DigiPen

It looks like I've managed to land a permanent second job if I want it. DigiPen wants me to come back in the Fall, and in fact they'd really like me to teach a full course. Not sure that I'm quite up to that just yet, but it's something to work towards doing I think. I've always had teaching at the college level as a retirement occupation in the back of my mind, and it's nice to find out I might actually have the aptitude for it.

The trick right now is to manage the commitment requirements given my somewhat random travel schedule at work. It helps that their semester schedule doesn't start until September, after my now crazy-ass August event schedule at work. The extra money is nice for doing stuff on the house, I find the idea of being simultaneously a Microsoft and Nintendo employee (DigiPen is owned by them) perversely amusing, and I have access to the Nintendo company store.

As jeliza says, I do need a new hobby now that I've toned down the gaming habit.

It is a bit strange being at a college, however. I don't feel like I'm three years away from my 40th birthday, but when I'm there I see those 20-something year olds and think "damn, they're babies."

(no subject)

Reading these lyrics, it's no wonder I identify so strongly with this song. In fact, I think I identify a bit too strongly with it--the same is true of Alanis Morissette's Flinch. It's a shame I'm not actually a lesbian folk singer, because I think at least Melissa gets hit on as a result of her angst...

( Melissa Ferrick - Stuck )

The Dangers of Journal Surfing

Got a notice from Linked In of a coworker from long ago, and far away. It reminded me that I should do some more LJ farming looking for long, lost friends. I tend to do it once a year or so to see who has been brought into the LJ fold.

This time I managed to stumble on Kim's LJ.

For the first few years of return visits to Austin, I lived in near-constant dread of running into Kim mixed with the fondest hope to see her again. Eventually the years rolled on as it just never happened, and I was able to relax and just let it go... mostly. Hearing her name mentioned through mutual friends still results in that flush of dread, that flinch that Alanis sings about so eloquently, despite it being many long years and a half-dozen lovers later.

The last time I spoke with her was probably four years ago in a short AIM conversation. Her mention of little details in her life sent me into a funk that lasted a week (loree, bless her heart, helped me get through the worst of it by keeping me company the first day). The root of my angst over her has long been that she could move on, and I felt stuck in a perpetual feedback loop. Full of emotion, need, and dreams for her and in return there's nothing: a blank space where she used to be.

The pain has been so recurring that it's clearly no longer really about her. I still deeply love (and in some ways resent) her memory, her ghost that still haunts my subconscious, but the woman herself is a stranger and has been for years.

After reading a few entries, I realized she's doing fine although not perfect, just like everybody really. She may be the face that breaks my heart every few months in some terrible dream, but she's just living her life and making the best of it like me. I hate myself for making such a mess of things, driven to destroy my life in my grief over her. I hate her for moving on and being able to let go. I miss the man I was when I didn't have so many scars and badly-healed wounds, and the woman I thought she was at the time. I certainly miss the five years sacrificed to mourning the loss, the relationships I had forged in Austin, the shared years with appleang, and the sense of hope I once had that the future was full of possibilities.

Honestly I'd probably like who she is now more. Back then she was damn needy, and while I loved taking care of her, she was still growing in significant ways. Given the gulf of sadness, regret, and sorrow between us I will never really know, and I always thought part of why she pushed me out of her life was because I had become more of a hurdle to her growth than a help: the role of the parent to be caretaker for a time, then left behind.

For many years I wanted there to be some purpose to my feelings, some value given to what I felt in my heart to be incredibly valuable and deserving of something more. Such a resolution is beyond the realm of possibility, and as such I was inconsolable. At this point I'd just be happy if I could forget the whole thing as effectively as she seems to have been able to manage. The best thing for me is to just try to let it go as best I can, leave her to her privacy and hope someday I no longer have such a strong reaction to her.

That's more or less been my strategy since I moved to Seattle. It's worked for the most part, but it's never been easy. There are not as many things in Seattle that replay her memory for me as there are in Austin, but there are certain songs, scents, and topics that always remind me of her. It is always bittersweet, mixed with the joy I recall she brought to me and the immense sense of loss that I feel over the rejection and replacement pattern that summed up our ending.

It's not Kim's doing that I was such a wreck for so long, and that I still harbor some incredibly crisp and powerful pain over the ending we came to. Being burned twice a few years later by Andrea certainly didn't help. In many ways, I think those years have left me with a form of PTSD, and Kim is simply the name to give to my night terrors.

The few years of therapy I had before leaving Austin helped give me perspective on the events. Tearing up my roots, moving 2300 miles away, and starting over has worked for the most part. I'm not the mopey bastard I was for many years, but I'm definitely still apart from the life I might have wished for myself as well.

At least I no longer cry every time I really relax. One should revel in the little victories.

I'll never really be over her until I move on, fall in love again, and just get on with my damn life. Nothing is as easy as it once was, but it is my fondest wish these days.