a bowl full

Dexter - how did I not find him sooner? He is my comfort in sleepless night & in sweaty dreams of infidelity & suddenly finding all these women coming out of cars. I've been putting in the work, thankfully, last saturday adding a 10-mile tempo at MP along a jazz filled night at the bar & a bus ride to Seattle for the superbowl. My father proclaimed that the Broncos were going to win so surely I dismissed the family party in order to dissuade the bad juju, which is why I helped the Hawks win, in the end. All my a-hole friends & their partners purchased superbowl tickets & spent the week in Jersey, but the backup plan of a 13-miler along the water, and game time at a waterfront home with endless skittles, dips, wine, 2 hot tubs, gambling & a giant poodle was a nice second. I'm really liking hanging out with older people. I might be an ageist. It's just really refreshing to be around people who have their shit more together, or are better at hiding the fact that they don't. Have you ever been sitting there, feeling a buzz of excitement around you, feeling it somewhere inside you, but it's quieted, and wonder what's missing?

Before the superbowl I was walking around U-village, looking at plants, when two of my good friends got a hold of me to tell me that they had become engaged on a vail mountaintop. The woman, who is coming to stay with me in a month, is a beautiful person. She was my neighbor & confidant in Boulder; who walked over to my apartment, would sit on the sofa, sipping tea, crying, as I packed my library of books. Together we were homesick and confused and felt like perhaps we might lose each other in my departure. These two have grown since I've been gone & were thoughtful enough to tell me their great news like I was (and still am), that neighbor. Ah, I love love. It is what I believe we were made for. Can't wait for her arrival, when we'll sit on a big bed of pillows, flipping through magazines, sipping wine, planning. I didn't know what to do with myself after finding out - I just felt inspired & lonely all at once, so I freaked & bought myself a lot of rings. It was like a defense-mechanism to my own fallen-apart love life, something like, "F-you! I get all the rings!" It was a little nutty & totally pleasurable.

I had an impromptu week off with everyone at the office sick, which made it easier to train. All my partners are dropping like flies; injuries and illnesses alike. I must have got a little cocky somewhere in there with my, "I never get hurt" kind of smugness, because now I'm falling apart myself, a little. Marathon training is rough on the body alone, but marathon training on someone like me who is an asshole about buying new shoes, gear, etc. is another thing - I'm pretty sure my year-old shoes and the 10-mile tempo was not good on my knees. Good thing I have free chiropractic, a benefit of the job.

A lot of nights this week I've woken to bad dreams of finding out that I've been cheated on. It upsets a lot of my day. I told my mother, who thinks it's ptsd. I find ptsd a little extreme for my situation, but then, when I confided in a friend, she said that it sounded like the same thing. If I've got two people conferring on the same topic, I'm apt to listen. This time last year I was in a really hard place. I asked my mother why I would be doing this to myself; haven't we come so far in evolution that we should be better at removing discomfort & the things that destroy us emotionally? Her response, If we obsess and address that which hurts, constantly, we believe we will be better equipped to deal. This is me putting it out there into the world - I'd like to acknowledge that it doesn't make me feel equipped to have dreams of all the women you've slept with. I would like to stop dreaming of bad women, I want to dream of powerful, beautiful women who inspire me instead of disgust me. Universe, please reinstate female connectedness into my life, I'm tired of dreaming of the others.

I run on my lunch breaks; my boss admitted that I was smelling "fragrant." I'm taking it on as a personal challenge. When it's time to be a lady, I'll know.