Friday, February 18, 2011

Jumble sale:

I love this cat, but her claws-in-the-leg habit is beginning to try my nerves--particularly when combined with the paws-draped-across-the-keyboard habit. Once I attempted to remove her from said keyboard, and she snagged one of the keys (F7, if you must know) and tore it loose. Awesome. Luckily, the keys can be reattached to my keyboard. I did not expect this, and I was pretty excited. Thank you, Compaq.


I still want to write poems, but don't have any poems queuing up to be written. This is pretty much the story of my life. Creative energy - creative ideas = irritated boredom.


I was just perusing some stranger's facebook photo album, and decided that I (/we? Me and Sara? Me and Kelly? Me and [ ]?) need to have a party with a photo booth. For this to happen though, I need to live somewhere with less furniture. Or I guess the booth could center around some furniture. Whatever. Draped sheet plus camera plus whatever: photo booth. It would be good times.



I am tired, but I still need to walk Miley. Gosh, that sounds familiar. I've already taken her twice today actually, but the first two were both quite short. More like tide-her-over pee breaks than actual walks. And the weather's really nice, so I guess it's okay.

I went to a movie (The King's Speech--quite good!) today with a friend and former counselor of mine. I've seen her a total of four times since I was ten or eleven, and those all within the past six months. She's great--smiley and friendly and fun. After a few minutes of awkwardly positioned post-movie talking out in front of the theater, we went to a nearby barbecue (is it wrong to want to spell that "barbeque"? Spell check says so.) place for margaritas and hush puppies. We talked about Camp, among other things, and it turns out that as a camper she received a super patch* every single year. I, though I tried my best, received a super patch not even once.** I was a nice kid, liked everything we did, didn't fight, and (to the best of my memory) followed directions. I didn't even fight back if other kids gave me a hard time. My friend, on the other hand, was a part of such adventures as "smoking under the bridge" and "naked sunbathing at the lake." Super patch. Apparently I was the subject of such patch-voting discussions as "well she seems really nice, but how do we know she's nice when we're not looking?" No super patch.

At this juncture, I feel that a "WTF" is fairly well justified. Not that I'm bitter, or anything.



I suddenly want a pretty red party dress. Also: the ability to wear heels without pain/messing up my feet for days. And I don't want to hear any of that crap about "it hurts everybody's feet." I feel that the underlying message there is "suck it up." And I'm not saying that "it hurts everybody" isn't true. I'm just saying that if you wear painful shoes because they look hot (ESPECIALLY if you do this on a regular basis), then, well. I don't like calling people names. But that is a completely moronic thing to do.



I came across this picture earlier while perusing a few mom blogs. (Sorry it's so small, but if you're using Chrome or Firefox then ctrl [plus] + should help with that.) Some people are just so crafty. I think this shot is so cool. Can you see how they put it together? I had to look carefully before I figured it out.



A somewhat more coherent group of thoughts:


What is lonely? Am I?


The other day, at Northstar, Theresa made a good point, I think, if it can be called that. Maybe it was a claim. Maybe it was a statement of scientifically researched fact. "By the time we are five, we have already formed opinions of ourselves"--and we spend the rest of out lives trying to prove (or, imo, disprove) them. She asked us what our words were. A few people threw some out: pushover. Abandoned.


Stupid.


I nearly cried, hearing all the words spoken, but for almost an hour I couldn't think of what mine might be. For a while I thought maybe I didn't have one. Then, suddenly, near the end, it came to me:


Misfit.


And suddenly I remembered all the times I was made fun of in elementary and middle school, all the times I felt like I was watching life through a glass, all the times people tried to speak to me and I, confused and afraid, treated them with disdain.

In my life, I've had trouble with depression. A lot of trouble. There were times when the only thing that kept me alive was the fact that I was afraid my baby sister would find me if I ended it. I could not bear to do that to her. But every time I slipped or was thrown or threw myself into another wave of depression, the symptoms were different. One episode I would lose weight. The next I would gain it. One time I was totally unable to focus on even the simplest of tasks. Another time I felt that I was losing my short-term memory. One week I felt pretty okay, but was completely unable to sleep at night, and unable to stay awake during the day. Every time I would isolate a symptom, it would stop occurring. Not immediately, unfortunately, but in the next episode, it would be gone, or different. It was like my body or brain were trying to hide the depression from me, or trying to convince me that it wasn't there.

I feel that those last two paragraphs are linked. I don't know exactly how, but it seems like, even if I am an introverted person, there is something that I'm not seeing. Something that I'm hiding from, or hiding from myself.


Of course, I do tend to go through episodes of extreme frustration and feelings of being trapped and completely unsatisfactory and hopelessly lost and apathetic and incapable of making a life for myself that I will find pleasing and fulfilling and useful. The feeling arises that I will never learn to make room in my life for artistic endeavors, and that all of my dreams of photography and papier mache sculptures and wire lampshades and mixed media paintings and interior design will come to naught. That is one of the most reliable self-doubts. Another is that I'll never again have my own space to do with what I will. Or that I'll have it, and do nothing with it. Because I'd rather sit and stare into space than actually create anything. Or that I'll never find love. Or that I will. Or that I'll settle for someone with whom I am poorly matched, the way I might have done with David, had he allowed it. Sometimes I want things to be true so badly that I make myself believe them. Like me and David--even though, from the beginning, I promised myself that I wouldn't do that again. Mental snares die hard.

And following the above train of thought, the one about depression and introversion and deeply hidden secrets, I can feel one of those episodes coming. Perhaps it really is, or perhaps I only feel it because I was following one of the paths that can lead there. Maybe it can be averted. Maybe it's all best left alone, and maybe my mind will untangle itself in its own time. Maybe one day on a walk or in a dream or on the phone, I will suddenly stand still and look up to the sky, or bend down to the ground, and find myself holding the key. Right there in my hand.





























*At the time, kids who behaved, were kind, had a good attitude, etc most of (as in, more than 50% of) the time were given a patch. Kids who behaved and so on almost all the time were given a special, much-coveted super patch.

**Kelly says that I got one once, but I really think I'd remember. She got one every year, so I also think she might just be trying to make me feel better and/or make me shut up about never having gotten one.

1 comment:

  1. I don't mean to pry, exactly, but are you in therapy? I know I know, I'm a New Yorker and, like, everyone in NY is in therapy -- but geography aside, it can be very helpful sometimes. Maybe you are, or have been, but it's painful to read that you are sometime so sad, even to this stranger many many miles away...

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