As quietly as an earthquake

I've been doing fairly well post breakup, all things considered. 

My trip to Ohio with the fellas was a godsend. A three day road trip full of third grade humour, greasy food and lots of hugs was pretty amazing and set me in a good mental place to process the breakup.  Which I've been doing for the last few days now.

Tonight was the first major setback. I slid an unmarked CD into the car cd player and before I knew it, a mix cd that I made for Diana started playing. Emotional flood.  All the time I spent combing the ITUNES Library for the perfect songs, teasing her that I was making her a mix-tape; all that emotion just sort of broke the levy that I've had in place since "the call" that ended our relationship.

It's sort of easy to process the termination of a long distance relationship. The night before we split, I was sleeping alone. The night after, the same. When you're used to seeing someone three days a month- it sort of takes a while for the ramifications of the breakup to fully and totally sink in.

I realized today that it's likely that I'll never see my best friend again. My lover. My partner. Someone who up until that point was everything to me- in one second- becomes someone who I'll never see again.

That's sort of sunk my mood, to be honest.  I'm working through it; no use in lamenting over a reality that I can't change.  But I think today may actually be the official start of my grieving process.

Go me.

Breakups in the age of Technology

My girlfriend and I amicably split up last night. I wasn't really for the breakup, but sometimes it's a wise man who accepts what's happening in his life, processes it and learns from it.

Nothing really emotionally changed for me, of course; I still love her dearly and wish things could be different. But as we all know, if wishes were fishes I'd be having sushi for dinner tonight- so accepting it seems like the only option.

New Toy acquired

As a kid, I always had toys. My earliest memories are of laying belly-down on the living room floor on a Saturday morning, avoiding the Florida heat, watching cartoons and playing with toys. Micronaughts, G.I.Joe, Transformers, The Krusher- any monster, robot or horror toy I could get my hands on battled it out, to the death, every weekend, holiday or summer vacation.

Somewhere along the way I started skateboarding, and through the magazines of the time, particularly Thrasher, discovered the artwork of Brian Schroeder- better known to legions of skaters and thrash music devotees as the enigmatic PUSHEAD.

Like tons of other kids into the skate/art culture, I rushed my S.A.S.E. out to San Francisco to join the Pushead Fan Club- getting letters and stickers from the man himself, encouraging me to keep on drawin' monsters.

Fast forward 16 years and I was still collecting toys here and there. My knees and wrists weren't really happy with my occasional bouts of skating, but when I did, I skated on a deck with art by- you guessed it- Mr. Schroeder.

Around the same time, my then girlfriend developed an obsession with vinyl toys. She was a little more than a decade younger than me and I quickly picked up her enthusiasm for collecting Western and Eastern toys- based on seeing the green colourway KAWS Pushead companion behind locked doors in a NYC toystore's display. The price read $500- a bit too much for a single toy, so I let go on ever owning this monument to my childhood obsessions; toys, monster and Pushead.

Several years later, and my toy collection had a few Pushead pieces in it- but the one that started it all for me still eluded my capture. Over time, I started finding it for under the initial $500 pricetag that the store in Manhattan sold it for. After chasing and missing for months, I finally picked it up- $250 from a fellow collector who was willing to part with it to pay bills.

In a few days, it will be in my collection, with a new glass display case purchased just to house it.

Little things like this make me happy.

Ohio Roadtrip: 05/23/08

I'll be heading out to Columbus, OH on Friday with Brian and Bucket. It will be approximately 478.11 miles of open road, representing nearly 8 hours of travel time. Right now, it's precisely what I need.

My head is very clouded right now and I feel that I'm on the verge of a major backslide. I've worked hard to fix pattern behaviour and have felt that I've made great progress- but it's likely that I've had a false sense of security because nothing had come up to test it.

Now that I'm being tested, I find myself reverting to old thought processes and pitfalls and I don't like it at all.

So. Put me in a car with two of my oldest friends- heading toward an event where I'll be surrounded by even more friends, and maybe I'll be able to clear my head.