My Life as a Blog

Out with the Old...

2011-11-15T14:17:00.001-06:00

The trouble with getting a Brazilian wax is that it leaves me feeling like I have a fresh new haircut and I want to show it off but I can't without getting arrested.

I dumped Corvus. He had been gone for over two months and wasn't calling me, even when he had a phone, and wasn't contacting me any other way when he didn't. We'd talk for a little while on Facebook Chat about once a week and invariably it would be all about him no matter how much I tried for a share of the conversation. I got sick of it. I moved on emotionally. I read The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists and couldn't believe how well the DSM's diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder fit Corvus.

When I made it clear to Corvus that I was sick of it, he started calling and texting me constantly, but it was too late. We broke up in what I thought was a fairly mutual conversation, saying we'd still be good friends when he came back (oh, his constant promise that he's coming back!) and then chatting for awhile longer about nothing. Then he kept calling and texting me to say how much he loved and missed me. I couldn't tell if he didn't understand that we'd broken up or what, so I was very direct with him. Yes, he'd understood. But he still loved and missed me. The next thing I knew, he was heartbroken and crying and calling me at 12:30 at night. I wasn't happy or particularly empathetic. The last time he called was Friday while I was with my work-from-home-together buddies at a cafe so I didn't answer and he didn't leave a message. That was four days ago. I think he may have finally figured out that we're broken up for real.

Meanwhile, I met someone else. We'll call him O'Snarky. Aural Girl's dog befriended O'Snarky's friend at the bar the Wednesday before Halloween and as Aural Girl and the friend got to talking, so did O'Snarky and I. He was cute and Irish and (you guessed it) snarky as hell so I reluctantly gave him my number, even though I hadn't officially ended things with Corvus. I refused to go on an actual date until after the actual break-up, but those two events happened only a day apart. So much for time to think between Boys. O'Snarky and I have been on a few dates since.

It's hard for me not to directly compare O'Snarky to Corvus--the way they treat me, the way they kiss, how they look (::cough:: naked ::cough::), who they are and how I felt or feel. I will miss Corvus mechanically, I will miss feeling head-over-heals and irrational. But I won't miss the anxiety or the way he acted like I was just an object in his universe or the way I could never actually rely on him for much of anything--emotional or otherwise. O'Snarky has a job and takes care of his mother, two good signs of the responsibility I crave. And there's genuine empathy seeping out just below the snark. Right now it seems those qualities and getting laid are all I need.

So ends my longest relationship to date and begins...who knows what.

2011-10-14T06:32:00.000-05:00

It's almost 6 AM and I've been up for hours. Migraine. Nasty one. I was supposed to go to my knitting group yesterday but my vision was all messed up from aura with whirling in my periphery and sparkles of dark matter straight ahead. That meant no driving, and the idea of getting on the noisy el sounded like puke in my face. I slept much of the day, occasionally waking up and being bored enough to take the blinding light of the computer over the empty total nothingness I felt. The computer provided enough distraction, while reading a book didn't zone me out enough to cover the pain. I had to give myself a shot again and it didn't really work. I hate that the most--coping with the needle and the blood for nothing. I'm out of the pill form of the ketorolac and Walgreens had to call it into my doctor and then it was pouring so I didn't feel like walking over and, once again, driving wasn't an option. I'll hopefully pick it up tomorrow and then I can be more aggressive with it. I just can't be aggressive with the shots, they wig me out too much to do two in a row or be dutiful about following up eight hours later when the first one did nothing.

I need to go back to biofeedback. I can't get my hands to warm up by relaxing anymore, which means my circulation is sucking and I'm not fully relaxing and that can't be helping the migraines.

I need to eat something more than cereal and bananas. I have plenty of frozen entrees and ingredients for nearly instant quesadillas and a pound of ground beef: all things I stock with being a migraine house prisoner in mind. I just don't feel like eating anything besides cereal. The nausea isn't as bad as it was a few years ago when I'd actually throw up with the headaches, but I have no appetite, just an awareness that I'm hungry and need to eat. Oddly, the one thing I feel like eating is Indian food but I don't have any of my instant Indian packets at the moment and I lack the ingredients and energy to make something from scratch. If I feel like shit tomorrow, I can walk over to the Pakistani-serving-mostly-Indian place around the corner from my house. It's not cheap, but my body really needs real food.

I need to clean my house. There isn't a tidy room in the whole fucking place. My living room is desperate for shelves. I think I want staggered floating shelves along my big blank wall.

I'm thinking of HDS, her mom, and her entire family.

Can't Sleep, Haven't Written

2011-10-12T07:20:00.000-05:00

So I haven't written in here in ages.

I went to Denmark with my mom and sister. It was fabulous. Viking ships and castles and cobblestone streets everywhere and a beach where two seas flowing in opposite directions meet and crash into eachother. We spent two nights on the island of Aero which was charming as hell and my mom drove everywhere which was impressive as hell and we did too much shopping on account of the other two people I was with and my mom's search for a raincoat (it was cold and rained half the time we were there, even though it was the end of August). Maybe later I'll go through my notes and write more about the trip, but right now it's 6-something AM and I just can't sleep so I'm writing.

The most amazing thing about the trip, I think, was that a year ago my mom was going through her breast cancer and now we were running around a foreign country from 8 AM until we passed out, usually long after 10, for ten days straight. I often felt like I had to keep up with her. Just one year after the cancer summer.

When we got back, she went to work two days later and, jet lagged as hell, her leg fell asleep and she fell wrong on her foot and fractured it. It was just a hairline fracture, but a fracture nonetheless. No cast, but one of those giant boots she has to wear for at least another week.

In other news of the bad health of beings I love, my dog got scary bloody-eye glaucoma. It was not fabulous. After months of eye drops and specialist visits, he ended up having his eye removed because it just kept getting worse and was clearly very painful. Turned out there was a benign tumor growing in there. The real fear was a malignant tumor, but tumor was definitely expected, so having the eye removed was clearly the right thing to do. He's still healing--the surgery was only a week ago and he gets his stitches removed on Monday. It looks like one eye is just closed all the time, but right now he's stuck in a cone and keeps bumping into things. Otherwise he's pretty much back to normal, going on regular-length walks and huffing and puffing at the world as he tromples about the house. I think he's still adorable.

Then there's Corvus. He's in Colorado with his mom. He left the same time we left for Denmark (end of August) and still hasn't come back. He had a recording project out there that, when almost finished, went awry as the guy he was recording assaulted Corvus's mom and Corvus (long story, but Corvus pissed him off...doesn't justify assault but Corvus did something that was, in my opinion, really rash and dumb). The guy being recorded ended up mouthing off to the judge (speaking of rash and dumb...) and landed himself a double felony conviction. With his father vouching to make sure to get him to all his hearings and whatnot, he's on probation and back in his home state, project unfinished. Now Corvus is trying to get paid for his time engineering and everything else on an unfinished record and seems to think he can't return to Chicago until he sees his money. So it's about to be seven weeks since I've seen him with no concrete sense of when he's actually coming back.

When I first got back from Denmark I missed Corvus painfully, but the longer it's been the more I feel ok on my own and just see how unreliable he is. I still love him, I still miss him, but I don't see spending the rest of my life with him, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm 29 and I'm happy to be with him if he gets his ass back here but I wonder about finding a Forever. I also wonder if I'm not being fair; he's only 26 and still getting his own life in order. Was I reliable three years ago? It's not much time, but for some people it can be huge. Is he just immature? Or am I making excuses for him now? I wish I knew. Either way, absence is not making the heart grow fonder, it's making the heart ask all kinds of questions and get all kinds of annoyed and impatient.

Great. It's barely after 7 AM and the workers across the street are making beeping noises with their trucks. I was hoping to get back to sleep at some point...

2011-07-09T08:32:00.002-05:00

How lonely we are to find validations of ourselves.

Thinking about college

2011-05-24T01:40:00.000-05:00

Nameless Liberal Arts College was the wrong college for me in so many ways.

I was even more bull-headed then than I am now.

I wish I was consistently well enough to go back to school. Maybe one class this fall as a trial. I miss the awesome Chicago college I started attending right when I got sick.

I want to be one of those people who can overcome shit, and I want to be one of those people who can accept shit, and I don't want to be so frustrated and saddened by my version of life. They say to write down goals and then achieve them. Can that be my goal? I'd like to get my BA and support myself, but the real all-important pie-in-the-mother-fucking-sky is to be accepting of and happy with myself. Be good to myself. Love myself in a real way for once and for good.

Corvus and Aural Girl walked my dog while I was away this weekend at my brother's college graduation. Corvus cleaned my house as a birthday present surprise. He really cleaned my house. He organized my closets and did the laundry in my hamper and everything. And he said beautiful things about me I didn't believe. He can be quite incredible. I should have gone over there tonight but I'm so tired and have to have my car jumped in the morning (booooo) and I didn't. Now it's 1:30 and I'm still awake and I'm all upset and I feel like an ass for not running over there as soon as I got home. I'll call him in the morning once my car is running and we can drive off into the sun(wrongtimeofdayforset).

So many of my Nameless College regrets surround a Boy I let treat me like garbage. I loved this shit out of him, maybe more because I could taste the blood on his lips. Corvus treats me well and I'm holding myself to holding him to it.

My own voice is still so loud in my head, it makes for better writing* than personality or happiness.

*and sometimes not even that.

2011-05-12T00:35:00.000-05:00

I'm anxious. In general. About everything. I think the assault was more damaging than I gave it credit for. Not that it's so terrible, and not that I'm afraid to leave the house or anything. I'm just on edge. My safety and general well-being were fundamentally threatened and it rattled me. No wonder I felt no great relief the next day when the US offed Bin Laden- I'd just been reminded how many more dangerous people lurk around every fucking corner who have nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

Sorry. I don't mean to freak you out too, readers. I'm just jumpy because one asshole decided to be an asshole and had to remind me I'm mortal. Ugh.

Bin Laden's Death to One 28-Year-Old

2011-05-09T01:29:00.001-05:00

When we heard Bin Laden was dead, Corvus spontaneously ran outside to shout with joy. "It's over. It's finally over." Tears dripped down his face.

I wasn't quite sure what ended with Bin Laden's death. I wasn't complaining, but I wasn't feeling the overwhelming relief or joy that seemed to take over my boyfriend. He's three years younger than I am, and it didn't occur to me at the time, but we were in different places in our lives on September 11th and I may be five minutes too old for the jubilance. Or maybe I'm just too skeptical to place my feelings of safety in the mortality of one human. Still, I envy the death revelers.

On September 11, 2001, I had just begun my sophomore year at Nameless Liberal Arts College. When someone in my statistics lab stood up that morning and announced an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon, I thought they were doing an experiment for psych class. But no, Google quickly confirmed that the world had gone to shit. Class let out early. Some classes were canceled for the day, others went on with optional attendance. The dorm lounges were packed with students staring at the news, horrific images, and the first time I ever heard the name "Osama Bin Laden."
My most hawkish (and incidentally, at the time, only Republican friend) wanted, to bomb someone. Blow up something in revenge. But being a self-centered 19-yer-old, that was my biggest fear: war. We were in the middle of a middle state, nice and safe. I already knew my family was safe, so my next concern was my of-drafting-age male friend pool. We'd just elected The Bad President and there was no way he was keeping us out of war. I assumed at that point it would at least be the "logical" war, but my peers were the ones who'd have to fight it and I didn't like that. We sat in that lounge and I wanted to be held by the Boy I was pining over at the time as well as every single boy I gave a marginal crap about before they all had to go die for the country.

I had friends in school in New York too close to Ground Zero. One still has PTSD.
I had friends help clean up at Ground Zero.
Then somehow we ended up in Iraq and no one I really cared about at the time had to fight.
But the threat of Terror never felt like it was the threat of Osama Bin Laden. I remember Oklahoma City (though I was quite young) and that was American extremists. There will always be a small percentage of the human population that likes to screw things up for the rest of us, and that is terrifying. I'm glad there's one less ultra-asshole, but he was never the focal point of my fear or pain and therefor doesn't get to be a trigger for great relief.

Maybe if I was just a bit younger, or a bit someone else, I'd need a face for the abstraction of fear. I wouldn't have such concrete non-Bin Laden things from September 11th and he would hold status as the threat of my youth. Maybe he would have been my childhood's boogieman. But he was only a piece of my fear and feels like just one piece of the puzzle, not full closure on a hole in my soul.

I joined my friends for a post-Obama speech tequila shot. Obama is so presidential and doing a shot seemed somehow the most appropriate response to Bin Laden's death, anyway; we drink to life, death, joy and pain, to numb the feelings that are too alive and to remind ourselves we're alive when we're too damn numb.

Assaulted

2011-05-01T00:53:00.001-05:00

April's last evening was among the only to feel like spring. Chicago winters are always long and hard, but this one refused to end. The whole city is suffering for sunshine, and the first hints of warmth make everyone insane.

Some in a more destructive manner than others.

I was walking home from the el around 10:30 PM. I was too tired to stop at the bar to be social, so I said hello to the smokers outside and kept walking towards my house. I didn't cross the street at the corner because a car was coming, so I rounded the bend and figured I'd cross at the alley.
There was a tall man in his 20s standing at the gate to the apartments next to the cafe. I was glad I didn't live there because he seemed like he was up to no good. When he started following me I decided not to turn into my alley but stay on the lit street and power walk it. As he walked too-close behind me I sped up and started wondering what I should do if he kept following...
GRAB!
In one swift motion he groped my left boob and my right ass cheek and said, "Hey, baby."
I threw him off of me and yelled "HEY! Fuck you!" as he ran down the street.

Two men and a women in some sort of all-white religious frocks came up the alley and I told them what happened. I called 911 and when the police came I got into the back of their car and drove around, hoping to find my attacker. It's not like he did me any great permanent damage, but more than anything I didn't want him doing worse to someone else. He probably lives in the neighborhood. If he's still out tonight, we couldn't find him, so I filed a police report (the officers explained that way if I see the guy again I can call 911 and have the asshole arrested) and came home.

Fucking dick-ass-douchebag-ass-hat.

Taxing

2011-04-14T11:37:00.000-05:00

I finished my 2010 Federal Taxes this morning and now I'm having a panic attack. My business came out either $1300 or $3000 (I'm still confused) in the red according to standard deductions and accounting and all that and I'm freaking out, even though I know much of that has to do with car and house depreciation numbers and deducting $300 for an office supply that was a gift from my parents. Still, that's kind of the real cost of my business and I'm just sucking money from the universe and I had no W-2s all of 2010 so I feel like a giant suck on society and a useless human being. I'm still not over the can't-hold-a-real-job-with-headaches-but-need-one-to-feel-like-a-real-person thing. Like if I'm not leaving my house on a daily basis and doing something for seven hours a day, I'm wasting community air. Never mind how bad my head got in 2010. Never mind being hospitalized half-way through. That feels like an excuse when I'm having a day without a headache, with just a pathetic panic attack that makes me feel even less human and more..well, pathetic. What I'm doing seems so useless when you put a big number up like -$3000. Will it ever be profitable in a real sense? If not, what should and can I be doing instead? And why can't I just logic through this like a strong real grown-up instead of a sniveling useless panic-attacker?

I'm hard on myself. But shouldn't I be? How will I ever be a grown-up otherwise? Except right now being hard on myself is making my cry and panic like a fucking baby. I take photos of things. I sell those photos and/or those things. People buy them. It isn't enough. When will it be enough? What do I have to do to constitute "enough?"

2011-04-05T01:09:00.001-05:00

Can I please limit my body to one disruptive malfunction at a time?

Frustration, Smiles

2011-03-15T14:45:00.000-05:00

Where’s my novel? Where’s all my greatness?
I’m so frustrated right now.
I want to write music without sound.
I’m annoyed I’m not writing or doing more.
I’m annoyed I can’t decide what more I want to do and practically can accomplish.
I’m annoyed I’m not satisfied with the things I do accomplish.
I need a project I feel good about.
Something that feels worthy.
Something tangible and challenging yet manageable.
All my albatrosses feel pointless. I want to knit or build or even pick up a normal boring-person hourly-waged job so I can checkmark success in more than repetitive motion.
I just want something to show for myself, but every minute of every day—a prolific portfolio of lifetime achievement.
I’m the only one who can make these things happen. But I have to pin them down as more than theoretical feelings and goals. I need practical steps and to do lists or I stay aimlessly wandering around the house looking for my sense of satisfaction and throwing temper-tantrums inside myself.

Writing something is a good step. My writing has gotten rusty. Keep it fresh and practiced so when there’s something to say, it sounds how I want it to sing. That’s pretentious as hell but true, so not the pretending part of pretentious, just the annoying part.

Too much computer time lately. It makes me crazy. Buying season starts now and I can start that fun part of things again if I relax about my financial situation. Let myself be happy again. I’m cranky slipping and at least I’m catching myself while it’s still just slippage.

A business requires building. It requires learning and figuring out and I haven’t been doing this so long. Days like today are frustrating because I suddenly am so capable doing so much and I don’t have sufficiently varied activities to keep myself entertained when I’ve done by noon what often takes me an entire day to accomplish.

Now what?
Violin or finish the knit gloves. Those are good. And get all my to-file papers in one place even if I don’t start filing them. And shower. That’s a good tangible checklist for this afternoon. If I can stand getting back on the computer and editing more photos, so much the better, but I don’t expect that to be in my tolerable zone in the next few hours.

Writing is grand.

* * *

Romance always makes a juicier update than the cerebral shit I can't help but spew:

Corvus is great. We still seem to think the world of one another. We spend huge quantities of time together. My dog specifically requests to be pet by him, then randomly freaks out and barks and snaps when Corvus laughs or stands too suddenly, and Corvus still likes my dog. Likes me, too. Has an insanely healthy view of the world and relationships and surprises me over and over again with yet another high-quality layer of himself.
My only complaint: he reminds me too much of myself, so the days I am particularly annoyed with myself I end up defaulting to annoyed with him for no reason. There was an episode of 30 Rock called "Double-Edged Sword" and I think of it every time I'm in self-hate-and-therefore mode. But, at least in Relationshipland, I'm learning to be a grown-up and it's all tremendously healthy and good and I'm just looking for something to complain about because it's easier and less-corny-sounding than all the perfectly content smiley swellness that makes up 98% of things. Tomorrow, we may go to the zoo.

2011-01-30T03:56:00.001-06:00

With Corvus it is simple; he is a dragon. I do what I feel and he sets every part of me aflame then devours me whole. I am his delicacy and he is my freedom.

Scream

2011-01-30T01:47:00.000-06:00

Inordinate amounts of pain. Ovarian cyst acting up again is my guess, and I just shot up with the Torodol since I can't take normal over the counter drugs. The pain is unbelievable. Took a shower and a bath. Nails peeling, dog whining, but it's pain and pain and pain above all. Trying to think of other things. Just spelled "of" "ove" and had to correct it. Feels like I've been ripped open or I want to rip myself open, not quite sure which. Both.
Corvus. He's in Charleston. His grandmother's funeral was today. Want to say more about it but now is clearly not the time. Too lost in the immediate negative corporeal. Come on, Torodol. Fix it.
This is after I spent a few days fighting the jitters, only to realize they were me adjusting to medication change. Add Lorazepam and all is forgiven. And forgotten. Sleep away the changes. Now after sleeping most of today I am awake and I eat and it stabs the cyst. What the fuck. Body is not very cooperative. Want to clip my toenails. Something positive and body and pretty. Corvus thinks I'm hot. Is broken the price of hot? Could perfect toenails negate the pain?

O! True apothecary! Thy drugs are quick! 20 minutes from wishing for death to re-evaluating my tolerance for aliveness. Not bad.

Holy Fucking Corvus

2011-01-19T18:36:00.000-06:00

My dog has declared a bit of snuggle time; he's feeling neglected, having been locked away to give this crazy electricity free reign over my house and my heart.

Corvus. What the fuck? How does a reciprocal crush become oh my god without blinking? For once, I don't actually care how. That's a mini "oh my god" in itself.
But Corvus! Like a mirror--a reflection without being the same. And so much kindness, so sweet. He babbles things fit for poetry, apologizes for perfect words (and I'm supposed to be the writer?). Then, without thinking, he holds my head up as I drink water in bed, tries to wash the dishes, makes the bed the moment I'm preoccupied...I'm not the porcelain princess, he treats me like I'm made of gold; like an unworshipped goddess; like an adored equal.
He sees beauty and light and hears it, too. He doesn't know he's brilliant or doesn't believe it. He is story after story and he is warm strong quiet and he understands the laughter in the saddest of things.

There's so much more, but to dwell and list seems petty this time. Somehow, it's all more real and fair to just babble and swear and scream the name of the nearest deity.

Holy fuck.

Starry-Eyed

2011-01-16T13:49:00.000-06:00

Boy, oh Boy.
He kept using the word "hypnotized," and that's about accurate...we're both still hypnotized. Chemistry and starry-eyes and things I can't yet render in words.
Boy gets a name..."Corvus." Constellation, raven, sacred servant to Apollo.
I picked him up at the airport. I've been cleaning my house and myself. He seemed entirely taken by surprise...I wasn't surprised by Boy and Girl make with the smooching, but the whole thing was surprising...listening to eachother's heartbeats just holding close but somehow doing so without pretense or even awareness at first...it was all so crazy electric yet smooth and perfect. We're so awkward until...we're not. I'm less and less sure he's real or I'm awake because it seems impossible, but there's no question, we were awake and alive. Jesus fucking fuck.

Nocturning

2011-01-09T07:35:00.000-06:00

My psychiatrist may be brilliant.
I've been in my standard winter useless-lump-slump. Every year I forget that it happens every year and I fight it tooth and nail, or at least "fight it" as much as I can without leaving the house or accomplishing anything and really just fight my own sense of self-worth. But every year I try new drugs and new therapies and new resolutions to not be generally miserable and this year has been no exception. So far it's been a sun lamp and that horrible, horrible Ritalin experiment and lots of yelling at myself to be fucking positive and get off my fucking ass and accept my health and my family and get on with it already.

It's not working. At all. Which is much of why I'm not writing. I don't feel like doing anything, writing included, but I also am trying so fucking hard to be positive and I don't feel positive so I can't write positive so I can't write. Hell, most of the time I can't feel because it's feel crappy or feel nothing. We're messing with my medications again or still or more or however you want to look at it. The migraines have been so much better, I don't know why The Sads have been so much worse.

But in the past 9 hours I've gotten more done than I've been getting done in week-long stretches, and without stressing or straining; just quietly working and accomplishing like I do when I'm not in depression mode. Like I said at the beginning, my psychiatrist may be brilliant.
I was trying to explain to him my listlessness and days of foggy nothingness, migraine or no migraine.
Is it cognitive? Motivational?
I don't fucking know, probably because I'm having too much in the middle of it to have a clear understanding of what it is.
So is it a medication? Does it get better or worse at different points of the day? When I've taken things?
I'm clearest at night. Always have been. I wake up at 9 or 10 and can only start to think then...which is right around or after I've taken my night dose of the same crap I take in the morning and feel like a fuzz-bucket.
So maybe not the medication...

BUT!

If I'm naturally nocturnal and am clear at night, what if I actually allow myself to be nocturnal? Get shit done at night when I can get shit done and sleep during the day when I'm a grog-monster? I can still see my friends in the evenings, when I see them anyway, and spend some portion of business hours awake so I can make phone calls and go to stores and things.

It took me about 24 hours to get over the idea that staying awake all night and sleeping during the day made me an automatic freak of nature and quite possibly bad person who just couldn't make it in society. But why? Other cultures have different sleep patterns than ours, anyway. It's just when the sun shows up that tends to dictate the most popular times for productivity, and even that's BS as proven by the existence of Cleveland where the sun never shines yet at least three companies still operate (though I hear one is in talks with Miami).
I'm still adjusting and figuring out what works with my biological, medication, dog-walking, hypothetical social, and errand-running schedules, but today started to feel right. I slept hard from 5-10 PM and it's now 7:15 AM and I've done all kinds of Etsy stuff, written this, worked on a BS time-wasting project I enjoy (in which case maybe I should be nicer to it and stop calling it a BS waste of time), did all the dishes, researched prices on printers and contact lenses, talked to my brother and Aural Girl on Facebook, and walked the dog twice. Maybe the return of the bitter self-hate is an indicator that it's bed time again. Also I'm itchy, another good sign. I'd wanted to write a bit about The Boy, but I'll give the extremely condensed version instead:

Boy. Talked hours and hours of IM pre-Christmas. Then didn't hear from him between Christmas and New Years. Heard from him New Years Eve, ended up talking to him on the phone for a long time, now no sign he's alive for a week. He's on vacation and working on his own stuff (and getting a shitton done, it sounds like). And I had a fear it'd be like Love in the Time of Cholera or something...passionate love letters curdling when faced with actual proximity...but he comes back in a week and I'm trying to play it cool when we all know very well I'm a giant dweeb whose unsure about everything in the entire universe, worst of all myself and second-worst-of-all Boys.

7:30 AM. Sounds like a good bed time to me.

2011-01-06T04:08:00.001-06:00

The music in my head has gotten loud enough my dog can hear it.

Lovesong for Shed-Beast

2010-12-31T08:39:00.000-06:00

How did Dog survive before it had Man to hold it while it whined and protect it from thunder? Did Dog always need its food broken into smaller pieces, or did it at some point consistently and instinctually remember how to chew? And what did Man do in the pre-dawn sleet storm? Sleep?

No, Darwin here is a fairy tale. Fur and love and big desperate eyes must be grand design; otherwise I would have eaten the little fuzz-monster.

2010-12-31T03:24:00.001-06:00

I want to punch a hole in something, like, life.

Belated

2010-12-27T23:34:00.000-06:00

Why write now when I haven't blogged in almost two months? A Boy, of course. I'll get there in a moment...

I never wrote about Thanksgiving, how much we had to be thankful this year. My cousin adopted a child. My other cousins are pregnant. Amber stopped by and she's all kinds of pregnant, too. I've created an actual business that's started to make actual money that I enjoy and works extremely well with the chronic migraines and depression that I need to accept as part of myself that's not going anywhere any time soon. And my mom had the fastest, easiest experience with breast cancer humanly possible. I don't think we've ever cried so much as we went around the table and did our "I'm thankful for..."s.
My babycousin (the adoptee) is almost one and friggin adorable. My parents still have this plastic horse on wheels that was my favorite 1st birthday present. I found it in their basement, Lysoled the hell out of it, and brought it up to see if Babycousin wanted to try it out. She loved it and I love that she loved it. Maternal instincts creeping in, biology and all that...raising the next generation with my own experience...someone please start singing "Circle of Life."

I never wrote about my business taking off over the holiday season, money coming in for the first time in a substantial way, paying down the credit card I pretend doesn't exist from a few years back, seeing 800 shop views in an hour, front page, treasury after treasury, hard work paying off.

I never wrote about The Ritalin Experiment. As happens every year, fall showed up and so did a general feeling of gloom and constant exhaustion. My psychiatrist thought I'd do well on a "stimulant" meaning Ritalin. It was a good thought. Unfortunately, I had a paradoxical reaction and it took me two weeks to realize my total lack of desire to do anything and deep dark depression were a result of the drugs and not just a part of me I deserved (isn't depression fun?)

I never wrote about my mom's surgery. Breast cancer reconstruction stuff. The last of it. She was getting back to her negative fussy ways, but then about 24 hours before going under, she saw her therapist and POOF! back to positive thinking. Amazing.

I never wrote about the ovarian cyst I got the day before my mom's surgery. I ended up driving myself to the ER in agony, getting probed by nice people with creepy machines and dumb people with nice drugs and then missing the entire time my mom was in the hospital. Not ok. Ok with my mom (who was wonderful about it) but not with me. I felt guilty, like somehow I'd made myself sick so this would be about me instead of her. They got a nice clear view of the cyst in the sonogram, so if I did somehow give myself the damn thing, I've gotten good at materializing my psychosomatic symptoms.

But I never wrote about the boy, either.
At first I thought he was gay. I misinterpreted something as him flirting with another guy, and I must have thought he said something else early on, too, because I filed him away as "gay" very quickly in a way I don't normally do. So he was my fun new friend I didn't see that much. He was there for Halloween, we hung out for a good chunk of the night as I got consistently more and more wasted. He was gone by the time I was almost ready to follow home the snarky stranger.
I think Halloween was when I first thought, "Wait, why exactly did I think he was gay?" Went from "Too bad he's gay" to "I don't think he's gay..."

Apparently I'm extremely dense. Aural Girl is amazed at my obliviousness, and Possible Boy knew exactly who I was talking about because "it's just that obvious that he likes you."
Still, I wasn't sure until he was talking about Neighbor Guy basically trying to rape him no matter how many times he said "I'm. Not. Gay." (Glad to hear Neighbor Guy is sticking to his M.O., falling for straight boys and then not taking "no" for an answer.)

I had to reevaluate The Boy. Because now he could actually be a Boy. What? Further investigation was in order, but I saw him at most once a week at the bar. We didn't actually hang out until right before he left for the east coast for a month-long winter break vacation.
But.
The day we hung out, we were together from 11 AM to 11 PM and had a really fantastic time. Driving around in freezing rain and an estate sale and making music and cooking and more music and being awkward and then just a little bit of smooch on my way out the door. He followed me out to my car in his t-shirt, oblivious to the cold in our mutual dazed bewilderment. The freezing rain slush had turned to snow. After our final bits of giddy and apprehensive, I managed a cool "See you in a month," and drove home.

And then he flew away. To a Carolina. For a month. He won't be back until mid-January.

I wished for an excuse to write love letters, but at this point it would be for the storyline and the love of myself.
But it turns out, he tends to be awake at stupid hours of the night creating things. Whether it's a bad habit or just my natural clock, I've been indulging my nocturnal tendencies and spending hours and hours (like, a good 5 hours a night) "talking" to him on Facebook chat.

I'm not quite sure he's real. I suppose there's enough about him that is just completely his that he can't be purely a narcissistic projection of myself, and there's so much I still don't know. But so much of what I'm finding out seems to fit very well. I'm not getting completely lost and stupid because, via instant messages, he seems more like a concept than a real person. We'll see when he gets back. As long as he keeps making me feel better about myself instead of worse, he's an improvement on most of my past emotionally-involved Boys and I"ll gladly live in fluttery-but-cautiously-optimistic limbo for a few more weeks.

[No code name yet because I haven't decided on one.]

My Halloween Evil

2010-10-31T18:01:00.000-05:00

Every Halloween, much of the female population dresses as sexy, skanky, whory as possible. This year my costume was an inanimate object not normally considered sexy, made sexy. It's part of an inside joke from a few years ago (mainly with NBF) that somehow seemed funnier if most people witnessing the costume weren't in on the gag. Aural Girl and Possible Boy ended up going to non-Chicago portions of Illinois for the weekend and my social awkward/laziness landed me at a single party where I pretty much laughed alone.

But the costume turned out very well and I was walking sex.

I spent much of the past week growling at the extra 15 pounds Emsam exploded around my middle. I actually got stuck in the corset that used to be too big for me, and shirts and dresses all seemed to point directly to the weird lumpy bulge popping out at my waist line. I tried to contain it and hide it and wondered what I was doing bothering with a sexy costume at all now that I'm such a lard-ass.
Fucked. Up.
I still fought with the tights that wanted to roll beneath my roll, still buttoned my sweater lower than I would have a year ago. But once I found tight cotton short-shorts to wear over the tights, I remembered the First Rule of...well, certainly not Fight Club. Aesthetics Club? They'll be staring at my ass, not my middle. And if that's embarrassing or whorish, in autumn it easy to forget how much less we wear to the beach in summer.

But here's the real deep-dark "secret" of it all: I like the attention. I like the sense of power. Not only was my costume an inside joke with myself, so was the reaction the costume produced. I got to be Holly Golightly and Mae West all at once, boys' sly remarks caught in their tied tongues.

When we're dressed up as someone else, we get to be ourselves. And for me, as I think for a lot of women, ourselves are a lot more sexual than we think we're supposed to admit. I think my ideal is a smile with just a shadow of smirk wrinkling my lip. Enough to remind myself I'm in control but no real malice.

I could have brought home one of the boys. Considered it. But once I'm reminded that even with my awkward and crazy and my gimpy migraine life, that I can still command a room, then I get to require basic things of a boy like intelligence, attractiveness, and giving a shit about me. Greedy? Perhaps. Thinking a whole fucking lot of myself just because I wore something slutty? Yes. But I'm hanging out with Ken on Tuesday and no matter how sexual I'm feeling, that's a much better option than random strangers.

Happy Halloween.

Ethics, Judgment, Fault: Conversations with my Mother

2010-10-27T01:45:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I had a conversation with my mother about blogs and privacy and all of that.

When I write about my life, there are other people in it. What right do I have to publicize their secrets and stories? But I do have some right to my own happiness, and writing is how I process. And not to sound pretentious/conceited, but "Art" has a stake in this equation as well. The written work created effects far more people than those mentioned in it, and that is every bit as important as the process of its creation, for what good is the unaffected life?

My parents pick pick pick and criticize my (and everyone else's) every action. My own doubts in my mind sound in their voices, echoing back and forth conversations real to imagined and imagined to real.

I tried to be clear and strong to my mother yesterday that she, as a therapist, needs to insulate her privacy to the degree she sees fit, and that's her prerogative. If she wants to write books (as she has) and be findable on Facebook (as she does and is), those are all her decisions and her issues. I am a writer and not a therapist. I write under a pseudonym now, but my business is under my real name, I'm on Facebook, I am me and I am not afraid to share with the anonymous world or with people who might know me very well. I get to choose what I cloak about myself. If she is the therapist and the person trying to maintain privacy, she needs to be the one to put up the blocks and the barriers. It is literally her job, not mine.

When it comes to writing about other people in a public forum, I wrestle with it all the time. My instinct is to share it all as openly and honestly as I can, real names attached because then you know what I'm talking about and it's true and pure; anything I change or fabricate on purpose will be somehow less beautiful than the genuine article.
But I behave myself. I'm not actually the narcissist I often think I am. Maybe that's why I'm so bothered by my mom calling back today with her ominous "We need to talk. About the blog thing," that I know is just her dissatisfaction with my trying to put the responsibility on her instead of taking the burden on myself.
I have to decide what path to take when I call her back, because if I just listen and respond the conversation will be her telling me why I'm hurting other people by doing the one thing that means the most to me in the world, and it's my responsibility to protect her and myself and everyone else from her crazy stalking client because she (my mother) didn't foresee the professional conflicts of Facebook.

I get frustrated because I feel like everything is all about my mother except for judgment and blame.

Dual Citizenship

2010-10-20T20:41:00.000-05:00

September, my head was so good. I had days and days of zero headache. Zero. And almost every day the pain was at least tolerable enough to function.

At first, I freaked out. I was so desperate to cram in everything I don't get to do when I'm a blob. I worked my tail off and felt like it wasn't good enough, like I wasn't getting enough done, like there was so much more to do and any moment I wasn't doing something visibly productive was a waste of my precious healthy time.
Then there were my friends. When the migraines are bad, I have trouble maintaining friendships. I have to cancel plans all the time and then we stop making plans. I can do things spontaneously, but few other people are available at my healthy whims. Then when we do get together, what do I have to talk about? My life is fairly limited, and if you don't find my present occupation or the ethereal and observational shit I like to spew interesting, I will bore you. Illness is incredibly isolating, and with a healthy dose of narcissism (I'm a writer, for fuck's sake), the Bad Days go by as all about me. My pain. My struggle. Pain is loud and makes me strongly aware of myself, everything else just background and things that might add or detract from pain. I'm like an infant, entirely corporal and needy. I kick and scream at pain, hunger, loneliness, frustration, and when these base things are quieted I marvel at my own two feet and the way light and color exist in and out of my dreams.
When September was good, I barely started relearning how to go out and be outside of myself, try to rediscover those friendships I care about. I went out to dinner with Possible Girl. I went back to the bar. I went to a party. Just getting my feet wet.

My neurologist says that my brain thinks pain is very important. We find something new to confuse it for as along as possible but it's trying to get back to the pain. When it finds it again, we go to something new. I like him better than the migraine clinic. The clinic is more aggressive, which was great short-term, but now that they've kind of blown their wad, he still has lots of ideas and worries about things like my long-term health and if my medications are killing my kidneys. But the point is, we'll keep working on finding things to trick my brain and keep getting chunks of time without pain. And each chunk of time I'm not in pain, I'll keep learning how to live a double life. And maybe I can take some of my this-is-just-how-it-is migraine-life acceptance into the bright places, and maybe I can take some of my human contacts and friends with me back into the dark.

Because October, thus far, sucked. I've gotten some good days. But more than half the days have been bad with some really bad. Today was particularly rotten with light and sound kicking my ass and logic evading me at every corner. When I curl up into myself, I want it to be about someone else for a change. I've had enough of me. I'm reading, looking for contact on the internet, but obviously it's not the same. I may call a friend tonight and deal with the pain of mechanised cell phone sound. Tell me a story of you.

2010-09-06T02:03:00.000-05:00

When I'm in pain, I feel like I can't get a grip on my life and the few things I can control I desperately cling to and force into storylines.
When I'm clear, I feel like I'm all hands and I don't know how to just live. I went out tonight and felt so sober and awkward, I didn't know how to just be. Nervous, out of balance, I wanted to scream. I could have gone home, but I stayed out. Mu usual signals to go home, like I get tired or start to feel the booze or people I'm talking to leave, just didn't exist. So hour after hour it was like I was waiting for the fun or the human connection or the sign that the world is beautiful. Instead, I finally spoke to the guy who had been sitting next to me and he was a magnified version of everything that was disgusting myself about my own awkward. He'd brought with him a sketch book, half a dozen artist pencils, pencil sharpener, and eraser but spent hours on the outline of a single cartoon-like character's head an 11-year-old could have drawn. His t-shirt tucked into his jeans belted high above the waist and the way his fat collected above his belt, in the seat of his pants, and in his face all added to the 11-year-old affect. I wasn't in much of a mood to give him a chance to redeem himself, but when the bartender said something about his drink also not containing alcohol, I asked why not.
"I just don't have much of a taste for it."
I asked why come to a bar then (he hadn't spoken a word to another human being since I'd sat down hours earlier).
"For the conversation. You don't get the social element at Hardees or McDonalds."
At this point he physically shifted forward waaay into my bubble. In as few sentences as possible I closed up my bag and escaped.

So is that me? Not even to middle school in my ability to interact with other people? And at the same time, I keep questioning what I'm doing with myself, letting my brain rot away, doing my sad bits of male scouting at a bar?

It's 2 AM, I'm still not tired. I'm going to go read. Like, a novel. I'm PMSed and on too many medications that make me want to climb walls and throw up angry things. Where's my fucking dog?

Mouse Hunt

2010-09-04T23:32:00.000-05:00

I killed a mouse Thursday. Snap trap and plum. Only I didn’t kill the mouse, it somehow set of the snap trap and escaped with the plum. I should have known then it had an accomplice.

I killed a mouse last night, this time for real. I moved the snap trap and used smaller bait: just enough muenster cheese to cover the bait part of the trap. It seems to have worked, because the mouse was very dead in the morning.

I would and could have set down glue traps, covered traps, other things that require less contact with the mouse, but these are actually less humane and less effective. As for a live trap, I live in the city. I’m not driving over an hour so some urban-adapted little shitter can go get eaten by his more wilderness-prone cousins.

So ding, dong the mouse was dead and I went about cleaning up the disgusting poop it managed to leave under my kitchen sink and behind my kitchen cabinets.

All mopped, every surface disinfected, so what the fuck still smells like mouse shit?

I’m not happy I now recognize the smell of mouse shit. I have nose that rivals most of the animal kingdom, a trait that’s been entertaining in my antiques/vintage acquisition. I already think cling wrap has a smell and my ice maker has a smell, so adding “mouse poop” to the olfactory equation has me homicidal and I already killed the mouse.

Or so I thought.

No mouse is an island.

A smaller, completely black mouse darted across the kitchen tonight. Darted across my freshly mopped floors. I yelled and I banged on things and I told it I was buying a shot gun. It seemed lost. It went for the washing machine and tried to come back out again with no real direction. Maybe I killed off the mouse responsible for acquiring food and making poop, and now this mouse is looking for answers. If I could show this mouse the door and no other mice or bugs or vermin ever crept across my threshold again, I would show this mouse my mercy. Otherwise, I want to blow it to hell.

I fear my kitchen floor boards don’t make it all the way to the walls and there’s a zoo living in what I judge to be my downstairs neighbor’s heating duct, creeping up into my kitchen at night to feed and poop.

My dog is useless.

Does Illinois require a license to buy a flame-thrower?

Who Knows Best

2010-08-31T22:49:00.000-05:00

FDA: Do not take these drugs together.
Doctor: It's ok, you can take these drugs together.
My body: Why the fuck did you take those drugs together?

At least, as of today, I'm finally recognizing the symptoms of the serotonin reaction shit. Also very weird, the increased dose of my MAOI started taking very obvious effect about a week ago, a week and a half after the increase. Now I feel everything else louder and louder, but at least I'm not in pain. I just hate the want-to-throw-up-the-inside-of-my-toes feeling. I'm making an executive decision and taking a half-dose of the offending drug tonight until I can talk to my doctor in the morning. I JUST WANT TO WORK RIGHT AND FEEL RIGHT AND NOT FUCKING THINK ABOUT IT ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

Sun Ray Sting Ray

2010-08-23T12:24:00.000-05:00

It's beautiful out. I tried to help pack the car and the sun stabbed me in the eyeballs. I was and still am wearing my giant sunglasses. I came back in and still felt it piercing all the way through the inside of my skull. I couldn't complete a sentence. I still feel it. I want to hold on until HDS leaves. Then it will be silent again and I can bury my head in my pillow and my dog can curl up in any room he wants. I will have as long as I need to be alone; this is my human contact time and the end of my HDS time and my chance to soak it up, pain or not.

If I still feel like this tomorrow, maybe I'll go to the migraine clinic for extra shots. Too many days of really bad.

Whine whine whine.

More Pain, More Thoughts

2010-08-23T00:24:00.000-05:00

My brand of love scares away boys and sets back feminism 40 years. Writing about love is gauche now, anyway. That's why I get migraines--to give me something to write about. It's a through-line to my story, a regular source of conflict, and a free pass to be self-involved.
Free pass is putting it nicely.
Screaming internal distraction that makes it hard to notice much else. Unless I lose myself in something. Today I spent a very long time figuring out how much something listed in an obscure currency decades ago would cost today (as in, today dollars versus then shekels, not how much it's actually worth today). I edited photos, tried to write product descriptions, got frustrated and heard my brain fizzling, and finally settled in to watch a gazillion episodes of Twin Peaks.
I wanted to be functional this weekend. I even saved my shots this week and drugged up Saturday morning. No good. Pain pain pain since Friday. Before that, too? I don't really remember when this bout started. It's been a bad one. HDS leaves tomorrow and her husband and friend came to pick her up. I wanted to have a nice goodbye weekend. I want to feel well enough to know want.

I'm supposed to go out to see my mom on Tuesday and maybe go shopping with her. It's been less than seven weeks since she was diagnosed with cancer. Now she may be fine to drive and shop again. That's amazing. She's so lucky and we're so lucky and everything has been so amazing. But there's a part of me that also struggles with her getting better and better while I have no real "better" in sight. Mine isn't scary, mine can't kill me. That's huge. But there are no walks, no ribbons, no support groups, no t-shirts, no awareness months, no product lines, and no foreseeable relief for my migraines. I will never be a "survivor," and that's appropriate because there was never any threat. Cancer is something you survive. But migraines are something you suffer.

I don't expect life to be easy, I just feel the things that aren't.

Everything is true at the same time, Reality is the version accepted by the majority.

Lake Street Red Line Stop on a Wednesday Afternoon

2010-08-18T13:32:00.000-05:00

Two men singing on the el platform with their permit clearly visible.

One plays guitar and sings melody, the other harmonizes.

They sway.

The harmonizer smiles.

The guitar player has long grayed dreads. He’s thin but not hungry, looks faded and worn but without pain. His skin is graying. His shiny black guitar looks gray under the subway lights.

His voice is anything but gray. Warm and mellow, like honey, like the 1960s folk that bore him. You can hear the hope and marijuana round the edges of each phrase.

The harmonizer reminds me of the old smiling Sambo images. Less bright, less ridiculous, but retaining a bit of the please-the-white-man quality. Still, his voice is pure and adds a dimension to the familiar tunes.

Police officer with his big german shepherd sitting not 10 feet away, staring.

The German Shepherd is watching the permit

The police officer isn’t watching much of anything.

A train comes and the guitar player leans into a concave *beam* to retune.

I drop a dollar into the bag with the permit.

A woman walks past. She is so large her legs sink down, burying her feet and her flip flops.

Pad My Walls

2010-08-07T20:20:00.000-05:00

I've got the crazies tonight. The pain was mostly gone today, but all the other fucked up shit diminutively classified as "aura" rendered me insane. It's so strange that when I get like this I can write. I can do a number of other random things quite well, too. Hopefully tomorrow I won't discover that I destroyed, offended, or bankrupted anyone, but I think I got a lot of work done. Walking the dog, I was ready to chainsaw the trees after 30 seconds of the cicadas. I hate the fucking cicadas. Crickets chirp; cicadas scream like electronics, but they ebb and swell so you can't forget they're there, vibrating at the frequency of your skull.

So I thought I was hungry. I'd been munching snap peas all afternoon, but perhaps red meat would cure my homicidal crankiness. I browned ground beef, planning to add one of the Trader Joe's Indian eggplant pouch things as an instant, no-thought sauce, but then I found a can of ranchero something soup with a recipe that sounded good and we had all the ingredients. So instead of three minutes and my nice fake Indian weird beef thing, it was 30 minutes for my fake Mexican weird beef thing. When it was done, I opened the oven and grabbed at the metal without thinking--no oven mitt. I can write but I can't use a stove.
Oven hot. No touch. Four-year-olds understand this. I'm alternating typing and icing my pointer finger.

Possible Boy and I had talked about seeing a movie tonight. At some point this afternoon I considered inviting him over to watch a movie, or doing some quiet but still social activity with him. Then I stand up and everything is wooziness and I try doing basic household crap and realize how scary I look. I don't want to hide all the time and only see friends when I'm glowing, but the bad stuff is easier to ride out quietly at home where I don't have to consider the variables. I'm not sure how to maintain friendships this way, but tonight I'm curled up afraid of myself and still trying to figure out how to get back to my parents' house to help out as soon as possible.
Cancer trumps migraine. Cancer kills.

Pathological

2010-08-06T20:27:00.000-05:00

Pathology report: lymph nodes all clear. No chemo necessary. Woohoo!

My mom had to have a second, though minor, surgery because her skin wasn't healing properly from the first surgery.

My dad has been by her side every possibly moment, bringing much of his work to the hospital and actually taking his years of accumulated time off. He has been an absolute super hero. Under normal circumstances, he likes doing as many things as physically possible. He's mellowed down some so that he can now wait in line without exploding, but he used to send each member of the family to stand in a different check-out line and then we'd all join whoever got to the counter first. If there were fewer lines than family members, my father would bounce back and forth between lines, check things out at the front, go back and shop some more or do whatever he found to keep himself occupied. The man couldn't stand still. As adults, my siblings and I refuse to participate in the efficient but rude multiline blitz.

I try to be there for my mom as often as I can so my dad and my brother don't have to. My dad hadn't cleared his work schedule to take my mom home after the unexpected second surgery so I planned to be there Tuesday and Wednesday. Thanks to the migraines and everything I've had to do to fight them, I'm no longer bothered by blood and IVs and all that, plus I'm female and not modest so I can help my mom get undressed and dressed.

Driving back and forth these past few weeks, I've somewhat abused my Torodol: nothing that will kill me, but a bit much for keeping it effective.

Tuesday, HDS stayed home from work because the inside of her head burned. I went to the hospital to find my mother quite chipper. She was walking around before they had her out of recovery and wanted real food as soon as the nurse could find her an unplanned turkey sandwich. Considering how much trouble she had with the anesthesia the first time, we were all pleasantly surprised.
Meanwhile, I took one of the alcohol wipes and bandaids laying around and gave myself another shot of Torodol. My sunglasses never came off.
My mom, who had surgery, was doing fine and better all the time. I, who had all my parts intact, got worse and worse. Sound, smells, all the usuals but no amount of caffeine or drugs seemed to stave them off.
I wigged out. There was nowhere I could hide in the hospital that was dark or quiet. Everything buzzed and hummed and beeped. I'd find a dark hall or stairwell only to step in and activate motion censor fluorescent lights. It was light a bad nightmare. I curled up in a corner behind a doorway where at least no one was around and cried and cried because it hurt so much.

I cried because I felt like I had no right to my pain, here on a post-op hospital ward.
Mine can't kill me.
But my mom will get better. My mom will be a cancer survivor.

I went back to her room and sat in a chair in the dark part while my dad tried to fuss over making it darker for me. I'm not sure what I said or did at that point but I figured I'd just sleep in the corner until the pain blew over. Then my mom said my dad and brother were going to both drive me home so my car would be back at my house and that was what she wanted and they would deal with Wednesday because I needed to take care of myself.

Lots of gratitude and I was home. I give my family a lot of credit for this one.

That night it stormed so loud the lightning woke me.

2010-08-05T22:32:00.001-05:00

Down for the count again. My mom has Cancer and is doing better than i am right now. I feel like I have no right to be so clobbered by something nonfatal.

Don't Call Me Shirky: Over 800 People Can't Be Wrong

2010-07-31T14:34:00.001-05:00

Birdie sent this to me with the note "This reminded me of the content of some of your blog posts. Plus, it is so funny and I thought you would LIKE IT."
Hyperbole and a Half: This is Why I'll Never be an Adult

Yes. Me + cartoons = that post. And it's funny.

What amazes me is that it has over 800 comments. Eight hundred people feel this way.
My expectations are so high that anything less than perfection gets thrown together in the "I am garbage" pile. "Unable to cure cancer," "didn't email back friend," and "forgot to pay parking ticket" all fall in the same wretched half of my black-and-white world. I go through Allie's responsibility cycle, worked into my very own ballet of self-loathing.
Why?
Over 800 random-ass blog readers responded to say they do the same damn thing. What's going on that so many people's expectations of "normal adulthood" knock them into the fetal position?

We have this strange luxury of choice, this ability to do things with our time other than find food and fight predators. We need what we need to stay alive. Then there's the next layer of the things we need to make life worth living. This is the crap people kill for and die for, things that inspire epic poetry, Opera and phone commercials.
Then there's everything else. There's just so much everything else. It's unnecessary and overwhelming, but it also helps all the people live a little smoother and it can be beautiful and add to the "worth living." But bullshit and junk and imaginary importance and stress stress stress make me run back to being a child, when all the grown-up nonsense is supposed to look like nonsense. I personally made the mistake of taking grown-up nonsense seriously as a child, which makes a lot more sense when you think about it--making noise and writing on lots of papers and everybody picking a title and wearing funny things to signify what they're supposed to be is much more of a child's game than the business of the life-learned. Send me to school now that I need daily gym class, now that I can understand the practical applications of economics, and could really use a refresher course in sharing.

With real mortality-related things happening in my life right now, I have much less luxury of choice. Dealing with my mother's needs and just sucking it up is exhausting, but it certainly reminds me I am and can be an adult. Last night the stress and weather finally won over my over-medicating hyperdrive and I crashed hard. In a strange way, I was glad because it somehow re-legitimized my migraines; like my body made it abundantly clear I'm not just being a pussy and I can't just push through and be OK.

My mom's ok and I'll write more later. Now I need to nap so I can go to my parents' house for dinner.

2010-07-28T22:14:00.001-05:00

Crashing at my parents house, watching a History Channel program "for mature audiences only." WTF.

Ways to Help

2010-07-25T20:23:00.001-05:00

My mom went home today. My dad has been with her since she had her surgery, sleeping in the chair beside her hospital bed. My parents can be infinitely annoying and occasional emotionally abusive, but they are pretty incredible.

Today is the first day since Tuesday I won't see my mother. I'm relieved. Starting tomorrow, much of her daily care will fall to my brother and me. He lives there for the summer, so he has less ability to escape. I have to remember it is not my job, that her friends can take up some of the slack.

Yesterday, while I was feeding her ice chips, my mom started complaining to me about one of her friends and went on her standard bitch-and-moan about her mother and one of her clients and other flawed people in her life. She's keeps checking to make sure she's not overburdening me with the physical stuff--repeats over and over I don't have to feed her or help her stand or poke at the bloody things unless I'm comfortable--but I've never been able to properly communicate how uncomfortable I am being her emotional support system, and now seems a cruel time to say something. I feel so backwards--help from her local adult daughter post-double mastectomy is a huge act of charity; therapeutic services have been assumed since I was 4. I never had to do the dishes or take out the trash, maybe I just got the emotional trash instead. And my parents still don't expect any sort of physical, visible work, but perhaps to them it's a greater burden to do something than to feel something. Not me.

I'll be back at their house tomorrow night and it will be emotionally draining, too, but it's emotionally draining sitting at my house.

The cicadas are loud again tonight. Crickets chirp, cicadas scream. The sound swells and ebbs in irregular waves. I never see them, but I hear them. They are monsters.

Not Real Sucky

2010-07-24T23:01:00.000-05:00

Headline News on mute in my mother's hospital room has been nonstop coverage of Lindsay Lohan. I don't have to look up the spelling of her name online because I can look up and it's on the TV. Still.

There are four clear turkey baster bulbs attached to four clear tubes attached to the incisions in my mother's chest. The body tries to heal the wounds, sends blood and fluid, and something needs to be sucked out. The tubes are stretchy and need to be squeezed clear of blood clots. Then we have to empty the bulbs and measure the fluid.

I don't have to do any of this. I volunteered. I'm strangely good at it, except when I tried to feed her the applesauce and got more on her than in her. At least I thought to bring the applesauce. All natural, NOT chunky, no sugar added. My dad said she'd been really nauseous all day, and I'm an expert at nauseous. She has dry mouth, too, way worse than I ever did but at least I understand the feeling. Ice chips mixed with the apple sauce trumped everything the hospital tried to feed her. You'd think hospitals would know these kinds of things, but I suppose it's different for everyone. We're related, so I imagine our reactions are far more similar. Nausea requires cold. Cold and wet, but not clammy. I'll often run my wrists under cold water at rest stops to battle the car sickness. My mom was grateful and amazed that I knew to put ice chips on her wrists when she was at her wooziest. But with her, with Cancer, with life in general, there's so much beyond my and anyone's control. I want to say it's "nice" to be able to make her feel better in little ways for even a moment, but "nice" the wrong word. It's all I can do and I'll take it.

The past few days have been filled with heat waves and electrical storms and flash flooding. Our power went out three times in the last week, only once while it was raining. Driving to the hospital today traffic signals were out or blinking all over the place. Transformers 3 filmed in Chicago last weekend, with explosions and parachuting and fireballs. Tuesday HDS and I sat on the Wao Bao patio at State and Lake and heard a huge blast. Most people didn't even look up.

I feel like the world is getting more and more absurd. There's crazy shit all over and we have our far-fetched explanations because if you stop and really think about any of it, the whole universe is too insane to be real. My dreams make more sense than my awake. Nothing makes real sense, we just stretch and accept whatever gets put before us. We're incredibly flexible creatures. Turkey basting my mother's chest? Why not.

Staring at the Sun

2010-07-14T09:22:00.000-05:00

My mom is being amazing. She's optimistic and rational and moved by all the support she's receiving. I'm so impressed. She was built for this. I very much wish she didn't have cancer and we're only a week into knowing it's there, but at least it's acting as the smack-in-the-face we all sometimes need to remember what it means to be alive.

I'm also completely freaked out and not sure what else to feel or think, so alive is a pretty good place to concentrate.

2010-07-11T21:26:00.000-05:00

My mom just called to let me know she has breast cancer.

She just found out. It's apparently one of the least bad kinds and she sounds pretty positive about the whole thing. My response was "That sucks, I'm sorry, do you need anything? I love you."

She said she kept thinking, "Oh no, now my daughters have a mom who had breast cancer."
Maybe all our day-to-day negativity and pessimism is just a way of saving our hope and optimism for the big stuff. I always say about my migraines, "it's not cancer and it can't kill me." Well, my mom has cancer. Maybe the distraught hasn't hit yet. Maybe today's just a day I'm accepting things. One foot is already in a dream. My mom has to have cancer to show her the meaning of life. That's how the story goes. We all learn things and understand things and hurt and cry and bloom. I've seen this movie. Now it's our turn to live it.

Clear, Fog

2010-07-08T10:03:00.000-05:00

The rain is so light it barely textures the surface of clear, still Lake Michigan. I can see angular boulders make a path under the water and I want to walk rock to rock until the water submerges me, too.

Like a plow, the beach comber made its shrinking circles around the sand. My dog and I stood at the top of the concrete steps separating beach from city to watch and wait. The machine seemed to change its course to finish the section in front of us. It felt like he was combing that bit just for us, but I figured it was more like finishing off a golf hole. We stood and watched his figure eights disappear unswept sand, and then he honked and waved for us to come down to the beach; he had changed his course for us. We were royalty. In cotton shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt, I commanded a presence. Sometimes I forget I'm not invisible.

Since the hospital, I've been feeling better in that I'm more inclined to get shit done and only had bad pain yesterday evening through now. I was crazy light sensitive before that, but light's not bugging me anymore.

I feel like I'm in a temporal hiccup where I constantly cross paths with past, present, and future versions of myself. These sorts of lessons get learned much faster on television.

Discharge

2010-07-03T11:59:00.002-05:00

I'm leaving the clinic today. I still have a migraine.
In the hospital, I don't have to remember my pills and meals all day. I don't worry about paying bills, running errands, making plans. They take care of me.
They also struggle to find my veins so they can then shoot me full of drugs. The IV lines start to hurt almost immediately, and after a day, ice packs and deep breathing are no match for the excrutiating pain ripping into my hand and burning its way up my arm.
They do this in the middle of the night, too.
And the food 65% sucks.

At home I take care of myself. It's hard for me. I see couples taking care of eachother and I'm jealous, but I push people away so I can prove to myself that I'm capable. HDS doesn't do dishes. Another friend of mine doesn't drive in the city or on highways. Other people don't kill bugs or clean showers. The longer I'm alone, the more I'm forced to learn.

Lately, I've been a stagnant smog of indecision. I've been turning to other people for excuses to go one way or another on all choices. HDS refuses to make decisions for me because she knows I'm just looking for a way to blame someone else for the outcome. Maybe that's the only way I know how to let myself off the hook; everything is someone's fault, so how can it be not mine?

I now have to wear a medical alert bracelet for my MAOI patch. Honestly, I'm glad. I want something to show for all this fucking pain.

All the other symptoms, too.

In some ways, I belong in a hospital. My memory is swiss cheese. Faces blend together. Being fucked up in the hospital is ok. But at home I want to run around and go to the bar and see friends. At home, I have a very hard time keeping up with friendships. People (Neighbor Guy) take it personally when you repeatedly cancel plans. Other friends stop calling when they don't want to bug you in case you have a headache. It takes that much more effort when you have that much less energy. But today I so desperately want out of this fucking hospital and the IVs out of my veins, I'm taking charge and responsibility and out out out.

2010-06-30T06:57:00.000-05:00

My room has a great view; the "lounge" gives you a 90º view of Lake Michigan, two boat harbors, and a huge green stretch of Lincoln Park. Between fluffy trees I see the morning joggers, large enough to differentiate but too small to judge from a 9th floor window. Green and light blue shirted women passing black shirted man. Black tank top and short hair taking an exhausted stretch between sets on the pull-up bars. Dirty blonde pony tail heavily bouncing stride, stride, stride, stride...

Even with the runners and the cars, everything looks so still. It's hard to believe time is passing at all.

If all goes well, I'm out of here Sunday. Fourth of July. I can go home and celebrate and watch fireworks without pain. That's the new goal.

Inpatience

2010-06-29T23:27:00.001-05:00

It's amazing that last post reads so coherent. I felt like I was in pieces, like I shouldn't have been able to type the words.

Now, I'm in a hospital bed with an IV aching on my left hand.
I've been so ambivalent about this whole inpatient thing because this is somehow the big huge next step overhaul in migraine treatment options and it feels like more of the same: more throwing curious chemicals at a problem we don't understand. The drugs they're giving me to break up my current headache cycle aren't even anything new; they're the exact same thing dripped into me five years ago in Cleveland with limited success.
I feel so down and negative right now. It's a universe of infinite possibility and potential. I'm trying to concentrate on the shiny happy things, but it feels like all my shiny happy places are currently imaginary. Still way better than feeling like shiny happy places will never exist, but at the moment I can't see them in a touchable way.
I see the beautiful moon and amazing view from my hospital window. I see tubes and informational bracelets and "mid-century furnishings."
I had one friend (Possible Boy) drive me to the doctor's office, the bank, and the hospital, and stay with me through all the waiting and my frazzled uncertainty, until hours later I had a room and internet and gratitude I'm never sure how to show.
I have another friend (HDS) who is not only walking and feeding my dog but also sent me a picture of him adorably accepting her surrogate love.
These are my shiny happy and these are real. I feel like I'm covered in muck and can't be a part of them. They are a part of me, I know, but I am a part of them, too.
I want this dark cloud off of me and the only way out is to realize it's not actually there.

My parents came by to visit tonight. They showed up just after visiting hours ended. I was still glad to see them.

My insides are fizzing

2010-06-27T01:13:00.000-05:00

What's wrong what's wrong what's wrong?
I'm trying to write it. I can't seem to write it.
I feel like crap.
I'm spending another day here because I chose to spend another day here because I decided HDS's need to have another day at home was more important than me having one more day of this.
Lots of pep talks and rallying cries. The bad I'm feeling isn't so bad, it's just knowing it gets worse before it gets better that makes me want to smash my head through a plate glass window. I'm going through Prozac withdrawal. And the weather is migraine hellacious. And I'm already down to my last shot which I have to save for the drive home. I'm tired but anxious so I'm not sleeping well and I want answers that apparently don't exist on weekends.

Monday I will get home, get dog, do laundry, and pack for my extended hospital stay. Monday hopefully I will get all of my questions answered while I'm on the road. I'm particularly frustrated that some papers I meant to bring are at my house and make it much harder if not impossible to get everything (charts and doctors and such) up to date and finalized while we're on the road.

I do things at the last minute, or at least wait until I feel the pressure of the deadline. I think this makes me a procrastinator and procrastinators are bad people.

I'm mad at myself for deciding to stay in Nashville until Monday. I did it for the wrong reasons and I am mad at myself for being mad at myself instead of just accepting that I made a decision. Let it go. I can't let anything go lately. I'm gooey.

Writing isn't supposed to make me worse. I'm feeling worse. More agitated. Where's the fucking Lorazepam? I need sleep and I'm too fucking bonkers. I've taken more Lorazepam this month than I have in the past year. It's still less than some people take in a few days, but it's a lot for me.

2010-06-24T19:36:00.002-05:00

Wigging out again.
We leave for Nashville in the morning. Driving. HDS is really homesick. Nashville is home. And the flea market. Fun fun fun, right? I'm just in dread mode. Dreading a car trip. Dreading getting back and going into the hospital. Things I don't understand and don't think I can understand and things that make me upset. I have many many doctors. It feels like doctors are something that happen to me. They are like the oligarchy of my life. They say different things and think they are science and right and I want them to be right.

Down with Down

2010-06-24T17:40:00.000-05:00

I'm having an icky down time. I've been wrestling and fretting, tears and furrowed brow, bile working the backwards path of post-nasal drip.
So I'm having a down time. My clawing around for a reason and a way out makes me bleed a little deeper without finding firmer footing.
Relax, take a deep breth, and remember it's ok to go through the sad, lonely, depressed shit, too. Fighting so hard is what makes it so hard.

What if your kid starts biting people?

2010-06-22T22:11:00.000-05:00

Upstairs neighbors who went to the condo board to voice their concerns about my dog instead of talking to me had a baby a few months back. HDS and I opened the door to leave on Sunday and the dad, his grandmother, and other various adults were in the hall. My dog ran out barking and snarling. I ran out and got my dog, picked him up, and carried him back inside (he's 14 lbs). He didn't bite anyone. But my neighbor still lost his shit. "There are laws against this." I lost my shit in tears.

HDS and I had been on our way to lunch with my mom, who suggested a gate for when we open the door so there is no way my dog can run out in the future. I had the gate up already when a police officer came by later in the day. My neighbors called the police. They don't talk to me, they go to the condo board and then they call the police. When they were dog sitting, I was there when their furry charge got out off her leash. I reattached and tightened the harness for them. My dog escapes for an instant and they call the police.

I'm terrified. I don't know what to do. I keep him on his leash, muzzled in the presence of others, and we've been working our butts off on training. But he is my dog and I love him so much and he isn't going to kill anyone and he's a complete sweetheart, joy, treasure, necessity in my life. He is not a pit bull or a thing or a gun. I'm so scared my neighbors will go after him and I see the huge unfairness and uncaring of situations like these and it crushes me into a little ball of chalkiness.

Friday we go to Nashville.
Monday I go to the hospital.
When will this anxious, sinking feeling go away?

Decisions, Stress

2010-06-10T14:28:00.000-05:00

I leave for Santa Barbara tomorrow morning.
There are things I wanted to do before I left.
I cannot do all of them.
I absolutely have to go to the DMV and renew my drivers license, which apparently expired on my birthday.
I absolutely have to pack.
I absolutely have to shower.

Just shy of absolutely, I have to photograph as many items as possible and upload them to my computer. Every time I go to take photos of something, I want to scream. Even the things I thought would be super-quick shots need to be cleaned or don't sit straight or something else killing the super-easy. And now that I know how to find all kinds of information on any given item, I feel much more obligated to keep digging until I have at least the manufacturer and time period. So no more instant gratification, and I've spent the last two weeks pushing pushing pushing without taking a breath, stoking my anxiety fire.

Not absolutely but I really wanted to, I was going to go to a movie with Possible Boy this afternoon. I haven't hung out with him or Aural Girl in ages and his school year is over now so he's a bundle of free time. Last night, "everyone" was at the bar watching the Blackhawks win the Stanley Cup, but HDS was cooking really fabulous dinner and she's still far from ready to plunge into the bar, no matter how tame it is. By the time dinner was over, so was the game and I was back to stressing.
But somewhere in the "watching the game at the bar" was an invitation to today's movie watching, and in my last night thinking, going to a movie today would be an excellent break from the crazy, a reunion with the last time I blinked and a person I'd like to see.

Now it's already after 2 PM and my body is begging to lay down again. I don't want to cancel movie time. I don't want to feel like I've let someone down or messed up his plans for the day. I already blew off Neighbor Guy who called with boy troubles and really wanted to hang out and talk, my mother when she called with one of her non-reasons, and my dog by cutting his morning walk to bad-weather length. I know I have to call Possible Boy and say no movie. I know writing this instead of using these minutes on one of the time-requesting entities is extremely narcissistic, but I have to consider this a case of putting on my own oxygen mask first before assisting others.

See? Starting to breathe better already.

2010-06-08T20:58:00.000-05:00

Too much. I need to decompress.

Friday I cleaned like I've never cleaned before. I went through the piles and lumps and stacks and ridiculousness of my office and transformed it into HDS's room. The craft closet is still a craft closet, my "to file" bin is still outrageous, there's still one pastic drawer unit of crafting insanity, and several boxes of miscelaneous I've yet to go through, but compared to a week ago, it's an entirely different room.

SHIT SHIT SHIT.

Phone just rang. I had an appointment to get a hearing test for research people. I never put the appointment in my phone calendar, the final resting place for all things transfering from memory to schedule. I feel like such a jerk. I also feel extra frustrated because this is one more piece of "too much" I just couldn't carry and don't see why I can't do it, too, without brain matter sloshing out my pores.

So I cleaned HDS's room and most of the house barely in time for HDS and husband (Cheeseburger Sam? Hot Dog Ashley?) to arrive a day early. I wanted the house to sparkle and for HDS's room to look ready and inviting, I wanted her to walk in and feel welcomed. Instead I was frazzled and hadn't gone to the grocery store or made her a set of keys and I still haven't mopped, but there was nothing to be embarassed about and I had worked hard for many many hours and accomplished something visible.

My dog and I are both awkwardly adjusting to a roommate. He sniffs her legs, follows her aaround, then turns around and barks like she's a newly intruding burglar after his food and warm spots. I'm trying-too-hard step-mother wanting to do and say the right things but not even sure what those things are. There's conventional wisdom, there's my gut, and then there's HDS and my shared flavor of crazy sauce that we have to be really careful not to splash all over the walls and eachother.

There are some big things happening right now for my vintage/antiques/buying/selling enterprise. From an objective standpoint, right now I should be filling my shop and marketing like crazy.
But I also have to go to my cousin's graduation in California this weekend.
My dog has a vet appointment this afternoon so I can kennel him if he's not BFFs with HDS by Friday.
Catalogue. Photo. Research. List. Repeat Repeat REPEAT.

I need my computer for everything. HDS didn't bring her computer because it is a giant desktop. What's the protocol for sharing? What's the protocol for me making sure HDS has what she needs? This is where I end up being weird.

The house is already a mess again. It's raining and my priorities list has cleaning the house pretty low. Writing wasn't even on the priorities list but became an obvious necesity when I was ready to curl up into a little ball.

Getting Help

2010-06-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

I scoured the inside of my fridge. Something smells. It's clearly inside my fridge, but it's none of the individual foods. I hope my neurotic cleaning takes care of the stink.
My counter tops are visibly dirty.

My mom really wanted to come over this week to help me with anything that needed helping and have me try on clothes she and my dad bought at a store they love that just went out of business. I had a few projects that I wanted to get done before HDS got here and my brother is home for the summer.

I wanted to finally hang my dining room chandelier even if that was all we did.

That's all we did.

But it's up and it's beautiful and my dining room is finally beautiful and ready for dinner parties and the arrival of HDS.

I enjoy basic creative problem solving, working with my hands, doing things myself, etc. My mother was clearly trying to be helpful and said more than once, "It's your house." Trying is good. Still, she complains, shoots her misery from the corners of her eyes and sighs. She makes sure you are well aware of her martyrdom, being there and helping you out. Then when she's really sick of waiting, she offers to take my cousin out to dinner if I have him do it.
We are not bribing my already overworked cousin with a meal to come fix my chandelier.
This is why I feel weird asking my friends for help. It's this whiny bored refusal to use the thought and energy to do anything. Then as soon as a task or project gets labeled "I can't," it's devalued and outsourced.

I feel weird asking friends for help because my family doesn't return favors in kind or kindness, they use money. I'm trying to figure out how to be a good, real, equal friend.

2010-05-31T00:10:00.000-05:00

Tonight was what I imagine my life "should" be.
I cleaned, photographed, researched, and listed things to sell on Etsy.
I walked the dog.
Then I went to the bar and was socially awkward among the socially awkward for several hours of healthy human contact, food I didn't cook, and and alcohol I only occasionally had to pay for. I hung out with girls and non-prospective boys and watched people play bags and tried to learn to play bags for real instead of having to giggle and flirt to hide my embarassment.

Birdie came to visit Friday night and got to see all the wonderfulness that is my bar. Neighbor Guy was completely shit-faced and thought Birdie was the hottest woman he'd seen in his entire life and could say little more thant "You are so hot!" He's still convinced she's "mixed" (racially) and would gladly go straight for her. Then tonight Neighbor Guy is following around this "straight" guy I don't particularly like as a person. I escaped the bar a bit earlier than necessary because I got sick of the two of them.

I hope the grocery store is open tomorrow.
Is it supposed to rain? My feet itch.

What I learned from the LOST finale

2010-05-27T16:56:00.001-05:00

Black people don't go to heaven. Even if they marry white people.

Morning Downs and Ups

2010-05-21T10:58:00.000-05:00

The president of my condo board is a complete dick, as proven by this morning's round of emails. There's a lot of hot-headed self-centered bullshit in this building, and having grown up in a nest of hot-headed self-centered bullshit (frequently wrapped up in it myself) I now like to play peace ambassador whenever possible. But in Condoland, I know so little about the process and the rules and everything, I don't stand a conscilliatory chance.

Reading nasty emails full of personal attacks was ruining my morning when my brother called.
At 10 AM he was drunk.
It was the last day of finals. He was at a bar.
Ah, college. Memories. The bar staying open all night right up until graduation the next morning
My brother's call drastically improved my mood.

2010-05-19T12:54:00.001-05:00

HDS coming to live with me is such a godsend. I need help right now and an HDS roommate friend is perfect. I hope i can be at least a little good for her, too.

Hard-Headed

2010-05-18T13:48:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a really bad day with lots of awake pain.
Today is worse. I try to unravel the pain like it's a tight, rigid riddle--release this muscle, swallow this pill, concentrate on this simple activity. Minutes are hours as I sit and breathe and dance across the surface of this hard hurt inside me.

State of the Onion

2010-05-15T19:54:00.000-05:00

Thursday was my birthday. I'm 28. The last several years I've been having trouble remembering how old I am; each birthday I'm not sure if it's that birthday or the next one. This year, I know I'm 28. It means very little, but it's comforting.

I'm still feeling like crap a lot. Still having good days, too. Good parts of days, bad parts of days. For awhile I was working and sleeping like a normal person, up and down with the sun and churning out fairly regular accomplishments without much regulation. Then it thunderstormed and I slept 15 hours and haven't gotten back on track since.

Today hurts like it should rain again. I didn't expect to spend much time with my friends on my Thursday of a birthday, but another weekend alone in the dark and quiet sucks. I feel so out of touch, seeing the people I'm closest to feels like dropping in on the lives of vague acquaintances.

Well fuck now I'm sulky teary. Maybe letting it rain from my eyeballs will relieve some of the pressure I can't control in the greater atmosphere.

2010-05-14T01:21:00.001-05:00

Dear Boy, I don't want this much power; it's not attractive.

One Pille, Two Pill, Orange Pill, Blue Pill

2010-05-06T20:06:00.000-05:00

I messed up my pills this morning. Really weird. I have dreams where I just keep putting pills in my mouth without realizing it until I notice my mouthful of pills and spit everything out and worry about what I've already swallowed and what I still need to swallow. This morning, reality felt closer to that than it ever has before.
I went to take my pills as always. I start on the big capsules and then take the little ones, so I grabbed my norotriptyline and downed my most recent dose: two. I went for the next vial and realized I'd just taken my norotriptyline. That's a night-time only drug. Fuck. Not worth making myself puke (I've never done this in a finger-down-the-throat way, only by mentally allowing my body to let go when it was already nauseous, and I wasn't nauseous, and I didn't want to change that). Fine. It's not going to kill me, I'm just taking it 12 hours early. Now where's the Prozac I was reaching for in the first place?
And having just taken two norotriptyline, I took two Prozac. Not on purpose. I wasn't consciously aware of my mistake for a solid minute, then, boom. I'd taken two because I was compensating for the two wrong pills with two right pills. Prozac fucks me up. I wondered if I was asleep, dreaming this. When my teeth fall out I know I'm asleep. Elementary school reunion is a dream, too. No, this time I was awake, but not for long. I was extremely careful with the rest of my drugs and then took a whole as-needed lorazepam to hold back the double-Prozac jumpy crazy weird shit and anything else unpleasant.
I fell asleep for real and for hours. So much for Thursday. I hear Fridays are nice.

2010-05-05T23:56:00.001-05:00

I wore my shirt backwards all day today without noticing.

In college, Post Modernists were PoMos, over-educated hipsters

2010-05-05T09:53:00.001-05:00

Oh, oh, silly PoMo
So we don't know what's real
So?
I, too, have days in which I lash out in outfits
We are so rebellious
Twist up in the meta meta meta
Every generation has us
So so subversive
Can instead we laugh?
Not hate ourselves but laugh?
Twirl our perception of perception around in our fingertips
Love every echo of the meta meta meta
Lose ourselves in it, instead of thinking about trying to lose ourselves in it.
PoMo, let go.

2010-05-04T22:43:00.000-05:00

I don't want anything touching me right now. I get like this around the Imparting of the Red Sea, where everything feels icky. I only want to eat smooth cool foods and wear slips and my lingerie/chemise things all the time.
Ok, now I can't fucking think or write. I have all this writey crap in my head and getting it down isn't working. I feel electrically charged. The way people describe before they get hit by lightning.

Frustrated.

Roach Attack

2010-05-03T00:08:00.000-05:00

Roaches were living in my dishwasher.

Shock value accomplished, I should be more specific. There's space in the door behind the stainless steel face where all the electrical and mechanical workings of the dishwasher stay dry. I imagine if you're a bug it's a pretty fabulous space to live, warm and steamy, always surrounded by food smells, but dry enough that there's a designated spot in there for your instructional booklet.

I clean my kitchen a lot. I get a bit OCD about it. The first time I opened the dishwasher and a roach crawled out, I was grossed out as all hell but I chased it down and killed it. The second time I opened the dishwasher and a roach crawled out of the same little spot as the first time, it was too disgusting a possibility to comprehend. Then Friday I saw a roach on the digital display, went to kill it, and discovered it was in the digital display.
Screwdriver, paper towels, garbage bag, indoor bug spray.
I had my dishwasher in pieces and it wasn't even 7:30 AM.

As soon as I saw the bug in the display I had this mental picture of a horror show crawling with a layer of roaches. So when instead I chased maybe 20-50 insects out of plastic compartments and insulating foam and around the wires and processors, it felt quite manageable. "Cockroach holocaust" and "I'm issuing a fatwa on creepy crawly things" kept playing in my mind. [Insert thought-provoking commentary on the religious nature of my bug-killing mentality HERE.]

I need to go camping. Then I'm invading the bugs' space and things are supposed to be dirty covered in dirt because they are made out of dirt.

Thanks to a 2 1/2 hour nap today, I am awake after 10:30 PM for the first time since...Wednesday?

2010-05-01T22:20:00.001-05:00

I did a lot of good things today. Icing on the accomplishment cake: staying awake past 10.

Spiky

2010-04-30T22:15:00.000-05:00

Sooooooooooooooo...
I've been up since 6:30 AM and I've been doing stuff the entire time. Cleaning and laundry and shopping for May gift-getters and at around 10 AM I was going to take a nap so I could get back to a normalish sleep schedule but then I wanted to sweep every possible surface before I took a nap so I could mop after my nap and then it was noon and the pain showed up and I hadn't taken my pills yet and I needed to eat and while I was eating I started doing stuff on Etsy and putting together pretty collections of possible gifts and then it was the afternoon and I had to do the one project I absolutely had to do today and then my psychiatrist called to say he actually had gotten the lab results fax and my nortriptyline levels were high (duh shit, this is why I'm crashing most days when the sun sets and in a content but shaky stupor during my awake times). At some point I blinked and it was 6 PM. I made dinner. Now it's approaching 9 and I'm still quite alert, unshowered, and need to go to Walgreens to get my new lower-dose prescription nortriptyline before it closes or I go to bed, whichever comes first. Before I can go to Walgreens (3 blocks away) I have to drive to put air in my tire (1.5 blocks away) which has been soft since before the last time I drove, two weeks ago. Tomorrow morning at 9 AM I intend to be at a demolition sale in Park Ridge. I may be a little bonkers, but it's an easy drive.

Oh, good, it's raining. I'm being 50% sarcastic. Good for my head, bad for walking to get the car and then finding the car a new parking space. And that whole putting air in the tires thing. Maybe I'll get up tomorrow at 6:30 again.

The rest of my week has been a blur; everything feels blurry. I haven't seen Aural Girl in some ridiculous amount of time.
>>Insert note: thunder and lightning outside, so my dog has to be touching me: my legs are crossed and he's resting his head on my elevated foot.<<
I only saw Possible Boy last Sunday for grocery shopping. And I feel like I haven't seen anybody, including myself, in ages. I've seen My Twin (new official code name for friend from junior high and high school with whom I'd lost touch and now we just started meeting up weekly downtown) but in my dreams I frequently see people from my past so something about it feels surreal. It's wonderful, but surreal. We used to say we were twins back in high school because we'd say the same thing or think the same thing all the time. People used to say we looked alike, and we had similar builds, but I'm blonde and pasty white while My Twin is deep mocha African-American and uses her hair an art medium. Still, we held ourselves the same (despite her dance background) and had the same speech patterns and we fed off eachother like Hall and Oates or something. Then we went our separate ways, I thought I'd failed her by being too young and self-involved...Ten years later, we've both changed and grown up and gone through a lot, and the same stuff that made us "twins" as kids seems to have ripened into an older but just as twinny version. I go around collecting people I like and identify with; My Twin was a cornerstone of my collection.
And then I got snippy over the use of the word "meta."

On most tv shows, characters go through some trial or tribulation and learn some life lesson, but things have to be set back pretty much to zero by the end of the episode so that you don't have to worry about the continuity and congruence of the episodes. I think I'm a little like this, too. I was reading through posts from last summer to see if I'd already given My Twin a code name, and it's the exact same thing day after day. Posts individually may seem like they mean something or are going somewhere or like perhaps I've really learned my lesson this time, but the accumulation is no more than pencil shavings, and I'm not using a pencil.

Life is so weird. Place your bets now on whether or not I'll make it to the demolition sale tomorrow, if I'll make it to any other sales, and who will go with me. I'm giving 5-to-1 odds I'll have a male or no companion. Who knows a bookie?

Things I Couldn't Make Up

2010-04-26T12:53:00.000-05:00

Posted sign near the beach I like to go to with my dog:

Rogers Park is a strange patchwork of socioeconomics that changes in blocks, pockets, and next-door neighbors. I live in a huge gorgeous condo that's full of married couples starting families, pets, and retired people. Across the street is a gorgeous building owned and operated by a slumlord who steals electricity and does all kinds of shady things including renting to pedophiles and drug dealers. The drug dealers don't bother me since I have been known to smoke pot so I have no right to insist the source stay locked away from my lucky white self. One of the dealers seems not to have a phone or doorbell, so to get a hold of him you stand outside his window and yell his name until he lets you in. I'd be annoyed, but it's so fucking funny and it drives my neighbors so crazy (these are the people who want to disallow satellite dishes because they look too "trailer park") I just laugh and laugh.
Across the street in the other direction are perfectly decent apartments. Nice brick three-story building, well taken care of, reasonable rent.
Next door is a three-unit condo building with the most amazing patio garden area in the back. One unit is owned by a very nice gay couple in their late 30s. One unit is occupied by a single mother and her three(?) grade-school aged kids. I heard they were renters and not owners, but it's entirely possible people assumed the family only rented because it's a Hispanic single mother. One unit is owned by some shadowy male person no one ever sees or discusses.

The street Howard is a few blocks north of me. Howard is a notorious Rogers Park pocket of general goods stores and currency exchanges loitering people of color. For as much as I complained about growing up in Oak Park, it gave me a lot of perspective on fear, race, class, and people. I'm still skewed way over on "Lived entire life as a little white girl" side, but seriously? I walk down the Howard strip with some regularity. I'm just as likely to run into an asshole, a dog lover, and a person who smiles at me in the nicest parts of Evanston as I am on the crappiest parts of Howard. People are people. Then you cram them through different sets of life experiences, and they engage those experiences in different ways. But they're still people. We're all people. How the hell did the imperialist thing stay so popular with light-skinned people for so long?

Anyway, what got me started on this whole big rant: the name of the fairly new community center built on Howard? The Willye B. White Park and Community Center. Seriously. The message to "at-risk youth?" B. White. I won't even go into that she was a black Olympic athlete, blah blah blah the only way to be black and famous is to be an athlete.

Maybe Molly the Ferret ran away from home to escape the pressures of a patriarchal all-albino society.

Sprunky

2010-04-24T09:42:00.000-05:00

I don't know why I thought I'd feel better today, or why I'm surprised to feel like the same pukeshit yet another day in a row. I showered this morning; the sidewalks are wet outside, too, and maybe I felt the weather break and expected a reprieve. Still, it's spring, and even without the added stress of finals and life-changes that served as rationales in years past, it's a physically rough season.

An Avocado with Parkinson's

2010-04-18T20:47:00.000-05:00

Bad shakes. Shakes on the inside, too. I still went to the barbecue held in honor of Neighbor Guy's birthday. No booze, wonderful food, and just NG's best friend, best friend's boyfriend, Possible Boy, Aural Girl, and myself. I was in no shape or position to pull on NG's demons, but I guess I was in no shape to realize that, either. Still, nothing happened, no plunging off on any emotion. I wanted to walk home with NG, but I was too shaky just washing the pie pan I brought, so PB and AG drove me to Walgreens and home. They were very quiet in the car, and I felt like there was something they wanted to say but stopped themselves from saying in front of me. Commentary on NG? Commentary on my dealing with NG? Commentary on how they've never seen me this bad?

The last few days I've been more outwardly sickly. I see my psychiatrist on Tuesday so I haven't bothered calling to say "Bad things are flaring, what drug do you want me on now? More of something? Less of something?" I think the pills are burning holes in my digestive system. The upside to my migraine's latest manifestation is that for once I actually look sick; my friends don't have to ask me how I'm feeling, and the rest of the world is less inclined to expect me in the usual flow of things.

AG is coming over tomorrow to help me clean my house. My mom keeps offering to come out on a Monday and I was ready to call her because I knew I needed the assistance, but I really didn't want to deal with any of the other stuff that comes with my mother especially when I'm not doing well. A year ago, my mom was my only option. Now, I have local friends who are all happy to do anything for eachother.

My life is a really great avocado with a few rotten spots.

Happy Birthday Neighbor Guy, Deleted

2010-04-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

I wrote a 1, 712 word post about today. I went to Cambodian New Year and three garage sales with Neighbor Guy. We had fun. Writing about it was a word-purge that took an hour or two. Minutes after I posted it, Neighbor Guy called. Drunk. And of the many things he said, the only one I can repeat is that he didn't want me telling anyone about anything he said today.

I'm not a journalist, I don't use real names, but there are people who know or will meet Neighbor Guy who also read this blog, and I would feel guilty if I didn't remove the post.

The only safe paragraph:

Cambodian New Year was too big an event for the temple itself, so it was held at the nearby city college. We walked in to parents with young kids and fussy babies out in the hallway; huge tables filled with Styrofoam bowls of noodles and curries and desserts and things don't translate; and monotone call-and-response chanting over a microphone. The two monks wrapped in orange sat on the raised platform with the whole room facing them, but I saw they didn't have the microphones. Two of the genuflectors at the front, dressed in white and posturing a bit higher on their knees, lead the chants.

Maybe someday things will change and I'll post the rest.

2010-04-16T16:37:00.000-05:00

I feel like I'm on a slow moving tilt-a-whirl. I keep eating, like that's going to fix anything. More likely another storm tonight. Maybe that meteor that fell from the sky in a flash last night (I didn't see it, but it's on the news...probably landed in Wisconsin) is sending me alien signals. I'm rooting for alien signals; then there's a chance they can fix this shit.

If my writing sounds even more bonkers and fragmented than usual, it's because I keep getting distracted and pausing to drop my shoulders back and close my eyes and breathe from my diaphragm.

Let go. gooooooooooooooooooo

Friends and Taxes

2010-04-15T01:33:00.000-05:00

Very late. Very tired. I need to change the way I do my accounting so next year's taxes won't be Adventures in Approximationland. I could be deducting way more than I am, but if I don't find any 2009 repair reports on my car's mileage by the time I take my pills tomorrow, fuck it. Not sure if that's the socialist or the motherfuckinglazy in me, but either way.

___ and I met up downtown at the Art Institute this afternoon. We're going to try to make it a regular thing, since she lives in Berwyn and we never see eachother. We understand eachother's weird shit. We're made out of the same shit. The universe is an amazing place.

moblogged from Kingston Mines

2010-04-10T00:24:00.002-05:00

Its a good thing im feeling well & enjoying unbelievably good music. Not wasting my time on drama or misalignment. Im here & theres plenty of wonderful.

Addendum: 1:08 AM. Home now. AG was tired and a bit fussy tonight, mostly at PB. Why do I feel like "Mom, Dad, I hate it when you fight," and the impulse to "fix" every recognizable hurt and sadness I think I see on PB's face? When did my protective side show up? I don't want it to be a narcisistic protective side--my mom does that a lot and I have, too, in the past.

Um, I had two drinks and I feel like I'm writing with rocks for brains.

Also, I made fairly clear but not particularly intense genstures in Ken's direction that were well received. The world is full of maybe.

Computer and Beetle Ramblings

2010-04-09T13:21:00.000-05:00

The internet lets me get lost in my head until my body is just packaging. I can do a million things and go a million places and never be bored. It's an extension of my infinite internal narrative--streams to swim through and around and around. I have a keyboard to take minutes: receipts for the time I spend, justification for overthought after overthought.

Walking the dog on the beach today I watched the waves reaching higher and higher and lower and higher up on the sand. Where the highest waves left foam lines on the sand, I saw ladybugs. Mostly dead ladybugs, wings slightly open and bodies at weird angles to the ground. Did they wash up with the wave? Were they in that normally dry area and caught off guard? There were a few still alive. They were more orange than red, so I'm hoping they were what we called "Asian Death Beetles." In college, a non-indigenous swarm of these ladybug look-alikes took over everything. My friends' room had ceiling corner completely black and moving. And Asian Death Beetles bit. I liked insisting they were close enough to ladybugs and making wishes when they showed up individually, but I could never really like gobs of them or their rumored harm to local ecosystems.
This morning's beach massacre looked more like Asian Death Beetles. Maybe it's a sign.

I've been snoozing my pill alarm for an hour now because I haven't wanted to get up from the computer to go take my pills. I wanted to finish this, and I apparently wanted to spend more time lost inside my head. It's beautiful out today. I need fresh groceries. I also need to figure out a weird thing on my taxes and then get them effing filed. That's back at the computer. Pulling myself up, away, go face life.

This is Migraine

2010-04-06T19:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was bad. Migraine-wise.
I was in a wonderful mood in the morning. I got things done, took the dog for a long walk in the beautiful spring weather, felt like I could kick the world's ass even if my head hurt.

Around noon I needed to lay down from all my morning ass-kicking. I then spent the next five hours dreaming about how dizzy and sick I was, waking up to a sweaty and exploding self chugging water and thinking, "Why? Did I take the wrong pills? Is all this from that tiny bit of chocolate I ate yesterday? It's beautiful out! Why? Why? Why?" I'd be back asleep dreaming angry things again, screaming at my father, then out somewhere stuck and incapacitated and helpless.

Around 5:30 I woke up for real. The pain was clearly pain instead of all the other things that make me crazy.

I have no memory of anything between waking up and the storm, even though it was just yesterday. I know it was already raining when I walked my dog. I may have been on the computer or eaten or done any number of mundane tasks, but I can't find it in my memory. I know people block out terrible things that happen and chronic pain leads to memory loss and all of that. It makes sense that I unconsciously refuse to imprint anything during a migraine. Still, it's very creepy to turn around and see nothing where your immediate past should be.

Then the storm broke. A real one, not just in my head. Thunder, lightning, my dog completely terrified. I felt guilty my dog spent the sunny warm part of the day snuggling me in bed and the stormy gross part of the day staring at me trying to accomplish something. But the storm justified my migraine; it was an echo of my experience earlier in the day. The hail against my windows had me giddy with gratification; it was my migraine, now escaped and showing the rest of the world what it had done to me in the afternoon.
I wanted to scream, "Do you see that? See that hail? See how hard it's pounding? Do you get it now? Do you get it? Now you can see it! Now you can feel it too!"

When I woke up this morning, it was nice out again. My head predicts another night of rain. A little bit dizzy, a lot of the weird zapping from everywhere, a lot of feeling like I haven't eaten even though I'm eating.

I had to go to the post office to mail a package. The sun was warm and shiny. I stood directly facing it and closed my eyes. It felt wonderful to have something that singular and bright and all-consuming. All the sharp little light sources that press and buzz and ache and tingle were nothing. This one beautiful source did not hurt. It felt healing and buttery. Then I crossed the street.

Now? I miss people. I'm saving my shots for tomorrow so I can go see Billy Elliot with Possible Boy for his birthday, so tonight I ride out the pain again. My house is a complete mess and I hate it so hopefully I'll be up to cleaning some before I crash completely. Otherwise, it's another night of convincing myself I'm this strong warrior, doing things that look like I'm a productive member of society, watching Hulu and DVDs when all I want to do is watch Hulu and DVDs, and making small efforts to contact friends with lives somewhere outside my head.

2010-04-04T22:20:00.000-05:00

I've been pouring my energy into my Etsy stuff so writing anything else seems so...is there a form of the word "ennui" that I can stick at the end of that sentence?

I still have excellent friends, and HDS is actually coming to live with me for at least this summer, which is pretty fucking fabulous except I'll have to start using my storage space downstairs as a storage space instead of using my office as a storage space/haven of disarray.

I'm trying not to play out every possible scenario in my head with regards to boys. If my head needs a project to keep it busy, I will think about my house or come up with some other life riddle that doesn't involve imaginary boyfriends based on real people.

My parents are insane. My mother's mother is incredibly negative and my mom frequently complains how negative her mom is. I've made a much larger generational improvement and I'm still 27.

2010-04-03T01:21:00.001-05:00

My eyes let in too much light. The world shines too bright and then i dont know what to do in the dark.

Blue Fairy

2010-04-03T00:17:00.000-05:00

Today I am sure I am dreaming.
Or some form of divinity and/or order is shouting, "How much more do you need to prove the chaos isn't random? It may not be fair, but there is pattern and order and control."
My wishes keep happening.
New wish: the knowledge and strength to make decisions and some sense that I know what to do and how to do it.
I don't mean this to be cryptic. I mean I have a really hard time making decisions over everything and if there isn't a clear, logical "answer" I get stuck.
So, message to whatever keeps giving me everything I want: that's what I want.

I want to poke my uterus with a stick

2010-03-31T17:34:00.000-05:00

Crampy. I had a very good yesterday. From a single sushi roll as I dined alone for lunch in Highland Park after my therapy session, to mediocre chicken vesuvio with Aural Girl and Possible Boy at the weird restaurant we've been meaning to try. I got stuff done and walked two different dogs at the beach.

Today, I feel crampy and overwhelmed by each project I think to tackle. Cleaning my bedroom and master bathroom was high on the list, but I'm making excuses. I think I need to put on real pants and take the dog to Walgreens and pick up my birth control (which I missed taking at 11:11 AM and can't be helping crampland) and maybe some Aleve because lord knows I'm not on enough drugs.

Later

2010-03-30T22:31:00.000-05:00

I have all these stories to tell, but I'm very full of food and I want to make with the asleeping now even though it's only 10:30. When the fire department finally breaks down my front door in three days, they'll find me and my dog have turned into giant gelatinous blobs of goo. Like spontaneus combustion, but far less spontaneous and we will be glerb instead of poof.

2010-03-27T22:11:00.001-05:00

Neighbor Guy says he loves me, that im his dearest friend. He loves the idea of me. No respect for the real me, though, just the version in his head.

2010-03-26T22:18:00.001-05:00

I'm lying in bed naked, stoned, farting, and eating an all-natural strawberry popsicle.

If A Double-Majoring Liberal Arts School Student Hasn't Already Written It...

2010-03-24T19:45:00.000-05:00

Each movement of the musical composition examines a different theory of the ontological argument (more or less, proof of the existence of God).

A movement in which each instrument that requires two seperate movements to create the sound and the pitch is played by two people. So a violin has one person moving her fingers across the fingerboard while the other person bows the strings, a trumpet gets one person moving valves and one to blow in the mouthpiece, etc.
A movement, same setup as the last, but while the people doing all the fingering of the instruments are masters and know the score, the people responsible for the sound-making are blindfolded.
A movement, same setup as the last, but now the people don't actually know how to play the instruments and are just learning.
A movement, same setup as the last, but the sound-makers don't come out at all. The entire thing is done in silence but with every note fingered out.
A movement with no instruments
A movement with no people
A movement with two conductors, one giving the correct beat and one giving the wrong beat.
there could be a bazillion movements.

Yes, as a matter of fact I am stoned. Least crappy I've felt in weeks. I'd taken absolutely everything else and done deep breathing and muscle relaxation and I was sitting in bed with my head burried in a pillow because I thought if I could push my face in deep enough it might get a little bit darker. Pot, bowl, matches, all within arms reach, probably shoved in my nightstand the last time I did this (not even two weeks?).
A few puffs of smoke and I start to relax the knot that's been holding in the black sludgy poisin.

Stop writing Enjoy the stonediness.

big hurt

2010-03-22T20:34:00.000-05:00

Pain is BAD. Hit a blood vessel for the second time ever when giving myself a shot this afternoon. It didn't even phaze me this time; just annoyed I had to keep a wad of toilet paper soaking up the blood until I could get a better bandaid.
Pain is so big only its hem registers so long as I'm still and distracted. I try to be aware of the present when I'm not in pain, right now is the opposite. Anything to distract from the physical and the now.
I was shaking like crazy earlier. That stopped. Just PAIN. I've taken all my drugs. Would pot help? I have an 8:30 AM appointment tomorrow to see my psychiatrist because I've been so crappy. If I didn't have to be awake so early I'd be stoned by now. Need to schedule more biofeedback. It's been months. Need to accept my parents' money, be a grateful disabled leech.
Want to give myself another shot directly into my skull. I need another soft distraction. More food? I'm not hungry, but tasty things are a nice positive sensory experience. Where's the guacamole? Where's the chainsaw?

Don't touch me

2010-03-21T20:53:00.000-05:00

Today was one of those strange days in my body where I'm in pain but I feel like doing everything, so I did everything. I did not clean the house or take the dog on an extra-long walk, but otherwise I feel pretty fucking accomplished for a scrambled egg brain.

I organized all my vintage maps by region into folders in two small plastic boxes.
I went to an estate/demolition sale that kicked ass. $7.50 for stuff that I can sell for $100+ and it's all easy to mail.
I purchased key ingredients for the completion of two of my ongoing projects.
I went grocery shopping.
I took photos of some of the new things I got at today's estate sale and almost completed getting them listed online.

I'd planned to go to the bar and listen to the Irish band and be social, but I'm completely exhausted. My logical processing ability started its downward decent a good six hours ago, and at this point I'm likely to bite anyone who touches me, possibly including my dog. When I first got back from all the running around errand stuff and I was light-headed and woozy and trying to breathe and re-establish myself on this plane of existence, I looked up and there was my dog, sitting tall in the middle of the dining room, staring at me. I stared back. It was perfect.

Now I don't want the computer touching me, either. I don't usually get like this. Weird.

Yes, I'm driving to my parents' house in a few hours

2010-03-19T22:54:00.003-05:00

Moblogged from the bar:

Cute stranger who tells me im pretty? Run off to a trainyard with captain negativity? How best to know im alive? How best to be happy tomorrow?

Ran off looking for a diner with Captain Negativity AKA Chain Boy. Talked about depression. I got to be the beacon of hope and understanding. I keep waiting and poking, hoping to uncover more outside his vacuum of misery. I thought about kissing him just to see if it would be the magical quick fix he imagines. It didn't feel right. He'd still be a frog and I'd still be locked in my tower.

My head behaved itself very well tonight. I'm very proud of it.

Faces

2010-03-19T21:49:00.000-05:00

I just posted an elementary school class picture on Facebook. Going to tag the people who are my Facebook friends, I notice trends:
29 students in the class
8 are currently my Facebook friends
3 1/3 African-Americans in the entire class, all of whom are my Facebook friends
3 of my 8 tagged friends are gay/bisexual
2 of my Fb friends were the other huge dorks that annoyed the hell out of me growing up. Both of them are gay
The third tagged lesbian I still see occasionally and I like very much; we could be reality friends.

Ken's photo is next to mine. The pictures aren't in alphabetical order; I'm guessing they're in whatever order we chose to stand in line because I'm also next to my fifth grade best friend, Ken's best friend is on his other side, and there are mini clique clusterings across the page. I've known him for 20 years. He remembers things about me I'd forgotten, times when I tried to conquer the world at age 10 and was too wrapped up in fighting evil to be a kid or be happy or notice what anyone else was doing.

Now Ken is working to fill the world with good and caring for everyone around him. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
How?

Took a Walk

2010-03-19T11:00:00.001-05:00

A black man in a very red hat wearing a red and black winter coat stood facing the street, shoulders square to the building and sidewalk, like a lawn ornament. I expected to see a dog in front of him, doing his business while the man waited, not wanted to watch. There was no dog. The man didn't move. He reminded me of a lawn jockey. The thought offended me even as I smiled at the parallel.

At the beach, a white man in a brick red coat was giving a tour.
"Chicago is down that way. Northwestern is a few miles up there. This here is Rogers Park. There's a dog beach half a mile down there. Daniel Burnham in Chicago. Lake Superior."
It took me a minute to realize he was alone and directing his commentary my way.
I smiled, I nodded. I didn't want to be one of those people who just smiles and nods. Sometimes we let our inner monologues bubble over so that someone else will say, "Yes! I understand!"
He walked over to a large shadow and asked it a question I couldn't hear. As I got closer (it was on my path) I saw there was another man sitting in the shadow.
"Don't listen to him, he's a homeless alcoholic," said the tour guide.
"No, he's a homeless alcoholic," said the homeless alcoholic.
There was no one else on the beach. It felt like spring under the warm sunshine. We had a "conversation" about the weather in short declarative statements.
"It's beautiful out."
"There's 14 inches of snow."
"There may be snow."
"It's beautiful now."
Then, "You're Katie Couric and I'm your husband Robert. I built this lake just for you, Katie; Lake Superior."
I said, "Thank you," and resumed my walk.

On the way back, my dog scared a mess of pigeons off someone's lawn, but a single tawny dove stayed behind. Smaller and thinner than the wounded dove I couldn't save last year, but there it was--a dove.

The lawn jockey had moved to a different street by now and walked very slowly. He must be hot in that thick winter coat.

Take a Walk

2010-03-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

Neighbor Guy called. We had a nice chat. Then he asked me to walk his dog. Neighbor Guy was too tired and lazy and didn't feel like it and really wanted me to take the dog to the dog park or something. Pissed me of a lot. He wants me to take care of his dog during one of the few precious moments I feel ok? I told him directly that I feel like shit most of the time and I still walk my dog and he can walk his own fucking dog on a day that he feels a little tired.
He said, jokingly, "I can't believe you used profanity with me!"
I asked if he understood why I didn't appreciate his request.
He said yes, I was very clear and direct.
Then he immediately started up again trying to get me to walk his dog.
I said "Fuck you."
We didn't talk much longer after that.
I'm aware the world revolves around Neighbor Guy, but even after I explained my feelings, his rude obliviousness was too much for me to swallow before lunch.

explain yourself

2010-03-17T17:40:00.000-05:00

I tried very hard to explain what it's like living inside my head to my therapist. She didn't understand and admitted as much. I write with the hope that people will understand and tell me I'm not crazy. She told me I'm not crazy, but she's saying that before understanding the thing she's valuing as sane.
If I can find a way to show her life in my head, maybe she can identify ways to make it more pleasant.

Now, my body is demanding a nap. I don't really want to be napping if I'm going to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight, but I'm going to fall asleep typing if I don't lay down.

2010-03-16T14:57:00.001-05:00

In bed. Under water filled with molassas. Too much amitriptyline? Why would spring hold so heavy? Eating tons of fruit all morning. Where is my energy? Life?

2010-03-15T20:48:00.000-05:00

I'm going over to Possible Boy's house to talk. I don't know what I'm going to say or what I think I want to hear, I just know I'm churning up dark things inside that can't be allowed to continue. These are my friends. Letting them know what's bothering me so they can be there for me is a big part of friendship. I'm much better at monologuing into the general cosmos and waiting for someone to pick up on it, which may be why I also take stab-in-the-dark guesses at what other people are really thinking or feeling when they pause too long on a name or touch an object a certain way.
I need to talk to Aural Girl, too, but I think seperately from Possible Boy.

When I'm playing a game or writing something or fixing a picture in Photoshop and I mess up or don't like the way it's going, I start over. Wipe the slate clean and start fresh. I have that impulse with chunks of my real life, too. All of my papers and filing crap, I just want to restart and have everything that's everywhere right now go away. I want some sort of reboot on my doctors and medications. Another one for my vintage/antique inventory, now that I'm finally getting a sense of what sells and how to sell it.
I guess I try to start things over a lot. I think of how many jobs I've had, things get too tangled and I get too frazzled and all I can do is curl up into a ball and run away.
Is that so terrible? I know it should be. Put that on the list of Terrible Things I Do along with forgetting to pay bills, being jealous of my friends, and punching old people.*
When I can't feel and think the things I want to feel and think, I get very upset with myself. Control. Should. Get me out of here.

*(I don't really punch old people)

Disbelief

2010-03-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

Dear Annabell,

Being human and being alive is hard. Some times and some things are harder for some people. You are doing a good job dealing with now. You are working really hard. Dark clouds may say otherwise. You may say otherwise. But I can see the progress, I can see all the things you do and try and think and push every second of every day. I know how hard you are fighting, and even if you're going nowhere or fighting in the wrong direction, you deserve a lot of credit for your effort and your experience. You are a deeply wonderful human and I am proud of your humanity.

Love,
Annabell who needs to believe what she writes

Wish I Was Irish

2010-03-14T00:28:00.000-06:00

Happy birthday, Hot Dog Sam! I am ever so glad you are alive!

I've been feeling like shit all week but today I made it out to the St. Patrick's Day Festival at the Irish American Heritage Center with Possible Boy, Aural Girl, and AG's other friend. So much to say about everything but the Puky Death portion of the Migraine Beast came to kick my ass right at the end so this has to be quick.
So much joy. So much to watch in other people. So many good feelings.
Also, jealousy. I want what other people have. Not things, emotions and people. PB and AG being all in love, I build up that hard nasty knot around a gaping hole. Being around them reminds me what I lack, but they were the closest, brightest friendship filling that hole and I miss them. I wish I was better at sucking it up.

Great music and great energy.
A woman fell and I wasn't sure if she slipped on a wet patch on the floor or if she was drunk and created the wet patch when she fell over and spilled her drink. She fell again later on the dance floor. Her friends spun her around and around. The features on one of her friends' face looked like they'd been spun around, too.

A small man of at least 80 danced circles around everyone. Jigged and reeled and jumped with his mouth agape and his tongue bouncing and his eyes serious but enjoying every minute of it.

So much more............

No One Understands Me Like My Barometer

2010-03-09T01:36:00.000-06:00

The fog inside my head spread out to cover Chicago.

I missed therapy this morning. First time I've completely missed a session. It sucks for my therapist because I know she'll often schedule me on a day when I'm the only reason she has to go to her office, but today even as I apologized I didn't feel my standard penitence and guilt. Wednesday we'll talk about ways to keep track of everything and remind myself and stay organized and all of that, but fuck that and fuck every well-intended coping mechanism. I've been poking around some of the other migraine/chronic pain blogs out there. All these things that make me feel crazy and worthless and alive and everything else get echoed across the internet. It's the stuff that makes it hard to take care of yourself when you most need to take care of yourself, the helplessness, the outlook adjustments, the assertions, and the thin shadow puppet "normal life" stories we project to distract and amuse ourselves. So I'm sorry to anyone I've inconvenienced with my disease, but try living with the uncontrollable monster that causes such "inconvenience," the guilt and frustration of constantly messing shit up, and the uncertainty as to whether or not anything you do has any kind of impact or if you're just being tossed around.

Some days I can cope with no control. Today was not one of those days.

Thank you, Aural Girl, for coming over and bringing me food and human contact. I don't think I even asked how her fucking trip was. She just did this huge thing. I was very lost and self-involved in fogland. The humus is delicious.

yes, still

2010-03-08T15:05:00.000-06:00

I'm at serious diminished capacity. I started to fix my slow internet and generally clogged computer stuff, but this time I stopped myself. If my brain isn't working right, I screw things up. This is how I messed up my finances. I get major points for recognizing the feeling and not doing things that might explode. It's like handing off the car keys when you know you've had too much to drink. Trouble is, with neurological fuckedupness, there's no measure. I can't count empty bottles or shot glasses. There's no breathalizer. I do things all the time to check my cognitive abilities, like puzzles and touching my fingers and thumbs together in patterns. I also watch how much my hands shake. Right now it's a lot, but I still don't know what that means. I write because I want a record of my thoughts. I don't want to lose them. Apparenly, hypergraphia is tied to migraine and siezure sufferers, Dostoevsky being one of its heroes. Makes perfect sense to me.

cloud formations

2010-03-07T15:11:00.000-06:00

I tore through my house, ready to declare war on the alien race pushing towards our planet with increased frequencies. I wished I'd showered as I thought of facing the apocolyps unclean, dirty underwear...Where is that noise? I looked out the window and people just walked past. They couldn't hear it? They didn't know? Is it my vents? My vents only magnified the pressure from outside, higher up, something above. Into my bedroom, dark safe bedroom, I opened the window. In that instant I saw myself as a crazy lady, jumping from her third story window. I wanted to stick my head out but the screen was down. People still walked around outside, not looking up at any sort of spectacle. No Independance Day. No V. Rain. That's all it was. Rain.
This feeling, this pain, stimulus depravity, sensory overload--it's so far beyond current comprehension levels. It could be anything. It's like trying to explain a sphere to a piece of paper. I can't even explain the hurt of the rolling, frustrating strangeness, the dull ache, and the complete unpredictability of when and where I can and want to be "normal" and do as much as humanly possible to make up for these days when I feel like Yoda drooping his shoulders under the weight of another disturbance in the force.

Too much light.
Audiobook time?

Eureka?

2010-03-07T01:23:00.000-06:00

Not quite as funny as "A priest, a rabbi, and a minister walk into a bar," but How many neurologists does it take to diagnose a seizure disorder? None! A puppet-maker dispensing mostly bad advice about depression with anxiety in a crafty-people chatroom.

I just learned of the existence of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. For all of the millions of things that sound sort-of-kind-of like what I deal with, I think this one is it. Maybe I'm just nuts, but between a thing I heard the other day about a woman with migraines like mine plus a seizure disorder, and then the symptom check-list for TLE including more of my symptoms from across the board, I want to call my doctors, like, now. Except it's 1 AM and tomorrow is Sunday. But TLE doesn't show up on the brain scans I've done. That was the big exciting thing. I know there's more to my migraines and my everything neurologically than we currently understand.

2010-03-05T22:54:00.000-06:00

ouchy pressure tight ouchy want to puke kill the ouchy distract

2010-03-05T18:12:00.000-06:00

Back to the woozy again. Body, just tell me what's wrong and I'll act accordingly. Am I woozy for lack of food? I'm eating things that seem easy to digest. More rice? More water? Do I just wait until the earthquakes die down? Am I being punished for not worshiping Wanda the Three-Headed Sphincter of Wonderland?

The more of my life I spend in bed, the less anything makes sense.

Too Much

2010-03-05T11:56:00.000-06:00

My stomach twists tighter and tighter. For wanting Possible Boy? It's fear and jealousy and it's only getting worse now. Panic panic panic. The money is almost fixed. Why the panic?
I've always had anxiety problems. The last two years may be the first time I haven't had major anxiety problems. Anxiety returns and I flip out over its return. Figures. HDS just had a panic attack for the first time in ages. Something is askew. Ken was talking about some people who are sensitive to solar flares, they just don't know it. Who knows if it's solar flares or extra WoobahWoobah energy being released on planet Xerg or insect migration or what, but yes, I am sensitive to things I do and don't understand. Possible Boy and Aural Girl are living happy ever after and that makes me feel sad and left out and lonely. That's pretty easy to understand. Less easy to understand is why I feel like I'm about to be found out for murder, or the bottom is getting ready to drop from under me in some other huge way. I can't move. I'm looking for some huge thing I fucked up to justify the volume of my panic and it's just not there. This reminds me of when I flat-out lied to a Hebrew school teacher in fourth grade. I atoned for that one at least two Yom Kippurs in a row and made myself sick every time I thought about it.
Can I ever forgive myself for being human? This will be the second day in a row I take my lorazepam, an anti-anxiety drug I've taken only a few times in my entire life. But for the level of freak-out I'm feeling, it would take a murder or some other very conscious harm to justify the bats in my stomach. This is what the pills are for. Now I'd like to function again. I'd like to figure out in a non-insane way what and how I'm feeling about the Ken situation. I'd like to get through my emotions without boiling over and shutting down. That would be swell.

purposefully vague (sorry)

2010-03-04T12:01:00.000-06:00

My last post is annoying.

Ken is full of surprises. I'm throwing my little temper-tantrum of unhappy, and he comes gallopping in with solutions to everything. Is he real? Human? Now I sound like the conspiracy theorist...

Yolk's On Me

2010-03-03T00:55:00.000-06:00

I didn't get the golden goose, now I'm cracking open every egg, looking for the prize inside.
Why do we keep crushing eggshells?
Isn't it enough to be somebody's prize?
All the kings men tell me I'm golden.
I want the answer to loneliness from the whites of his eyes.

It's possible to be happy for someone and so jealous it hurts, all at the same time.