the same state as i do and i've seen him a number of times over the last five yrs where we'd get together but its been quite a while since i last saw him and he has become more and more distant. always promising to meet up but never coming thru or keeping his word. he will be at my wedding. this november. i've probably known him for at least twenty years and we've always remained close even when distance is thrown b/t us, even if it was his own doing. he's always been mysterious in that sometimes i never knew what he was really thinking, what was truth, and what was really going on- today it is mainly that he has almost become a stranger to me and i'm not really sure why he has become so evasive but it bothers me.
(us in 1999 when we got together during summer vacation)
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above is the portrait he mentions at the end of that entry (of me with a story attached). the one he gave me at disney when we met when i was nineteen yrs old. he had it made for me based on my sr highschool picture. it's always been one of my most treasured pieces in every place i have lived. today, my friend is a writer and teaches drama in high school.
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A PORTRAIT OF APRIL
Rendaldo staggered into the restaurant just after the lunch-hour rush. He was a towering black man wearing ruinous denims and a Pittsburgh Steelers jacket. Under his arm he carried a sketchpad and a box of pastel chalks. His hands were smeared with a rainbow of colors.
"You, I want to do your portrait," the man said to me. His eyes were red with drunkenness, and he smelled awful. I had seen his work, however, and he was quite talented considering the amount of wine he consumed each morning. He slept on the grass by the creek on those nights he wasn't in jail for public inebriation. A colorful man, to say the least. But I didn't want to have my portrait made. "What is your sign?" he asked me then. I said, "Capricorn." He replied, "You, you were born on the twenty-fifth of the month." He was right, and I was hooked. I dug through my wallet and said, "Could you make a portrait from a photo?" He jumped at the chance, then pointed at one of the pictures. "Her," he said. "I want to draw her." I looked at the photo of April and smiled faintly, then passed it to the man, along with my last six dollars.
As he drew, he spoke to me of alcohol and policemen and drug testing and women. He looked at April's photo once again and said, "Asian women are the most beautiful. She is Filipino, isn't she. Yes. She looks like that beautiful girl, whose father, oh whose father...the Vienam girl, the actress..." For a moment he was silent, but continued drawing. "Jane Fonda," he said finally. "A Filipino Jane Fonda, with such blue eyes."
He spoke of a foreign phrase, then smiled a spacy grin. "She said that to me as I left. The girl I knew in the Philippines. She said it meant, 'Where are you going? Where are you going?' I told her I was going back to my ship because we were done. A woman wants a man who will stay after the fact, but the man wants to play pool, be with his friends. A man says, 'I'm going to play ball,' and a woman cries when heleaves. But the man thinks about her. He remembers the glory of the moment when it happened. He always thinks, 'When will it happen again?' You never know. Next month? Tomorrow? The anticipation is what it is all about. Me, I am fifty years old. I have my art."
Fifteen minutes had passed by as he talked and drew. He said, "I see that cross around your neck. I know. God wants us to be sober, Jim, so that we won't forget his laws. That's the sin: not the drunkenness, but the forgetfulness. The trick is to remember the laws even when you're drinking. Four dollars a bottle, and it barely made meforget." Then he said, "I am finished. She is beautiful. And you are lucky to have her. He handed me the sketch, and I examined it for a moment. "I've never even met her," I admitted. He replied, "She's the saddest girl you'll ever know."
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(haunted by the presence of the things i miss)
the above nostalgia comes from a recent trip i had taken to my parent's storage unit about an hour away from where i live to try to start sorting thru my belongings, mementos, and sentimentals that i had long stored away when i was forced to leave chicago in 2001. when i was forced to leave- i was unable to bring those things with me. i was forced to fit into a suitcase and carry on bag, favorite clothes and only my most favorite things of makeup/perfume/cds/books/magazines/personal letters/poems/dvds/ and everything u can imagine. my journals. photos. photo albums. childhood things. my life of 29 yrs.
when i had to leave, unexpectedly and with not much warning or time to organize my thoughts and belongings- i could barely take anything and everything else was left to sit in storage out of state in chicago. it would be 3 yrs before my parents could arrange for a way for me to get all of my things from chicago moved back to the state i was now a permanet resident of- florida [where i'd been forced to move back to due to abandonment].
it wasn't until october 2005 that we were able to do this and then these things were promptly put into storage. there was so much and it was so disorganized and thrown together hastily in unmarked boxes that i could never go thru it all as it overwhelmed me so and i had so many mental issues going on and chaotic relations to keep me from focusing on getting it done. it had been hastily packed when i was forced to flee my apt with parents help as i was abandoned by my first husband out of the blue [now ex.] and my parents had to come and rescue me. it was the ultimate hysteria. i had no time to think when packing, when running. no time to be organized so everything was dishelved. and shoved into a storage unit in chicago where it would sit there in dust for years.
i've been living with my fiance (who i am to marry next month) for approx two yrs now [give or take] and so that hasn't lend itself much time to try to sort out this storage unit of my life that is a far drive from where we live, humongous in amount of what is there, not to mention i kind of am limited to when i can go there and sort thru things because: the storage unit closes at seven pm, we don't get out there much, a lot of it needs to be sorted apart from my fiance since alot from previous marriage is in there and i feel it would make him uncomfortable + three- my mom is currently using the place my stuff is at to also store her things in there and since i've last gone, she's put so much stuff in there that it is hard to figure out where my stuff is as none of it was really labeled or organized in any sort of way. that makes it unbelievably overwhelming for me to sort thru anything and the dust is something i can barely tolerate. not to mention there is no air and the times i tend to go there are during the summer heated days when it is barely bearable!
so recently one wkend when my fiance went to a game with my brother since im anti-sports, my mom and i took a trip to the storage and i brought back a few boxes which i took home to our place. i started sorting it on friday and had found a few folders in a box/ notebooks from UIC, some of it was stuffed with nostalgic writings i'd printed from my first online diary (elsewhere - not here) when i first joined in 1999. there were papers and emails from past online diary friends which happened to be around a monumental time in my life when i was going thru a lot and centered around relationships and chaos.
there were many other things in the folder from around the late 90's to the start of a new century (the 2000's) that i still find deeply sentimental today..like when i first made a website tribute to lola rennt, run lola run- the submission to geocities and acceptance letter and a million fan letters written to me in regard to my website. all of this was so moving it brought me back to that place that i visit often in my head- nostalgia induced memories that both sadden me and warm my heart- make me long for those days simultaneously. i was so excited and happy to find these few treasures, they were like hidden gems that just lit me up inside.
what can i say? i am probably one of the most nostalgic people i know. my fiance doesn't really get this as it seems he isn't the way i am, about writing, sentimental stuff, memories and mementos packed away. i doubt he gets it. i tried to share the scarlet beautiful piece with him last nite just cos i wanted to share a piece of the girl i was and my heart. i think it was a mistake though. the romantic wording and leaning in that piece probably made him uncomfortable which was totally not my true intention.
i only shared it cos this friend and i never had any romantic relationship let alone physical relat. but i guess i can understand his apprehension or unsettled feelings since i am way more jealous than him and would be enraged if he showed me anything hinting towards him of love, crush, or desire from another girl. i guess that was not a good choice but he just doesn't seem to become jealous easily and i wanted to share an important vital part of my past. too deep for words. but maybe i shouldn't have.
i asked my fiance if it made him uncomfortable and he said it didn't but when i asked what he thought he kinda shrugged shoulders and said it was, OK. that made me think he could care less about my sharing, was bored, OR was bothered by what i shared. i don't know what else to make of such indifference but i felt kind of annoyed at him. i guess i know better to share anything in my heart like that again.
it makes me sad that i cannot share with jimmy the way i would've shared with my exhus. as that was the kind of relationship i had during my first marriage. my ex even wrote on the diary site and we both read each other, and had mutual diarist friends. jimmy doesn't read my diary and has no interest in that sort of "thing". i guess its good to have my own private outlet away from the relationship and maybe that kind of separation is healthier but i really miss having a partner who gets the whole diary thing, is interested and into it. and its hard for me in some way since all the guys in my past relationships wrote online and read my online stuff as well. this is the only person i've been with who isn't into that sort of thing and has no interest/time to read the things i write.
it makes me sad that i can't share with jimmy the way i would've shared in my past relationships but he is just very different than anyone i've ever known. my ex-husband was open to my past and allowed me to share everything. i hate to admit it but i often miss that quality. i love jimmy but i often wish he would be more open (sharing) and allow me to be my total self. my ex was the one who truly allowed me to be myself one hundred percent. i realize now its a rare quality that i assumed anyone i had a relationship or married would give me.
