In bed. Cold. Maxed out on my migraine drugs, but I think they're finally working since I'm not actively in pain anymore. Now I'm just nauseous and cold. Sleep now.

Hearty and Fantastick

Wine tasting party at Aural Girl's house, then to the bar with a heavy buzz.
Aural Girl makes an excellent co-conspirator. Everything feels like a nudge and a wink and an inside joke at the mild expense of the world.
Then she went home and I talked to Possible Boy about the pebbles grinding against the deepest parts of my heart--family, fear, self. I say things out loud that I barely know how to write, tears pouring down my cheeks.
I watch the Social Worker ebb and flow in his words and his eyes, I hear him profess the oaths of painters and poets, praising the inherent beauty of emotion and the expression and art of every life experience.
I want to hear the song that's in my heart sung by another person so I know I'm not alone. When another person starts singing it spontaneously, joy joy joy.
Now let me meditate on the song of your heart.
measured
I keep going back to The Fantasticks:

There is a curious paradox
That no one can explain.
Who understands the secret
Of the reaping of the grain?

Who understands why Spring is born
Out of Winter's laboring pain?
Or why we all must die a bit
Before we grow again.

I do not know the answer.
I merely know it's true.
I hurt them for that reason;
And myself a little bit, too.

Crazy, Evolved, or Crazy Self-Critical?

I can't concentrate properly. I get frustrated when I'm trying to sew the zipper on Aural Girl's dog's hoodie but put the needle in the wrong side and under and over and wrong wrong wrong when my mind wanders. I was trying to finish the damn thing while watching Colbert Report, but it proved too much distraction.
I've always feared The Crazy. Is my wandering mind The Crazy? My short-term memory getting less and less reliable, attention taken by the shiniest and brightest of the moment and lost to what I was doing seconds before, phantom smells and ringing sounds and flashes in the corners of my peripheral vision. The doctors attribute all this to the migraines, but what if there's something more? Migraines as a symptom of Crazy?
or
Migraine sufferers are a baby-step further along the evolutionary scale and/or we have access to bits of another dimension but since we're still mostly the same old humans, peering into whatever's next tends to cause pain.
or
I just spent time with my family again and anything less than an instantly generated optimal solution is considered a screw-up. I now say things like, "Well, we're human," a lot, especially to and around my parents.
Parable:
Yesterday at brunch, my dad made people omelets to order. I can't eat cheese anymore, so I had mine with egg and tomato. As we were cleaning up, he seemed very concerned that I'd had enough to eat. I explained that I'd eaten lots of egg and more than my share of the lox that was set out for bagels, even though I couldn't eat bagels.
"I could have made you a lox omelet!" This dawned on him like he'd forgotten his prom date. I told him it was really no big deal as I'd eaten both ingredients and ended up quite satisfied, but my dad couldn't let it go because he hadn't optimized everything. So I told him a story.
"Today, I wanted to get a bunch of things done. I realized on my way here that, had I done them in a different order, I could have made it to more places and accomplished more things, but it was already too late to go back in time and change my morning. I am a person, not a robot, and it's pretty impressive that I could ever figure out the puzzle to see places to do more; that doesn't mean I'm always required to do it. I had a productive morning for doing as much as I did because that's exactly how much I could."
My dad liked and appreciated this very much.
I expect both of us still have traces in our hearts of the dwelling self-reproach for not being Perfect Saturday morning.

Un(w)hol(l)y Developed Ideas

In the future, when Humanism becomes an actual religion with its own rites and dogma, it will have its own ceremony, akin to a christening, welcoming new babies into the world. Parents will choose for their child a Humanist name. It will consist of two names, usually the same number of letters, written on top of one another. The name can then only be pronounced by two people simultaneously, so no Humanist can speak his or her full name alone.

Name generator gave me 10 random girls' names, Serena and Emilia had the same number of letters and sound, poof! Instant Humanist name. Works in any language. Two Hebrew names for Annabell according to another generator, אהובה and תפארה, Humanist-ized:

At the naming ceremony, it takes more than one person to say the name of the child just as it takes more than one person to raise and shape the life of the child.
At weddings, Humanists look deeply into one another's eyes and say together their full names, able to speak them in true completeness with one single other person. Superstitions will arise about couples who fumble during the speaking of names—fumble the first and you will have many children, fumble the second and one partner will be unfaithful, fumble both and you will be killed by pirates on your honeymoon cruise.

That's it, I'm starting a cult.

Or walking my dog and then making pie and photographing as many things while it's still daylight as possible. Cult might be more lucrative and make a bigger impact on society, but being a regular human being is my current project and, while I find it rather difficult, its rewards are far deeper and more stable than having my visage carved into the hedges by human lemmings.

I am the only person in the universe who knows the right answer and perfect method for everything

Brunch at my parents' house this morning so we could see my ex-uncle's brother's family. My father was in "I will do everything myself and it will be perfect" mode (the factory setting he's been stuck in since birth, I think). His sister's family expects it and lives to a similar standard, but not this branch of demi-family. They live in Cleveland, for God's sake.

I've been doing much better lately seeing my family in smaller doses and being grateful for their positives and the fact they don't beat me. But it seems I can only take so much before it starts translating into physical pain, even with all the changes in diet and lurking off to the bathroom to give myself booster shots of morphine-grade pain killer.

Ultimately, I don't want to lead the sort of life they lead or consider optimal for a person to lead, but I still have the biological urge for my parents to be proud of me. I guess my house will always have to be cleanest when I invite over the family, and sooner or later I'll learn that I can still have friends if my outfits and my plates don't all match.

Food for Thought

I'm trying to concentrate. I want to get my cards up on my website. Lots and lots of cards. Keep listing on the site so I rise to the top of the searches, again and again. I've been working. I've also been playing random stupid computer games in short but obsessive spurts. I want to do too many things at the same time right now but I want to do them all by magic explosion while I eat pumpkin bread and frosting and fill my bones with hot apple cider until they radiate heat.

How long did I just sit here trying to write this? Was it two minutes or twenty? At least I'm not in pain today. I cheated on a number of foods yesterday, so I'll take demi-stupor over pain. It's just frustrating that those are frequently my choices.

Neighbor Guy decided not to come to Thanksgiving with me because he felt weird not knowing my family. Much easier that way. Now I want to sleep for a week.

Thanks Crazy Family

My grandparents graduated together from NYU Medical School and continued to work at Bellvue and do research for them as long as my grandmother lived, so they lived in an incredible NYU-owned apartment right on Washington Square Park. As a teenager my dad worked in a novelty shop around the corner that sold t-shirts with boobs and sarcastic posters and things. If I was lucky I'd get to walk there with my five older cousins, doorman smiling at the gaggle of Singers on the way out and me feeling like the grown-up queen of the world for getting to go on such an adult adventure before my fifth birthday.
When my eldest cousin was closer to her fifth birthday than her fifteenth, she and our mutual grandmother went for a walk in Washington Square Park.
"Dr. Perlman! Dr. Perlman!"
An enormous black man in a pink tutu bounded towards them, calling my grandmother by her maiden and professional name. My cousin stood in horror as Grandma and the Creature in Tule proceeded to have a very friendly chat. Thirty years later, I expect that same cousin in that same situation would have the same reaction, except she might make her desire to leave more pronounced.

My dad's sister's family was raised in Deerfield, Illinois with a very narrow idea of how things are supposed to be. Artistic endeavors exist to get you into a better college. You go to the "best" college you possibly can, get the "best" job you possibly can, do business, make money, get married, make babies, etc. My dad's brother was treated as the token family failure for never living up to these expectations.

My mom's parents never went to college and my mom had to write an essay for her father to explain what she planned on doing with her schooling to prove higher education wouldn't be wasted on a girl. She wasn't expected to marry a nice Jewish doctor, but she did. My maternal grandmother's greatest wish was for blonde grandchildren, and somehow I showed up despite my two dark-haired parents.
My mom has two brothers. One is a lawyer whose salary so astronomical it would make my dad's side of the family cry, but his debt is on par with Iceland and his third marriage is destroying the offspring it produced. The other two siblings are much more like me, with more intelligence and creativity and depression than directional drive. My mom's mom has had a few paranoid psychotic breaks, but only one or two in my lifetime.
On my mom's side there are ten cousins. One cousin had severe OCD (that's doing much better in the last few years, yay!), most of the cousins have been treated for depression and/or anxiety disorders, at least four or five have tattoos, and my brother and sister are two of the only three whose lives aren't primarily driven by something in the fine or performing arts.
My mom and my dad's sister are very civil to one another though they are secretly battling for my father and the entire world's love and affection. Still, my mom makes more sense on my dad's side of the family than she does her own.

I get a sadistic pleasure out of watching the two sides of my family interact, each making caddy comments about the other in the same key but for opposite reasons. I have a cousin on each side with the same name and only two years apart. They are both fundamentally artists and married around the same time and live in Chicago. But one went to an Ivy League school for undergrad, spent time as an investment banker during the boom, graduated Harvard Business School, owns a condo in yuppie-ville, etc. When we were little, he was my favorite cousin. He's goofy and loved to play with me and have fun all the time. The other cousin dropped out of high school and got his GED. He's an artist by profession, makes amazing things and has his work in magazines and people's homes and such, but doesn't self-promote at all and works obscene hours every week for little or no money. He's extremely shy and socially awkward, but he's also very tall and has a lot of tattoos and piercings so people think he's menacing and standoffish instead of nervous and quiet. Both cousins helped when my parents redid their kitchen.

My immediate family has been to Scotland and Switzerland and Tanzania and many other places as tourists. My sister has been to every continent except Antarctica. We travel and we gawk and we try not to be the obnoxious Americans going, "Hey, look at the funny clothes! You call this food? Where's the McDonalds?" My parents, with their exacting perfectionist tendencies for themselves and their children, also instilled in me an openness and acceptance of The Other. We want to see everything the world has to offer. Perhaps my mom, in trying to distinguish herself from her family, has been more severe in keeping her judgments. My dad won't stand for slow service at the drive-thru, but he will go to any religious service in any language if it's beautiful. Then again, we all laughed hysterically at the state fair llama show when the handlers spelled out "LOVE" with the llamas to Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight."

All this and more is why I'm bringing Neighbor Guy to my family's Thanksgiving. We are not Birdie's family, where Neighbor Guy would be par for the course. But whatever my family is or isn't, whatever I want them to have been or be, they are the sum of so many parts and an inescapable part of me that can't be broken by chaos or wild cards or inappropriate dinner guests.

For all this and more, corny though it may be, I am thankful.

Maybe next year I'll show up topless.

That's it. I can't take this weather anymore. I'm moving to Venus.

Lost at Sea

I am such a space cadet that I went to my blog right now thinking I hadn't written today and really should before bed.

Time.

Memory.

One of my neighbors was standing outside my gate when I came back from The Mall and I wasn't sure if he was the person who has lived above me for the last seven months or the new guy I haven't met yet. People all look the same, a thousand times worse when I'm fuzzy. Is this what crazy feels like? Does this count as crazy? Should they take another look at my brain scans? I still have the CD. Maybe a chunk of my brain is made out of sponge cake.

Ugh. I'm having the flasheys. I keep thinking I see lighting or a camera flash somewhere outside my window in my peripheral vision. It drives me crazy when there's the possibility that the flash happened in reality and it's not just my brain misfiring. Breathe, Annabell. I've set my life up so I can swim through these day like a pro. I feel like I swam the English Channel against my will but made it to the other side and felt the sun on my face and the warmth of human contact as dried off with towels in two shades of blue. Now I want to stay in the sunny and warm forever and only swim in my jacuzzi, but I find myself back under icy waves and I have to use those muscles I worked so hard to build up and then wished so hard to abandon forever.

Peachy Fuzz

I am super fuzzy out of it today. I am not in pain or anything, and I've had an extremely productive morning all things considered, but I am a total space cadet. I actually finished my crystal chandelier and did absolutely everything I physically possibly could without a second, taller person around and/or a ladder to install it in my hallway. Then I took apart the chandelier destined for my dining room as much as I could, but I can't get into the center where all the wiring comes together. I think I'm not strong enough and it's just too old and rusty crusty from spending 50+ years untouched, but I got all the other pieces apart and took pictures at every step so I won't have problems remembering how it goes back together. Then I went looking for the sockets I bought, thinking I'd at least make the sockets and the socket covers the same size and get that done, but as I looked through my container of hardware stuff my brain fizzed and bubbled as it tried to make sense of the mass of objects. Sometimes, I can very quickly glance at a group of things and then look away and tell you how many there were, what colors they were, things like that; this was the exact opposite. I stared and stared and instead of "wrench" and "socket" and "hammer" I saw mushmushmushmushmush. So no driving for me today. I'd planned on going to sell some lamps, but Man plans and God laughs. I need to find another micro-concentration project. That's what I'm good at today. Small tasks with one thing at a time. I could polish a huge box of silver if I had such a thing. Maybe I can take more photographs or make more envelopes. That feels useful and takes the right kind of functioning.

It's hard for me to express my fuzzies in writing. Writing seems to be one of those micro tasks that I can do amidst the fuzz. I will space out for who knows how long in the middle of a sentence, but that doesn't come across if I'm able to pick up the sentence and you read it all at once later without the five minute lost-inside-my-head-following-some-random-train-of-thought pause.

I fear the crazy in me.

Ok, I may be going to The Mall and Target with Aural Girl. Get me out of the house, and with a baby sitter so I don't walk into walls. I need Draino and a few other things, so this is good. Last night I finally got her and Possible Boy to watch Dr. Horrible. I'm not sure how much they actually liked it, but I probably over-hyped it and then we had to watch it on my tiny little computer and Possible Boy and I were both in odd (not bad, but odd) moods and I ate half the olives my parents left after Sunday's dinner.

Speaking of olives, I need to eat again.

Trying to mess with things on Blogger. There should be a discussion board-like thing at the very bottom of my blog now. In theory. And opinion buttons after each post. Also, it would seem the new Blogger format is set up so you can easily set up a blog with only very specific people permitted to read it. I'm a bit of an emotional exhibitionist, so it's irrelevant, but that's a very useful feature for the universe.

Like Family

Last night, my parents and brother came over for dinner. It's the first time I've truly hosted them for dinner. It was my chance to show off all my shiny things that seem so absurd when I wave them around at my friends; things like a fully set table with crystal wine glasses and appetizers in the living room (well, bags of chips and humus from the store and guacamole I'd made days before) and my general ability to hostess like a grown-up to sufficiently meet and exceed their expectations. Growing up, I watched my parents wig out when their families (my dad's side in particular) came to visit, cleaning the house top to bottom, never serving anything in its original container, making presentation prime. When my dad was growing up, they wore ties to dinner and had white linen table cloths every night and a maid. Both of his parents were doctors and his mother went to finishing school in Switzerland. Her father was a somewhat notorious lawyer in New York City who defended a Communist spy. My grandmother was herself a card-carrying communist for a time. Same grandmother who was a Freudian psychiatrist. At their formal nightly dinners, she and her medical degrees and her Smith College and her finishing school background would frequently stand up under five feet tall and pronounce "You ass!" in response to my grandfather. She could cuss like a sailor and would, but over lobster bisque served in silver tureen.

So never mind the mess in my office or in my head or everything else. If I can be a good hostess, if I can prove whatever it is I think I need to prove to my parents and to myself, then I am officially a successful human being, deserving of their love and praise, deserving of their financial assistance, deserving of my share of the oxygen on this planet and the space I occupy and everything else.

Crazy

Neighbor Guy is certifiably nuts. He's still obsessed with his ex-husband from seven years ago and talks about him all the time but then says he doesn't talk or think about the ex and is totally over him, he just made me the beneficiary of his life insurance because he didn't want anyone to have to fly out to Chicago to collect the money, he spent a few drunken hours with Possible Boy's friend and decided she's on her way to a psychotic breakdown and he's going to do an intervention. The last few days I've felt like Neighbor Guy is too much bonkers for me to handle. If we were dating, I'd break up with him. "I'm sorry, but this is turning into a very unhealthy relationship. You need to get help and I am not that help." Apparently his work offers free counseling/therapy. I told him he has to go. If he doesn't have a therapist by next weekend I'm going to stop talking to him. I told him that jokingly, but I don't think I'm joking anymore. It's what will work with him, and maybe he'll get a good therapist and get better and I won't have to kill him for the life insurance money.

Seeing Stars and Bars

I slept all day today. Woke up in time for dinner. My doorbell rang at some point during the day and my dog barked at it a lot but I stayed in bed. At some other point I tried doing my biofeedback, and while it felt like I relaxed things well, my hand temperature stayed below 80° and then I fell asleep again. I tried doing a crossword puzzle while I ate breakfast and couldn't make sense of any of it; the same crossword puzzle at dinner took no time at all. I went through my loose socks and found lots of pairs. I did dishes. All these things in my haze. My life is built so that I can operate in my haze whenever necessary.

But now I have friends. Aural Girl and Possible Boy texted me and called me numerous times. Neighbor Guy was responsible for ringing my doorbell.

When I finally emerged tonight I was ok enough for some mild calm social activity. Possible Boy and I really talk now, and he had some absolutely brilliant insight about the Freudian power dynamics feeding the generations on my dad's side (my paternal grandmother was a true Freudian psychiatrist). Aural girl was too tired to come out, and I decided to stay a bit longer after Possible Boy headed home to bed. I went and sat with another friend (boy who used to Like me and may still...he needs a name in here...did I already give him a name at some other point? He's Bart now) who was fussy and brings out the worst in me even when he's in a good mood. Actually, I'm not sure he's ever in a good mood around me. I think he's a good person, but he sparks my inner antagonist and tonight was no exception.
We weren't talking about anything when I spotted a person I'd met months ago and talked to extensively about writing and literature. The Writer came over and we immediately started shmoozing again in a comfortable, carefree way that doesn't exist with Bart. Bart started shooting angry arrows with his eyeballs.

Enter Neighbor Guy and his gigantic dog. When I saw them walk in the door, I was glad I'd stayed out. I was happy to see Neighbor Guy. Neighbor Guy gives me a huge hug and tells me how happy he is to see me, that I'm "his girl," that he woke up today and just wanted to tell me he loved me. He kept hugging me in a way that hurt and I said "gentle! careful! you're hurting me!" and he didn't care.
I tried to introduce him to The Writer and he said, "I don't care who he is, I'm glad to see my girl." He wanted to take me out to dinner right at that moment. When I told him I wasn't feeling great, I'd spent the last two days in bed, there was no way I was up for going out to dinner at this point, he took it personally. He lashed out. He gave me all kinds of crap.
"Why do you never want to do things with me? Why won't you let me show you how much I appreciate you?"
"If you really appreciate me and want to do something for me, you'll respect my feelings and my wishes and let me go to bed. I don't feel well. You are being unreasonable and stressing me out and making things worse instead of doing something nice."
Bart kept chiming with "Oh my god, who cares. You guys are freaking out over nothing." Always the helpful input. Usually that's my sister's chorus when my dad or I get upset about anything, warranted or not.
I went home. I know I said the right things and Neighbor Guy was drunk. I'm still frustrated as all hell. It's hard enough for me that I can't do everything I want to whenever I want to without my body wigging out and turning into a useless piece of painful crap for indefinite periods of time; I don't need a "friend" actively trying to make me feel guilty when I listen to my body's clearest messages.

It's not about you. Everything isn't always about you.

Funny, Possible Boy and I were talking about our parents earlier in the evening, and this reminds me so much of my mom.

I wonder what percentage of writers have/had parents who were the Center of the Universe. When you're born to a Star, it's easy to become the Narrator.

ouch brain whine whine whine

Ouchy in the head. All day. Not terrible, but enough to get in the way. No following my schedule today. I knew as soon as I woke up. I had wine last night, but not that much. This isn't a wine headache. Front of my head. Pressure. Weather headache.

I have a pumpkin from Halloween sitting on my front table and it needs to go in the garbage. Flashback to Birdie and my college dorm, sophomore year when we didn't throw ours out for months as it rotted away. This one still looks like a pumpkin, but there's no need to push it. I just forget about it because it's out of the way.

I ate a lot of puffed rice today. I feel like that may be making the head worse.

Ok, as I'm writing this, Birdie texts me to say she's in upstate New York watching two of our mutual college friends performing in some show with some band. Crazy.

Dear pills,
Please kick in and make ouchy brain stop. I don't feel like giving myself a shot and I've slept enough today as it is. And I'm bored. And it's Friday night. And I want to drill a hole in my head. A lot. Maybe I should spend some time in the jacuzzi...

It Makes the World Go Around

Credit card statement. Contained my dog's health insurance for the year (almost $400) and two auctions. I need to cram my finances into their nice separate accounts where they belong so I don't get double-punched in the stomach after the cash I got for what I managed to sell never makes it into my checking account. Granted, right now I have cash that should go into my checking account, but it's been lounging about my house and purse for almost two weeks now, slowly dwindling as I go for a night out here and an estate sale there. If I actually get my butt out to sell the lamps I bought with some of the cash I made on a purchase sitting on my credit card, and then get more cash for those lamps, I will put it in the bank. I have to. Otherwise, the antiques I sell will have to be made out of drugs.

Media, Men

Song in my head for the past bunch of days:

I finally watched the new Star Trek movie. That's some super high quality nerdiness. The graphics and everything were so amazing, it's hard to imagine 20 years from now we'll look back on it and roll our eyes or laugh at its campiness, but then you look at the original Star Wars movies and those were revolutionary when they came out. Still, it was fabulously refreshing to see things that didn't look like "The Future" always looks. Not just slight variations or improvements on what we have or are doing now, but bigger jumps and random side-steps so it's not all flying cars and giant computers and robots that do the dishes.
In short, awesome movie.
So good I didn't spend the entire time wishing I was smooching on Possible Boy, with whom I was watching said movie, on his couch, under his blanket. Ugh. For the first time in my life, all these boys want in my pants. There's an argument to be made for "getting my numbers up" while I'm young and spry. Let go. Make stories. Experience life. How many girls would kill for even a kiss from Ken? Beetle's brother invited me over last night while his roommate was out and I doubt his intentions were entirely pure and friendly. Dijon's compliments stopped feeling so friendly and safe. And I suspect even Possible Boy would be more than happy to screw my brains out if there weren't emotions involved.
But there are emotions involved.
Pesky, pesky emotions. I want in boys' hearts, not just their pants. Reciprocal hearty likeyness, which seems to be particularly difficult. No more of these stupid chains of he likes me but I like this other guy who likes this other girl who likes another guy who likes yet another girl. This is what I get for hanging out among the Lonely. Birdie said it really well the other day: the Boys I like and I are deeply and profoundly lonely, but we will also do anything within our power to make sure we stay that way.

Today, I made myself a schedule for my amorphous daily life. It has everything from eating meals to working on long-term projects to taking my pills to writing in my blog (scheduled for now). I missed the whole afternoon chunk because I took a rainy-day coma nap, but I still got tons more done than I have been and it felt good to have direction and something to turn to and say "what's next?" Also, I forget things and get distracted so easily these days. Yay schedule.

I'm hungry again. I made real food for dinner, but I guess I didn't eat enough of it. Must drag dog out for final pre-bed walk.

I know Possible Boy will read this. It makes me pause before writing, then I write what I was going to write anyway. Totally honest. Dammit, why couldn't things have worked out? Maybe NBF, my therapist and 99% of humanity are right: I need a better filter, one can't be totally honest, The Game is important, etc., etc. I tried to play, but I suck at it and don't like it. I just need more practice, maturity, acceptance, or some other adjective I don't quite believe right now.

Seriously. Stop writing. Eat something.

Guys and Dolls and Cupcakes

Model-gorgeous friend I've known since elementary school needs a name in here. For lack of anything better, I'm going with "Ken."
Today is Ken's birthday. Even though it's a Tuesday, he had a party. I brought Aural Girl and we drove down to Humbolt Park.
Aural Girl wants to know why the hell I haven't slept with Ken. Ken made it very, very clear he wants in my pants. He's made it very clear for awhile now. Ken's a really good person in so many ways. He knew me during the worst part of my life and was one of the few kids that didn't treat me like shit. How do I feel about him now? I don't know. Nervous? He's always been a horny boy with a filthy mind, but we used to tell jokes and turn everything we said into dirty jokes on the back of the bus. Flirting was safe when I thought I was an ugly runt that nobody wanted; now it has power. There's just so much history, so many years of nothing-more-than-friendship.

Regardless of Ken, this goes back to the ol' internal debate over sex and love and everything in between. Do I want notches on my bedpost, more experience, more stories to tell, more life to have lived? Or do I accept the part of me that doesn't feel right? Am I repressed or am I repressing my repression?

I'm thinking about this way too much. Relax, brain. Relax, everything. Can I close up the hole in my heart through deep breathing, diet, and exercise? Tonight I was ever so social, but it still craves something specific and not necessarily healthy.

2 AM Post Script

I have my Pandora station going. I'm heavy with tired, and I'm eating puffed rice like it was a bag of chocolate chips. I found my familiar warm buzzy place. If I'm going to revel in my shadow, then dammit, here it is: the part I enjoy. One step away from sleep, brooding, ruled by the soundtrack.

Play along at home:
Wings - Josh Ritter
Uncurl - True Margrit
Kathy's Song - Paul Simon
Almost Lover - A Fine Frenzy
Swim - Stuart Davis
Julia - The Beatles
Colorblind - Counting Crows
Selling the Drama - Live
Forget Me Not - Lucie Silvas
Absentminded Melody - Joel Plaskett
Hey There Delilah - Plain White Ts

Between A and B

Possible Boy said everything I've ever wanted to hear a person say about something I wrote. And he meant it. Really, really meant it. If I could make myself cry honey and rose petals.

Aside: Other Girl needs a different name in here. It's the code name that seems wrong every time I write it. NBF always cracks me up to call him New Best Friend because how the name came about, the irony of it, the double-edged smirk. Possible Boy is a bundle of still-blooming kinetic energy, so I think of him as Possible Boy like a super-hero name: Super Man, Wonder Woman, Batgirl and Possible Boy.
I discussed Other Girl's need for a new name with Other Girl and, plied with wine, we decided on Aural Girl. We think it's funny.

We can talk now. All the things I was so careful to hide. Hide the crazy, right?
I want to fix him. I want to take all of his sad and make it go away. I don't know how to make my own sad go away, and I'm back on my weird self-defeatism again. When I feel physically ok, what am I doing to make money or somehow improve the world every moment of the day? Oh, look, it's that little hole in my heart. I can't just stuff it full of imaginary Possibilities and dreams to distract myself, so how do I fill it? I ate all the cookies last week. Warm dog, that feels good. I want something bigger, something to pop or burst or push me in some direction. I have to recognize that I'm the one who makes the choices, chooses to pop and burst things, can set things in motion at any moment. But I keep waiting for something external to happen; peg my emotional currency to random forces. I'll just keep playing until I get one good score, take a nap until I wake up refreshed, walk my dog in any direction until we come across something interesting. If I'm a feather in the wind, then I don't have to take responsibility for any of the decisions I make. Decisions have consequences and then I dwell dwell dwell. That came up in therapy today. Therapy that I had over the phone because I forgot we switched it today to her new office. I definitely didn't remember when I crawled back into my nice warm bed this morning post-writing, but I've been weird about it changing to a new place on a new day. What the fuck? People go about their business all the time with changing appointments and things. Ok, so this has been the only constant appointment in my life over the past year, but I also walk my dog every day and go to the bathroom and ingest food. The other things that I don't keep constant, I wrestle with my real commitment to them being constant. What is my life? What do I want it to be? How and when do I remember I'm alive? At least I'm not jumping off airplanes or anything, but I over-analyze every thought and action and then try to insulate myself from myself by hiding in the hole in my heart and reading or watching Hulu. Never mind all the things I got done today because look at all the time I spent not getting things done. Look at all the oxygen I wasted.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
I'm not the only one like this, but can I use that to inspire myself to keep improving? Hello, Annabell! Do you not remember what you were like six months ago? I'm making insanely tremendous leaps here. Patience. Rome wasn't built in a day, and other such sayings and aphorisms and blah blah blah. How much do I coddle myself and say "look how well you're doing!" and how much do I yell at myself to get the fuck off my ass and stop analyzing my lack of motion and (apologies to Nike) just do it? Carrot, stick, carrot, stick. Isn't there another way? An easy answer? Something solid and definitive I can hold onto? I wanted a human to be that thing I could hold. I've imagined that as my panacea. I had a friend a few years ago who was adopted, and she always thought finding her birth parents would be her "cure." White wales and golden fleece, why do people all feel so incomplete?
My parents have all kinds of faults and difficulties and incompatibilities, but there is no question in my mind that they are the ends of one anther's beginnings. They also still have the incompleteness and the insecurity and the melancholy.
Books and movies and television are filled with lies. Like drugs, they get us high on the illusion of a simple answer, a simple happiness, definitive answers and paths from point A to B with story arc and happy ever after. When I wake up and remember I'm trying to narrate myself in a complicated universe, I throw temper tantrums and curl back into my head and books and tv and don't want to do anything that doesn't go into the story. No paying bills or daily tedium. No routine. You don't write about all the days you got up, flossed, brushed your teeth, walked the dog, ate cornflakes, watch Colbert Report, and then farted around on the computer for two hours before showering if you even bothered to shower. The narrative skips to what you did, and I feel I'm failing myself and the narrative and my debt to being alive every moment that isn't story-worthy. At least, that's how I feel while I'm writing.

While I'm talking to Possible Boy, I want to make everything whole, in myself and in him.
While I'm talking to Aural Girl, it's scaffolding around an archaeological dig; building up more support, digging a little deeper.
And then there's the general flock of Boys at the bar. It takes so little for them to tell me I'm pretty.

"She had begun to notice something strange.
Her ugly duckling features
Had undergone a change.
In short, she was growing pretty.
For the
first time in her whole life--pretty.
And the shock so stunned and thrilled her
That she became
Almost immediate
Incurably
Insane."

(From The Fantasticks by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt)

That's enough rambling and ranting for tonight.
And they all lived happily ever after
and had direction and purpose and willpower and shined like cattle guard on the Little Engine that Could.
Amen.

Remember the Goal

My memory is getting worse. I've been back on name brand Topamax for a full month and I'm still finding fragments of conversations and events straggling about in my skull and that creepy uncertainty where and when and if they occurred. Am I going certifiably nuts? They've taken many nice pictures of my brain, but when looking for tumors, I wonder if the doctors would be able to spot a leak instead. Flowers for Algernon. Maybe I need to be using my brain more on a day-to-day basis; do calculus problem sets, half an hour on the tredmill, learn 50 words in Sanskrit, then crunches and push-ups, all by 10:30 AM. I'll be a picture of health and energy, both mental and physical. I'll be President of the Universe by next Friday.
Where's my orange juice?

For Those Considering Suicide

There is the will to live. There is a lack of will to live. There is a will to die. Where and why does one slip into another? While I'm standing on the sunny side of the shore, how can I bottle my reasons to go on and pass them out to people who don't feel the same stability?

I'm lucky; I knew my fundamental reason for living by high school. I have something more tenable than faith or goals or people: experience. I live to experience things. The senses themselves blow my fucking mind on a regular basis; all the colors of the world, the nature of color, light, the nature of light, how these visual cues tickle and stimulate and set off things inside the hugeness of life and feeling. And that's just a teeny tiny slice of one sense. Don't get me started on touch. If I feel more pain than the average person because I'm more aware of tactile sensations, I think I'm willing to take my migraines as a sacrifice. Mind you, I'm not in the midst of a migraine right now, but I did have one the last few days and it messed with my Great Life Plans, and I will gladly give up Great Life Plans for a will to live that life. Because that's the fundamental piece of being alive that death, suicide or otherwise, will most likely end: tasting the world, tingling fingers under a hot faucet, smelling memories in damp wood staircases.

One friend faced with the sudden death of a colleague, jarred again by her own mortality. The rug can get yanked out from under us at any time, but we fool ourselves whenever possible, we forget and concentrate on the long-term blur, the big picture, the daily minutia.

Another friend says the biggest thing between himself and suicide is the means.

Today, while I remember my love for existence, death terrifies me. It seems such an easy mistake to make, it's everywhere. I'm not done yet.

Now how do I give every person who ever has and ever will contemplate suicide a drink of my reason to live? Can I go back to younger me and understand it better? Harness its power and pour it over the universe? Would it seep into all the cracks in all the hearts and souls everywhere? Do I have to go around with a caulk gun and give spot treatments to those in arms length (plus booster shots to myself, of course)? Or is this all an exercise in futility, like my other desperations, trying to eke some meaning out of another night of words words words words words...

Neighbor Guy's ears are for ornamental purpose only.

In Decisions

I can't make a decision right now. Will somebody else please be in charge? Just yell at me and boss me around and tell me where I should go and what I should do and when. I feel like a floating head and I don't know what I "should" or even what I want. If I want to be around people or not is more decision than I can handle. People good? People bad? I listen for the internal applause after each suggestion to gague my own reaction. Is there anything that makes my heart aflutter right now? Anything with any pull at all? No overwhelming emotional response, so what ever happened to logic? That used to be my first method of choice. What right now is "Best" for me to do? Go out, see humans, have conversations, face whatever dark underlying fear of Maybe is snaking around my throat? Or crawl into bed, read, and go to sleep ASAP so I have the best possible chance of making it to Iowa tomorrow to see my brother play soccer in his college championship tournament thingy?

In Running With Scissors, a few of the characters frequently opened the bible to a random page, closed their eyes, pointed with a finger, and took wherever they landed as an answer to their question, direct from God. I want to feel that sort of certainty from as simple a ritual. I want to quiet the worry and the questions.

That may be my answer for tonight: if the worry and the questions are being fussy, the last thing I need is to be around other people. Sometimes it works out and I end up engaged in conversations with fellow fussy souls, but I can't storm off into the night and expect to make lightning.

One problem with the stupid hormones I'm on: I no longer have a normal cycle ever, so I'm never sure if mood flare-ups and/or "heavy spotting" are my period or if I'm just randomly fussy. I was talking to Other Girl tonight about life revolving around medical shit.

Wow. I'm not going anywhere. I'm totally zoing out now. Across the street there is a tv playing something with a lot of movement. I'm staring at the tv, watching the motion. Iowa tomorrow? I'll see where I am in the morning. I'd like to write about the character I met at dinner, but I'm done forming sentences.

On Buffy

Earlier this week at the bar, I found myself completely mesmerized by the tv. I've always been mesmerized by the tv, but this was stronger than the usual hypnotic pull. So in my campaign to avoid doing anything useful with my time, I decided to watch Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its entirety on Hulu. I'm a big fan of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible and I'd never actually seen Buffy (Mr. Whedon's more frequently referenced creation). Was 1997 really that long ago?

I feel a little like puke, but I brought it on myself by eating the cookies I originally bought for my cousin's birthday. They were going to be stale before I saw her again, but that didn't mean I had to be the one to eat them. They were just so tasty.

I wonder what it would be like if I could do and eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted without physiological repercussions. I also wonder what it would be like to be blind, starving, an insect, or live a thousand years from now.

I want more cookies.

Half Measures and Slow Sinking

The sum of today's productivity:

• Cleaned my kitchen (bleach spray makes me feel like I'm doing something)
  Took photos of cards that may need to be retaken, but I didn't actually bothered editing the photos (yet) so I'm not even ready to say if I need to retake them or not
• Went to therapy
• Wrote the beginning of something that I realize ties in with my old creator/creation Frankenstein/Golem/Genesis/writer thing that may or may not some day solidify into an actual work of something whole. Golem musical is still the closest I come to a mazzoh ball in that idea soup.
• Talked briefly to Birdie to determine that my weirdness about another work-related thing is now entirely moot (was probably moot to begin with, but I'm weird, thus weirdness) so I should go ahead and write an email and get something going whereby I decorate a person's life in exchange for vegetables. Have I sent the email yet? No, of course not. Today is a day for half-measures.
• I gathered some newspapers off the floor of my office and moved a few things around and took out the dirty dishes. It would be a stretch to say I actually cleaned my office, but these things are at least a step in the right direction.
• Took my pills on time
• Told my mother I wasn't going to take my parents' opera tickets this weekend because I'm trying my hardest to go to my brother's NCAA Division III Soccer game in Iowa on Saturday

Some people teach, others build shelters for the homeless, others cure disease. I'm doing little to justify my use of oxygen and since I'm annoyed with myself, I'm curling up and doing less. I thought about going to the bar for human contact, but somewhere along the line I decided I didn't deserve to go out. Maybe not my best move, since now I'm going to spend more time at home smelling like bleach and fake-tidying my office while watching random tv episodes on Hulu. I should eat something, too. I've gotten away from the regularly scheduled meals thing again, even though I know better. The self-punishing torture misery thing is really satisfying and cleansing when done right for just a day or two, but I have to be careful not to get sucked in. It has to be a low point I bounce off of, not a sticky mud puddle.

If I don't go to at least one lighting store tomorrow to sell my shmancy lamp, please bitch-slap me.

Of Note

I should be grateful that BRAVO hasn't turned my bar into a reality series yet because it leaves the stories for me to write without contract infringement.

I gave Possible Boy my blog address. On purpose. I wrote him a note and included the this very blog address towards the end. I had to write the note on the computer because that's how I write more coherantly and naturally. It seemed a strange thing to have printed off and somehow unfaithful to the words and the recipient to let them live any life but their singular intention, yet something came out of me in that note that I think belongs in here, too. So just that one part, and appologies to Possible Boy:

I feel compelled to write so there is some record of everything in me, so that maybe someone somewhere will read it and understand. There is just so much universe, and I want to catalogue it all so that each lonely feeling can be found and pointed to and said, “Someone is with me on that.” Selfishly, I want someone to read what I write and say “Yes!” to every word and tell me I’m not alone. But that means another person is no longer alone, too, and the magic of books and words is that they can be used over and over again by people who don’t have my compulsion, the same way I can use a computer but have no idea how to build one. I have to remind myself, in that way, too, we’re not alone. Ever. It’s just easy to get lost sometimes.

I guess that's my point, or a point of writing, and what I'm saying, and all kinds of other pointy things, too: adding permanance to the ephemeral. Memory. Antiques. I'm the one person at estate sales who is disappointed when all the vintage cards and stationary in the big box are all still blank. I want to collect stories and smear them all over the world so that things that aren't mine can connect stranger to stranger with silky strands of "Yes! Me too!"
I'm more spider than I realized.
Spin spin spin, a web or a dizzy blonde.

Has anyone checked my medication recently?

Putting Humpy Together Again

Beetle (guy I shtupped in May) is apparently in town this week. I know because last night, while I was sulking and tending my wounds, his brother called looking for pot. Thing I could do: call my model-gorgeous marijuana-connoisseur friend who's been trying to invite himself into my jacuzzi for months. See how many hot, intelligent boys trying to get into my pants it takes before I stop caring that one in particular doesn't want to carve my initials into the sunset.

Most recently revised version of "my type:" The Lonely.

Last night talking to HDS, writing, snuggling my dog, and leaving an appointment time change confirmation message on my therapist's answering machine, it dawned on me quite how well-supported I am. I have all these healthy, expressive outlets, all these ways to be sad and work through everything. How far I've come.

Possible Boy has no one to talk to, and until yesterday, we never really talked. I was always doing some sort of fan dance. He needs a friend. He said that, or tried to tell me that when I was leaking tears on his couch.

I'm a writer. I'm a lonely soul, fascinated by other lonely souls, collecting their stories as evidence in The Case against the Feeling I'm The Only One (as of yet unsolved by Nancy Drew, Freud, Nietzsche, All the Kings Horses and All the Kings Men).

6 Billion People in the World

Possible Boy never made it in the water past his waist, then fell in fully clothed when he was trying to put on his shoes.

He asks for definitions of words but understands the concepts of what I’m feeling. It’s easier to look up “antithesis” than to perpetuate the lie.

That’s a big part of it: The Lie. Smoothing out the edges. Did I show my hand early? I wanted to.
We’re both getting closer to doing things “right.” Maybe we did exactly what we could. We’re both learning. That was part of his appeal: the sense that I wouldn’t have to hide or be quite as ashamed of what an emotional novice I am. Instead of going after assholes who call the shots or the pancake boys who like my too-smart-for-you bitch side, I thought, “Oh. Here’s a person who might be a good balance.” I still have a lot of growing up to do. This is how I do it. I missed a whole earlier chunk of my life when I could have been figuring this stuff out because I thought if I “knew better” on some kind of academic level, I could avoid getting hurt or dirty. I see consequences and hypotheticals everywhere so I refuse to move or do anything for fear of what I might cause. I’m trying to change and live and try things and let myself get hurt for what I do instead of what I don’t. I’m trying to keep my mess to a normal-person limit. I’m trying to make an income and have friends and do all of these regular grown-up things that I’ve gone from fearing to craving. At least this is the pain I know I want to feel. And nothing is so black and white as I used to think. This isn’t a deep and cutting insult. The sense of rejection is unquestionably there, but despite my best efforts to put myself in an “I’m just not good enough” position, emotions have little to do with logic or measure. Dr. Phil likes simplifying. “He’s just using you for sex.” But there’s just so much more in every moment.

So much world. So much room for lonely.

Long conversation with Possible Boy. His new status: impossible boy. He declared a moratorium on us sleeping together. He still has feelings for Other Girl. And many other much more complicated things that I want to simplify into nice one-sentence summaries and toss aside. Or I could write treatises on loneliness and human relationships.

Lonely lonely lonely. But I wouldn't trade it not to feel.

Man plans and God laughs.

Hot Throbbing Stinger

I didn't mean for the story to sound like the spider kills the bee. Possible Bee understood the story. Possible Bee spent the night in my web again. No counting larvae before they hatch, but I could get used to this.

Backstroking

Why are Boys so intoxicatingly delicious? And distracting? And delicious?

I build big barriers because I am quite so squishy inside. Squishy squishy squishy. I revel in the feelings of the squish. If I could safely survive living within the squish, I would stay here forever, idly doing the backstroke and ignoring the cacophony of logic and should and day-to-day. This goopiness is my migraines' joyous foil, limiting my capacity for basic thought and function.

Danger! Danger, Annabell Singer!

The Spider and the Bee

Once there was a spider. She knew herself to be a spider. She watched the way other spiders devoured their prey. She watched the way other spiders could be swept away and crushed, but she also saw the beauty in every web, every creature, and everything within and beyond the webs as well.

Once there was a bee. He knew himself to be a bee. He watched the way other bees swarmed and stung. He watched the way other bees slaved for an apathetic queen then died alone fighting the strange and unknown, but he also saw the beauty and sweetness of every honeycomb, every creature, and everything within and beyond the hives as well.

The spider and the bee became friends. Both were apprehensive at first, for while they saw much beauty in one another, all spiders know that bees can sting, and all bees know of the spiders' deathly tangle. What's more, this spider and this bee each feared her and his own true nature far more than that of the other's.

"Hello, Spider," the bee would say.
"Hello, Bee," would reply the spider.
"Beautiful day," would say the bee.
"Beautiful world," would say the spider.
"Huge world," would say the bee.
"Terrifying world," would say the spider.
"Lonely world," would say the bee.
"Indeed," would say the spider.

One day, after many months of their usual exchange, the spider changed her answer.

"Hello, Spider," said the bee, as usual.
"Hello, Bee," said the spider, as usual.
"Beautiful day," said the bee.
"Beautiful world," said the spider.
"Huge world," said the bee.
"Terrifying world," said the spider.
"Lonely world," said the bee. But the spider said,
"It doesn't have to be. I could keep you company."
"Oh." The bee thought for a moment. "Can I sit with you on your web?"

The spider thought for a moment, too. She cared for the bee and wanted nothing more than for him to come into her web, but she wanted to get to know the bee better within her web. She did not to devour him and leave his empty shell of a carcass like so many other spiders did, and like even she had done in the past.

"Yes, come sit with me," she said.

The bee flew into the spider's web and landed gently beside her. His buzzing made the whole web vibrate with a hypnotic calm. She wrapped a long spindly leg around him to see he was truly there. He sighed and buzzed louder, so she put another leg around him. Now she could feel his wings against the bottoms of her feet. They were such gentle but solid things, not at all like the rainbow wings of dew that would stretch across sections of her web in the morning or after a rain. She curled two more legs to envelop him.

All this closeness, and she so much like a flower unfolding leg by leg, the bee began to pollinate. The spider began to spin.
"I hope I am not adding to the terror of the world," said the bee.
"Only to its beauty," said the spider.

************************

Shit. Now what?