disturbing

i got some horrific news saturday that i am still trying to process. a friend committed suicide friday morning.

mike and i weren't close friends, but we used to hang out some. i met him last november through my good friend steve. we had a great time hanging out with my group of friends and over the next month or so we went out as a group several times. i had a bit of a crush on mike but nothing ever came of it. he was the type of guy i was often attracted to. he had a "bad boy" edge to him but was funny and fun to be around.

right before christmas i moved to franklin so i didn't see or talk to mike much after that, but my group of friends continued to spend time with him.

i am still in shock that this happened. i have never quite understood what would make someone so desperate that suicide seems like his or her only option. we've all gone through tough times, and sometimes i have wondered what exactly i am here for, but i've never been to the point where i considered taking my own life.

when you hear about someone who does this, his or her friends and family often say they would never suspect this, he or she had so much to offer and live for, in a million years they never thought they would go through this. in this case, from where i stand, all of this is true. from what i knew of him, mike was trying to get his life in order, he loved his family and friends, he was happy-go-lucky and liked to have a good time. he did not seem brooding, or depressed, or anything you would think a "suicidal" person would be.

more than ever i am convinced that you never, ever know what any individual is going through, and that is why it is important to treat EVERYONE with kindness and understanding, as hard as it may be at times. i never thought mike would be dealing with demons that no one, in his eyes, could understand. i, nor do i think that any of our mutual friends, were aware that he was at the brink of being unable to live everyday life and deal with what comes our way. or maybe this was something he did in the heat of the moment, in which case i still don't think it is something anyone could have predicted.

if anyone is reading this, please keep the o'connell family in your thoughts and prayers. mike will be missed by many.

it's been awhile

i am only writing because i haven't written anything in awhile, not because i have anything really interesting to say.

i have gotten hooked on dexter reruns and painting pottery. after work one day some girls and i from work went to "all fired up" here in nashville. i am not very artistic or imaginative so i picked a cool-looking wavy vase and painted it my basic colors - red with a black inside and a small black heart. that's me - blackheart! ha. anyway the piece turned out great and i really want to paint more pottery. they have a neat heart-shaped dish and small jewelry box i want to go back and paint. the box mostly because it is tiny, perfect for my earrings i take off every night, and because it's a "heart-shaped box" which is one of my favorite songs ever. they also have a cool triangle-shaped plate i'd like to paint and buy a stand for to display somewhere in my apartment.

so dexter is my new project via netflix. i have watched the first two seasons and am waiting on season 3 to be delivered. i took a short hiatus to watch "twilight" which i found disappointing. i was somewhat disgusted with myself for giving in to the frenzy and buying the book in the book in the first place, but i had to admit the book was entertaining and i was hoping for more from the film. the only thing i really got out of it was that robert pattinson IS hot. :)

other than that it is same old, same old in my world... all work and no play for the most part.

wintry day

three days ago it was 70 degrees and sunny! my windows were up and it was beautiful day, plus i was off work so i was running errands and enjoying the springy weather.



today it has been sleeting and cold all day.

from the past

i actually wrote this a little over a month ago on myspace, but it's still interesting (at least to me) and pertinent, so i am reposting it here.

this is what happens when you drink a li'l too much..
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life

after 32 years i still dont really know what i want in this world. how messed up is that? arent we supposed to have some sort of clue at this age?

i am very lucky in that i have started a great new job and i love it. granted its only a month in but i think it is the perfect fit for me at least at this stage in my life. it wasnt what i pictured myself doing when i was little but i truly hope i have found my calling.

whats really confusing is the "other stuff." do i want to get married one day? do i want a family? some days the answer is yes, most days the answer is no or at least probably not. but the days the answer is no are the most depressing. i talked to my dad today. it is his 64th birthday. i sent him a sweet card that was perfect. it talked about how you didnt need the frilly dresses and tiaras to be a princess in your daddy's eyes - and that definitely wasnt me as a kid! i played in the dirt with the boys and liked to watch sports. but i am still daddy's little girl. i also gave him a keychain that said my dad.. my hero. and that is the truth. along with my mom and my sister they are the most important people in my life. and i often wonder if i will ever experience that relationship in a capacity other than the one i have right now. if i dont have my own family, what do i mean to anyone? it feels like my life will mean nothing.

however i cant make my mind up when i probably should. i run away from relationships and blow people off who might potentially be interested in me. last year was a very bad year for me relationship-wise so maybe that is the reason why i do everything i can to avoid a date or getting to know someone in a role other than friend or makeout partner. 2008 made me cynical and sour when it comes to men. finding the person you are dating in bed with someone, or learning that the person you are dating has a pregnant girlfriend will do that to you. luckily for me i can laugh about it now. even if it is bitterly. :)

at any rate i rue the fact that i am not a real life carrie bradshaw - my passion would be to write about this stuff on a regular basis, along with other things of course, like sports. i would love to dissect it and discuss it and try to figure out why i (and other chicks) are so messed up when it comes to dating and dudes. or maybe its just me? if thats the case i will have a whole other reason to write a blog.

kentucky hoops

right now i am watching my wildcats play georgia at rupp. i meant to write about the state of uk basketball before today, but was too pissed to get my thoughts together.

i have never been so disgusted, uninspired or depressed with a kentucky basketball season, and it's nothing new. at least not lately. i was never really on board with the billy gillispie hire. i was like, who IS this guy? i had never heard of him and wasn't impressed with his coaching credentials. now almost 2 seasons in, i am REALLY not impressed. we have no heart, no will to win, and our coach has no class.

the pitino era was the most fun, exciting, meaningful time in kentucky basketball history for me. i started watching the cats when i was maybe 8, when eddie sutton was coach and rex chapman was uk's golden boy. i was instantly hooked. after probation and the first losing season in over 60 years, pitino resurrected the program and made it something to be proud of again. his first few teams were my favorite ever. i loved our championship teams of 96 and 98, but pitino's bombinos and the unforgettables moved me to tears. pitino inherited a team of walk-ons and benchwarmers and made them into a team that played in the Greatest Game Ever Played, in my opinion. It was the stuff of movies and fairy tales, albeit without the happy ending.

now, years later, i watch a team which suffers from contant turmoil and drama. players are kicked off, then reinstated. others transfer after only 6 games. i don't buy the hype of "waiting til gillispie gets his own recruits." see above. great coaches work with what they've got. they make what they're given into winners, like pitino did with the good ol' kentucky boys he was "stuck" with when he came in as head coach. we have the best one-two punch in the SEC with patrick patterson and jodie meeks, yet we are barely above .500 in a conference that is way down from years past.

our coach throws his players under the bus after a loss and takes none of the blame. whereas pitino broke his players down, he built them back up and made them the absolute best athletes they could be. as a result, they had an undying loyalty to him and would give everything on the court to make him proud and bring the team a W. his former players become his assistant coaches, and then become some of the best head coaches in the game. now it seems gillispie tears his players down, but he doesn't know how to build them back up. it seems they end up resenting and end up so scared of making a mistake and risking getting lamblasted, they don't give their all on the court. these guys are kids and dont deserve to be made to feel like scapegoats in the kentucky media.

pitino was not only a master coach, he was a master psychologist. he knew how to handle players and their different personalities. his first year as uk head coach, john pelphrey got screamed at for every mistake anyone made. the team's best scorer, derrick miller, could be streaky, and would become withdrawn and down on himself if he was criticized. as a result, pelphrey took his beatings, and it worked. pelphrey could take it, whereas miller could not, yet both players became better for it. gillispie has no idea how to employ such strategies. he is just hard-nosed, balls to the wall, bulldog mean to everyone, with different results.

our coach also lacks class. he has been rude and condescending to media on national tv and on his own uk radio and tv networks, the very individuals who run his radio and tv shows. pitino was a master spin doctor, and a PR dream. he knew what to say and how to say it. even when he was being sarcastic and maybe a little rude, it was funny when it came out of his mouth, and not a turnoff. gillispie does not have this talent.

this is not to say gillispie will fail because he is not pitino. i'm not saying he should even try to be. what's disturbing is the state of the program pitino helped build back to dynasty level. now we are almost laughable. we might not make the ncaa tournament for the first time in 18 years. we haven't been ranked consistently since tubby smith's last season. we get blown out by subpar SEC teams and lose 5 home games in one season, the most ever. it's embarrassing. i think gillispie is in over his head and has no idea what to do. sometimes i even question his ability to coach. and i get pissed when i think about the possibility of everything we have built since the mid 90s being torn down.

right now we are clinging to a two-point lead at home against lowly georgia. we have lost 6 of our last 9 games. if we end up losing this game, the last iota of faith i have in billy gillispie's coaching abilities will be gone.

you think you know someone

this week i found out some interesting information about my ex-boyfriend.

my ex (let's call him jake) was the first person i really felt a connection to. i was a late bloomer in the love department - i never dated in high school and didn't date much in college either. i was 19 before i had my first kiss. i was the girl all the guys wanted to be friends with, but wasn't attracted to. after college i lived in new york for four years. i went on a few dates but nothing serious. when i moved to nashville i started going out more and spending more time with my new friends - a big group of single girls. i started meeting more guys and dating some, but none of my relationships lasted longer than a month and a half.

then i met jake. one of those short term relationships had just ended and i met jake when i was at my favorite watering hole at the time. i was immediately attracted to him. he had the "bad boy" look i have become quite the sucker for - bald head, "chin strap" facial hair, a tattoo. we began talking and immediately hit it off. he had the look i wanted but also the intellect - he was well-spoken and engaging. i thought i had hit the jackpot - a good guy in a bad boy's body.

we had our first official date two days later, on a sunday evening. i was to meet him at the restaurant he worked at so he could serve me dinner. after a couple of confidence-boosting pitchers of margaritas, i was on my way.

when he poked his head out of the kitchen door as i was sitting alone at the bar, he looked just as cute as i remembered, even cuter with his chef coat on. he served me an awesome meal of steak, potatoes, vegetables, salad, washed down with my favorite adult beverage - maker's and diet coke. i paid for nothing. afterwards we went downtown to go "honky tonkin." we had a blast. great conversation, great attraction, the whole bit. our first kiss was extremely passionate and an experience i had never had. i had never had such an intense physical attraction to anyone before.

we immediately became inseparable. he cooked me dinner, we went out for drinks, we hung out at his house with his adorable two-year-old son. a little over a month later i turned 30, and for the first time i had a real boyfriend on my birthday. i had a huge party and he brought me flowers, along with a beautiful cake he had made himself. i had never been happier.

a few weeks later he told me he loved me, in the same spot where we met. i had never uttered those three words and certainly no one had ever said them to me. but i did feel like i loved him, and i told him so. i had never been in that situation and it was a wonderful, amazing feeling.

it was soon after that the wheels began to come loose.

right before thanksgiving we got into a very disturbing discussion. he was cooking thanksgiving dinner for the vanderbilt fraternity house he catered at once a week. somehow the subject of religion came up. i was raised southern baptist by the two most wonderful parents you could imagine. i was raised to love my family and friends, be polite, respect myself, go to church, and turn to God when things look bleak. jake had been raised to go to church as well but because of a bitter experience now shunned God and looked at religion with distaste. i told him going to church was important to me and i wanted to get back into going regularly. the conversation just didn't go well. it seemed we had come across a deal breaker but neither of us was ready to walk away from what we had just found with each other. we basically agreed to "table" the issue and deal with it later.

things just got harder after that. jake had a checkered past - drugs, jail time, etc. he also had a temper - more than once he ended up bloody at the bar we were at, either defending himself or a friend. none of these were things i wanted in my life. i have never touched a drug in my life and have worked hard to be a decent member of society. i was nervous how it would affect me if jake had "stuff" on him, especially if he was driving my car around town. on top of all this was the way he kept his ex from me. i couldn't understand how she wouldn't want to meet the girl who was spending time with her son. we also had a lot of fights because he never had money or time to take me out to dinner, but had both to take her out. when i would call and he was with her, he would pretend i was a guy friend, calling me "brother" and whatnot. it was all fishy but i dealt with it. i got pissed and we fought but i didn't want to break up over it.

things just got worse after our first christmas together. i gave him a huge stocking full of stuff i picked out with care, and i did not even get a card. he spent more time hanging out with his friends than with me, and would conveniently not answer his phone when he was with them. by the end of january i had had enough and ended things. we reconciled shortly thereafter but after more fights i ended it again. that was the year of 2008 in a nutshell when it came to our relationship - knock down, drag out fights, hurtful comments, breaking up and getting back together. one of the biggest altercations came when he learned my friend chris and i had dated several years prior. i thought it to be none of his business since it was so long ago and we dated only a month, but jake had a HUGE issue with it and i ended a friendship for him to earn his trust back.

he would be conveniently unavailable often - when i was out of town and he was supposed to be watching my cats he would disappear. his phone was often shut off due to unpaid bills and he rarely had a car. he would drive my car after drinking and then show up hours late to my house after going out with friends after work. we had a very rocky and tumultuous year. he hated that i went out with my friends and was extremely controlling. everything was a fight.

right after valentine's day the following year it all came to a head. i had gotten us free movie tickets and we had plans to go to the movie. poor planning on his part made us late, but i ended up getting reamed at for not being at his beck and call and picking him up when i was supposed to - i was 5 minutes late because i had to pick up the tickets. i had had enough. i told him how i felt about his behavior and that i thought this was not a relationship should be. it shouldn't be fighting and trying to hurt the other person and being jealous. he asked if i knew he was the one and i couldn't say yes.

it was an ugly breakup. he would get hammered and show up at my house unannounced. he would borderline stalk me when i was out with friends. he would beg me to take him back. one night he led me to believe he was going to hurt himself in some way. i called the cops and had them check on his wellbeing, for which i got berated for.

i moved on and dated other people casually, but found each new guy to be worse than the one before. one man had a pregnant girlfriend that i knew nothing about until she called me. another was jealous and manipulative and verbally abusive. i started to miss jake and think about the good times we had rather than the bad. i wondered if i had made a mistake. my feelings for him resurfaced. i knew he had dated someone else but he told me they were done. i saw him in august, six months after we split. i started to think i wanted him back and he led me to believe the same. but then he didn't call me for almost two months and i learned he was still with his girlfriend. i was hurt and angry and bitter and after a very angry email, we never spoke again.

i saw him again two weeks ago. he didn't mention his girlfriend and i was happy to believe he was single. i still had feelings for him and couldn't deny it. its amazing how much control your heart has over your actions, no matter how much your head is telling you what the right thing to do is. he promised to call me in two days after we had time to "process" what had happened and if we wanted to try to be together again. he finally did over a week later.

i didn't answer the first 13 times he called. he made me wait and i thought he should too. we did finally talk two days ago and he wanted to know "where my head was." i was at work and told him i would call him back later when i had more time to talk. when i did he didn't answer.

i needed to vent to someone who knew us both. i called his oldest childhood friend, who, strangely enough, i have become rather close to. he tried to reassure me and tell me i deserved better. then he dropped the bomb, a bomb he didn't even know WAS a bomb. i learned that jake had not one, but two children. he has a 15-year-old daughter, a child he fathered when he was 16 by a girl other than his son's mother. i had no idea. his friend didn't suspect i wasn't aware of this information. it hit me like a ton of bricks and i was in complete and utter shock. the man who accused me of being dishonest, of keeping things from him, the man who cut me down and made me feel awful about myself time and again, had a huge skeleton in his closet that he apparently felt he never needed to show me, the girl he loved and wanted to marry.

not only that, he was not single and evidently tells his friends he wants to marry his current girlfriend. he has cheated on her with not only me but i also believe with his son's mother. i have no proof of this but i have always had a suspicion he was not over with her when he and i dated. and based on his behavior i think i should trust my instincts.

it is a shame that my first real relationship has scarred me in such a way. i don't believe i can meet a man who is honest and true and loyal. i don't think they exist anymore. the ones i have met and given my heart to have looked me straight in the face and lied to me without so much as a blink of an eye. its amazing to me - some people have no conscious.

one good thing has come of it though. my feelings for jake are completely gone. i know i will not be tempted to speak to him or give him another chance. it's finally over. it's taken me over a year to get here, but i'm finally here.

my first blog

this is my first blog so i'm not going to write much. i have been a member of myspace but would rather not deal with the drama and turmoil it has brought to my life! so, i am going to delete that account, but i wanted an outlet to vent, share photos, etc.

i've been writing since i was in first grade, but haven't written a whole lot in the past 5 years, so hopefully this will give me the opportunity to get back to what i wanted to spend the rest of my life doing. being the jaded adult that i am, i realized long ago that my childhood dream of being a "bookmaker" aka an author would not support me financially, especially with my tendency to spoil myself or throw caution to the wind when it comes to spending money. so this blog will have to do in terms of satisfying my longtime hobby.

i'm not sure if anyone will actually read this besides my friend laura, who has been persuading me for months to start this, but it will give me the chance to get things off my chest and write about what's on my mind.

more later!