Hey Darling Ones,

Back in my journalism major days we had to take a class where we practiced writing news stories.

I drove Derek, the kid who sat next to me, nuts because I would spend most of my writing time staring at a blank screen trying to think of a lede and only once I had that lede would I start writing. It was not at all efficient, and yet wholly effective. I’m still pretty good with ledes when I want to be. Mostly, I bury them because I’m a coward and figure I can sneak in all the juicy stuff past the point anyone reads. It works like 99% of the time.

This letter was gonna start with how laughably bad I am at relationships. Then it was gonna be about a guy I dated in the early aughts who hated hated hated my blog because he thought it was a giant personal ad meant to make men fall in love with me (obvs, duh). Then it was going to be about the ungodly amount of self-reflection caused by the pandemic isolation. I’m still gonna write about all these at some point, except the dingdong. All you need to know is he dumped me because he started seeing a stripper.

All of them are a distraction from writing about the actual pain and sadness I feel today regarding the ex’s birthday. This entire day up to now has been about distracting myself. I did pretty well. I stayed in bed late, did an eye mask, ate some donuts, organized my records. . . but then I decided to read and take a nap. After I put the book away and took off my glasses, my brain started to sing Keep Yourself Warm by Frightened Rabbit, because holy shit is my brain an asshole.

However, my brain was onto something. While I had anticipated writing about how broken I am, instead I keep reminding myself that Scott Hutchinson is right and I did not find love in a hole, but I sure as hell tried and that’s worth something.

When I decided to get involved with the ex I really wanted to be in a longterm relationship. So what did I do? The exact opposite of every thing I’d ever done in any other relationship I’d been in. I was ultra forgiving. I communicated my ass off. I apologized when my ice-robot heart got in the way. I asked for what I needed. I was not the fuck & run girl I usually am. I trusted to the point I even invited them into my house, which is not something I do often.*

Surprise! None of this worked.

I tried so fucking hard with the ex, because I thought maybe that’s how love is supposed to be. Maybe it’s supposed to be endless emotional labor to make someone feel loved even though you always feel like a hollow afterthought. What the fuck do I know? I don’t know what love is. I’ve said “I love you” in a romantic sense to exactly two men in my life. One of them I wasn’t even involved with. So, fuck man. I told you I was bad at this.

Here’s the thing I realized today, my ex is a hole. Of course I knew this on some level when I ended things in September. Obviously. Only I don’t think I would have put it in those terms until this afternoon when I was on the couch trying to nap.

They took everything I had and probably would have until I died. What I always suspected, but never wanted to admit, was they didn’t love the me of me. They only loved the way I made them feel. I don’t blame them. I’m good at being caring and supportive. I can nurture like a motherfucker. And also I’m an ice-robot hearted Yeti who will not reveal anything unless I’m asked. I operate under the premise that if someone wants to know, they’ll ask, because that’s what I do! If I don’t ask, it’s because I really don’t want to know.

The ex never asked about anything. I’d tell them all the time how it made me feel like shit when they didn’t ask what I was reading or listening to or what I was thinking about or writing. Bleh. Now I feel like I’m rehashing dirty laundry and petty grievances.

Barf. Being human is so hard,
Jodi, who would totally fuck someone to keep herself warm right now.
 
*Back when I lived in an apartment in Prior Lake a few men I’d casually dated (or fucked and ran out on) stopped by unannounced. One caught me in the parking lot and one knocked on my patio door. It scared the shit out of me and it’s why I don’t let too many men know where I actually live.

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Hiya Darling Ones,

No flower yet. Since I was never pregnant I’m gonna pretend that you are all as excited about the blooming of this flower as you would be if I were having a baby. I realize this is putting me uncomfortably close to being a person who calls my plants her babies or Wendell my fur baby. Trust, that will never be me. It’s been almost four years since I had to put Paco down and I’m still mad that the vet kept calling me his mom. Gross.

My plants are my colleagues, obviously. Wendell is a trash goblin that haunts my house.

Now that we’ve got that clear I must admit I’m feeling kind of grody, filled with dread, and generally melancholy today, which is not Thursday but feels like Thursday. I’ve been complaining for ages that every day has felt like Thursday since March 13, 2020 and here we are on the 33rd of July and it’s still Thursday.

Duolingo, the app I use to learn Spanish, tells me all the time it’s Thursday, as witnessed above. It is rarely actually Thursday. I live in an app-based web of lies. Today I marked the “I am not a robot” box when logging in on some site. A total lie.

For the first time since the pandemic started on Thursday the 82nd of Septober I’m longing for an endless Thursday.

One of my worst/best traits is my ability to remember people’s birthdays (and astrological sign). It’s like once I know your birthday it never leaves my brain. The co-editor of my high school student newspaper that I had a huge crush on? October 18th. Kurt Vonnegut? November 11th. My cousin Wendy, May 12th. I might not always get the exact day, especially if it’s in the 20s of the month, but I can usually get it within a day or so. Having Sister #4 born on my eighth birthday is probably what gave me this superpower/curse.

People are alternately impressed by this display of memory or creeped out because it makes me look like a stalker. Frankly, having a good memory in general makes me look like a stalker. I can’t help it. Like so much of myself, I try to stuff this way down deep so it doesn’t leak out and make people uncomfortable.

I wish I could forget Friday is the Ex’s birthday (also Johnny Cash & BFK’s oldest kid). I keep telling myself to forget it, and if you read any of the paragraphs above you know that’s not gonna happen. The birthday is extra tough. It was my birthday when I realized the relationship was over. They* forgot my birthday. Like totally, utterly forgot. Forgot so hard they didn’t even speak to me on my birthday. At all. Not even a friendly text.

So that sucked, but at least it finally opened my eyes to how very little I mattered to them. I’ve given myself permission to wallow all about the end of the relationship in Friday’s letter. I’m hoping by that time I can stop feeling so sad about and tap into my anger and, well, pride that I finally got out. You know?

Ugh. Anyway, tomorrow’s actually Thursday and I got some donuts to celebrate the momentous occasion.

Blah,
Jodi

* Pronoun disclaimer: I feel shady & shitty using they/them pronouns. My ex is a trans-woman. For most of our relationship she presented as male. She came out to me eight months before the end of our relationship. Using he/him is wrong. Using she/her feels like I’m misrepresenting my sexuality and appropriating a queerness that doesn’t belong to me. Gender is hard. Sexuality is hard. I will have a lot more to say about this at some point, but not right now. I’m not ready.

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Hi Darling Ones,

Do you Timehop? Do you know what Timehop is? It’s an app that shows you all your social media garbage on the day you put that garbage out into the universe. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Your phone’s camera. It gathers all the ephemera and then presents it to you on a daily basis.

Because I am stupid competitive about only the most pointless stuff, I have a four-year Timehop streak (1705 days to be exact). My streak is longer than both Sister #2 and BFK, however Ben has me beat by like a month and that chaps my hide more than you can imagine.

Most days I thumb through Timehop without even reading it. I usually try to get through it in the morning right after I finish Spanish (822 days). I just want to check that off the To Do list so I can move on to other things.

I don’t keep track of romantic anniversaries. Since my romantic track record is a train wreck it’s best not to tie those tragedies to specific days. I spend enough time rehashing those failures, I don’t need a day dedicated to such nonsense. My memory is pretty solid so I can usually pin train wrecks to a vague week/month year. Oh yes, he was the wreck of November 04. Oh yes, he decimated my heart in June of 06. That kind of thing.

Thankfully, for most of the morning I was pre-occupied, which is why Timehop didn’t get a chance to karate chop me in the gut until this afternoon.

There I was procrastinating by thumbing through stupid updates about Daily Wendell songs and John Cougar Mellencamp when KAPOW! There it was, their* stupid cutie face I liked for so so so long. It hurts with a shocking specificity I didn’t expect. I’m still so hurt and angry about everything that happened or didn’t happen, and yet I’m still here softly weeping while writing.

I didn’t expect to feel this shaky and sad. I’m the one who ended things. It was my choice and I’m still proud of myself for doing it after being unhappy for more than a year. It took me awhile to figure out that being lonely when you’re supposed to be with someone is way shittier than being lonely when you’re actually alone.

And yet, ugh. It’s as though I conjured this anniversary into being by writing about them in yesterday’s letter even though I know that’s not how time works. Maybe my subconscious knew today was the day and that’s why I had already planned to make my favorite dish. Maybe that’s why I spent so much time this morning pestering a friend to pay attention to me. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true? That we had some sort of internal, intuitive defense system that went to work even when our brains are too busy to remember there was an emotional landmine ahead?

Instead, I’ll be grateful for the luck and coincidence that has kept from sobbing and puking all day. I’ll be grateful for paying work that kept me busy and Liz Phair’s “Polyester Bride” for existing and becoming part of my DNA and for friends who paid attention to me when I needed it and for a heart that takes risks.

Resiliently yours,
Jodi

*I feel shady & shitty using they/them pronouns. My ex is a trans-woman. For most of our relationship she presented as male. She came out to me eight months before the end of our relationship. Using he/him is wrong. Using she/her feels like I’m misrepresenting my sexuality and appropriating a queerness that doesn’t belong to me. Gender is hard. Sexuality is hard. I will have a lot more to say about this at some point, but not right now. I’m still not ready.

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Hi Darling Ones,

Remember how I vaguely mentioned a thing that’s weighing heavy on my mind? It was resolved today and it didn’t go our way. I’m devastated and my heart hurts. I wish I could say more, but as I mentioned this is not my story to tell. I will say I want to burn some people and institutions to the ground. 2020 is gonna be a motherfucker right to the very end, isn’t it?

On top of all this, I had an emotional accident last night and I’m still a little shaky.

You see, my nephew and I are working on this pretty intense video editing project. He’s doing the video editing and I’m doing the project managing. Neither of these things are my forte and I have little patience for it. However, it’s for a much adored client and as I told her, I value our working relationship so much that I don’t mind moving the occasional mountain.

Because we’re working with massive video files Gladys, my laptop, kept giving me all these alarming you’re running out of space errors. So I was like, “FINE, GLADYS! I will clear up some space you prissy little bitch.”

When she directed me to a bunch of very large files, what I found was an emotional landmine that exploded into my heart. It seems that buried deep in Gladys’ catacombs are every image and video the ex sent me via text. I did not know they were lurking in the bowels of my laptop waiting to jump out and scare me.

Granted, I found some utterly delightful things that I had forgotten about, like that time Wolfdogg sang with Lydia Loveless at someone’s backyard barbecue. However, it was mostly painful reminder after painful reminder of my latest romantic catastrophe. It’s really fucking hard.

There’s a part of me that wants to reach out with the I miss yous and let’s try agains. I have to keep reminding myself that it was my choice to end the relationship because my emotional needs were not being met and chances are nothing has changed. Then I get equal parts mad and sad because I ask for so very little from romantic partners. All I ask is for someone to listen to my fun facts, tell me about their new favorite song, ask me what I think of the book I’m reading, and occasionally makeout with me. WHY IS THAT SO HARD FOR MEN TO DO? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

So, anyway, I saw a white squirrel in my yard today. He or she was eating from the bird feeder Maxwell hung in my tree this summer. I jumped off the couch and threw open the door to get a picture, frightening the little guy. He took off down the street, but I still managed to get a couple shots of him.

This is probably a good omen, right?

Jodi

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When April started I had big plans to blog every day like the glory days of the 200 project. I did really well for three days. Then something happened. Something else probably happened, and then my Aunt Janis died.

Her death was sudden and shocking. She was only 60 years old. It’s been two weeks and I’m still not sure if I have the words to express the depth of my sorrow and what she meant to me, to my family.

My Aunt Janis was pretty damn cool, like legit cool. She was a Turnip-hating, equality-loving, Joan-Jett-Hall-of-Fame-Induction-celebrating kind of woman. She was also an actual boss, like a VP at work. I don’t know if she called herself a feminist, but she sure seemed like one.

When I first learned she was going to die (two days before it happened), I kept thinking about how she’d gathered my sisters and I before Grammu’s funeral, and encouraged us to play a special role at the funeral like the grandsons.

Even though she and my Uncle Danny got divorced years ago, she always came to A Very St.Martin Christmas with a green bean hotdish in hand. This year she also came with Adam Lambert ornaments that she hid around my house for me to find after she left. Janis looovvveeed Adam Lambert, like meet up with her friends from the Internet and travel to go to his concerts love.

Sound like anyone else you know?

And while she loved Adam Lambert, her all-time favorite band was Queen. At Christmas this year she said about Queen, and I quote, “They were the clay my universe was built upon.”

My Aunt Janis was hilarious, loved crude humor, and was probably one of the best storytellers I’ve ever known. That’s not hyperbole. She held my entire family rapt talking about a harrowing, snowy drive to South Dakota that happened like thirty years ago.

I still can’t believe she’s dead. It just feels like a thing that’s not possible, which is why I can’t seem to find the words. How do you describe the impossible?

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