no rest

for i'm weary. i finally closed my book at 2am, and was wide awake by 7:50. i had to call in to work to make sure everything was copacetic, as they say. i hate that word. long story. maybe a poem will come about it now that i've dredged it up. i still remember the fury that word once evoked in me. but i digress. what else is new.

i'm half asleep, "wide awake" and after having a long convo with my boss this morning, he said,

come by work.

and i groaned.

but i must. it's not out of my way, i just hadn't planned on going by. i'm not a drop in to work on my days off kind of gal. but lately, i have been. so much going on and i shouldn't say more.

i did manage not to take a shift today that was offered up (time will come when i can't say no), because i need to go park myself on my best friend's couch and watch movies with her and her husband. i love them. they are soulenriching. i need to be there and just decompress. i feel, even now, the thought of going there wells me up with tears.

i'm just tired, tired makes me weepy.

but i've not forgotten the meanie from last night. and he was making a point that the "library is a public forum" and not yours (as in mine). but what he doesn't realize is, yes, now it's a booming gig, but there were months when there were only two or three people. months when it was a bust (no, never did no one show up, though at times i wished it. i welcome solitude and an hour to be alone whenever i can get one, even then, it seems i needed this).

but now, that there is a lot going on, that things are happening, that this group is relatively hip with poetry community (none of that was known before this group or my piling the info on them), i'm viewed as unneccesary. whatever.

i know the real story. i know what matters. i know the truth.

but i have to decide what matters to me. and as much as i dig walking away from thriving things, i'll not be driven away by some bitter white guy. i refuse. i can be obstinant. and while i don't want this to be a power thing, i do not feel rolling over has ever been my role.

i am not going to yield because someone is a jerk. public forum or not, i am still the host. i have played out the scenario of our next read in my mind a couple ways. i will be dignified and gracious. that is all i've ever tried to be. even if it has been perceived as "fakey" i can't let it change who i am.

he doesn't know me. and for that, i am grateful.

i'm just tired and didn't need to take a hit right now. but better from some periphery of my life than some place that really matters.

i'm grateful for every person in my life, even the jerks. they, often, teach you more about yourself than the straight dealers. they make you ask the question, can i be comfortable around my enemies? or, more profoundly, can my enemies be comfortable around me. i pondered this question yesterday before i even knew what was coming down the pike. i know everyone puts such stock in being nicey nice to those who are nice to them, but that's always been easier in my mind. i can be nice to the nice. that's not a problem.

it's the jerks, the irriators, the bitter white guys whom i have to reckon with. they are my challenge. and the disapproving guy at my work, whenever he walks in, i greet him by name and hand him his coffee with a smile, because i'm taking his crap and growing from it. the same will happen with this bitter white guy poet. i don't know how to do anything other than grow and change, regardless of what the impetus is.

we cannot choose how or when we will grow, we can only try to be open. there is a line from the goddess book (an amazing read if you're into that kind of thing) that goes:

The truth that will give us back a lost part of ourselves is also the one that takes away a self to which we have become deeply attached

does this apply to angry white man? no. but it applies to me. how can i do better, be better, grow from this experience? will i let this experience mold me, or will i mold it?

i know who i am. not who he thinks i am.
and as they say in tim gunn's guide to style,

i cannot control how i am perceived, only how i am presented.

so be it.