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Looking in my inbox tonight for the first time in a week or two, I see a bunch of spam, lots of mail about baby stuff, and about 300 lbs of “Fwd”s. Haha I made a funny joke once, when my good friend Steph sent me a forward and I replied back with REMOVE in the subject line, like she was unsolicited spam. haha. Yeah, it was pretty cool.

I just want everyone to know that it’s okay to not forward every piece of email that comes your way. Really, it’s okay. No one will die if you delete that message and not send it along to all the email addresses you have.

Oh that reminds me of a funny skit I saw on SNL the other night, the one about the Spammies, an awards show ceremony where they gave awards to email spams, including one about forwarding. Hahaha. Yeah, it was pretty funny.

So there are about a million people I need to reply to right now, but I am on DIALUP right now and if I had to choose between walking around naked in front of a bunch of judgmental assholes or doing internety things on dialup, it would be a very very tough choice. Of course, I would choose dialup, but only just barely. only just barely. my email is particularly painful on dialup, so give me a few days before you start getting mad that I took the time to play on loafe and not write you back. besides, I am embarrassed that I am on dialup so quit making me feel bad about it. jeez louise.

and I have to say that I really think there is something to this whole trying to bring in joy and banish shame and anger thing. It certainly isn’t easy, this world is overflowing with people I can’t stand, people so worthy of rage and annoyance and hatred; so few things exist worth my love and kindness and understanding. But the point here is I’m trying, I’m trying real hard, and it seems that the more I let go of the bad, the better life gets. The easier it becomes. The happier I feel. It works, that’s what I’m trying to say. It works. The more effort I put out, the better I feel. And even the effort gets easier. Sitting in the worst traffic in the world, surrounded by stupid morons on their stupid phones drinking their stupid coffee and thinking their stupid thoughts, instead of paying attention to driving, instead of doing the one thing they are in their effing cars to do, only makes me slightly crazy now instead of full-blown, fire-spitting, head-pounding psychotic, like before. I still hate them, but just not as much, not as intensely. You should all give it a try.

I am making pies tomorrow for Thanksgiving and I am looking forward to it, because I like pies. I like making and baking pies and I like eating pies and I like saying the word pies and I even like to spell pies. P-I-E-S. I know one or two people who don’t like pie and I am fairly certain they are not of this world. It’s unearthly to not like pies.

I hope you all have a lovely loafey Thanksgiving with lots of pies and no traffic jams, dialup hell or email fowards.

And while I’ll be eating turkey in Boston, I’ll be dreaming of San Carlos.

I would like to take this moment to welcome the newly minted and freshly married V. & A. the sun shines brighter for you two now. happy wedding and happy togetherness, as long as you both shall live.

or find someone else anyway.

hahah, just kidding!!

I wish I could have been there, but I was too busy sabotaging my and my family’s lives. thank god I am terrible at finishing my projects, otherwise who knows where I’d be right now. Maybe shooting up heroin while ryland holds my crack pipe for me. But I am sure it was a gorgeous time with gorgeous happenings and my spirit was there. I wish you guys the best.

We all have a certain vision of ourselves, both inside and out. Sometimes that vision matches up quite nicely with what the outside world sees and sometimes it doesn’t. For me, it happens a lot. 9 times out of 10, when I see a picture of myself it looks nothing like how I see myself. When I hear my recorded voice played back, I sound stupid, immature and annoying, not at all like the voice I hear in my own head when I talk. And as far as my personality and behavior? Well, let’s just say that I am pretty much completely wrong about who I think I am vs who other people think I am.

Here are some of the things that were said about me this past weekend: that I’m super defensive, highly sensitive and impulsive, I have an extreme need for validation, I am childish, I am overbearing, I am competitive, I am misguided and I lead Gordon astray. These were said by different people and in different situations, but I started thinking about it. I would agree with a few of those descriptions. I am definitely sensitive and impulsive and competitive. But I never ever ever saw myself as defensive, overbearing or misguided. I can be childish at times. And as far as leading Gordon astray? Well, if keeping someone from living a life of complete worthlessness is leading him astray, then I suppose I’m guilty. The need for validation…hmm, I would probably have to agree with that and it makes me sick to my stomach that I’m so frigging weak.

When people say things about me (well, BAD things), I obsess. So for the past two days, I’ve been full of hate for myself, for being all those awful things, and more. I kept saying, “you disgust me christa. you are a terrible horrible pitiful mother, you make all the wrong choices for yourself and for ryland you’re selfish and worthless and hopeless. you can’t do anything right. you’re 31 and you live the life of shit. SHIT! just go crawl into a corner and disappear so the rest of world can finally forget you ever existed.” oh yes, I can be quite harsh and beautifully melodramatic with myself, let me tell you.

Don’t fret though, as there is hope. Cause see, in the past 12 hours or so, I began to feel a shift. I have wasted so much of my life trying to please other people and fix what everyone else says is broke. I have abused myself and hated myself for what other people think, for how other people see me, for other people’s benefit. Always for someone else. I was already feeling very anti-christa, and these recent experiences could have easily pushed me deeper down the hole. In another time, that might have happened.

But not now. I just don’t want to do that anymore, I don’t want to pick myself apart. I want to love christa. I want to give her a chance. It sounds super cheesy, I know, but it’s true.

So I decided to do some forgiving.

First, I forgave myself for a) being all those things (and worse) that people described of me and b) for letting what other people think and believe shred my self-esteem. We are all a lot of good and bad, all of us. We all have opinions. We all have reasons and histories and coping mechanisms. We all have our sacks of heavy rocks. And when you try to please everyone, you only hurt yourself. I will never ever be what other people want. I can only be christa, nothing more nothing less. It’s up to me to decide my path and the way I walk it. It’s up to me. I can live my life with strength and dignity and pride and hold my head high, even when I’m making mistakes. Or I can continue to let the bastards grind me down (thanks U2). it’s really true, what all those lame self-help books say. You can’t change other people or their behavior, you can only change how they affect you. It’s so simple and cliche and so very very true. There is enough hardships and battles in this world to overcome, hating myself is one I don’t need or want.

Second, I also need to forgive those who’ve hurt me, now and in the past. No one has it easy and the only way I can survive is to forgive. This 2nd part is going to be a little harder, but it’s equally as important. I’m going to forgive you, I promise. Just give me time.

So tonight loafe, I make a vow. I make a vow to actively seek joy and love in all its many forms and to push out the shame, be done with the whole lousy business of it. I’ll let other people stress and worry and kill their souls with their anger and resentment. Tonight, I welcome all of mother universe. I will let her embrace me whole and true, as she is me and I am her.

There was this boy I knew once in high school, someone who was just the sweetest, saddest song you’ve ever seen, and I loved him. I had my share of silly high school crushes, the “oh my god, he’s so cute I love him forever” kind. This was different. It was a high, aching love that you feel for the intangible, the untouchable, the dreamy and free, a love from the cosmos itself. Sensual and kindred, not sexual and romantic. It’s hard to distinguish the two, especially when you’re a kid, but I saw that spark in him and I knew he was different. He was beyond it all, even when he was being nothing more than a high school boy. He wrote something in my yearbook my senior year and maybe he wrote it for everyone and maybe he didn’t, but it doesn’t matter. What he said has always stayed with me because it embodied everything I believed in, and still do. It’s how I’ve tried to live my life, but I realize now I only did it half-way, I only dedicated parts of me, not all of me. I’m not going to say what he wrote because it belongs to me, but I will tell you that I am all in now. All in.

Your choices were divine girls, I love the poems. This one is my favorite. I am almost positive I’ve posted it before, but it’s so good it deserves another post. And being able to read pablo neruda’s poems in the native form is one of the main reasons I’m pursuing Spanish at school. Well that and the whole “I’m a mexican” thing. This translation by the way is done by a teacher of mine from Emerson, who also wrote the book “half the house” which was an amazing book that I’ve mentioned before and I think the whole world should read.

I always wondered what this poem might be like translated by a different person, but I haven’t been able to find it anywhere else. I want the original Spanish version.

Anyway, here it is:

Don’t Ask Me
by Pablo Neruda (tr. R Hoffman)

My heart is worn out
with knowing so many things,
as if I were lugging rocks
of different sizes in a sack,
or as if rain is falling
ceaselessly in my memory.

Don’t ask me.
I don’t know what to say.
I have no idea what happened.

Nobody else knew either,
so I kept going, in a fog,
convincing myself that nothing had occurred,
looking for fruit in the streets,
ideas in the fields,
and I came to the conclusion
everyone was right–
I have been asleep too long.

So let them go ahead and load me down,
not only rocks this time but shadows, too,
and not only shadows but blood.

So that’s how things are with me, boy,
but they’re also not like that at all
because, in spite of everything, I’m alive,
my health is excellent,
both my fingernails and my soul are still growing,
I come and go across frontiers,
make claims, take readings, get my bearings.
If they want to know more,
I get confused about where I’ve been,
But if they think they hear grief’s howl
Around my house, they’re wrong.
Love is clear weather,
Weeping is time wasted.

So, about what I remember
and about what I don’t,
about what I know and used to know,
and all I’ve forgotten
of what is by now long gone,
about the dead, who never heard from me,
and wanted, maybe, to see me,
they had best not ask. Instead

let them put a hand here on my vest
and they’ll feel me trembling,
a big sack of heavy rocks.