Cole, 9/14/14:

Hola a todos! 

I hope that everyone is doing well. 

For me, life just keeps getting better and better.  I have work to thank for that, on top of stellar, amazing, bad ass friends, but work is tantamount for me, and I continue to grow, learn, and thrive at the winery I am working at for harvest, and know that that is a huge part of why I no longer wake up with anxiety, why my appetite is back, why I wake up with a smile on my face, no matter how sad I may be to leave my puppy behind for ten, twelve, and lately even fourteen hours a day, six days a week. 

I no longer go to work with “nervous excitement”, just excitement, because everything I may have been timid about before I have excelled at, if not mastered.  Every day, every week, I am granted more and more liberty, responsibilities, and the kind of trust that is given only once a person has proven that they are competent enough to handle some situations on their own, without supervision.  Inoculations, chemical additions, drain and returns, pump overs, racking, barreling down, etc.  Some of these things I am now trusted to do alone, and at the end of the work day, I am so happy I almost don’t even want to go home.  I want to pinch myself!  It’s almost like I can’t believe anyone would give me the authority, would cut the leash and just set me free and trust that I wouldn’t fuck shit up royally, but then again, they did it at a nuke plant, so why not a winery?  So far, so good!  SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking good!  

 

Work has become something like a blood transfusion to an ailing body that was about to collapse, something that I SO desperately needed, but before I continue on about work, there is a little something I would like to get off my chest…

There’s a lot of anger and hatred going around, that I simply cannot grasp.  I understand being angry, and getting mad and yelling.  I get that.  I yell at the idiot on the freeway in front of me going 63 in the passing lane.  I give a silent ‘fuck you’ to the asshole who doesn’t know how to park.  I may yell and let off some steam, silently or aloud, to myself, in my car, listening to metal, but this is a different thing.  I have never, in my life, gone out of my way to cut someone to the flesh with acrid, straight razor acuteness and precision.  I have wanted to break a chair over someone’s face before, and I’ve wanted to blurt out some incredibly hurtful and horrible words to someone that I know would have provoked a waterfall of harsh and bitter tears, but I never did it.  I left the chair where it was and I bit my spiteful tongue, because no matter how pissed off I was, I knew that I didn’t want to make the person I was hating on feel bad.  I know what it feels like to feel bad, and it fucking sucks! 

 

I am by no means a saint in any sense or interpretation of the word.  I know I have hurt people, and hurt people rough, but I have never in my life gone out of my way to intentionally hurt someone, either in general, for my own gratification, or to humiliate someone.  That sort of shit is just fucked up, rude, and beyond reproach.  You don’t get to hurt people just because shit in your life isn’t going as planned.  You don’t get to hurt people just because you’re in a bad mood, or because you want to put someone else down to feel better about yourself.  That shit is just fucked up, silly, and positively lacking in self respect.  I’ve hurt people, to be sure, and I am not proud of it, and never intentionally.  People who go out of their way to intentionally hurt other people, and are proud of it at the end of the day, well, those people are just straight fucked up, and should take some serious time to reflect about what makes them so unhappy they feel the need to intentionally hurt other people to feel better about themselves or for whatever other fucked up reason they choose to do it. 

This random, twisted concept of hatred and retaliation came to me as I was driving to work the other morning.  I was happy and excited to be going to a job that I loved, music was pumping, I had a full cup of coffee in my hand, but someone who I thought was a friend of mine had sent me a text to hurt me on purpose the night previous, and though I typically am a pretty happy person and don’t let that type of shit effect me, it did indeed touch a vein, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.  Not what he said, but the concept of bitterness, contempt, and retaliating and lashing out for no other reason than to make another person feel bad about themselves because the “hater” didn’t get what they had aspired to acquire. 

I was driving and wondering what made people go out of their way to intentionally hurt other people, and it made me think of three separate, deliberate occasions where someone went out of their way to make me feel like shit, bring me down, or else just shit all over my life.  And all of the sudden it came to me.  REJECTION.      

Apparently being rejected brings out the worst in people.  I’ve had people hate on me for several other reasons, but rejection seems to be the primary, most voracious and malicious, not to mention incapacitating form of hate I have ever experienced.  Perhaps my three examples can shed some light to others who are going through something similar.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps it can make some people aware as to how they treat others, or how others treat them.  Honestly, I have no fucking clue, but can we seriously just stop this vicious circle of shitting on other people just because things didn’t work out as planned?  Um, yeah, that’s called life, and we sort of just need to stick together and deal with it, and not trying to maliciously dick with other people because feelings weren’t mutually reciprocated or whatever would be a great help, and a giant leap in the right direction.  Just saying…

The first incident needn’t hardly be mentioned.  To any follower of my posts will know that I am speaking of Sedouche.  Sedouche was the ridiculous dude I carpooled with when I was still working at the nuke plant.  He wanted an intimate relationship.  I did not.  When I told him I was sleeping with someone else and did not want or desire him, he retaliated by writing a voraciously erroneous and incriminating letter to security to get my ass fired.  Far out.  Thanks buddy.  Do you actually own balls?  Doesn’t matter.  He succeeded.  And why?  Because he couldn’t handle rejection and didn’t want to deal with the humiliation of other people knowing what actually happened between us as apposed to reality, which was absolutely nothing because I did not want him. 

 

Be careful what you wish for, however.  His lies may have gotten my security access pulled, but they also made him somewhat of a pariah, and he may very well have propelled me into a line of work that I much prefer and could even go further with.  I have no doubt he just wanted me gone so he wouldn’t have to deal with the humiliation he would have to face once the truth got out, but he also wanted to hurt me in the only way he knew he could.  Work.  The only thing I care about aside from my dog.  That fucker may as well have taken a machete to my throat, because taking away my livelihood and ability to pay my bills was like sawing an arm off, and he knew it.  Retaliation.  Rejection.  I get it.  But why?  Why hate yourself and someone else so much that you would go out of your way to ruin their life?  That is a form of hatred so beyond my mental capacity.  Like I said; I have hated on people before, but I would never hate someone so much I would go out of my way to try and ruin their life and take away their ability to pay their bills and function.  That takes a special type of crazy that I simply cannot grasp or support.  If someone wants to fight, I’ll fight.  You wanna scrap i’ll fuckin’ scrap!  But to hit below the belt, lie, and take away someone’s livelihood?  To have such a low opinion of yourself that you lash out and, in trying to pretend that you care so little actually end up showing how much you truly do care because you went to so much trouble just to cause another being strife?  To be so miserable? I can’t even begin to try to understand how in hating someone so much you would care that much about them to hurt them, or to even give them a second thought at all. That shit is fucked on a level I can’t even begin to fathom!  I mean just, wow.  I have never hated someone that much.  I guess I should be flattered, in a way, but it’s really more disturbing than anything else.  And to think, this psychopath works at a nuclear power plant, as a functioning, “safe” radiation protection technician.

My second example is somewhat recent.  It involves a landscaping buddy of mine that I had met through the temp agency.  He and I “seemed” to get along on a lot of levels.  We had worked together for a while, he knew my convoluted history, and just seemed like a really cool, mellow dude that I could be friends with.  I knew that he wanted more out of our friendship than I was mentally and physically able to provide at the time, seeing as I had just recently broken up with the Rapist, someone I was truly in love with, and I wasn’t ready to just replace him and move on to my next “victim”.  I didn’t want to be with anyone else.  I just wanted to be alone to sort through my mental bullshit, ALONE, and to just be me for a while, not think about boyfriends, lovers, or intimate relationships of any sort.  I am not the sort of person who needs to constantly be with another person.  I am perfectly content to be alone, and in fact prefer it, the only thing lacking for me in NOT being in a relationship is the fact that I am not getting laid, something that is actually quite significant and important to me, but whatever.  I can do without getting laid for a while.  I am no stranger to masturbation.  Sometimes fucking yourself is better than fucking another person anyway, depending on their skill level and your ability to tolerate another human being at the time. 

Long story short, I really liked Landscaper guy, but I wasn’t sure to what degree.  I knew I didn’t want to get physical with him, but I truly enjoyed having a beer or two with him at the end of the day, and our textual banter and random, general conversations throughout the day.  We saw each other a couple of days a week, after work, to shoot the shit and drink beer.  I took him to Turkey Flats with me one day to teach him how to fire off a 12 gauge, as he had never shot one before, and though I knew he wanted more than just friendship with me, friendship was as far as I was willing to take it.  Might things have progressed one day?  I don’t know.  All I knew was that I wasn’t ready for anything more than friendship with him at the time, and I was very open and honest with him about how I felt.  I had no trouble expressing to him that, although I was glad I had cut ties with the Rapist, I was still obviously in love with him, and not willing to enter into a new sexual, physical, or intimate relationship in any way.  He said he understood, and I thought he did, but I guess he didn’t. 

At about two AM, on the morning of my birthday, he texted me that he thought he was in love with me.  I wrote it off as him being drunk and never really addressed what was said, because I thought once he sobered up he would realize that was probably not true, and he was just heavily under the influence.  I mean, how can you love someone you don’t even really know?  We continued to text back and forth for a couple of days after that, about work, mostly, and then three days later, after sending me a list of songs he liked that I didn’t respond to, because work was really picking up for me and I was just busy, out of the blue mother fucking sky he sends me this text that was completely unprovoked and well, just weird.  This is the text he sent:

“So yeah.  What I’ve found out about you is you’re kind of a snob.  I don’t get down like that, dude.  I appreciate who u r and your strength but I don’t typically surround myself with the likes of you.  I’m punk rock.  I’ve always been that way.  I stand up for reality and those that appreciate it.  I’m not a sellout.  I don’t judge ppl.  I live my life cuz I’m a felon like the rest of em.  I don’t drive a fancy car and I DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WHAT MY PARENTS THINK OF ME.  Just sayin.  I refuse to give in to the wine industry.  I have worked for those ppl before and know they r suckers of our land.  Good luck to u bro.”  

Hmmmmmmmmm.  So, I’m a sellout because I choose to take a job in an industry I have always been passionate about?  I’m a sucker because I do try to keep a healthy relationship with my parents, even if I don’t often agree with their religion and politics?  I judge people?  I mean, maybe sometimes I do get down on haters, or people who try to put other people down, or people who are just straight shady, back stabbing, and insincere, but I feel like I’m one of the most understanding and least judgmental people that I know, and not just because it isn’t my place to judge, but also because I just really don’t give a shit about other people’s lives or what they do because it’s none of my fucking business and what is right for one person may be completely different than what is right for another.  Yeah, I’ll call someone out for being a cunt or a douche, but does that constitute me being judgmental, or just stating an opinion about something I don’t necessarily agree with or a “feeling” I have, as apposed to a lawful “sentence” of what I think is right or wrong?  Almost all of my friends who are experiencing a mental and possibly uncouth dilemma more often than not come to me first to confide, because they know the last thing I would ever do is judge them.  It is simply not my place.  I’m not Jesus, after all…

My last example is about the Rapist, so I will keep it brief, because why waste my time?  Once he found out I had blocked his number and email, he, being the coward that he is, and too scared of Marge to look her in the eye, let alone speak to her, began calling up a mutual friend of Marge and I in South Carolina.  I’ll call her “the Regulator”, because I forget what pseudonym Marge has given her, and I think The Regulator fits, because she is bad ass, she can make a mean vodka tonic, and that sweet southern miss can fucking regulate!  Anyway, he went from texting and calling her, at first asking why, then if I was seeing someone else (his typical question, because he never trusted me and was always, ALWAYS insecure about himself, especially when it came it to me), to getting straight up irate and saying things like “well FUCK her then!” 

The Regulator didn’t tell these things to me until after a few weeks, she would just keep checking up on me to make sure I was staying strong and sticking to my convictions.  After she felt confident that I was somewhat out of the woods with him, and would continue to stay away, she sent me some of his texts, and told me what she thought about him.  Her words about him and his character were not kind ones, but I do believe they were sincere, accurate depictions of his personality.  I just don’t know why I didn’t see it before.  I had the love blinders on.  Perhaps I had seen it, did know it, but chose to look past it because I just loved spending time with him so much.  I really can’t say. 

On top of his insecurities, which had always been glaringly obvious to me, she said she thought he had control issues, anger issues, and that he was a die hard manipulator, all the most obvious weapons of choice that a man who was insecure in himself would arm himself with.  His arsenal consisted of finding a person’s weak spot and picking at it like a vulture pecking at the bones of a helpless, withering animal about to croak in the desert.  And what better way to feel better about yourself than by putting other people down and trying to make them feel bad about themselves?  It’s so high school I can hardly believe the man I was in love with was actually 39. 

 

In any case, I guess my point, in this last scenario, is when she told me he kept yelling “well fuck her then!” all I could think in my mind was; “No.  There is no fuck ME. There’s only fuck YOU.”  I kept thinking there couldn’t possibly exist a “fuck ME” scenario in our entire history because I hadn’t done anything wrong, but on top of all of that, I didn’t even feel enough animosity or hatred toward the guy to even want it to be a fuck YOU scenario.  I wasn’t mad, I was just done, and there was nothing wrong with me being done, because I had explained to him several times what I needed in order to stay in the relationship and he chose to blatantly and unapologetically ignore what I needed, so I left.  It didn’t matter to me that he tried to skirt around the fact that I blocked him in several ways, and that VIA USPS a letter did make it’s way to me, but what I couldn’t understand in it (and no, I did not respond to it) is that he said he “knew I hated him” in it.  No.  That was false.  I didn’t hate him.  I had no reason to hate him nor do I hate him now. What the fuck is wrong with people?!  Just because things end doesn’t mean there needs to be hate.  Live, learn, love, lose, but most importantly, when things are over, keep your head up, move forward gracefully, meet new people, have new experiences, become a better version of yourself, but don’t hate!  Dwelling in misery is toxic.

 

  So you see, there cannot possibly be a FUCK ME in that scenario, because unless the man was a completely inept fucking retard, the only way he could expect any other possible outcome from not giving me what I expressed several times that I wanted and needed in order to stay, was to just not care.  That is what I got out of it, in the end, and that is why I left.  True, it was sort of jacked of me to just straight up block his number and email address, but I was just so tired of it by the end.  I didn’t want to have to listen to his empty words anymore.  So I blocked, I left, and I forgot, but I never hated, and I never said “fuck you!” I didn’t feel that way about him.  I still don’t feel that way about him.  Sometimes, some shit just doesn’t work out, and that’s ok, but please, for the love of anything holy, like bacon and whiskey, can we stop hating on people just because things didn’t work out?  There’s enough negativity going around in this world already.  I think we could all use a little more peace.  Let’s save the “fuck YOU’s” for the people who really deserve them, because believe me, there are a TON of those mother fuckers walking around, and I would rather say fuck you to them than to any ex I have ever had, or even all of them combined.  Not worth my time.  Not worth my hate!  Hate takes effort, after all…

Ok, time to switch gears real quick, because I started this post over two weeks ago, and a lot has happened, but we started getting in way more fruit and as my hours at work have multiplied, so have my hours at home to write diminished.  I suppose within a few degrees one way or the other, everything is pretty much the same, however, the Exhibitionist has recently re-contacted me, and now that I am single, I didn’t have any good reason to turn him away, nor did I ever really want to in the past, it was just that I was in a committed relationship with the Rapist in the recent past and didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize it by communicating with the Exhibitionist.  He contacted me a few times while the Rapist and I were still together, but was very respectful of my wishes and when I would tell him to fuck off, he would disappear for a few months, only to shoot me a random text, a few months later, to see if the fishing was any better.  My response was always the same, and he always respected my desire to not be tempted. 

  

I have written about the Exhibitionist before, but just to recap, he and I have always sort of had a thing for each other, which began about twelve years ago, before I went to school in France, but I was in a relationship and so nothing happened.  When I returned from France, a year later, the mutual attraction and chemistry was still cloyingly palpable, but he was in a relationship, and shortly thereafter I got into a serious relationship with the Exhibitionist’s best friend, my now ex-husband, Martichyst.  The Exhibitionist was supposed to be best man at our wedding, shortly before the day of our wedding he declined to attend and we never really heard from him or of him since then.

Well, now that I am single, the Exhibitionist is single, and he decided to hit me up again, just a couple of days ago, I really couldn’t turn him down, though as usual, and me being my typical standoffish, asshole self, I was none too friendly straight out the gate either.  He texted me this, out of the blue, after months of not speaking:  “Still too cool…”

I asked him what he meant.  He said I never texted him.  I told him we had nothing to talk about, and that I was working a lot of hours, but this time, I managed to drop that I was single as well, after my rudeness didn’t even phase him and he continued to text me.  I’m not really sure why.  Perhaps 12 years of sexual tension and the fact that I’m going on three plus months of not getting laid might have piqued my curiosity. 

Mmmmmmmmmmmm!  The man looks good!  He has always had a ruggedly sexy face, although now that I think about it, it probably only looks rugged because he is sporting a beard as of late, because when he is clean shaven, he looks smooth and sexy, almost pretty, but a naughty, “dirty” pretty, with gorgeous eyes, nice cheek bones, and a stellar mouth!  Did I mention that he is covered in tats, loves food, wine, and is studying to be a chef?  Oh yeah, and he works out a lot and is into rock climbing.  Let me just take a moment to mop my seat dry with a napkin!

     Anyway, to make a long story short, after much banter, we started talking about getting together, to see if the chemistry will still be there in person (mind you, its been almost a decade since we’ve seen each other in the flesh) the next time he comes into town, which may be within a week or two.  I’m pretty sure the chemistry will still be there, based on our candid conversations, and as if shit like this would actually phase me, because I usually keep my guard up, surrounded by a mote, archers with flaming arrows, and my own, personal, fire-breathing dragon, he did send me two texts that struck me a little, if I can believe in their sincerity, and even if not, it never does anyone any harm to be flattered every once in a while, even if the flattery is bullshit.  He texted me this:

“U have always been my “got away” girl.”

And then (nail meet coffin, when we were discussing why, after all these years of desiring one another, we had never hooked up, and the primary answer was me marrying my ex):

  “I had to watch you marry a guy I knew couldn’t satisfy you.” 

Well, if that’s truly the way he felt, no wonder he didn’t show up to the wedding, and no wonder he disappeared from our lives after that, until he contacted me via facebook, after he heard about my divorce. 

Well, peeps, I’m calling it quits.  I’m tired as hell!  Loving work, loving my freedom, independence, and being single again, even though I don’t really have the time to enjoy and embrace it.  The Rob Zombie and Social Distortion concert recaps will have to wait for another day, though the mosh pit at Social D in Pozo did eat my hat, one glove, left me with a stained shirt, a hell of a good time, great workout, awesome laughs, offending WAY too many dudes who I just had to call out as pussies and grab by the shirt collars and yank their asses into the heat, fights oddly avoided, and may or may not have fractured my left forearm and foot. But now, I’m cold, my body aches, I get no sleep, and half the time I question my own sanity.  So cheers to the lovers, indifference to the haters, and a nice fat middle finger to the assholes in front of me on the freeway who don’t know how to drive!  

 

Cheers everyone!  Have a great fucking week!   

Also, this chair!: