Puglet is Moving

Welcome to adventures in a nervous breakdown, 10 months in India, Love, anger, fighting, a nervous breakdown or two. But I'll be updating here, finally. Who knew it would happen..
So my latest batch finds me recuperationg from a nervous breakdown complete with hospitialazition..in the Indian mental health facilities is not exactly somewhere you want to be. BUt I'm out and recupperating and ready for season 2 of Amar and our restuarant, which we are thrilled about. Ok mostly him. I'm stressed because last year sucked big donkeys. But we're trying again. So if you're going to be in Palolem India and want to meet up, please email at frangipane.Tarlet@gmail.com

INDIA!!

(hyper pug circles)

stress stress stress

pant pant pant pant

On the plane in 9 hours, at the airport in 6!

Well, Then

I fell asleep in the MRI tubes today. I think I may have passed out from stress/lack of sleep, but I had a dream I was in India, and it was loud and buzzing.

My backpack is as full as possible. Now I have to clean the apartment. Or try. And beat my carryon to death.

They mislabeled me at the hospital at first, and looking at my bracelet I realized I was not a 41 year old male named Bert. I wonder what Bert was there for. I helped a woman next to me open her tasty barium shake and grimaced with her as she drank it. I pondered how it's been ages since I drank barium. I recall last time they wanted me to, and I shoved my hands under my armpits, clenched my jaw shut, and shook my head furiously. I think I may have blogged about that, sometime in 2005.

I sat in the backroom in my dinky gowns talking shop with the other scanees..cancer patients, MS patients, post surgical brainy type patients, and there was an impromptu scar show and tell. I practiced holding my breath, just because it kept me from crying.

I want a nap, but I have so much to do. I think my body needs to hibernate for a bit, to stop thinking.

*eep*

I am leaving soon. Wednesday night at 9:54 I board a plane first to Germany, then to Delhi, then to Guwahati, then Bagdogra. I've crammed my backpack full. I still have to deal with my carryon. And try and clean and pack up part of my apartment.

Today I went for my first of two MRIs, and was strapped in and slid in and out of the machine 4 times. It was broken, and I ws unstrapped and told to come in at 8 am and get both series done then. I was crying by slide three, because it was a reminder of all that has happened, all i seek to free myself from, and I was alone. My best friend had just gotten married and I'd left her, my other best friend is in NYC, and my friends here were not able to arrange a goodbye, and my parents are on vacation with my sister. So I am in the machine alone, and 31 years of my past life are slamming through my brain, and I'm overwhelmed with what I'm about to do.

take off a world away, with no one but AR to hold onto my hand if I offer it and try and guide me through parts. No firm plans, all possibilities. A life unlead, yet, perched on my back. I am terrified and excited and anxious and mourning and just a general whackadoodle. I am going to be in India by Friday..Thursday night for you folks here.

I'll step off the plane into roaring wet heat and sounds and smells and look around for that smiling face with the crinkled eyes waiting for me. I'll bucket in a hotel bathroom and climb into a hot bed with no bedding and try and nap away jetlag while AR locates mango juice or Limca. When I wake I'll spend hours talking and staring and renewing and remembering his face. We'll head outside and get rice and dal and I'll choke it diwn and spend three days vomiting. I'll look for internet cafes to send out emails. I'll sleep sticky wet sweat sleeps in bed and wash clothes in the sink. My feet will get dusty and dirty and the sun will make me weak and headachey.

I am so scared, so excited, so empty, so full and it's swirling in a jumbled knotted mess in my stomach.

I have to breathe. I have to cry. i have to shout and scream, alone in my house, with no family and no friends near. I have to prepare for everything I can't prepare for.

I am terrified. I am happy. I am a mess

Platypi

I kneaded bread dough yesterday for the first time since my head and neck were whacked open. It was done on a counter set to high for my height, and it wasn't easy. Yes, my bakers muscles are underused, but the strain and pain in my neck and shoulders was clearly a yelp from my poor seperated muscles and nerve fibers.

I don't think I'll EVER be able to bake again like I did. I think I might be ok with that, though. At most I could work part time in a kitchen where the tasks were varied. I don't think I'll ever be a bread baker..or anything where I worked my shoulders.

Atlas shrugged. He didn't have a chiari malformation.

I helped turn the dough into a hundred and thirty little birds with seasame seed eyes, a traditional Ukranian wedding treat. These birds were tied in tulle, and they nes now, waiting to be passed as favors. Some of them look like coiled cobras. Some like ducks. Some like turtles and snails, and most look like platypuses, not doves. Mine are fat bastards, proof that my muscle memory for intricate hand work has gone the way of my herniated cerebellum, as well.

Tonight lemons were grated for the cake I start tomorrow, three tiers of square cakes, lemon with a white chocolate mousse filling, soaked in a raspberry liquor syrup. I'll start baking tomorrow, split and fill and crumb coat the cakes Tuesday, let them chill, then Wednesday transport them to the theater where the wedding is and while the bride and groom to be hang and focus lighting, I'll be in the backstage area rolling fondant and storing the tiers in the beer fridge the techies use. Should be..interesting....?

I had dinner tonight with the grooms parents and brothers family..entertaining the usual questions. I know describe myself as an "ex" pastry chef, who did some work in India and is going back because life did a few hard transitions and my focus is shifting..into what, I don't know how to answer. How do I say I want to put naughty boys in headlocks and have them read me books, or that I want to work on safe drinking water for slum kids, or that I want to get my hands dirty in the trenches and stay out of offices and away from doctors and away from some ghost of myself, and that I wanted to be the wife of an Uber Shrink and my heart was broken and rebuilt and every definition of myself flew out the window and that some sort of universal shift happened and everything slammed into sharp focus and took my breath away? How do I explain AR and the temple in Goa and astrology charts and caste systems and vomiting nonstop for a month and that I want to go back?

I say instead when the questions are asked that I had some problems with my health, and that my priorities and needs are shifting, and I'm going back.

And the responses are still shocking to me, the quiet knowing smiles and nods. I don't expect these. I don't know what to do with them, especially when I feel like my story has so many holes. Perhaps part of it is these people tonight had just suddenly lost a daughter, a young mother, my age, with no warning. Perhaps they know somewhat that feeling of fleetingness and wanting something to be one, something to be whole.

Perhaps not.

I have 11 more days.

MMMMmmmmzzzzzzzz

I haven't been to Canada in ten years. Last time I was here I was performing a show that Bella and I had written together for the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit. Bella is my oldest friend, who I met while trying to escape my New Jersey musical theater roommate in NYC. I was sitting on a kitchen counter in the residential crackhouse/hotel we lived in on Broadway, smoking a cigarette, when she wandered in, looking to escape her Wisconsan musical theater loving roommate. We bonded and moved in together our second semester, as we both hated musical theater and were both prone to not only smoking but wearing black lipstick and dying our hair all colors of the rainbow.

So here I am, 13 years after we met, being maid of Horror at her wedding. I'm doing a shit job of it, as well, but I think thats okay. And I'm making the cake..at some point, and am about to make french toast, because I'm awake and no one else is.

I said goodbye to my parents for the last time when they drove me to the airport. Strangeness. Starting the traveling thing. More strangeness. Starting to feel that peacefulness descend..interspersed with some stress because AR is freaking out. He has managed to not join the faction of whatever faction he was being pressured to join, but his family is revisiting the arranged marriage thing again. So apparently I have been outed somewhat as the evil western slut girlfriend, and the neighbors and family are quite in an uproar over it. I don't know much Nepali or Bengali, but in one tinny phone conversation I could decipher enough of his non english speaking fathers rage to understand that I was being called some choice words.

Urgh. " She is not India" and that sets wheels in head spinning, and there are reminders that I am indeed not India, but I am familiar with power cuts and strikes and bandits and dal, even though I hate to eat it. I'm a half step up from a tourist, but that half step was an uncomfortable slam into bucketing reality. But it will be ok, as soon as ARs visions of my constantly walking on rose petal strewn immaculately clean floors in sub zero air conditioning pass. I'm a tough cookie. Sometimes.

I'm sleepy.

Phase 1

In one hour I leave for the airport to go to Canada to be maid of horror at my oldest friends wedding. Today is the last time I see my parents until I return from India ( get deported, quit, give up, come for a visit..god knows whats gonna happen with a ten year visa. Who decided to give me one of those anyway? Do they not KNOW me?). The 'rents will be on vacation with my sister and her husband, so I'll be freaking out alone. I come back to the US July 6th, have back to back MRIs July 7th and 8th, and leave for India July 9th..flying first to Germany, then Delhi, then Darjeeling provided the current Ghorka/bengali tensions ease, arriving July 11th. Of course, from Germany to Delhi I'm flying the abysmal Air India, so who knows if and when I'll actually arrive.

On the plus side, I'm smoking hot in my bridesmaid dress, probably because it's a goth/theater geek wedding, and the stipulation was "pick your own, and make it, like, black". Having dropped close to 40 pounds ( and gaining back ten eating Krishnas Poptarts and coconut pecan icing) I'm packed into that thing with thrust up cleavage and looking as refined as I'll likely be looking anytime in the next year, thinking cocktail dresses and living out of a backpack in monsoon sticky heat do not mix.

For my three days back home, besides the MRIs, I have to box up whatever I can to put in storage, make sure I'm as packed into my backpack as I can be, and just generally try to talk to AR as much as possible and not lose my passport.

Oy.

OY.

Bleary And Blurry

I fell asleep last night fueled by too many beers and with bits of coconut icing decorating my shirt and fingertips. Salvation came at the end of a phone as a friend let me howl and wail in decibels and words I'd forgotton I could reach. A precious and fragile long distance connection had broken yesterday and with a buzzing phone held in my hands I didn't know if there were trains being boarded, stained duffels being hoisted, men and boys who shared common ancestral blood piling on to protect someones ideal, someones homeland, someones spot within a larger country. Last thing he may have heard was me yelling " Ganesh is the remover of obstacles and he doesn't get a vacation!"

I yowled and drank beer and slammed cake pans into ovens and temper tantrumed by myself and over the phone with Stephany. I lost my vocabulary and wailed about things not being fair, never fair, that this beautiful beautiful person who'd held my hand and blown on my forehead when I had hiccups, who led me barefoot over hot stone steps into a temple flanked by bulls and garlands and coconuts, could possibly be lost to me forever. That this tenuous connection would snap and for all the bullshit about the world being connected, this western girl with her cell phone and computers and this Ghorka boy with a number memorized in his head would never be able to reconnect.

He said he would carry me in his heart and I told him to take his mystical Indian bullshit and shove it up his a**. I am American, I said. If you go away carrying my love and my memory with you I will scream as loud as I can until you hear it and my magic is stronger than yours. You knew it was trouble to love a Western girl and you yourself have said that I can embody part of Kali and the only way to stop my furies is to throw yourself in front of me. I said that is not Kali, that is a woman. And you said all women embody all of the Devi. And the phone crackled out.

Last night instead of severed human heads I smashed and separated eggs for my fathers birthday cake, wondering if my tears and fury would change the taste. Stephany called and told me "just cry" and instead of licking blood from my face with a forked Kali tongue I licked bits of coconut icing, and my cake stuck in the pans and I pried them out with a spatula instead of tearing someone limb from limb with my fear and fury. I am helpless in this fight, I can love one person but I cannot change blood or culture or family or religion.

This morning he called, and I lifted my sugar sticky face from the pillow and listened to him say he was not going to the hills, and his quiet tender voice slipped into Hindi as he talked about the last year, the months of work, the boss who left with the salaries, the father and uncles on the streets who'd shamed and shunned him and told him to at least be true to his blood and his land and restore the name to the family by doing something that had honor, that had money.

We will travel the hills when I come, but not those hills. We will see Everest from a distance and walk through mountain valleys and make our way through the desert and to the valley at the base of the Aravalli mountains where my Indian family and my kidlets are. And after that, I don't know.

Say What?

One of my goals on my..mm..not vacation I will shortly be going on is to write the crap outta anything I can write the crap outta. I'm going to flesh something out, something real. Of course it will be written on scraps of newspaper, most likely, but heh, it's a start. I've used this blog as adepository for many a thing, much of my life, sometimes a journal, sometimes a venting platform. I need to start a daily journal of sorts. I'll likely do some of it here, and sometimes I won't say much, because as much as I dump here, sometimes I can't, for whatever reason.

Thats my disclaimer for myself and for my readers. Because holy crap, theres some strangeness brewing. I alternate between feeling firmly planted and grounded in mundane everythings, and extraordinary everythings, but my head is whiplashing these days between my upcoming trip, being here at the moment, what happened this winter, the complexities of my past and present relationships.

Today I have to remember so I can write it later. Because today was the day worlds and cultures really collided and my brain came to a halt as I processed what I might be hearing, that AR might be going to the hills near his town and joining up with some sort of faction. There's all sorts of trouble brewing in West Bengal between the Ghorkas and Bengalis. There's quite a bit of military..offical and unoffical. There are groups of young men lured by promises of high pay saying goodbye and packing and leaving in the hours before I wrote this and in hours to come.

Where will you be in my life, AR? You are in tears over the conflict and over the money offered and the pressures of being the eldest and the only son in a family that you've tried so hard to escape but are so inextricably linked to. You are in tears because I can visit but I am not one with the soil there, my blood does not flow with centuries of tradition and tension, and though we were both birthed we were as separate and different and destined to different upbringings and chaos. Where do we meet in the middle, if we are to do so? Your mother who picks tea by hand on steep plantation hills, your father who has disowned you for fleeing a bride at age 14, yet a man you are still bound to by blood and religion and culture to try and provide for.

I don't know where I will stand with you, what I will see, or who you will ultimately become. There is a brief respite coming your way, and my way, too. You are my friend above anything else, and though with you by my side the universe started to make sense, and I started to listen to it, we are both just human. Both birthed by mothers. Both struggling, but in such different ways.

This is not what one thinks of when they hear " cultural differences".

Calm, Again

There is a calmness that descends when I can stop and think about going back, a wholeness and sameness that I'd managed to capture finally my last weeks in India. It's back now, and I can breathe again. Even with all the turmoil and chaos upcoming, and all the disjointedness here now. I rub my fingers across the stained gold edged picture of baby Krishna. I change out his pistachios for a packet of Frosted Poptarts. We have an understanding now. I feed him every so often and then eat the offerings for breakfast later. I am not Hindu. I don't know what I am. But being a blasphemous American, sharing breakfast pastries with a diety seems ok.

I stopped tonight after running haywire inside my apartment shoving clothes now 5 sizes to big into plastic bags to donate. I spoke to AR on the phone, and let it all tumble out, my overpacking and underpacking, worries about rioting and having no plans, logistics and itineraries and he reminded me to breathe. First you breathe. Then you be quiet. Then you listen to your songs and remember Ganesh around your neck. And then you freak out again tomorrow. And he told me about the quiet in his town because the military is still out, but thats good, because there are no burning cars right now. he told me about the cows in the road walking by, and I heard the strangely familiar bleating of baby goats running behind mothers to catch up. It's morning there, and i heard the crow of a ( bird flu carrying) rooster. I heard the coughing splutter of a two stroke tuk tuk motor starting up.

He asked me about my writing and I said it was a mess of messy stress right now. He quizzed me to see if I remembered how to swear in Hindi. We talked about our mutual hatred of Delhi and he told me about his friends wedding last week and how half the brass band was completely sloshed on Old Monk rum and how the CD during the street dancing procession had gotten stuck during a song from "Om Shanti Om". I laughed because I remembered listening to this in Udaipur when I was stuck in my own wedding procession, my hands grabbed and my body pulled into a mass of bright saris by women I didn't even know. I remember how I froze for a moment and then stuck in the crowd started swinging my hips and tossing my arms as women giggled and laughed at my attempts at Bhangra dancing. He told me about the weddings we would have to go to when I come.

I put a voice to my fears of traveling off the tourist circuit and the crap we would face as an Indian man and a white woman traveling together. I talked about how I would be scared and homesick and overwhelmed by dirt and cows and noise and smells and heat and food and how grumpy I would get. He reminded me he'd already witnessed a few flip outs of mine first hand. I reminded him that was only knowing me a short time and we would be at least traveling together for a few weeks, if not longer. He reminded me that green coconuts shut me up every time and said he would go back to temple and ask that I be given more patience and he be given an endless supply of coconuts. I got quiet and reminded myself that I'm going back because my footing is so unsure and I'm ready to blast out of my skin and into something else, anyway.

Breathing and breathing and breathing and breathing as I still stand on the edge of this and wait for the right moment to fall.

Freakout Update

For farts sake..when one is going way far away for an indeterminete amount of time to do things undetermined, it's kinda stressful, especially where packing is concerned. I can figure out that it'll be hot and wet for a few months, then hot and dry, but I dunno if I'm playing tourist or worker or hobo or vagabond or riot-dodger, all which seem to require different ensembles.

Then theres the matter of packing up the apartment, which will be rented out by the parental landlords, and how much NOT packing it up I can get away with.

Logistically, all the crap is done, for the most part..last vaccination is tomorrow, appointment with gastroenterologist because I'm having a Crohns flare ( of all things ) is Thursday, prescriptions are all filled mostly, MRIs are scheduled for the day BEFORE I leave for parts slightly known for things unknown for an amount of time who knows.

I have WAY too many clothes I'm taking, because all I do recall is that I could never have too much underwear or t-shirts or western style pants, and anything else I can get made. But I have way too many tops because what what what if I need them?

I still need a keg of Robitussin and a silo full of Immodium but thats easily taken care of. The danger in behaving like a backpacking bum who will have to be quite mobile yet be prepared for longish stints in various parts of the country means I want to travel with more than the bare basics but not too much..you'd think I'd have a better grasp on this this time around, but no, I don't. And I love all my bangles and pashminas, but how many pashminas do I take back and how many sets of bangles? I figure one set on my wrists and one packed, and two pashminas? Glorious as blankets and pillows on trains plus excellent for if it gets chilly..but which colors...argh.

I leave for Canada June 24th for a friends wedding in which I am maid of honor and cake maker, back late July 6th, MRIs on july 7th and 8th, leave the evening July 9th, arrive in either Delhi or darjeeling July 11th, depending on rioting situation, meet up with AR, and either set about exploring the Darjeeling hills ( no riots) or head to Manali (riots) or..er...argh....what..I...have..no...plans.......

Which is precisely the point, to have no plans and see what unfolds and where my head is at, but in the absence of an itinerary or ANYTHING other than the basic monetary needs to survive and a long term visa....I'M CLUELESSS! Which is the point, because I'm ALREADY clueless, but HOLY STRESSBUCKETS BATMAN I'm about to run off to India and have NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING!!!!!

I'm planning on doing an email list like last time, if you want to opt out, let me know, though they will likely be a bajillion times more amusing due to the lack of concrete plans and incessant travelling.

pant pant hyperventilate pant

On the good news side, Uber Shrink has not made contact since Friday, because I need no more incentive to run away from home than I already have. On the negative side, I'm so...UNGH with everything coming up I've pretty much stopped talking to everyone, because I can't handle it.

And thats my freakout for the moment.

Real Life, Interrupted

There are riots going on in Siliguri, Darjeeling. Curfews imposed as the Neplaese and the Bengalis fight. Of course, this is where AR currently is, and where I am to fly into. Will it be safe in a month? Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps we meet up in Delhi. I hate Delhi. Will he be safe, an Indian by birth and Nepali by blood? Maybe. Maybe not. I get a call tonight explaining the situation, as he heads out to do some work on a tea plantation.

It is somewhat nice to know that I have constant reminders I am not going on vacation. There were riots in Delhi recently, as well, as members of a lower caste rioted to achieve some government benefits available to the Dalits, or untouchables.

I spent a few months teaching English and insulated though I worked with very poor tribal communities. I traveled the "banana pancake" circuit laid out in the grossly misnamed Lonely Planet. But when I head back...oy..when I head back, reality is what reality is.

It has not been a good week. I know soon reality will shift and be redefined once again, and though so far away there is chaos not often seen here, I ache to get back to that kind of strangeness, that chaos in which I feel calmness, that place where I feel normalcy. But gimme a break. Just trying to balance out the strangeness of my abnormal yet normal American existence, with flare ups and MRIs and ex boyfriends who keep calling and being grumpy about it all, and then hearing about the issues happening in the place that in less than a month will be at least a temporary home, leaves me confused as how to process and sort it and compartmentalize it all.

So in the meantime, I think I will eat some raw chocolate chip cookie dough and have a beer and put some more anarchist punk music on my Ipod.

Shit already. You can't make this stuff up.

Ok, Afterall

Interesting few days. I'm slowing down and breathing after the events of late, and refocusing on whats ahead, and what's good about it. I was approved for a ten year visa for India..I have no idea if I'll even last a month during summer and monsoon, but rather than doing visa runs every 6 months and praying they get renewed, this is better. I still legally have to leave the country every 6 months and re-enter, but I don't have to worry about being denied re-entry. I can just hop over to Nepal or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh.

I'm vaccinated to the hilt and have enough western medicine to keep me going until I can manage the local health system better. I'm having lunch next week with a friend of my moms who is Bangladeshi and has NGO contacts galore, plus relatives and friends everywhere, and can even get me into the theater in Delhi if I choose to go back to acting, which I find hilarious. I have N acting as my guardian, which means he will be there if I ever need him, for anything. I have a guide and travel companion and translator of Hindi and Nepali and Bengali and Tamil and negotiator of everything in AR, and I have travel plans for the first few months to see the mountains and less explored areas of the country.

I have a new Ipod loaded up with music for all situations, because my Ipod was my lifeline when I was gone. It got me through travels and tears, let me create my own safe space surrounded by sound, allowed me to recenter when i needed to, and helped block out the outside when the stimulation was too much to bear. I have portable small speakers so my kidlets can listen to songs all at once instead of me having to try and get them to share earphones. I have enough t-shirts to keep me feeling happily western when I need to, and my favorite Van sneakers, because even if Crocs are more practical, an American girl does need her most loved "kicks" at times.

I have myself removing from Uber Shrink, and I have something very different and hopefully better on the horizon. I'm still reeling from the crush of crap that was unleashed and unearthed, and in the beauty that is hindsight and some distance am picking around some rubble and counting my blessings. I am a silly girl who falls hard and fast lately. I know much of this is because of the new skin I find myself in, one of a life renewed and of an albatross of illness and fear removed. And with this new found freedom and lust comes lessons being learned of how to temper it and make things correct.

There is something so beautiful and scary in shedding such a skin, and though I may have tried to reinvent myself a million times, it was forcing something that couldn't be forced. And now I find myself being reshaped almost without..such effort. In a difficult place and with impossible circumstances, but I'm actually letting it go and watching the horizon instead of looking at the stones I'm stumbling on. It's a balance between the two, and right now, this is a good place to be.

29 days to go. Thank you for reminding me some things are good to let go of.

Aha..erm..mmm..yeah

Not long after the last post, the phone rang. 'Twas a contrite Uber Shrink. I had nothing to say but "Aha..er...mmm..yeah.."

He ripped me a new mental orifice the other night. It's his habit. Take everything he knows about me that he at one time celebrated, and use it venemously to cut me into little dysfunctional shreds. And then I get in trouble when he feels shame, because if he is feeling shame, it's because something is making him feel like a bad person, and there is no such thing as a concious, so it's me working my super voodoo. Ok, I made up the voodoo part. But the rest is true. I always assumed if he felt shame it's because he felt he was being judged by his behaviors or actions. So, perhaps one should not be a colossal fuckwit, then. Especially with his super duper credentialed shrinky dink skills. Sick thing is, he's an excellent psychiatrist. That terrifies me. Especially when I am in his crosshairs. Because I am an excellent absorber of everyone and everything. And my tattoos and my occupation and my zipper head scar and my returning to a third world country lets me shine shine shine like a beacon in the dark.

Push and pull and push and pull and push and pull.

Today, he would like to come visit me while I'm in India. So he can tell me on foriegn soil what a colossal fuck up I am, presumably. Then he can also tell me my work has no value, I am a slacker with attention deficit disorder, I use my sexuality as a weapon, all my friends have (insert disorder here), my parents secretly hate me, and the depths of my love for some others is something that needs to be medicated away. And then he will tell me our beautiful non existant children will be born with ADHD because he has it and he has diagnosed me as having it, and that I'll be an excellent mother to his spawn because I will show them they are greatly loved and never make them feel devalued, that is until I abandon them and him to go chase shiny objects and become a hanglider. But that was 10 minutes ago, when he was threatening to marry me, because now he sees that I am a worthless stock in his portfolio, and his money is not safe in the bank, and he would never ever have children with me. But when he is 60 and has leukemia, will I sit with him and hold a wet rag to his lips? of course not, because my mutant genes will have me incapacitated before him.

And when my eyes fill with tears and I turn away from the whirlwind of anxiety and cruelty in front of me, he realizes that I loved him so much, and no one else would put up with his shit, and he tells me he loves me because I love him. And I stopped asking to hear it without qualifiers, because he would not say it without negating it, without pointing out as many flaws as he could muster in a breath and a second. But as I am turned away, he will say he has made the biggest mistake of his life and he wants to take care of me, now, and he will tell me how much money he makes because thats is what security is. And if I turn back towards him he will tell me I am not constant, and he was just protecting his "fertility interests", and it wasn't love that ever bonded him to me, it was the secrets behind my "shameful smile" and the oxytocin released in his brain. And he will ask to look at pictures of me when I was a child and in school and sick and in an unhappy family because the anger behind my eyes is a turn on to him.

I can't believe I just said all that. I've carried that without words for months. Because who am i, that I should be questioning him. Who am I, whose IQ dwarfs his, who's artistic side flattens his latent ancient film school dreams, who loves too hard and intensely and lately with abandon, who is double fisting as much experience as she can and plastering it to the back of her scarred neck. Who am I to say what the truth is.

I am free.

I am free.

I am free.

Please don't let me forget that. Please don't let me forget how he says these things, how he does these things, how he leaves me when I am 7000 miles away and when I am in the same room.

If I did not already have a ticket to India, I don't know what I would do.

I Think I'm Finally Free

When I was gone, so was he. He'd reach and pull me close and then push me away. I stayed longer because I was going to build around him, and suddenly the foundation was sinking. And back home, after weeks of silence, there he was. And he was fast furious love declarations as the newly shifted plates in my psyche tried to observe where the new fault lines were.

There were conversations when there shouldn't have been, talks about things that probably shouldn't have been talked about, and all I could be clear on was that what had happened before could never happen again, and that wasn't mended by any words or promises by him, the yo-yo snapping that seemed to have me on the end of a string.

And as my time to go again grows closer, all I could say was not very much, at all, to this man I had loved. Last night he offered to pay for my ticket already paid for, and if I didn't go back, we could get engaged. And if I went back, well, to never speak to him again, really. And now, that one does seem like an offer I can't refuse.

He knows a bit about AR, because I am still evil, and when he came at me with declarations and proclamations when I first saw him again after his weeks of silence I told him that I was seeing someone. Thats when he said he loved me. Once I was lost, I think. And in his shrinky dink fury he is dissecting me and trying to reassemble it to make sense to him, that I am not leaving because of a man, or for a man, but because I am learning how to be free. I was learning it, and feeling it, and fighting it, and sometimes drowning in it, and I need to go back because it was just a glimpse of what I was capable of.

I can't be a partner when I am terrified, and sad, and not capable, and shamed. And now that the final conversation has happened, I see that indeed the house did burn down, fast and then slow and then stubbornly and in plumes of smoke and ash and now there is nothing there but soot. I don't have to watch for hot spots anymore. And when I realized that, something else happened too. Some of the burden that's been growing on me since my return stateside has gone, as well. I owe no more explanations, there is no more careful considering of certain consequences or actions, there is no hole anymore in my heart where once an Uber Shrink stood. There just is no hole.

I go back in 31 days unencumbered by him, he whose anxiety and panic and issues and cold logic that kept me from fully exploring what I went there to explore, whose promises kept me tethered on a very long leash that I then dragged around broken from my ankle.

He's gone. It's sticking this time. I will not be having his children, I will not be his wife, I will not wear his ring, I will not be there when he is old, I will not be sleeping next to him at night. My face will not be in his neck. His hand will not be on my hip. He will find someone who is quieter, with tattoos that are hidden, who lives up to his potential. She will have her PhD, and her laugh will be the right volume, and her choice of footwear won't appall him, and she'll take medications already that he thinks she should take, and she won't eschew safety to find stability in chaos, and she will wear his ring because he now has a plan, and a timeline to find her, and even if he doesn't love her he'll make decisions and stick to them, because that is what he does. He will decide she is right, and he will date for the allotted amount of time, and then they will cohabitate, and then they will be engaged, and then they will marry, and then they will have children. This is what he has told me.

And soon I will stop being the great love of his life on every other Tuesday and his nemesis the rest of the days of the week, and soon I will stop being his proclaimed Madonna and Whore, his Creator and Destroyer, his Id and his Ego, his wild child artist and his untapped intellectual.

I think I win this one.

Erm..

I'm convinced doctors just make crap up now. However, being told that I have headaches within the realm of normalcy for a decompressed Chiari type person with an upper cervical syrinx that present in classic migraine patterns sounds just swell to me, especially when there is a triple cocktail of meds available that I can take to India and not have to seek out balls of home made opium.

Viva la Western medica-tion!

Oh, and I have to keep a headache journal describing what I've been doing when I get headaches. I'll just give her the link to my blog and Uber Shrinks phone number. That'll be easier than trying to explain. Perhaps I'll just put her on my next email list of Dispatches from India, part Deux.

Oh, and Phenergan rocks my world.

I do find it fascinating that my headaches are more frequent since my return stateside. As does she. Her exact words were " You look amazing. Whatever you were doing, don't stop."

Sounds like doctors orders to get my butt back overseas to me.

Better Not To Know

I have to go see my neurologist today. Last time I saw her was pre India, with warnings of seizures that would come and staying hydrated and wearing helmets and protecting my skull and not getting over exerted and...basically, I followed none of the instructions, but not on purpose.

Digression..

Last week at the travel clinic the nurse told me, very straight faced and with utmost seriousness, how I absolutley must not eat any fresh vegetables at all and olny fruit I peeled myself, keep my mouth shut in the shower, brush my teeth with bottled water, don't go into any kind of bodies of unchlorinated water especially fresh, no dairy, no ice, no street food, no local juices, only eat at "impeccably clean" establishments, use hand sanitizer all the time, cover myself with DEET regularly, take antimalarials every day every day every day even if I was there for months and months and and and..I tried hard not to laugh. She's never been to a developing country. You can follow the rules, sure..but only for like 2 or 3 weeks, especially if you aren't doing volunteer work or living rurally or...aw hell. It just can't be done. It can't. No way. Just can't. When I'm running around all dehydrated in the middle of nowhere and I see someone hacking the tops off of coconuts with a rusty machete, I'm running straight over and upending one of the filthy roadside things straight into my mouth with my unsanitized hands. And then I'm going tromping through the mosquito filled brush and getting on the back of a motor scooter because it's the only way I can get home before night falls and the bandits come out.

So. Back to the brain doc today, about 40 pounds lighter. Did not do anything as told. Oops. Still alive. I would have done it, I swear I would have..but..but..aw hell. It just couldn't be done. It can't. No way. Just can't. I had to make it all up as I went along. last time I saw her, she said we'd regroup when I came back. So I'm back..and leaving again in a bit over a month. I have some headaches. That worries me a bit. What worries me more is if I divulge all that I've been up to otherwise, like, you know..planning on going back, the semi vegetarian no beef thing, feeding baby Krishna pistachios, being involved with a trainhopping anarchist, thinking I want to stay working at grassroots levels with muck in your face NGOs and the like, then something might ACTUALLY be wrong with my brain.

Grand Plans, Revisited

Posting while prescriptioning, so this shall be short.

AR is in Darjeeling. All trainhoppers present and accounted for, at least for as long as they stayed together..lord knows how the rest of the broke ones got home. Sweeter sounds than a tinny voice at the end of the line in Mumbai is one at the end of the line in Darjeeling. Somehow he is securing a SIM card tomorrow ( it takes me weeks and..never mind. I DON'T want to know) so keeping up with his shenanigans should be less stressful for me.

No teal shoes spotted anywhere in the Rajasthan area that they should not be. I am now overly involved in researching castes and rioting in general. Oh, plus the status on road washouts now that monsoon has started and I'll be travelling for shits and giggles with a trainhopping sort. Note to self..Indian pokey and the train po-po is NOT an adventure or counterculture thing I need to explore. Period. End of story.

Latest kidlet update is that Prakash is now speaking full on complete English sentences and Mohanlal has been at summer camp and Dharmalal finally outgrew that godawful orange and yellow striped shirt and now wears an equally godawful green one every....single....day. Jagdish from second grade with the jacked up ear is starting to read "Ugly Duckling" in bits on his own. And MJ has found Facebook ( oh lord ) and is using it to inquire on my marital status. Bless her cotton saris.

Lab reports all back and I have no worms or bacterias in my tummy, so all problems are likely do to..er..being involved with things that make me wonder about rioting and trainhopping and literacy. That plus my western diet sucks.

Grand Grand Plans

Today, I shall stay in my bathrobe all day. And quit smoking.

Er, though I'm only in my bathrobe because I'm battling a " it's not Chiari you got that fixed so it's faux-chiari" headache, that part wouldn't be so grand. Also not grand because I do things like that frequently, though admittedly I did spend all winter with no bathrobe and beyond fully clothed..especially when sleeping while in Rajasthan, because man was it cold..I dont think I wore so many layers since the days back when the evil Albanian henchmen of my super wouldn't turn on the heat and I used to break into the basement and mess with the boiler..

*sigh*

Good old days when my anarchist tendencies were limited to night baking and Hot Pocket eating and sticking the "man" with a higher utility bill. What has become of me, I ask.

Now I'm amused because I just went back and read those old posts. I was kinda amusing in 2005. Pathetic, but I crack myself up!

Eh. Who am I kidding. I'm not quitting smoking today. Baby steps. the bathrobe thing is doable at least. Off for Vicodin for my not Chiari head.

An Ode To My Ugly Shoes

I watch the news because of the rioting in Delhi and I know a friend is there, and I hope to not see a flash of teal Croc shoe. I often couldn't FIND my shoes, in India.
N liked my shoes. I'd wake up some mornings when sleeping in the rec room and step out to find them gone, and I'd pad around barefoot with bedhead and my pashmina pulled around me muttering, making the circuit to the office, the dining table, the kitchen or the pantry until I found him, brushing his teeth or drinking chai or on his cell phone, with his feet in my shoes. I'd point and grunt and usually cough or rub an eye sealed sticky shut with conjuctivitis until he'd give them back. He'd ask me how much they cost and I'd tell him I'd get him some, at some point.

I wear ugly shoes. Growing up was steel toed boots and Doc Martins and low top Converse. Clogs and hiking boots in kitchens. I started wearing Crocs the year before I had brain surgery,because I could balance. These were ugly, too, but I didn't have to bend over to tie them and deal with a pounding blood rushing to my head or have my trembling fingers try and do knots or laces. And my feet, sore from years of work, could just be quiet while the rest of my body raged. And after surgery I could walk without tippling to one side, because my base was solid and wide.

My one pair of sneakers went unused, my Crocs carried me down dusty unpaved roads to wait for the public tuk tuk, to school to be kicked off under the tamarind tree, into Udaipur to step and squish through holy cow poop. Easy to slip off when I entered shops, to leave at the door while I raised hands to my forehead and greeted my retail captors until the chai offering/greeting/barganing/insulting/purchasing/not purchasing/declarations of self or inflicted harm/more chai drinking ended. Kick off and tuck my feet under a table to eat, to leave in a doorway. I'd hopped on and off moving transportation and dodged livestock and gone barefoot in temples and over stones. I'd learned balance and stood on one foot and contorted my body into weird shapes to fit amongst masses of people.

On trains I'd weave my way into bathrooms and hover and squat wide stanced and then rinse my shoes off under the spigot. I'd go back to my berth and kick them under my seat and sit cross legged and barefoot like everyone else. In Goa I left them on my porch if I didn't have to go into town and spent days at a time barefoot, slipping them on only to avoid burning my feet when I needed to go on a book or internet run. In Bangalore one night at a swank rooftop bar, in my blue silk kurta and black silk pants I realized my days of being feral were coming to a close, and my feet had function but no form. I was smaller, and tan, and quieter, and smiled more and was nimble in my clumsiness, and India was less of a chore, and so was my body.

In a mall there I picked up a new pair, in black. Still Crocs, but mary jane style.
I was form and function, and there was a seamlessness there that wasn't present before. It all flowed and worked together, slipping silk over my head and pushing bangles onto arms and fastening anklets and slipping shoes on and off and ducking and weaving and contorting and breathing and smiling. And when I went back to B**** I gave N my old pair of shoes, until we could get him a nice manly color. I see pics of him now, taken after I left, and flashes of teal shoe.

So I watched for those, in the paper and on the news. N was in Delhi to pick up new volunteers and being so far sometimes I worry about my family there, because it is chai drinking and communal living and cow dodging but it is also India. Castes riot and people close to you hop trains illegally and spend nights on sidewalks and children don't eat enough and workers don't get paid and dammit, public toilets are godawful. And when I go back, I might get him a pair in a Day Glo orange, because those would be easy to spot, as well. Even with eyes glued shut from double conjunctivitis.