pre-x-mas

Tonight feels like christmas eve. I'm packing my clothes for the weekend. wrapping presents for m and s's shared birthday celebration. drinking. Gin is such a comfortable companion.

(Clearly I have something to prove with all this overly enthusiastic posting after what seems like a drought. Needing to make a point, I was, and now, clearly, I'm hooked. Clearl: my new favourite word.)

The words are all a mish mash inside my head. I have thoughts swimming around, but i'm having a hard time nailing anything down - translating the immutable forms into language. Did i use that word right?

I'm thinking about the men who have shared my bed, who have touched me. If there's anything that makes me feel the passing of the years its the growing list of "past lovers." This expanding group still doesn't affect me the same way as seeing a child whose gestation I have witnessed to, but still... it is an accumulation. Like plaque.

Now, now, now... not so bad.

I recognize my impulsiveness, what some might call recklessness - or even thoughtlessness. But what of that final moment on the death bed? Do I really want to lie there thinking, "if only I had touched so-and-so, kissed this-one, accepted the proposition of that-one?" Hardly.

And so it's all Actions and Consequence. This is why I am robust. Because I must be.
But am I strong ("You can drink. You can sleep.") or am I tough?
Or am I both?

Maiko said a long time ago (OK, not that long) that she refused to start any sentences with "I'm the kind of person who..." because she wanted to allow for the fact that a person is indefinable. And me, I feel like I've spent so much time trying to figure out who the hell I am - where the hell I come from - what *kind* of person I am. Is this the legacy of growing up hovering between ethnicities? Is this the product of hybridity? My uncertainty. My "neurosis." The sense of always being on shifting ground?

(I'm remembering the haziest part of the conversation in Regina post-Simon, when M and I argued about who had it worse, or something like that. God, I wish I hadn't been so drunk for that fucking conversation.)

No. I can't believe that. In the end, there is nothing special about me. Nothing more special about me than there is special about every single human who is un/lucky enough to inhabit this planet - if only for the shortest while. We all struggle. We all seek solid ground. And nothing is solid. We try to build solidity, or at least a matrix or map that we can refer to when lost. We do our best. That's what we do. We find solace and joy and comfort when we can. We connect when we connect. We make mistakes. Sometimes the same mistakes again and again. And we live. Raucously. Wildly. To the fullest extent of our reach. What else can we possibly do? How else can I make sense of this taste, this predilection, I have for indulgence?

I must sleep. Because tomorrow we leave for the island and it will be WAY earlier than I would like.

I love you.