Wait: I am not ugly, it is just that I am not *pretty*. What's more, I don't want to be pretty...except that I wish I was pretty to you...and that's kind of stupid. People (myself included) have to be what they are and who they are. It's about integrity towards oneself.

I think about all the women I've been attracted to. Most of them haven't been pretty, and they'd look silly in a dress with makeup and foo-foo hair. Most of them didn't have barbie-doll figures, either, because I'm not attracted to barbie dolls.

The issue I am struggling with is the conflict between society's demands on me (be pretty, be feminine, be attractive to men) and who I really am (not very feminine, very outdoorsy and rustic). I have been coerced into "pretty" before...it was pure misery and I couldn't wait to wash that crap off of my face, to get back into jeans and brush those silly curls out of my hair. It sucked.

I can't base my self image on what other people want me to look like. When I wear my Carhartts and a button down shirt, tie and jacket....I might not be pretty, but somehow, it looks good. And more importantly, I feel comfortable and at home in my own skin...

How could anyone look as bad as I do and have such cute kids?

I was going to write about my hyperactive mind and how it runs negative feedback loops incessantly.....but after seeing a bunch of recent photos of myself...

I can't stand the way I look. I wish that I had a good chin. Guess we can't all be beautiful, but combined with social awkwardness and gawky, ungraceful movements...it's just painful. The only thing I have going for me is my body (which needs work but is not beyond redemption), but I get so tired of being seen as a body, as something to have sex with. It makes me nauseous to feel that way.

And my sister, who looks so much like me, only slightly different, is beautiful. It's so hard not to resent her for that. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
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The sad truth of it is that I'm a dyke who happens to be hopelessly in love with a man. This is not a situation that can end well. No happiness in sight. And yes, I am now depressed again.

OK, so bear with me here, because I know, dear readers, that you're probably sick and tired of k.d. lang by now....

But consider, please, after listening to what she says.....

What would happen, what could happen, if I gave that kind of care, attention and dedication to my art? To raising my children?

How about you? What gifts do you have that could be developed so much more, that could enrich the world, if you nurtured them more? How much potential gets lost in the fracas of day to day life because we let it slip through our fingers?

I have nothing to bitch about today. The yard is festooned with the large cones of Pinus monticola, which I have been collecting to draw and to have around simply because I like pine cones, lichens, sea shells, stones and similar objects...

Made a really nice soup last night that my kids are still raving over, telling me I could win a contest with it. It's nice to have fans ;-)

All of the gardens are doing fairly well, considering the kind of fitful on/off attention they've had from me.

And now I'm going to make summer rolls.

I still feel the same way about you, still miss you....but am starting to feel stronger, more grounded, less inclined to put up with bullshit from anyone, more centered and secure in my own identity as opposed to trying to please people and being what they want me to be. Maybe these six months of trauma and grief and angst and general falling apart were what I needed to feel and cry over and finally begin to grow past all the crap that's been smothering me for so long.

i feel fragile...like an anxiety attack is waiting to finish me off.

There isn't any solace to be found in this world. Unless I carve it out for myself, it simply doesn't exist otherwise, because other people can't be counted on to provide it. Oh, maybe temporarily....but sooner or later, the axe falls and it hurts. It hurts so much more than never having had it in the first place.

I write too much.

I guess one of the things that is hurting me now is the slow, growing realization that I am never going to get to talk to you again. It isn't a matter of being patient or waiting some length of time, it just is not going to happen at all. I have fucked things up too badly. There isn't a way to fix it anymore so that we can be relaxed and friendly around one another anymore, is there?

Maybe things are not the way I have been interpreting them.

I found pottery studio space at the Arts Alliance and within 15 minutes (or less!) was making a fish sculpture. I feel sane again, feel like myself for a change. :-) I wish that I could get your feedback while I'm working, but.....this cannot be. I wish I had been able to articulate what you meant to me, when I still had a chance to talk to you, when you still heard me. I just took all of that for granted. I was such a fool, such a coward.

Things are strange now. Now I think back on all the times you were near me, and I didn't breathe more deeply, when I heard your voice, and I could have listened more than I did...when I wasn't afraid to look into your eyes, but I simply didn't. Those are the things that pain me.

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Dinner....salad. Arugula, spinach, romaine, fennel...radicchio, olives, blue cheese cubes, and pear gorgonzola or huckleberry vinaigrette dressing. I should make something else. I have free range ground beef. But...it reminds me of you. Cooking reminds me of you. Of all the things that I would like to make....to eat with you. And then....then it is only my son and I. I am not hungry...will make him something to eat. I think about how, before things got this way....I was passionate about food and made so many good things. I loved it because I'd pretend I was cooking for you....it seems so long ago. So long ago.

I miss you so much...and am sorry for the things I said last week. I was upset.

I love you. Maybe someday, I will love you differently, with less intensity, in an as-a-person way. Today is not that day. And despite all the pain, I am thankful to have had the experience of feeling this way, of finding that my heart is able to open up fully, that it hadn't been scarred shut after all. It hurts. It does. But I am thankful.

Sometimes I feel that my every experience is painted or tinted with the color of pain.

I just planted a LOT of vegetable plants...mostly in your dreaded nightshade family...(I love eggplant)....and am now in so much pain that the idea of having an apple orchard seems as ludicrous as being able to talk easily with you again. What was I thinking???

On the bright side...bought my kids each a tuberous begonia plant. They were thrilled...the begonia flowers are huge and flamboyant, even the leaves are attractive. I showed them how to transplant them into bigger pots, and some leaves and tops broke off....so I showed them how to root those. This seems magical to them, as it did to me when I first learned about it. :-)I love my kids....and I think it is so cool that they like plants too.

Another side income to supplement orchard idea: raising chickens (they are cheapest when the chicks are straight run, i.e. both male and female without being checked for gender) that are of breeds whose feathers are desired for fly tying. A quick check online shows that a smallish bundle of feathers (not, for example, an entire hackle) goes for $5-6, and that at least one of the breeds is both an egg layer as well as a good forager, which is what I need for keeping on top of weeds and insects in an orchard floor. So I could grow the chicks out to butchering size, use the roosters for my own meat (sidestepping butchering and food handling regs required for outside sale), sell their feathers, and get eggs from the hens. I think this is the best poultry option so far.

More research: sweetgrass appears to be a very good crop. $80 K per acre, fairly easy to grow, steady market, no spoilage. It looks like an acre of intensively managed dwarf apple trees might be enough, with a transition to semi dwarf trees and possibly standards....if one also grew sweetgrass and strawberries. Probably grow garlic as well as crop failure insurance....garlic always makes it.

Still researching apple varieties for flavor, texture, storage qualities, historical interest, disease resistance, suitability for this climate, etc...just in case I somehow figure out a way to start a small organic apple orchard/farm. So far, it looks as though a person could live very comfortably on 2 acres of intensively managed apple trees. Of course, the earliest marketable crop would be produced within 3 years of planting, and it typically takes a little time to prepare the land before planting. The trees don't come into serious production until 5 years after planting. That means that I'd have to find something to produce income during the interim:

• Strawberries: a relatively high value crop (especially if organic since they're one of the most chemically sprayed fruits) that bears the same year it is planted and can continue to bear reliably during subsequent years with attention to weeding, etc. It's also labor intensive to harvest and weed, and the berries spoil rapidly if there isn't an immediate market. Probably the best choice of the things I've thought of so far.
  
  
• Eggs/chicken: a good supplement to the apple trees because the chickens eat codling moth larvae and also help weed around the trees. However, probably best treated as a supplement rather than as a main crop, because I don't want to mess with killing hundreds of chickens.
  
  
• Specialty birds??? Chukars? Partridges? Pheasants?
  
  
• Herbs: the beauty of this idea is that I'd planned on underplanting the orchard with herbs anyway. As far as providing income though.....lavender? Sweetgrass? Possibly an assortment of herbs marketed to the gourmet restaurants in the area.
  
  
• Winter squash and pumpkins: I have experience in this, the pumpkins sell out during Halloween and winter squash seems to be a trendy food right now...as well as a good way to age fresh manure so that it can be used for other crops.
  
  
• Garlic, onions: both pretty reliable, easy to grow crops which can be braided for higher value. I like the fact that as with winter squash, they don't spoil right away.
  
  
• Sheep? I don't know if I want to deal with sheep. On the other hand, they would now the grass under the trees, which would obviate the herbicides and mechanical mowing which are usually utilized in orchards. The market for organic lamb is probably limited. To sell the wool, I would have to keep the sheep in very clean conditions so that their fleeces wouldn't get matted and full of chaff and debris.
  
  
• Angora goats: Can be shorn, unlike cashmere goats, and there is a better market for mohair than for wool in my opinion as a handspinner. However, nothing can defoliate an orchard faster than a herd of goats!!! I would have to have a bombproof way to ensure that they never, ever got into the orchard. They would be a nice outlet for the prunings....If I had a way to mow between rows, I could cut the vegetation for hay....rather than having them (or sheep) graze it.
  

sigh...pipe dreams are fun. :-/

I miss you. I'm so ashamed of myself...for being so weak, for not having the strength to get back to my feet....for not knowing the right things to do, the right things to say. Maybe there weren't any right things to say or do.

I know that I've become the classic textbook case of a person with Asperger's in love, an easily visible and accessible example of why relationships just can't work for people like me. That should hurt me....but it doesn't. I'm so used to being a case study, and all my energy is focused on making it through the day...

I feel like...like the thing inside that makes me want to live, to see and breathe and eat and work and play....it's just died. I'm like a necklace that someone's pulled all the string out of.

I never thought I'd ever feel this way about anyone again. I thought it died and was buried with him when they closed the lid of the coffin. I don't say that for pity....that's not what I mean....what I mean is, I lived for so long without it, for almost 15 years. How did I live for so long like that? Knowing he was gone, not expecting anything but a lifetime of filling in hours and days and weeks and years until I might see him again....it seems like there were times when I was motivated and happy and satisfied with life.....

I don't know how to get there again. It seems a world away.

Caffeine induced enhanced panic attacks. Time to transition to decaf. :-/

It is unreasonable for this to hurt as much as it does. If anything's ever hurt like this before, I sure as hell don't remember it..... I've never held you, never touched you, and this shouldn't have hurt for more than a week or two at most. This is craziness.

I feel nauseous, like I can't breathe....I can't live like this. This is just nuts.

Would someone reputable in the psych field please, please, please discredit Maxine Aston? This bitch is a quack, and she has devoted her career to destroying the lives of people with Asperger's syndrome, probably after encountering one or two bad apples in the bunch. She needs to be very publicly denounced as the cunt with a vendetta that she is.

Note to Maxine: Generalizations are lame.

This is a link I want to look at later so I am storing it here until then: http://agsci.psu.edu/tfpg

Run away from the hurt, girl. Run fast, fill up the time with stuff and stress and people and things to see and places to go. Don't stop and don't rest, run....run. Fill your mind, your time up with things that you like, things to eat, things to do, things to watch and pay attention to, and try to fill your vision with a haze of happiness. Crowd it out like a child barricading a door with stuffed animals against the nameless horrors on the other side.

Because when you stop, when it finds you, it will gut you and leave you screaming in pain, pain that only you can see or feel. Pain that rends your soul and your heart in tatters and leaves your body an empty shell.

Don't look at him

don't see the way

that he looks right through you

right past you

as if you were the ghost

that you long to be.

Pretend with all your might.....

that you don't see him either.