Everything is on hold. Everything!
Okay, not really. But it feels like it.
I'm taking my road test tomorrow, and I have a lesson tonight, and i've had a lot of lessons in the past week, so i'm poor right now. And i bought a table and chairs that my neighbor down the street had for sale, so i'm even poorer. (The table, however, is wonderful. now, if only i had a tall, skinny bookcase...)
And i'm all nervous about my test, which is why I sound all scattered and distracted.
To calm myself, i am going to make a list of what i will do to my house when my financial situation ceases to suck:
I am going to purchase a tall, skinny bookcase for the kitchen that will go on the wall that the table is now against. I will move the stuff from the current bookcase (canned goods and cookbooks) to this bookcase, move the current bookcase to the living room, and put all of the extra books i have now onto it.
I am going to stain the bookcase that will go into the living room some color other than unfinished pine.
I am going to paint the bookcase that's sitting uselessly downstairs a color other than ugly pink and put it someplace in the media room. i think. I'm not actually sure yet.
I am going to Do Things to the upstairs bathroom. I will start with a couple more bath sheets and a shelf-thing to put over the toilet. I will then get some more rugs to put on the floor, some dried flowers to put over the mirror, a picture to put on the wall, and, yes, a fuzzy toilet seat cover. I will get smelly candles and I will take down the now-useless curtian over the window. (My wonderful landlady installed a frosted window in the bathroom when she did new windows this year.) My inspiration from this comes from Tess, who did something similar to her bathroom recently and caused me to yearn for my own Wonderful Bathroom Space.
I need to figure out what I'm going to do with the Mac in the living room. It may go into my bedroom, or just plain away if i can't get it to recognize the fact that it has an AAUI port. Originally, it was going to be the Madstop public access terminal, but that may not work out.
I need a scanner and a printer for Bach (the NT machine).
I will purchase two new servers--one for home, and one for the co-op. The machine at the co-op will become the new primary Web server, with Crab becoming a backup. The home box will be for certian high-bandwidth stuff i don't want to do at the co-op--a streaming server, Shoutcast, leaving the cam on more.
I need to buy Sister Soleil CDs.
Other things i will do:
I will clean out the storage area downstairs. It needs it, badly. I may also buy shelves so things can be organized.
I will call an insurance agent.
I will, if I pass my test tomorrow, treat myself to a Dove Bar.
You cannot have me.
I lived in terror of you; terror that you were going to swallow me up, terror that by giving you permission to take care of things for me i was giving you permission to run my personality over with yours. I was afraid that if i gave you permission to change one thing about me that you would certianly wish to change the rest.
And you did.
And then everything happened.
And i came through broken and limping, torn from limb to limb, licking the blood off of my arms and staring into the crevasse that my life had become.
But then i put myself back together, better than before. i can say i needed you to shake me up, to break me down so I could build myself back up again. I can say that I knew what i was doing when I got involved with you, even if it was subconcious.
Or i can say that I was drawn to you as I am drawn to knives, fire, tall buildings and dangerous substances; the desire to submit myself to experience so completely that I can do things i know are extremely dangerous without a second thought. Or the belief that I am only real when i am hurting.
But now, healed, I can tell you that you cannot have me. There are scars across those old desires, there are openings in my emotions that are shut forever. And it is a good thing. I wanted to know what it was like to love by another's terms alone; now i know and it's nothing I want to do again.
And in healing, i have thrown you out of my heart and mind. I don't even think of you much any more, except when a friend mentions you. You were a lesson i've learned, and the lesson is this:
You cannot have me, even now, even over a year later. I have reduced your power, which existed only in my own mind, to nothing.
You cannot have me.
I am free.
Anne, with her father, is out in the boat
riding the water
riding the waves on the sea
