The Queen is Dead! Long Live the Queen!

As the self-proclaimed queen of romantic love, I, Melinda Lisle, renounce my crown. I give it away to whatever poor soul decides that it is worth the pain (and the crown hair...yuk) just to have the possible glory of saying, "See, I told you that love is perfect like a Disney movie! Nanner-freaking-nanner!"

Since I consider myself a veteran of the wars, I can say with a certainty that only comes with age and dismemberment of vital heart parts that romantic love is bull-puckey.

All those things that people tell you about how great it will be when you find the one, and you look at them for the first time, and just know? Yeah, that only works when "the one" looks at you the same way. I know this because I have fallen in love with people and had them not love me back. Trust me, it's as bad as it sounds.

Otherwise, what you have is a serious case of the one-sideseez. These usually include declarations of love that are not returned, lots of sleepless nights, and crying to yourself in the bathroom. So, you know, the usual.

HOWEVER, non-romantic love is the SCHNIZIT!!

It may be great to have someone tell you that they romantic love you, but (and I speak from experience here) someone telling you that they love you can be:
1. A lie
2. Half-hearted (no pun intended)
3. A preamble for something a little less awesome like, "I love you, just not like that..." (Sidebar - REALLY F***ER? REALLY? 'CAUSE YOU SEEMED TO LOVE MY VAGINA LIKE THAT. I"M JUST SAYIN'.)
4. It could mean that they love you like they envision love to be, which usually includes hitting, yelling, generally unpleasant behavior, or an intense desire for you to only do what they want you to do.

Non-romantic love, kind of like that chicken soup that your mom made you when you had the sniffles, provides the following (as an alternative to the crappy list):
1. stability
2. fun (yes fun can be had when you aren't worried about all that other nonsense)
3. sarcasm (people in romantic love are far too serious to be sarcastic about their dumb behavior)
4. caring. (yes, I said caring)

I much prefer the man who says, "I don't love you. I care about you. I want to spend time with you. I want to see where this is going," to the man who says, "I love you forever," but only means for the next five minutes.

So I relinquish this crown. And I gotta say, it's kinda nice to not have the dent in my forehead.

At a loss

This post decided to be red...and black too...

I don't remember what it feels like to be in love.

By this, I don't mean that I don't know what the feelings I am currently having are. I am happy & terrified; content & restless; sure of myself one minute & devoid of certainty the next. I smile & cry, sometimes as much in one day as I had in weeks past.

I wish that I could call him. Someone who would tell me how not to fuck this up, and how to not be fucked up by it in return. How not to be in love, if that is what I am, without at least the slightest possibility of a healthy return of love.

But the terrible consequences of February once again make themselves known. Once again, I twist, ruthlessly tossed to the wind, at the loss of the one person on whose honesty & regard for my own personal truth was not to be overstated. Only in the area of us did he frequently, and with such final, disastrous consequences, did he err. Otherwise, he was an ever-fixed mark to which I could direct my gaze in times of uncertainty or doubt.

Truly did I love him.

He was my partner and my guide in so much of life (even when he was about the business of living his own), that to be here...now...without him, feels like falling all over again. Though I am not in such despair as I was, and I try to remember the little things that he would tell me (the good things), I am sure of my inequality to the task of deciding this business on my own.

Should I stay? Should I go? Should I run? Should I walk?

How often can I be so alone without some significant damage being done to my truer self? I fear the loss of my own good humor, my own way in the world. It should seem strange that I would want, or need, the guidance of another to find the port in the storm, but every ship looks for the lighthouse...lest they crash against the jagged rocks and go down in the storm. I feel myself precipitously close to those same reefs, even as I write this down.

He needs me, of this I am certain. Whether or not his own countenance will admit it freely, he needs me more than even I may be able to withstand. He would care for me, without reservation, if only he would let himself. He admits that he likes me against his better judgement, against his better reason (though what kind of endearment that might be is still not decided).

But I? I am different now. I cannot love in that way anymore, or at least I do not think that I can. To love one for so long, so completely unrequited, is far beyond my tolerance. I have tried that path. I have failed. It broke me so that I hated instead of loved, to the worst possible ends.

So I destroy my little bits of happiness every time I open my mouth. I push at him. He pushes back. I cannot imagine that we will survive a direct assault, and yet, with each passing moment, I am more and more certain that I will die if I do not move forward. I will be no man's receptacle, for no man has the right to think me worthy only of his trash.

But God...I am lonely.

The Compliment

You are great.
You are so low maintenance.
You are smart.
You are pretty.
You are the awesomest girl I have ever met.
You are the most laid back person.
You don't make me want to put you six feet under.

We should travel.
Virginia City.
A baseball game.
San Francisco.
Your parent's house. They'll love me.
Not this year.

I should meet your friends.
You should meet my friends.
You'll hate them.

It feels so good when you do that.
Scratch right there.
I can never reach that spot.
You smell good.
Like my ex.

I'll fix your car
Your house.
Your job.
Your life.
But not if I have to be around all the time.

I'm not sleepy.
I'll just stay down here for a while.
I don't want to come to bed.
I don't want to sleep over.
I don't want to answer the phone.
I don't want to go out.
I don't want to care.
I don't want to think about you, your feelings; anything that isn't me.
I don't want any of this.

Can I meet your mom?

On the other side of OK

In celebration of the fourth annual self-love day, I post the following:

I love that I forgive. I know that it can seem like a weakness at times, but it lets me be able to let go and that's what I need, so yea me!

And thanks for reminding me that it's OK to just be myself.

Do you have anything to add?

It might get loud...

Hello again dear reader!
This is the new cover art for my new band...Slowly Varying Function.
We've decided that our first album should be called "The Heroic Makes Heroes."
I know, I know it's all too awesome to be believed...you can start paying those Ticketmaster incredibly overpriced prices any moment now...any time...really...
(All stolen from some random Facebook user. Go to Wikipedia. Click on Random Articles. The title of the Random Article that comes up is your band name. Go to Random Quotes. The last 4-5 words of the last quote on the page is your album title. Go to flickr.com. Chose Explore the last 7 days. The third picture that comes up is your cover art.)

No title will do...

I'm all done.
I don't love you like that anymore.
You left me. Brutally.
You made me hysterical on the fucking freeway today.
I had to pull over because my iPod shuffled you back in to my brain.
Fuck that.
You made me almost mess up the new, potentially good thing because you demanded, in my head, that I be loved & paid attention to RIGHT THEN.
Because you left me, no one else could want me.
To prove to you that someone else does want me...he does...he does..., I lost my mind. That helped.
Fuck that again.
I'm not having it.
You can take your happy life,
Your condescendention about mine,
Your bullshitery...and fuck off.
If there were stronger words, I'd use them.
If there was a way to slap you, I would.
If there was enough tissue in the world, I'd never stop crying.
But there aren't stronger words,
And there isn't a way to slap you,
And I will stop crying.
So fuck off.
And take your life with you.
I'm going back to bed.

The world...off kilter...

Hello dear reader! I hope that all one of you is happily noshing away on something tasty and sighing in contentment at the goodness...

Lately it seems as if the world is completely off kilter, off its rocker, out of its orbit. The things that I thought that I knew, the things that were a constant in my world have warped beyond recognition or been cut off in brutal and painful ways.

While this seems like a post about the awfulness of it all, it really isn't.

It's more about how I thought I knew things.

I suppose when I chose to be on a path, and I really committed to it, I didn't expect it to be difficult. Does that sound arrogant?

I suppose that I have always been so decidely sure that whatever I wanted to do, I could do, that to have something that I decided on doing throw a steaming pile of crap in my face and challenge me not to lose my ever-loving mind, seems incomprehensible to me.

Why would the universe do that? Was it really necessary?

Perhaps even the act of asking the question why is arrogant of me...perhaps it isn't my place to ask why; it is only my place to observe the sting of the crap in my eye and the way that it slides down my face and then notice the next thing that happens...

But here are a few things that I just can't wrap my brain around...

1. Why didn't I let go? Really? What was it that made me hang on so hard? It felt like my fingers were on the edge of a cliff and the bad guy stomped on them, and instead of this being like a Hollywood movie where I magically recover all my strength or the hero comes to get me, I fell. And fell. And fell some more. The blessing that came with this fall was that I had a friend who grabbed my arm on the way down, and much like a Hollywood hero, saved me from certain death. But let me tell you, my arm? Ripped right out of its socket and I may never be able to pitch a softball again.

2. When I accepted that there was suffering, and that we created more suffering by the attempted avoidance thereof, I somehow (again, arrogantly) thought that it would help to ease the suffering that I saw around me. Yeah, no. As it turns out, the best thing that I can do is to hold a hand or smile and laugh or just sit quietly. But it keeps coming. It never stops. I want so badly to end the suffering of the people that I love, and the more that I try, the more that the universe smacks me down and reminds me that I can't. I don't understand that at all. Or maybe I do, and I am just rebelling against the idea that the selfless attempt at the giving of cessation of the suffering of others is something that the universe just can't hang with. Fuck that. Seriously.

3. Why am I given the ability to be patient in one moment and then have it burned away in the next? Like solar flares in a no ozone atmosphere, my patience crisps right out of me. WTF.

In all of this, I mean not to complain or say that things are so bad, because they're not. I have friends who love me and who let me love them in return, a place to sleep, a job to go to, enough to eat, and even if I didn't have those things, I would still have all the possibilities in the world surrounding me. There are times when it seems so clear. Like the valley on a windy winter day. Maybe I just need to let go when the wind stops blowing and the smog moves back in. Maybe I can't even hold on to the picture of the lovely day...perhaps that is how the world comes back to its center.

My friend

So I have this friend...she is pretty much my only reader...(you know who you are) and sometimes I am reminded why I love her so much.

Of course, this isn't a complete list (because I don't think that even I, brilliant though I may be, could acheive that in this limited space), and the whole idea would most likely be better served through just a simple e-mail, but on the off chance that cyberspace takes off for me, and blogging becomes the way that everyone in the world makes me famous, I want it recorded for all of internet-y posterity that herein are the reasons that my friend is amazing.

1. When she decides to do something, she does it all the way, with no wishy-washy namby pamby bull crap. For example...she decided to pursue a path of peace and harmony with the universe, and come hell or high water (and trust me, she has had both encounters with hell and with high water), she has managed to be more at ease with everything and let go. That's just brilliant.

2. Her selflessness knows no bounds. She would give me (or any of her loved ones) the shirt off her back, the shoes off her feet, the car out of her driveway, a home in the back of the valley. I don't know anyone else who would give and expect nothing in return.

3. When she loves someone, she does it completely and does not let anyone or anything get in the way of that. When I think that I am completely unloveable, she reminds me that she is brilliant and that she loves me, so that must mean that I AM loveable...the logic is so simple that even a dum-dum like me can get it.

4. She forgives. Period.

5. A creative genius lurks beneath that happy exterior. From cakes to crafti-arty-pictury-goodness, the power to make something new that no one ever made before exists in copious amounts within my awesome friend. I truly think that if she wanted to, she could make a cake that would make you laugh, cry, and then expire from sheer sugary bliss. That's how good she is.

6. She never lies to me. Now, I know, some of you think that little white lies are a part of social dynamics, but that just isn't the case. I think that we should all say how we feel all the time, but I have never, and I mean never, met anyone else who has had the balls to be honest with me like that. As a result, I know that whenever I ask for an opinion, I will get a real one, not just what I want to hear. I know that if she gives me advice (which I frequently need) it will come from her heart and she will mean every word in the most loving and helpful way. It is not always what I want to hear, but it is always what I want to listen to.

7. Certainly not last or least, she is a funny fucker! I mean pee-your-pants and drive in to the ditch funny. She can take a simple thing like the definition of wang vs. wang-doodle and make it in to a 10 minute laugh festival, whereafter I clutch at my tummy and gasp in sheer pain and delight. MC Esher driving, hysterical visits to the California border to buy lotto tickets, and more than one jest about donkey balls, and you have a comedic genius!

So that's my friend. I hope that someday I will have more than one reader, and that when I do, they will read this post and a little part of them will envy that I have a friend like this. But even if no one ever reads this but her, it will suffice to make me a little happier that it will live in the ether of the blogosphere for all eternity that I have a friend like The Floating Princess Pretty Flower.