General Updates

In looking back, I just noticed that I never posted again about Ian's mother.

She died. Jyl died too, by suicide, and my darling friend Aby died as well, by accidental overdose, in a relapse.

It was a hard year.


I know I've tried to write about my almost-mother-in-law's death several times, but I guess it must have just been too hard. I don't remember what I wrote or why I didn't post it. I have probably attempted to address Jyl's and Aby's as well, but I guess those words never made it through.


By some miracle--by a whole bunch of miracles really, and with a lot of help--we did manage to get married. In large part the wedding was beautiful, but looking back I have a lot of negative feelings surrounding the planning and the day that I don't want to try to dissect right now.

I have an office job, which I both like and hate. Mostly I enjoy my coworkers, and obviously the stability of a regular paycheck. But I feel trapped. I never see the sun. The sameness of my environment and my work, day after day after day, is rotting me away inside. I am starting to feel old, and empty, and (at the very high risk of being nauseously over-melo-dramatic) lately this has been leading me to ponder my own mortality in a very dark way. I am sure the awareness of one's own mortality is normal, and maybe early thirties is when it usually hits--but I am really not liking it. I was hoping to get away from the total surety that the rest of my life was going to be nothing but a long unsteady irrefutable slide down into a dark tunnel. Lately, mostly, each day has felt either the same as or worse than the last and the horizon looks dark and dangerous. I feel like I've made all the wrong decisions and now I just have to learn to live with them until I die. But maybe it will get better, right? People say it sometimes gets better.

Deep Thoughts

I just got some candy from the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Idea basket (constantly filled with delicious name-brand candy) at the front desk at work because I am stress eating, and after I sat back down at my desk and ate it, I thought,

That wasn't the candy that I wanted. (What was the candy that I wanted?) Well that candy didn't fulfill me as a human being.

...

Oh, wait.


Then my eyes rolled so hard they got stuck somewhere up by my hairline.

HOPE.

I don't visit this place very often these days, as may be made obvious by the dearth of posts. But I just stopped by and read what I'd been writing...which is awful. So I wanted to put in something nicer.

I can't say that I'm all that mentally stable these days--hormonal swings in particular still tend to grab me by the collar, slam me into a wall, and throw me on the ground. Then kick me in the gut until I wish I could die without sending ripples of pain out through everyone I love.

But luckily I don't have hormonal swings every day. And I am trying to keep talismans in my pocket for those moments--ginseng tea, deep breathing, walks to the river with Ian. It is difficult work, but I am trying to find things that help me to feel like this is all worth it. I am trying to find hope, and when I find it, I am trying to hold on. TENEZ BON, as my uncle recommended at our wedding, and wrote in what is I think my favorite guestbook entry.

I had been doing rather well, I thought, until my father ended up in the hospital for two months with a persistent infection. That was years ago, but I have felt the ground crumbling beneath me ever since. It feels like that incident that spring was the shot heard round the world, and life has just been one disaster after another. I am trying to keep my feet on solid ground. I am trying to hold on to it, to put it back.

But I have a family, and a place to live, and friends who will be there for me if I can learn to stop shutting them out. I have a sweet and caring husband. I have a job that almost pays the bills.

Maybe there is hope, even if I can't always see it. I am trying to have faith. I am trying.

Again. Still. More.

It's not so much that I want to kill myself these days, it's more that, roughly eighty five to ninety percent of the time, I find myself wishing I'd never been born.

Indecision

You know, I hate that I'm such an indecisive person, but if I weren't I probably would have killed myself a long time ago.

So I got that going for me, which is nice. I guess.

That being said, if I weren't so indecisive, I might not be so anxious and depressed all the time. It's hard to say which stems from which.



I'm sitting here in my parents' bathroom, because I stopped in here before leaving their house and I can't stop crying long enough to leave, and my parents are both on edge now and it just reinforces my belief that I have to control my emotions or else they'll fuck other people up. Which might be true, but it isn't healthy.

I was supposed to have a nice afternoon of socializing but I can't even get to my goddamn car.

Rogue One

Here's what I love about Star Wars, particularly in its most recent iteration.

In Star Wars, there's no internet.

In Star Wars, one can lose one's mind, and get it back again, and be someone who matters and makes a difference.

In Star Wars, it's okay to be a woman.

In Star Wars, nobody uses translators--have you noticed? Everyone speaks his or her or its own language, and everyone else understands. And if you don't understand, then that's your problem.

In Star Wars, people fighting for Good work together, and they give everything they have, knowing that they may never find out whether it all worked out, or whether other people would hold up their end. People do 'what they can with what they have, where they are.' They do their little piece as best as they can. As Jyn put it: "If we make it to the ground, we'll take the next chance, and the next--on and on until we win, or the chances are spent."

Rebellions are built on hope.

Predicting the future

Badly, as usual. I've realized that one reason I tend to fall so easily into despair is that I expect the rest of my life to be all downhill from here. I can't imagine taking on a new responsibility because i feel certain that in the future I'll only be more tired, more anxious, more achy, less physically able and thus less mentally or emotionally capable.

I don't want any of my problems to have anything to do with my father, but I think maybe they do. I have two wonderful parents, but growing up with a parent that has a debilitating degenerative disease will do things to your head.