ceiphiedknight

If I could thank my ex-fiance for anything, it would be for making me brave.

He didn't do it on purpose. Oh, no. He never purposefully did anything kind. Any gifts or kind gestures I received were apologies for something horrible he had done.

But he did, unintentionally, make me brave.

I will never be one of those women you see on the news, taken advantage of by someone slightly smarter than they are. Someone who knows how to control and manipulate. No, because I question everything.

No one decides my fate but me.

I completely missed the deadline for LJ Idol yesterday, after fighting the good fight and just getting back into the main competition! Alas, I was too busy obsessing over ABC's Once Upon a Time. If you haven't seen this show yet, and you enjoy fairy tales (not just Disney, they make references to the Grimm stories, various nursery rhymes and all sorts of things) and if you enjoy shows that unfold over time (like LOST) then I can't recommend it enough.

I spent all weekend and all last night watching OUAT fan videos, starting a new fanfic, reading fanfic (mostly about my new OTP, Rumplestilskin/Belle) and compiling a Rumbelle fanmix of music while making Rumbelle graphics. Pathetic? Absolutely. But my mind often fixates on things like this, innocent things that make me happy, especially in very stressful times. And I've had a lot of stressful things going on lately.

Anyway, that's what happened! I honestly wish I had a better reason to give, but it is what it is.

If anyone got to "know" me through the competition and would like to remain friends, please feel free to add my real journal over at sensitivinferno since this one was made specifically for LJ Idol and will probably see little use now.

See you around!

Don't feel that you have to watch the video, but I thought it would complement this entry. Perhaps you'll feel interested enough to watch it at the end, once I've finished saying what I feel I have to say.

The song is called "80s Ladies" by K.T. Oslin, a former country music singer. I was only six years old when it came out in 1987, much too young to fully understand the video or the song's meaning. However, when I started middle school in 1993, I eventually formed a bond with two other girls, my best friends, and it became our song.

The song, which is about the friendship of three girls over the decades of their lives, became like a theme to us. We even decided which one of us was "pretty", which was "smart" and which was the "borderline fool" from the opening lines of the song. I was always the borderline fool.

We used to love to make home movies back in those innocent years, and we made our own music video to the song. The three of us were inseparable in that way. We thought it really meant something, this song about three friends staying together despite the ups and downs of life, or the distance between them.

But over the years, our circle of friends swelled to include others. What none of us ever expected was for our own feelings to shift, and for real life to include fights and the dissolution of some of our friendships.

I tried to hold on to the song, though. I can't really say why. Two different girls from high school became my best friends, and they are the two who have remained. For fifteen years, they have remained.

But those first two girls, the middle school girls...we're not friends anymore.

With one of them, it was simply a matter of losing touch and no longer having very much in common.

But with the other, there was a falling out of epic proportions. It literally hit me like a ton of bricks on the day I realized that we were no longer friends. And the funny part is, I was the one who ultimately made the decision. I decided that she had done something unforgivable. But it wasn't an easy decision, and I cried in my small apartment while clutching an old photo of all of us together. I'll never forget anything about that moment. The sunlight streaming through the blinds, the heat of the day.

Still, whenever I hear this song, though the songwriter lived her life during a different era, I can't help but think of them. Of her.

I love all of the friends I have now. I love the two girls who were in my wedding and who I still consider my best friends. But we never quite decided which of us was pretty, which was smart or which was the borderline fool.

Something tells me I would still be the fool.

I wanna end all this suffering
I do believe a second chance is coming
Love is a high wire act
Got to be an acrobat
And I know you can still be that...

- Don't Look Down, BBMak


It's hard to balace Real Life with what I want to be.

Although, it would probably be easier if I had the faintest idea of what it is I want to be.

I'm constantly torn between wanting to remain an irresponsible child who makes costumes and travels anywhere I want, and wanting to finally choose a career and maybe have a baby.

I think I would be a great mom, actually. For starters, I have an awesome "mom voice." Like the throaty, angry voice of a mom who is REALLY pissed about something. I yell at other people's kids all the time! It's just practice for the future, I say.

Most importantly, I would truly enjoy things like watching cartoons with them and taking them out to the newest Disney and Pixar films. I still have a really strong grasp on what it was like for me as a child, and I think that my own associations would make it easier for me to identify with them as they grow. I was an only child, but I was so creative and intelligent that to this day all of the things that meant a lot to me back then, all of the worlds I invented or took part in, still have a special place in my heart. I feel like games of pretend with my hypothetical child would be as easy as riding a bike.

But I think I'm still too selfish. I enjoy spending time with my husband and our pets. I enjoy being able to pick up and take off to another state if we feel like it. I also really enjoy sleep. Like, a lot.

Life isn't what I expected it to be. I'm still living in the same basic area where I was born and where I grew up, but it's not the same. The restaurant where my late Uncle used to take us to breakfast is gone now, replaced with a bank. There are huge overpasses where there used to just be stoplights. There are malls and apartments where there used to be woods.

I never expected this. But I also never expected to even entertain the idea of maybe being a mom someday. I don't think we'd be the kind of parents that would change, though. I think the kid would just be another adventure, another thing added to our lives. Added, not taken away.

I think I'm getting there. Slowly but surely.

We'll find the perfect balance. Someday.

Home.

They say it's where your heart is. Or where your family is. But I've never felt at home since my parents sold the house where I had spent twenty years of my life.

It was 2003, and I was in Philadelphia, so they decided there was no time like the present to sell the only home I'd ever known and move an hour West. They had their reasons, but I never got closure. I never got to say goodbye.

As such, I have a bit of an unhealthy fixation on my old house. Whenever I have a dream that takes place anywhere, it usually takes place in that house. My memories of every nook and cranny, of every pattern on the wallpaper, are so vivid and intense that I've often wondered if there is something legitimately wrong with me. After all, it's just a house. Just some wood and brick and mortar.

But it's so much more than that. To me, even to this day, it represents a life that I took for granted. That house is my anchor to peace. Within those walls, even when I was being an angsty teenager or pissed at my parents about one thing or another, I was at peace. It was my safe haven.

There has never been, and will never be, the perfect mixture of smells from the neighbor's garden wafting into my open bedroom window on a summer's night. There will never be the perfect pattern of light created by the rising sun in my East-facing bedroom.

A computer, a gift from my parents, sat in the corner of my room by the window. The desk was covered with cards and photos from my friends. A trashcan full of cream soda cans and jelly bean flavors that my best friend and I had deemed unacceptable sat nearby.

There will never again be the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of laughter from relatives long gone. On a Sunday morning, there will never again be the WMZQ Top Country Countdown blaring on the radio from the sunroom.

These were happier times as I padded downstairs, barefoot, excited to try and pick out each voice from the kitchen. Whether it was one of my Uncles, or my grandfather, it was always someone. I would turn that corner and be greeted with smiles and, often, the offer of a breakfast burrito brought by one of my late Uncles.

I will always have my memories. And, obviously, they are strong and unyielding. It would take a lot to make me forget the sights and smells of my home. It would be nearly impossible for me to forget all of the good times I've had there.

And yet, because that home now belongs to someone else and I will never again be allowed within the walls, I feel a sense of loss and longing that has never so much as ebbed after all of these years.

I have daydreams about pulling into the driveway, walking up to the door, and asking the current owners if I could possibly go take some charcoal prints of the initials written into the concrete of my dad's old workshop in the backyard. Many of my relatives who have passed since then helped him build that workshop, and when they poured the concrete floor they placed their initials just inside the door. I feel that it would be as valid of an excuse as any to set foot, however briefly, back on the property.

But I don't know if I have the guts, as they say. I don't know if I've reached that level of desperation.

But before too long, I may have to do something to get the closure I so desperately need. Especially before I finally leave Virginia behind, for good this time.

Posting my intentions to join Second Chance Idol!

I'd obviously heard of delayed reactions, but I'd never had one before. Or at least never one so delayed that it took a good sixteen hours to kick in.

But then, years ago, I went out and saw a little movie called Serenity which is based on the cult sci-fi show, Firefly. There is an absolutely senseless character death at one point, and I think I may have gone into shock. How silly, right? To be so upset over a fictional character!

I shook it off and went home. Slept the night away.

The next morning, I woke up in tears. I was literally sobbing over the loss of this fictional character, even though I had slept an entire night and thought I had put it behind me.

Delayed reaction at its finest.

The same thing is currently happening, which is why it's so fresh in my mind. I just watched the series finale of a show called Chuck, which has been my favorite almost since it first aired five years ago.

There are a lot of reasons to feel attached to a show like that. You get comfortable with the characters, so you feel an actual sense of loss when you can no longer watch them. For me, it's also an association with all of the things I've done, and all of the things that have changed in my life, over that five years.

I've been through three jobs since 2007. My best friend has moved five hours away. I've moved, myself. I bought my first new car. And this show...this silly show...was something I could count on through all of that.

I'm not weeping openly, as I've been telling everyone I would. I haven't popped open the Ben & Jerry's ice cream that I've been saving for just this moment.

I suspect that it'll hit me sometime tomorrow. Hopefully somewhere private.

At times like these, I wonder if I'm broken. My body is a sack of bones and blood, and it works the same as anyone else's sack of bones and blood...but there are parts that go deeper than that. The deep parts; the ones no one will ever be able to see, even if they cut out my heart, are the ones that I think are broken.

There's nothing wrong with being deeply moved by things, whether fictional or not. But why can't I just cry? When my mother called me nearly four years ago to tell me that my cousin Ricky had been killed in a work accident, I was quiet on the other end of the phone for a long time. My mother, hardly the most empathetic person I know, snapped at me that she thought I'd be more upset.

I was. She had just told me that my closest cousin, the kid who was like a brother to me when we were growing up, was dead. Yes, I was fucking upset.

But I didn't cry until the day of his funeral. I didn't cry until I got up and spoke heartfelt words about him, unrehearsed, and took my seat again.

I was just so tired of feeling. Five years earlier, we had pulled up to the same funeral home where my favorite Uncle, Ricky's father, had been given one of the most amazing services I've ever seen.

He'd been a local fire chief for thirty years, and Ricky had also been a firefighter. Most people in my family have been at one time or another.

When we pulled up to the same funeral home, and saw the same yellow fire truck with the big black bow and ribbons on the front...the truck that would carry my loved one, once again, to his final resting place...I couldn't feel anymore.

I've lost too much. So whether real or fictional, maybe I'll always just be delayed and broken.

There came a point where I cracked, and nothing could put me back together again.

Large brown eyes, shadowed by a curtain of chestnut hair, gazed out from behind the walls of the local tavern.

S'lanna rose and pressed her lithe body flush with the flickering shadows on the wall, hiding herself from the light coming from within the very tavern she stalked.

Drunken men were easy targets, and generally S'lanna thought better of her skills, but she was too tired and hungry to be picky. It was her exhaustion and growling belly that had brought her to The Singing Dwarf, one of the shadiest pubs in her home nation of Zirien.

Because, should her thievery ever go wrong, it was best to kill the lowly and unwanted dregs of society. They were less likely to be missed.

S'lanna waited in silence as the voices inside the tavern grew louder and more obnoxious. The lights began to fade as the voices swelled, and her first target stumbled out of the back door and into the alley.

He was at least a head shorter than S'lanna and reeked of cheap wine. His body swayed as he approached a rickety fence that served to cut the tavern's alley off from the main road. S'lanna watched in disgust as he lowered his pants.

Though, she had to admit, there was a positive spin to the situation. If he was having difficulty just taking a piss, robbing him would be almost too easy.

The thief removed a dagger from her belt, just as a precaution. It was a short blade, no more than twelve centimeters in length, with a handle made of finely carved bone. It fit perfectly in her small hand, and had slit more than one throat in the past.

She slowly approached her prey, blade at the ready, her thin fingers stretching toward the intoxicated man's coin purse...

“Excuse me, you there, what are you doing?”

S'lanna spun toward the male voice coming from the side of the tavern. Her target turned around, as well, stumbling a bit and sending urine flying into the fence.

The game was over before it had even begun. S'lanna whirled and muttered several words under her breath, much too softly for anyone to hear.

Holding her dagger close, the thief's body suddenly exploded into hundreds of tiny metal marbles. The marbles bounced a couple of times on the hard, cold ground and abruptly disappeared.

The drunkard blinked in confusion. The man who had interrupted the theft glared at the place where a tall, thin young woman had just been.

Longon hated thieves, but he hated sorcerers even more.

Whoever said, "words can never hurt you" must have been deaf, dumb or a bully.

From kindergarten until fifth grade, I attended the same school. I had the same friends, the same teachers and the same familiar routine. One of my parents would drive me to school in the morning, because my school was outside of the normal zoning area of my home. Therefore, no bus would pick me up. The reason for this was because, in the afternoon, I would take the bus from school to my grandma's house. She and my great-grandma were my caretakers for a large and important chunk of my childhood. They would watch me every evening, feed me dinner, and sometimes have me quite late into the night. That is why, for six years, I attended the school that was right across the street from my grandma's home, and not my own.

Unfortunately, around the time I was preparing to "graduate" from elementary school to middle school, my great-grandma suffered a very serious stroke that put her in long-term care at the hospital. She stayed there for years, until she passed away. She never got to go home again.

My grandma was with her day and night. She simply refused to leave her mother alone in that horrible place, and my grandma is the kind of person who needs to take care of people. She didn't trust the nurses to give my great-grandma the kind of care that she deserved. Because what she deserved was dignity and kindness, always.

This, however, put my parents in a lurch. Every afternoon they had to arrange for someone to pick me up from school and then transport me to the hospital for my grandma to watch me until my parents came to pick me up. Luckily, as an only child, I was always able to amuse myself. To this day I can recall the cedar smell from sitting inside the closet of my great-grandma's room, and I find elderly people incredibly enjoyable.

After fifth grade, my parents enrolled me into the middle school that was within the zoning area of my own home. That meant I would have to say goodbye to all of my childhood friends, and start at a school with a bunch of kids who had already known each other for six years, and did not know me.

On my first day of sixth grade, during gym class, I will never forget the first taste of bullying that I had ever had in my entire life.

We were doing jumping jacks when a boy named Andrew, who had been in several of my other classes that day due to our last names being alphabetically similar, turning to me and glared with burning eyes. No one had ever looked at me with such hatred and disdain. With no provocation that I was aware of, this boy growled at me, "You're my mortal enemy."

And thus began four years of torture.

Andrew was popular. He played junior varsity football and was generally well-liked by everyone. But for some reason, he hated me. He made fun of my glasses, my teeth and my nose. All of the traits that I had never before paid any attention to. At that time, I had a big gap in my two front teeth that would later need orthodontic treatment, but I had not even lost all of my baby teeth yet. I was berated daily for things I couldn't control, and I was eleven. I was called every name under the sun, compared to various barnyard animals and of course called the usual bullying favorites such as "four eyes" and "big nose." Frankly, I had never even noticed the bump in my nose from my German lineage until my classmates pointed it out. By the time I reached seventh grade, I wanted a nose job. I was twelve, and I wanted plastic surgery. That is wrong on so many levels, I can't even fathom what my mother must have thought when I brought it up to her.

Several specific incidents stick out in my mind. Once, in the seventh grade, a girl who was about three times my size grabbed a notebook that I used to write down dreams and poetry. She held it too high for me to reach, and began reading is aloud during science class. The teacher did nothing.

In the eighth grade, I had to sit next to a boy named Scott in Social Studies. He was best friends with Andrew, so of course I had to deal with his venom for the entire class. It was he who, somehow, got the entire class to start "mooing" at me, like a cow. Because my silly German surname contained a moo-like sound, I was often called "Cristi Moo-cow." But to have them actually making animal noises at me was a new low.

But then, in the hallways on the way back from lunch that same day, Scott and Andrew somehow got everyone in our grade to start doing it. Most of them may not have even known exactly why they were making cow noises, but I knew. I think that's what hurt the most, that all of my classmates were being cruel to me for no other reason than because the "cool kids" started it.

I got back to class in tears and buried my head in a book. I hoped that the worst of it was over. But then the Principal came on the loud speaker and announced to the entire school, "Students, please refrain from making animal noises in the hallways." Everyone in class turned to look right at me, and Scott led the class in laughter.

And he saw me cry, and he watched me burn, and he liked it.

Looking back, it's a wonder I never considered suicide. But that wasn't something children knew as much about back then as they do now. Plus, now I feel that children have a harder time escaping their bullies. Whereas I could just go home, now kids are followed by texts and Facebook and all manner of things. For me, summer vacation was a blessing on so many levels.

Things finally began to level out for me around tenth grade, but it took that long to find my footing. I made a small group of friends. I joined drama, choir and creative writing. I found kindred spirits and hung out with them while people like Scott and Andrew did their sports and stayed far away from me.

Still, I will never forget. Nor will I ever forgive. Youth and inexperience is no excuse for cruelty. There are many things I have forgiven in my life, and many people with whom bridges have been burned but I hold no ill will.

But if I ever run into Andrew again in my lifetime, he had better hope like hell that I don't break his face.

Since middle school, my dad has taught me how to throw a mean right hook.

When I was just twenty years old, I was engaged to a man who I thought I could "fix." When things were good, they were great! We had a lot in common, we laughed together and we got along swimmingly. But when things were bad, he was usually drunk or high. There was abuse of all kinds. Mental and emotional manipulation, fights that turned physical...pretty much everything your parents warn you about when you're a young woman going off on your own.

I had always thought I was too smart to let such drama into my life. But I'd never been in love before.

We became engaged, ironically, on April Fool's Day in 2002. I just knew that if we were married, we wouldn't fight anymore and things would be perfect. My best friend teased me about being a "child bride" but I didn't care. My plan was to marry within a year.

But how much a meager six months can change things.

A little under two months later, one of my best friends passed away from cancer at the age of twenty. The same age as me. It threw me into a spiral of what am I doing with me life? and am I truly happy?

The answers did not come easily. I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I was floundering around, counting on a man who was, frankly, not good enough for me. And, no, I was most decidedly not happy.

I was also falling in love with one of my closest friends.

I don't know how it happened, and it really doesn't matter. But by the time I'd turned twenty-one I had left my fiancé, moved back in with my parents (though very briefly) and was determined to "take it slow" with the man who saved me.

I fail at taking it slow. In a little over two months I was running away from all of my problems in Virginia and moving in with my new boyfriend and a house full of mates in Philadelphia, PA. I had no job prospects, I had a '97 Jeep Cherokee with over 100,000 miles on it, and I only had about two grand in my bank account because I'd paid off my ex-fiance with most of my savings to cover the lease I was skipping out on.

But I was young and in love, and I wanted to get away. My ex and I worked together, so I still had to see him every day. I felt like I was in a dead-end job anyway, and I was not where I wanted to be. It seemed easier to transplant myself and start over somewhere else. What I did not know at the time, and what I only know now in hindsight and having gained the wisdom that only a decade can bring, is that it doesn't matter where you go if you don't actually change who you are. Also, poor planning does not make for a better lifestyle.

Few people I know have ever been as poor as I was in Philadelphia. We're talking practically destitute. Once my savings ran out, there were days I went hungry because I had no other choice. I had a job, but it didn't pay me enough to live on. Once, I had to beg a roommate to split his personal-sized microwave pizza with me. Fun things like going out to dinner or a movie were absolutely out of the question. My cellphone got turned off. My boyfriend lost his car, so we were relying entirely on mine. Things were grim.

My boyfriend and I left Philadelphia in one night. We got a U-Haul truck, spent about fourteen hours loading it up, and drove the three hours home.

While I'd been gone, six months once again changed my entire world. My parents sold my childhood home, the home in which I'd spent twenty years of my life, and moved an hour west. It was their house and their decision to make, but I have severe abandonment issues in regards to that decision that I have never fully been able to shake. I'm still fixated on that house, and in my darkest hours I've even driven by there and cried.

So, even though we were out of Philadelphia, we were staying with my parents in their new house. I felt incredibly misplaced. Like I could never truly go home again, and it was my own fault.

As we enter 2012, we come upon the ten year anniversary of my sudden move up north. The reason this is significant is because my husband and I (the aforementioned boyfriend, so at least that part of the story worked out) have plans to move north once more. We once again find that there is nothing for us in Virginia, but for completely different reasons. There is nothing we're running from, except perhaps our own stagnation. The area in which we live is overpopulated, incredibly expensive, and so full of traffic that the county can't even keep up with widening the roadways. It takes me about 45 minutes to get to and from work...and I live 14 miles away.

We will never be able to afford a home here, because even in this buyers market everything in this area is overpriced. Our entire county is run by Republicans, and I feel as if we'll always be a conservative, backwards red state. There are simply too many things that my husband and I don't agree with.

So we're going to make a change. Later this year, a decade since our first adventure in leaving Virginia, we'll be heading up to Maryland.

Frankly, I'm terrified. Because despite the lessons I've learned over the years, and the wisdom and insight I feel that I've gained to prepare me this time, I'm obviously still a bit traumatized.

Things went so wrong ten years ago. Who's to say that they won't go wrong again?

But I have to try. Because I suppose that failing again and at least knowing that we tried will still be better than rotting here.

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat
Cause looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me...

-Shake It Out, Florence + The Machine