Your Little Blogs Are Getting Way Too Literal. How About Some Goddamn Subtlety for a Change?

It occurred to me two nights ago while I was running that I haven't told you about my toilet situation, a perfectly natural thing to not write about what with everything else that's been going on in my life. Over the course of the last week, though, when my longtime toilet issue graduated first from mild annoyance to major inconvenience and then from major inconvenience to life lesson, I realized it was high time for the toilet to be discussed. To discuss it, though, we have to go back to the start.

The Start

January 17, 1975, twelve days after the day I was due - wait, no, not that beginning. While I'm sure you'd love to hear the story of my birth, let's flash forward forty-eight-and-a-half years to last June when my toilet woes began. The toilet upstairs, which is the only toilet upstairs, had been running intermittently for a while, but in the middle of June, it started running more and more. A handyman who was at my house doing some other stuff tried to fix it but couldn't, so I looked on Yelp and called a plumber, like a real live actual one. He came, did whatever it is a plumber does, said he fixed it, and left. 

A little while after the plumber left, I went upstairs to go to the bathroom and noticed that when I flushed the toilet, the flush was off. What I mean by this is when I flushed the toilet, it didn't feel like the handle was quite connecting with whatever it was supposed to connect with inside. The sound and feel was, I don't know, hollow? I'm not sure if that makes sense, but that's the best word I can come up with to describe how it felt. Not only did the flush feel hollow - if that had been the only issue, who would have given a fuck? Not me, that's for sure - but upon flushing the toilet, the water didn't fill up the bowl; instead, it just barely covered the little hole. In order to make it fill more, I had to stand there and hold the handle down because going to the bathroom in a toilet with such a small amount of water would have led to nothing but a dirty toilet bowl and things that are gross. 

I called the plumber back as soon as I noticed the issue, he came back the next day, he spent about four hours in my bathroom, and unable to fix it, he gave me my money back in exchange for my promise to not leave him a review on Yelp. As he left, he commented on how I really made out because I didn't have to pay anything, but he fixed the issue that I originally called him about. Well, you know what? Fuck that guy because no, he certainly did not. While before I called him back, yes, my toilet had stopped running, when he came back to fix whatever it was he broke, he made my toilet run again.

A couple days later, my ex-Glenn, who was a plumber's apprentice about a million years ago, came over to fix the toilet. Apparently fixing my toilet is some sort of impossible task, though, because he couldn't fix it, either. He got it to flush the right way, at least, but as for the running? It didn't stop. I decided I had enough going on in my life to worry about a running toilet and moved on.

Okay, so that was July (the plumber dude came in June, Glenn in the middle of July). I lived with the running toilet; it got more and more frequent but whatever. I had things to do, things like cry and stalk and belittle, go back and forth with an ex-boyfriend who had as hard a time letting me go as I had letting go of him. In the meantime, though, while I focused on the falling apart of my internal world, my external world was doing the same, and come January, my toilet tank stopped filling up.

Here's what would happen: Nothing. Like, literally nothing. I'd flush my toilet, and nothing. Well, that's not true. The toilet would flush, and then the nothing would come, nothing being no water coming into the bowl or into the tank. I tried playing with the handle, and I tried working with the chain, but the only thing that would make the toilet fill up was taking the top off and pulling up what I'm pretty sure is called the canister flush valve. I'd pull that thing up, the toilet would fill up, and I'd put the top back on. 

For about a month and a half, maybe two, I did that every time I went to the bathroom: took the top of the toilet off, set it down on the bathmat, pulled up the top of the canister thing, waited for the water to fill up, and put the top back on. I loved doing that two or three times a day. It was awesome. Actually, in retrospect, it was awesome. I wish I could still do it, but alas, I cannot, for one day, pulling up the canister valve thing no longer worked. I pulled it up, but instead of going back flush with the bottom part where the little seal is when I let it go, the water instead trickled out. It would stop when I pushed down on it, but once I stopped pushing and, in effect, the pressure stopped, the trickling began. At that point, I had no choice but to turn the toilet water off. 

Now, the toilet water was turned off, yes, but that didn't mean I no longer used it. What I did was use the toilet downstairs during the day and the one upstairs, the broken one, the only other one in the house, in the middle of the night and in the morning when I woke up. When I went in the middle of the night, I wouldn't flush, and then when I went in the morning, I'd turn the water valve on, let the toilet fill up, flush the toilet, and then turn the water off. Barely an inconvenience. In fact, not only was it barely an inconvenience, it was better than what I'd been dealing with in the past. The toilet was no longer running practically nonstop, and I didn't have to keep taking the tank top on and off and playing with my toilet's insides. I even thought to myself that I was dumb not to have turned the toilet water off sooner. 

Well, I'll tell you what was dumb, and that's thinking I outsmarted my diabolical toilet whose mission, it's become clear, is to defeat me. At this point in my story, the point when I started turning the toilet off and on every day, it was, I believe, the middle of March. And I know what you're thinking. I know! Kelly, you're thinking, you crazy bitch, why the fuck didn't you call a plumber? Well, mean people who read my blog, I did that once, and it didn't work. Excuse me for being a little wary. My best course of action, I decided, would be getting a whole new toilet, but I plan to redo my bathroom this summer, so getting a new one just a few months before the entire bathroom is ripped apart seemed dumb and like an unnecessary expense. The way I looked at it, I'd been dealing with toilet problems for so long, how big a deal was it to turn it off and on every day for a few months? 

lol

I'll tell you how big a deal it is. A few weeks in, I started noticing that the floor was a tiny bit wet under the valve. Just a few drops, though, so I didn't think much of it. A couple weeks after that - we're now up to last week - I woke up in the morning, peed, turned the valve on, flushed the toilet, and turned the valve off. I then got in the shower, and while in there I kept hearing an intermittent noise. Wondering what it was, I turned off the water only to hear nothing. Turning the water back on, I finished my shower, got out, dried off, and began to brush my teeth. Again, the noise. I turned my toothbrush off. This time the noise didn't stop. My toilet - my toilet with the water valve turned off - was running, and it was running a lot. 

After playing with the valve for a few minutes, I grabbed my phone. I Googled. I YouTubed. I wanted to cry. Apparently there's this screw in the valve, and after the valve gets turned off and on enough times, it starts to loosen. Grabbing a screwdriver from my handy dandy Ikea toolkit, I tried doing what the YouTube video instructed me to do, but it didn't quite work. I was, however, able to mostly control the running so that now, a few days later, I sometimes hear an itty bitty trickle but it's nothing compared to what previously had been a nearly constant gush. 

Those good old days of waking up and turning my toilet water off and on? Those are over now because fuck if I'm going to tempt fate by turning the water on again. This happened Thursday, so for the past three nights, I've had to trek downstairs to pee in the middle of the night which let me tell you, is the opposite of fun, and as for the mornings? Well, the very first thing I do when I wake up is pee, and on the weekends, that's followed immediately by applying sunscreen, waiting fifteen minutes, and then walking my dogs. Yesterday and today being weekend days, and me not wanting to rile up my dogs by going downstairs, I did the only thing I could. I sat on the edge of my bathtub, let my butt hang over the inside, and Jesus God I can't believe I'm about to type this, I peed. In my bathtub, and yes, I'm well aware I brought this on myself.

And so the moral of my story? The epiphany I had while I was running, the life lesson I learned? When something is wrong, you can ignore it at first because maybe it's not that big a deal, a minor annoyance is all, and then when you can't quite ignore it anymore, you can find ways to sort of patch it up - jerry rig it as Jonathan used to call it, a much nicer and more acceptable term than the one I grew up hearing - and just go on as if everything is fine, hoping the issue will disappear, but problems don't go away on their own. If you don't actually address what's wrong, what's really wrong, before you know it, there you are, sitting naked on the edge of your bathtub, butt suspended in thin air, peeing and praying you've scooted far enough back that you don't accidentally pee on your bathroom floor. 

Nobody Wants to See Me Blog About Tragedy

Last week I was talking to Griffin, who, one day earlier, had gone to the gym for the first time in two or three years. When I asked him what he did there, he told me that among other things, he ran. Naturally, the next things out of my mouth were how far and how fast. He answered that he put the treadmill on an incline of five, started out at 5 mph and went back and forth between 5 mph and varying speeds for a mile, 7 being the highest.  

Wow, that's really good! I've been running for years, and I work out all the time, and I can't run at 7 mph, I responded. 

A couple days after that conversation, I went to the gym instead of running outside for the first time in months. Because it was Saturday and Sundays are my long run, my plan was to run two easy miles like I usually do. Onto the treadmill I stepped and began my 5.5 mph slog. And I started thinking about Griffin.

I started thinking about how Griffin had run 7 mph, Griffin who had run for the first time in years, Griffin who didn't work out at all, and I thought to myself, if Griffin can run 7 mph, I can run 7 mph! I'm in way better than shape than Griffin! 

And you know what I did next?

Wrong! You were going to say I ran at 7 mph, weren't you? (I know you were. Don't pretend.)

What I did was set the treadmill at 6.5 and run at that pace for about a minute. You know, give a faster pace than I was used to a whirl. I then went back to 5.5 where I ran for a minute before moving up to 6.6 for another minute and then back down to 5.5. Then I did the same thing for 6.7; 6.8; 6.9; and yes, finally, 7.

7!

There I was, running at 7 mph, faster than I'd ever set the treadmill to in my entire life, and you know what happened? 

I didn't die!

I didn't die, I didn't fly off, I didn't get hurt. I didn't even get abnormally out of breath. 

You know what I did do, though?

I felt fucking thrilled. 

I felt fucking thrilled, and even it was only for two minutes, I felt super proud of running at an 8:34 mile pace, the fastest I'd ever run, and I text Griffin, all excited, as soon as I got home.

You inspired me to put the treadmill up to 7 mph today

I was like, Griffin does't even run

If he can do it

And I could!

And then, once I finished texting, I asked myself why I was always so afraid to do anything, so cautious about everything.

For so long I've told myself this story, this story about what I can't and can do. This story about how I'm built, about my limitations, about my ineptitude.

I'm not built for running.

I've got these wide Greek-Italian hips. 

The Venus of Willendorf and I may as well be twins.

I mean, I've been injured before, yes. I've hurt my IT band, I've hurt my Achilles tendon, I wore custom orthotics, I wore a boot. 

But you know what else I did? I ran a half-marathon in January, my first since the half-marathon debacle of 2007 that left me incapacitated and nearly crippled for weeks, and not only did I do it half an hour faster than the average first half-marathon time for women between 20 and 50 years old, but I was totally fine when I was done; I recently took more than two minutes off last year's 5k times, running a sub 30-minute 5k three times in the last two months; and I started running 9:35 miles at my run club on Wednesday nights - and, yet, despite these accomplishments, when someone at my run club commented a couple weeks ago that I've gotten fast, I immediately corrected him. I've gotten faster, I said, emphasis on the er. 

People who read my blog, the point?

That story I tell myself; that's all it is: the story I tell myself. I'm _______. I say it all the time, forget about running but about so many things. You know what, though? I think it might be possible that I'm only those things because I think I'm those things, and well, if I think I'm those things, and it makes me those things, doesn't that mean I can just think - and, therefore, become - other things?

***

A few days ago, so I guess about four days after I ran at 7 mph, Griffin called me.

Hello?

Hey, I'm on my way home from they gym and can't talk, but I just wanted to call you to tell you that you inspired me.

Goddammit, Griffin! I replied, laughing.

He laughed. I thought to myself, If my mom could run at 7 mph . . . 

I interrupted him. How fast?

He continued as if I hadn't said a word. And I'm a man -

Griffin!

Then surely I can run faster.

Griffin! Just tell me!

And would you believe that fucking kid/man ran at 8.5 mph?

Motherfucker! I said. 8.5?  

8.5, he answered. 

Yeah, well, I'll see your 8.5, I replied. 

And I actually think I can. 

*Sobs Quietly*

I come here every day. It's instinct. Writing, that is, especially here in this space where for so many years I've exposed so many parts of myself to you for no reason other than, well, instinct, some innate, irrational need that I have, that I've never not had, to share. I open up Beatrix, I click on the little B on my toolbar which brings me to the "Blogger: Posts" page, I stare at the "Blogger: Posts" page, and I move on to something else. Because why? What am I going to write? What do I have to share? That ever since Jonathan told me about a month ago that if I never kicked him out of the house things would be very different now and we'd still be together, I've hated myself every day? That soon it will be nine months since Jonathan and I broke up and I still miss him just as much today as I did at first? That I cry in the shower? And in my kitchen? That I'm crying right now? That even though I can objectively look back and see how selfish Jonathan was in our relationship, how dishonest he was, I still love him the same way I did before that clarity came? That despite the therapy newsletters I get and Instagram therapists I follow who all say pretty much the same thing about dignity in breakups and how we should have it, I have to respectfully disagree because they also talk about authenticity, and nothing is more a value of mine or hallmark of me than loving fervently, irrationally, and unreasonably? That I care so little about things that Keifer, who doesn't have a job, spent over four thousand dollars on my credit card in just about a month, and it made me feel eh instead of angry? That in an attempt to move on, I went on four dates with someone over the course of about five weeks, slept with him last weekend, never heard from him again, and feel eh instead of angry or hurt about that, too (I mean, slept with after being assured this wouldn't just be about sex and never talked to again? It must be Tuesday, right?)? That if it weren't for my dogs, I'd stay in bed whenever I wasn't at work and that on the weekends I have to force myself to get up to take care of them? That living feels like a chore and some of the time or maybe a lot of the time, I wish I just didn't exist? That during particularly sad times the Buffy episode "Beauty and the Beasts" is there inside my head? That I picture the scene when, in the midst of a girl's breakdown at the hands of a boy, Willow says, I think we broke her, and Buffy responds, I think she was broken before this?

So, yes, I come here every day; it's my instinct, after all - to write. But, people who read my blog, I ask you again - why? What do I have to share? What am I going to say?  

I Kissed a Boy, and I Liked It

Actually I kissed two (well, two new boys anyway. The not new one will go unnamed and for the purpose of this post, unconsidered) but, really, I only liked kissing one. The one I didn't really like kissing, I didn't hate kissing; it was whatever (the guy was a little too mouthy and a little too handsy but then again, maybe I just didn't like him because it's not like too handsy has ever really been a problem for me). The one I did like kissing, I didn't love kissing, but it was nice, even pleasant maybe. You know what neither of them were, though, people who read my blog? Upsetting or unsettling or disconcerting like when I kissed M that time I told you about when I saw his penis (sorry, M, but I wasn't ready for that (either of those that's) although I can't imagine this news is a surprise). And you know what that means? You do, right? 

I'm starting to feel better. To move on. 

I mean, fine, maybe one of the guys just happened to be a 34-year-old Virgo just like Jonathan and Jonathan's same height, and maybe he's also Hispanic and has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, and maybe the other guy I kissed was also a Hispanic guy with long dark hair and dark brown eyes plus an inch or two (regarding height, sickos! Regarding height), but, like, isn't a girl allowed to have a type? We're losing focus on the thing that's important here, people, which, to reiterate, is that I'm starting to feel better. I'm starting to move on. 

Or at least I was. 

I was totally starting to feel better and to move on, and I was planning to write about it here, share the good news, alleviate your concern, but what happened before I had a chance to write? My stupid birthday came along. 

My stupid birthday came along and stupid Jonathan spent four hours making me the stupid vegan picadillo that I love and because he wanted them to be perfect for me, he made stupid beans three different times, and he came here for stupid dinner, and until things got a little more than a little emotional - and surprisingly, the emotions weren't mine - we had a really good night, and then, somehow, despite the good night and despite the more than a little emotional aspect of it, I was still doing fine, clear eyes, full heart and all that jazz, ready, like really really ready this time, ready and resolved, and then there I was yesterday on a three-hour phone call full of I love you's but this and what's not insurmountable to you is insurmountable to me's, and nothing would be different right now because neither of has changed's, and information about his weird, weird relationship (if you even want to call it that, and I'm thinking that I don't) that I vacillate over whether it makes me feel better or worse, and, like, my gosh, it's been almost eight months. Eight months! 

Not that I don't think you can count, but

June 3 to July -1 month- July to August -2 months- August to September -3 months- September to October -4 months- October to November -5 months- November to December -6 months- December to January -7 months- plus 21 days. 

Seven months and twenty-one days! Griffin said seeing the two of us is painful, that it's like seeing a cartoon character who keeps stepping on a rake, and the rake keeps hitting the cartoon character in the face. My mother told me this needs to just be a learning experience, a lesson, and I need to ignore him when he texts. My students told me I need to block him and protect my peace. 

I'm not one to give tests, but if I were, and I gave a multiple choice one, and one of the questions were Which of the above statements involving Jonathan and Kelly is correct?, the answer would be (unequivocally? I want to say unequivocally, but unequivocally means a world I unequivocally don't want but do I want the world that currently is?) all of the above. 

If, instead, I gave a lesson about inference and implication and line of reasoning by connecting texts, it might look something like this:

I've been talking to this guy on Bumble, and when I told him my ex was bringing me dinner, he was like, It sounds like you guys are still attached. As friends, I said, and I meant it because that's all he and I are. 

We're friends.