The Pink Martini Glass

So today was a long day and that means it will be a long post. For those of you that choose to stick around, settle in.

I have a bar in my house. Yup, a bar. Fully stocked. Important asset of my kitchen. Makes the kitchen pop really. I won this bar on the Price is Right. Yup, the Price is Right. Bob Barker had me on contestants row. Rod Rodey, may he rest in peace, called my name. And there I went, bouncy, 21, and in pigtails. Totally happy, shocked and surprised until right there on national television some jack ass bid a dollar above me and I gave an on camera dirty look to my right. However, the door prize was a bar, and every 21 year old should be so lucky to get a bar on their 21st birthday. About 4 years ago when I first moved to the city and learned what hard work days were, I bought a martini-set for this bar. I replaced one glass in that martini set with a delicate pink martini glass. Because damnit, on a hard day, I was going to treat myself to a martini in a pink glass, that would be my reward to myself. Now, in terms of rating tough days, they run the gammut. They go from water to beer to martini(regular glass) to martini(pink, thought I like to call it blush, glass) for a number of reasons. I'm sitting here friends, with my blush martini glass. But it feels kinda silly. Like the day didn't really deserve one, but I just gave into feeling like it was a bad day.

My brain went from thought to thought to thought and the stream of conciousness was exhausting. Today I felt like a little girl. Just young and naive that I allow for my heart to experience such sadness. You see I started out by thinking about the man I encountered in the morning. Waves of what I called sadness in the last blog entry, but really it was more of an overwhelming weight of how much work was left to do. Even to just get people to pay attention to people who are screaming top of lungs for help. I didn't even want to talk about it at work, I felt like it would undue the deed if I did. Like there was something sacred and personal that I shared with this man by buying him a meal and speaking to my co-workers about it would be more for affirmation of my person than helping him. And today, what I did was a personal choice.

Then I hopped into thinking about my uncle. About his path and the role that I have played in my family and asking myself what kind of role I should play. Having the gifts I have, quite honestly, it is very few and far in between times that I have stretched back to them. It is a cause of unease, but I also don't feel positioned to provide healing in the way I do in other places. But is that undercutting my ability to make excuses. What ownership do I carry for the lack of healing in my family. What role do I play in that cycle having gotten out and really gotten out. Argh, here I go again. Anyway. I sat at work churning through things, missing my students, feeling a little guilt. Trying to take the weight away. I gave up insulting myself for Lent and ultimately I don't believe in victimization, so why would I go there with myself.

Then I started to think about how I am with men. Because when I think about the men in my family, I think about the men I've had in my life. There is of course close correlations. A while back, Jeremiah taught me this paradigm of thought. Victim, Aggressor, Rescuer. It's just different ways of instinctual being. People rarely do just one, but they often veer more to one category. I was figuring out today that I'm phobic of the aggressor/victim (ie daddy), but at the same time, he's the man I have dated. The aggressor/victim is the guy that kinda bulldozes his way in with all his issues. Then I sit there and try to sort through them in an attempt to be loved for what I can do. I could beat around the bush, and sugar coat it, but thats been my pattern.

My male friends, they are more the rescuer/victim guys. They find the broken girls and try and fix them or at least try and have sex with them. Until they get so tired of the fixing or the sex (because though straight men will never admit it, they get tired of empty sex, its only novel for so long), they give up or they get tired of dealing with it... like they didn't seek it out. You see in the triangle of behavior, the way you respond to the world depends on what you've gotten result from. The men I know are amazingly good. Just the most fantastic beings, I'm so blessed. The level of comfort, protection, insight, intelligence and humility is just far beyond what most women get to know and see, and for that I'm grateful. But in the tradition of men are dumb and girls are crazy. You fill in the blank. They make me laugh though, and I love them for that.

I gotta tell you. I miss having straight guy friends around. I love my gay guy friends, don't get me wrong, so much of me has been uplifted and cared for by these men. But the one's that I have in my life, I've assisted through some of the tougher times in their levels of personal security. I'm the protector. In the same way I protect most people in my life. (Rescuer/Victim) Most of my straight male friends live on the east coast. When I'm out there, it is so nice to receive that perspective. To have conversations with the dudes. In both the depth and shallowness of it. I find that the men in my life do not censor themselves around me. I get to hear the undoctored for women truth about how they think, feel, act, its raw and lude sometimes, but its comforting to be around a lack of bullshit pretense in that way. It's hysterical too. I don't have guys out here like that. I miss it.

I rounded out my night with sets of tears. One adult, two teens. I just sat on the phone and listened and prodded. Most of it silence, a lot of hurt. I can't really talk about it yet, I will eventually, I can't right now. It was just hard to be far from some people that I love that I know need me right now. I wish I could provide the comfort of my embrace to them and its just not what is possible or even healthy right now. As I listened to them, I felt the trueness of how futile it is to try and protect people from life. It's life and it just bites sometimes. You can't change that, you just prepare people to handle tough.

So thats why, when I came home today and sat down with my pink martini glass, all I wanted was a hug. I wanted to know that someone understood that though I can't change everything in the world right now, eventually, I got it in me to make some major changes. Someone that could tell me, "yo, its gonna be alright Karla, don't trip for too long." That though I beat myself up for half the day, I was making strides in the right direction.

Maybe this is the point to this time period in my life. It should be about me giving that to me. Which is why the blush martini glass exists. I'm dating myself, ;c), giving myself all the things that I used to wait for someone else to give me. But it was never enough that way. I knew that then, I know it now. You learn little by little how to empty the cup. How to not be heavy. I've spent my life teaching other people how to do it, but I never learned to do it for myself. And its okay that on a week when your closest friends are out of the country and you have a hard day, you struggle with the emptying process. Doesn't make the need for a blush martini glass any less necessary or wrong. Repeating to myself "I'm not a bad person. I'm not a selfish person." isn't enough anymore either. It's other levels. It's time to accept who I am and breathe through that. Feel okay with the weight of the day, knowing tomorrow will be different.