Brave New World

It’s been a year since I put anything here.  A very eventful year.  I don’t know why I quit writing, but that maybe I was tired.  I’ve been tired a lot in the last few years.  Mostly tired, actually.  I’m tired now.  I just don’t know what all to do about it.

I’m not going to go into detail about what has happened over the last year but to say that I got promoted, started a relationship, lost the relationship, failed an interview for a new job, had some success with the work band, and got down to a reliable size 8.  Reliable.

The relationship was a huge learning experience.  I learned that if someone talks about the way they have treated other people in a way that makes you cringe, that is a warning – they are one bad experience away from talking to you the exact same way.  I learned that I do not have commitment issues – that when I am in, I am all in.  I learned that I can fall in love.  I learned that living in good faith means accepting responsibility for my actions – past and present – and all of the consequences even when it wasn’t my fault or choice or desire or intent.  I learned that being right does not exempt me from my oath to live in good faith.  Just because I didn’t ruin something doesn’t mean I get off scott free for being careless.

I was careless.  Or I think I was.  I’ve been trying to find out for sure, but I’ve had the hardest time of it.  I think the universe doesn’t want me to know.  But that is another story for another time.

I’ve forgiven myself for my role in the dissolution of this relationship.  I’ve forgiven him too – it wasn’t just one party’s fault.  I don’t know if I can be friends though.  I struggle with that part.  There are aspects to him that I would overlook as a lover but that I find difficult to tolerate as a friend.  Funny how that works.

I will be re-engaging with the rest of the world however.  I will not stay knocked down by this one.  I will get back on the metaphorical horse.  There is a little bit of work I need to do first though.

Last week I went to a week long continuing education session at a monastery in Santa Barbara.  It was intense.  Part of the curriculum involved regular journaling.  I haven’t journaled regularly in many years.  I’d forgotten how helpful it is in working through the nonsense stories I’ve created in my head.  Tonight I want to write a little about one of those stories.

One of the exercises in one of the sessions involved sitting across from another person – an acquaintance at best – and telling them what I deserve out of life.  To most people this would probably seem like an easy enough task.  They deserve to be loved and to have a happy life and to have a good job and a secure future and a family and a partner and all that jazz.  But for me this exercise was so difficult that I almost broke down.  I almost started crying in front of this veritable acquaintance – blubbering about how I don’t deserve anything.  Which is bullshit.  I know it is bullshit, but it doesn’t change the way I feel.

So I started trying to analyze why I feel this way about myself.  Why is it so difficult for me to believe that I deserve to have a good and happy life?  Why only me?  I easily accept and frequently remind my friends of all the good things they deserve, what makes me unique?  During the session we talked about the way we react to the “lessons” or “mores” passed on by family and friends, through music and TV and movies, in school, and through books.  I’m talking about the rules we create around our realities – where we decide, based on whatever feedback we’ve received, whether or not we are pretty or smart or clever or funny.  The rules that tell us what we can and can’t accomplish, what we are good at and what we fail at, and why we shouldn’t try.  These are internal rules that may or may not (usually not) have any basis in reality.  But we abide by them as though they are gospel.  So that when somebody says something that challenges those rules (“You’re really pretty!”) our response is to reject the challenging statement outright (“no I’m not”) and then deflect the speaker in order to avoid any other challenges to our reality.  I was thinking about my rules – the ones I’d inherited from the church and my family and my peer group.  I’ve already rejected all of the church oriented rules.  I’ve also written over most of my family inspired rules.  The one where my ideas never work?  Gone.  The one where I’m only pretty if I have long blonde hair that coil in neat ringlets?  Gone.  The one where I’m fat?  Gone.  The one where I’m lazy?  Eh, mostly gone.  Still working on that one.  As for my peer group, I don’t know that they ever had all that much influence over me.  I’ve spent most of my life abstaining from whatever celebration or social event or holiday that my peer group was focusing on for that week.  I’m used to being something of an outcast – which means that now, that I’m not really an outcast at all – it is easy for me to take the solo road.  Natural even.

This left me wondering where my rules come from.  What is it that has shaped my world so that I don’t feel like I deserve anything good in my life?  Then it occurred to me – the Shit.  All of the Shit that has happened to me – from my abusive marriage to my familial abandonment to my stalker to my car accidents to my rape to the death of my mentor – even the loss of my most recent relationship – all of that Shit that has happened to me with no real reason or direct cause.  I have had all of these fairly terrible things happen to me – many of them absolutely randomly, with no input or causation from me – that have had a very noticeable impact on my self image.  I joke all the time that with my mis-fortune I must have been Hitler’s Gardner in a previous life.  Even people who have a much more self-determined concept of life tend to agree.  It is almost comical the way that I attract bad mojo – even and especially when I am trying my hardest to be positive and strong.  So much of it rolls off my back (the mouse in the house, the furnace that caught on fire, the flooding in the garage – a small fraction of February’s adventures) that it isn’t until I start keeping track that the sheer weight of the Shit becomes apparent.

Generally speaking I don’t whine about the Shit.  I don’t call my friends and complain.  I don’t go asking for other people to handle my Shit for me.  I don’t blame anyone.  I just deal with it as best I can.  But I internalize it too.  I wonder what kind of person must I be to have so many bad things happen.  Just how terrible I am as a person to deserve all of this Shit.  Because I must deserve it, right?  That is what our parents and our religions and our schools and our friends teach us – that bad things happen to us as a result of us being bad – doing things wrong – treating others poorly – just not being a good person.  Therefore the mere existence of “the Shit” means that I must be a bad person.  And bad people don’t deserve to have good things in their lives.  Bad people don’t deserve anything but bad things.  This was my struggle.  I know I am not a bad person.  I work really hard to help people and do right by the environment and live my life in good faith.  I cannot both live in Good Faith and be a bad person.  But the Shit keeps happening.  So I reject the part where I know I am a good person and I accept the part where I deserve the Shit and round and round we go.

The thing is that I don’t deserve the Shit.  It just happens.  It will probably continue to happen.  And I still won’t deserve it.  The question is whether or not I can believe that I don’t deserve it.  If I can actually believe that I deserve good things.  Not know – knowing is easy.  Believe.  Believing is something far more difficult than knowing.

I think this warrants another trip to the therapist.  I’ve come so far in the last ten years – I like myself these days.  I feel like I have a lot of positive things happening for me, and I’m in a generally stable place emotionally.  Generally.  But I still don’t believe I deserve to be happy.  And that is a problem, because it isn’t going to happen until I believe it can.

I want to enter my next relationship with the belief that I deserve to be happy, that I deserve to not be lonely, that I deserve to be loved.  I think that was the piece that was missing for me this last time.  I hid it well, but that lack of faith in my own deserving-ness is what caused me to be careless – to (even if it was in my own mind) put another person at risk.

Another day I’ll write about the sameness of belief and reality – even if the belief is not reality.  Not tonight.  Tonight I want to think about finding a counselor.  And a dance class.  Time for this girl to find her groove.

Habit Forming

My grandfather was a work addict.  I remember when he fell from the roof of our barn and shattered his foot.  He was in a wheelchair for almost a month while they did the surgeries and inserted the pins and then waited to see if it would heal right.

It mostly did.  He limped for the rest of his life though.

It was less than a week after his last surgery before he had figured how to get that wheelchair to the factory where he worked and then how to get around the factory in the wheelchair.  This was before the age of ADA, and I know that what he did was far from easy.  But he could not not work.  That would be insanity.

I never figured that I had that kind of work ethic.  Or addiction.  I like to lounge around and read and write and play music and think.  I like time off.  I like five hour trips to the gym and spending a day exploring trails on foot or on a bike.  I like those things so much that in the past I chose my jobs based on how much time I would have to do the things I enjoy.

Somewhere along the way things changed.  I still love all those things that are not work.  I crave them.  But now, work comes first.  Ok, so that sounds like a no-brainer.  Of course work comes first.  Bills to pay, things to get done, all that nonsense.  I’m not talking about that.  I’ve always been good about going to work every day that I was supposed to and doing all the tasks that I was supposed to do.  This is a different kind of first.  This is a first that is before everything else – before food or sleep or exercise or friends or dog or family.  It has been this all-absorbing totally consuming experience.

It has not been pleasant.

Apart from the physical manifestations of stress – hives being the prime example (it is always a joy to realize that you have once again gotten into a situation where you have become allergic to your life) – I slipped into some very self-destructive patterns.  Not exercising.  Drinking ridiculous amounts of booze.  And by ridiculous I mean much more than what I usually consider heavy drinking.  Sleeping pills.  Uppers.  Downers.  Everything else that is required to feign normalcy when nothing is normal.

I used to tell people that I don’t have an addictive personality.  That is a lie.  I do not have the kind of addictive personality that gets hooked on cigarettes or drugs or even alcohol.  But I do get hooked on behaviors.  Like exercise.  Like work.  Like picking at my fingers until they bleed when I am stressed.  And when I get hooked on a behavior that disrupts my positive addictions then I fall back on the superficial – on the chemicals and the additives and the supplements and whatever else will feed my physical ability to pursue my new addiction.

For the last several months – since June, really, I’ve been working some ridiculous hours.  And it isn’t the kind of work where you do some task, and then you wait or you take a break or you regroup and then do another task.  This is the kind of work where there are three or four tasks going on simultaneously, and any pause in the one is filled by effort on another.  Lunch is a cup of soup at the desk.  There are no breaks.  I get up to either pull something off the printer or run something upstairs.  It got to a point where my deadlines were so tight and the meetings scheduled on top of each other and my general workload was so heavy that I didn’t have time to go to the restroom.

It is a crazy feeling to need to pee but have to pass the bathroom because there is a huge group of VIPs waiting for you to come do your presentation, and you don’t see a break in your schedule for at least another 2 hours.  And I do not just mean crazy as in strange.  I mean crazy as in insane.

Two weeks ago I hit my limit.  I’d been sick on and off for over six weeks.  Two days in a row I was trying so hard to get all caught up and to not miss any deadlines that I sat in my office chair for almost 6 hours straight before I got up, raced to the bathroom, the breakroom and then back again to continue what I was doing.  And three days that week I fell asleep in my car – while it was parked – because I was so exhausted, but I couldn’t go home just yet – I had more work to do.  Two weeks ago I decided that drinking myself numb every night, going to bed at midnight, and then getting up at 5 and trying to be productive was no longer working for me and that something needed to change.

Last week I started my new habits by not drinking alone, going to be by 10 every night, making sure the dog got walked, and still getting some exercise for myself every day.  It wasn’t five hours at the gym.  There were no endorphin rushes, no sense of accomplishment.  And I still felt depressed and stressed and generally unhappy.  But I didn’t have a migraine.  I didn’t fall asleep in my car.  I was ridiculously productive.  And I had enough energy that when the weekend finally rolled around I was able to work on my thesis – good work, not just a couple of paragraphs that I know I will need to either edit or totally rewrite later.  That was enough reward for me to decide to try to do it again this week.  No drinking alone, no sleeping meds, a little exercise every day, and going to bed early.

I’m determined to not let myself be derailed again.  I want this new pattern to become an addiction.  I want to need to not drink during the week and to go to bed early and to get my exercise.  And I want to learn to step away from work a bit too.  I want to stop working through lunch and sitting for three and four and five hours straight.  I want some perspective and some balance.  And if I have to drop some of the smaller balls at my job to make that happen, then gravity can do its thing.  I doubt they will fire me for it.

And if they did, well, it isn’t my dream job anyway.  I mean, it is ok now, and I could like it if things were a little different.  But for now, it is what it is.

A paycheck.

It’s time to make some new habits.

Like the one now, where I step away from the computer and go practice my guitar for a while.

S O S

If you were to ask me the things that I found most distressing about my life, my first and foremost answer would be the fact that I am female.  There are a lot of strong women out there – women who know how to use their female-ness to their advantage.  I am not one of them.  I will never have children.  I will probably never have a long-term relationship.  Everything about me and my life choices is antithetical to my biology, and frankly, the biology is in the way.  If a sex change wasn’t both extremely expensive and socially challenging, I’d have done it long ago.  Because the only thing I’ve gotten from this whole female gig is a stupidly high tolerance for pain – and really, that is actually more trouble than it is worth.

I joke about my karmic unbalance – the fact that it is not unusual for me to face more problems in both quantity and severity in a month than most people face in a year.  And I have gotten used to that.  True, I have periods of stability – times where I forget how things can go – and then I get reminded.  How about surgery the week that you are finishing your master’s thesis, a week after the worst flu in two years, and three weeks after a debilitating three day episode of abdominal pain?  Oh, and let’s make sure you remember that you don’t get paid for any of those days you took off, and that your insurance is both expensive and minimal and that you will undoubtedly be spending the next two years paying this all off.  Remember that.  Also remember that there are rats in your attic, that you lit your hand on fire two weeks ago – in part because it is slowly going numb, and that you have both hives and a now-chronic migraine.  Oh, and you haven’t had a decent workout in over a week.  I’m going to be late on almost all of my bills next month – I did not plan for both a vacation – the first real “you do not have to think about work/school” vacation in 5 years – and surgery to happen at the same time.

I’m having this dual response to everything that is going on right now.  Part of me is all “you can do it – it will all be ok.”  And the other part of me is all “die.  just give up and die.”  I’m trying to ignore that second part right now, but every day that I don’t exercise – every day I don’t get my endorphins, it gets a little louder – a little more insistent.

I should be working on my thesis tonight.  I’d planned on finishing my maps.  But being female caught up with me today and instead I’m doped up on vicodin and booze, and even then I can still feel the cramps and the aches.  I can’t walk in a straight line, but I can sit here in pain.  Good times.

Today I was able to observe a couple of apartment raids with the police department of the city where I work.  There were no doors getting bashed in or any of the like.  But a couple of folks who had violated their probation got picked up, along with a few warrants.  It was an interesting situation.  Everyone in the briefing room assumed that I was the weak link, and several times I reminded to stay out of the way.  I did not explain my past.  I did not tell them that I have years of experience in physical confrontation – both armed and unarmed.  I did not say that, the mood I was in, anyone who wanted to start something with me was most likely unprepared for what they would get in return.  I just nodded and agreed to stay out of the way.  And I didn’t get nervous.  I could feel the anxiety bleeding off of the others in the group.  I could smell their adrenaline.  But when we were actually on site, I felt like I was in my own neighborhood.  I felt the kind of calm that I used to feel when I was squaring off against an opponent that I knew was far stronger, much faster, and way more skilled than I.  The kind of calm that comes when you give up the fight for status and for face and for pride and for your sense of right and succumb to the fight for survival.  It has been so long that I’d forgotten what it was like.  But it was strange – all the anxiety around my presence in the briefing room disappeared when I was on site.

I will be doing this again – more regularly and with a higher level of participation.  My role is not to catch “bad guys”.  My role is to help make these apartments safer and to encourage residents to take a more active role in improving their living conditions.  I believe this is something worth doing.

I’m not going to work on my thesis tonight, and the loss of this time will hurt me.  I absolutely must have a completed draft by this Sunday.  If I don’t, I’ll have to postpone my graduation until this summer.  My trip abroad will be tainted, my stress level will not decrease, I will not be able to relax.  I have not relaxed – really relaxed where I don’t have to think about what I am going to do the next day and how I’m going to fit it all in and damn if that deadline isn’t rushing at me faster than I can fathom and what about all that work that I am postponing that is going to catch up to me and brand me a failure – in so long that I have a hard time remembering.  It has been years.

The last two weeks have been brutal.  The next two will be even worse.  I’m already at the point where I don’t feel that this kind of life is worth living.  If it wasn’t a temporary situation, I’d give up.  When it gets worse, it is going to be difficult to remember that this is all short-term – that soon things will be different.  I’m going to try, but this here is an apology for when I fail.  Because I will fail.  Because there is that part where karma is still trying to teach me a lesson and it will wait until I am at my weakest before delivering the killing blow.

That lesson better be worth it.  I’m thinking the secret to world peace or the secret of the universe or something equivalent.  Cause otherwise I’m going to be a might bit irritated.

I spend so much time sitting behind a computer either studying or working – so removed from the reality of the world and the people around me – that I forget what it means to be human.  I feel like a search engine with a corporeal body.  I feel like a machine – and I’m sick of it.  Whatever I do next will have to compensate for that – because I don’t think I can take much more of it.  All work and no play…

Something Else

This isn’t what I started out to write.  I started to write something else and realized that I wasn’t ready to put the concept in my head into actual words.  I’ve been told that people think in language.  I’m not sure that is true.  I think in language when I am thinking about talking to other people, but I think in pictures and sounds and actions when I think about other things.  Lots of the thoughts in my head play out like mini-movies – even the ideology and theory based ones – that must then be subtitled before they can be released at theatres.

I’m about to get back into my thesis writing.  I’m close to being done – if by close you mean 2/3 of the way.  When I run distances, I think of 2/3 as the home stretch – which is funny when the home stretch is 4 or 5 miles.  Still, I’m most of the way there.  The rest is doable.

I didn’t take a huge amount of time off of my thesis – just yesterday.  I had to.  My brain was not functioning.  I got sick on Monday and ran a fever on and off from Tuesday to Friday.  I could tell when the fever got worse because I would start getting the fever chills, and they would last for a few hours and then go away and I’d feel a little better for a while and then they would come back again and so on and so forth.

I worked through this – thesis work, not work work – and Thursday I even went to the library to get some more data, even though I was light headed and dizzy and prone to confusion.  I kept having to rest on the stairs because I thought I was going to faint.  But there really wasn’t much choice – or rather, the choice to not work means extending the level of stress that had made me vulnerable to illness in the first place, so better to get it over with sooner rather than later.

Friday night though I realized that I had nothing left to think with.  I felt drained physically and mentally.  So yesterday, instead of working like I had planned, I read.  I didn’t even read anything meaningful or educational.  I read comic books – comic books I’d already read once before even – for the whole day and did nothing on my thesis.  I didn’t even go outside except to take care of the dog – not walk the dog, because I was still a little light headed – but take care of as in water and feed.

Today I feel more like myself than I have felt in a long time.  Today I walked the dog.  Today I will work on my thesis and hopefully move that 2/3 into the 3/4 zone.  I’m still hacking and coughing and my jaw still hurts from the ear-ache (you know you have a gnarly ear-ache when it feels like your jaw has been dislocated and popped back into place) and standing up too fast is a bad idea, but I no longer feel like I’m going to fall down if I have to walk more than a block, or like I’ve been gargling battery acid.

Tomorrow I go in to have my wrist x-ray done – and if possible – schedule the surgery to get it fixed.  Almost everything I do at this point hurts.  Rolling over in my sleep wakes me up.  Pulling the blanket up when I get cold is painful.  And the numbness in my palm and thumb are growing worse.  I’m almost positive at this point that whatever is growing in there is putting some pressure on a nerve – and not just the one that goes “ouch”.  There was still some numbness in my palm from the last surgery, so it is a little difficult to know the exact line of old and new – but the thumb is definitely new and it is a very strange sensation.

Whatever happens, I am not going to let this summer pass with me in pain.  I refuse.

Not long ago my boss asked if I am one of “those” people – as in one of the people to whom bad things just happen.  And it sure seems to be true.  Not that it stops me – or even slows me down that much.  And it isn’t like the things that happen are all that devastating – though they have been in the past.  They are just normal bad things that seem to happen with abnormal frequency.  I don’t even mention most of them anymore – they just the way of things.  But sometimes I wonder if there is any way I can change this.  I do get tired of the extra struggle.  For instance, my thesis is hard enough without getting sicker than I have been in almost two years, and without the damaged wrist, and without the rats in the attic, and without setting my hand on the stove, and without the hives on my sides and hips.  Just the thesis is enough.  The rest is dead weight.  Itchy dead weight.

My positive thinking experiment is still working for me – despite not being able to work out regularly for two weeks now, and despite the frustration and depression that come with being sick and stressed out at the same time.  I’m still ok with myself.  And I’m starting to wonder if maybe something like that can change the way that things work for me.  It is one thing to keep a positive attitude and not let yourself get too low when things go wrong.  But it would be so much better if things just didn’t go wrong so often.

Ok.  That is it for now.  I wrote this to try and get my mind back in writing/thinking mode after a day off.  I think this is as close as I’m going to get to functional.  Back to work.

Pending Mental Refresh

I have just finished the text of my literature review.  I need to go back and read it through and edit it before I send it off, but first I need to think about something else for a bit – to cleanse my mental palate so to speak.  I’m pretty drained mentally right now.  Yesterday was a great step towards refilling the intellectual coffers a bit but it was only a start.  I’ll run through everything I accumulated yesterday before I am done tonight.

I got on the scale at the gym Friday.  I don’t know why I did.  I knew it was not a good time to weigh myself – I’m in the midst of another weight gain cycle.  I’m not particularly anxious – or at least I wasn’t until I got on the scale and it told me that I was 14lbs over my target.  Now I’ll grant that my target is 5lbs under my average.  I cannot seem to lose those last 5lbs.  And that’s fine.  At some point I’ll have to reassess the target.  Some future point, that is.  But 14?  Good grief!

There is the bit where muscle weighs more than fat.  Yeah, ok.  I’ve been lifting weights three days a week for a month now.  I haven’t seen much increase in my strength – which is to say that I’ve only gone up between 5 and 10 lbs in the amount of weight I’m lifting (barbell curls with 20lbs!  it’s a first for me) but I think that if I keep it up I might actually be able to do a pull-up by the end of the semester.  So maybe some of that 14lbs is muscle.  Maybe 3lbs of it.  Maybe.  The rest?  Stress fat – aka Booze and cookie fat.

Ok, not cookies per se.  I’m not a huge cookie fan.  Instead I eat these cardboard flavored granola bars.  I figured that if I got the ones that just tasted bad then I wouldn’t be so tempted to eat the whole box in one sitting.  Instead I’ve developed a taste for them – which is good in that it’s toned down my sweet tooth a bit and bad in that I was buying them by the Costco box.  I’m still trying to keep on the higher protein/lower processed carbs diet.  But I’m struggling a bit.  Mostly because it isn’t habit yet.  And I’m finding that I run out of my protein foods and my fresh veggies much faster than I ran out of carb based foods.  AND they’re more expensive.  So not only do I have to go to the grocery store more often (hell!) but I’m paying more when I do (depressing!).

To sum up, we’re going back on the no drink during the week pattern.  Just so I can continue to fit in my jeans, please.  I cannot afford a new wardrobe right now – especially since I want to buy some travel friendly clothes for my upcoming trip.  I am going to have to find something though that I can turn to for my after meal/pre-bed fidgets.  That is usually when my sweet tooth hits hardest, and I’m most vulnerable to eating all the dark chocolate in the freezer, drinking half a bottle of Amaretto and finishing it off with a big snifter of brandy.  Not a friendly way to end the evening, if your waistline is at risk.

I keep thinking about how things will be different when I’m not longer tied to my thesis.  I’m tempted to put some high expectations on this coming summer.  Tempted, but I’m going to resist.  It will be what it will be.  And it might take me a while to find myself again.  I was chatting with a friend Friday night.  She is one of the half-dozen or so good friends that I have made since I started grad school – only two of which are actually from school.  I told her that I thought they might be surprised to see how my personality is different when I’m not constantly struggling with too much work and too little time and way too much stress.  I told her that I was way more laid back.  That was kind of a lie.  Not to say that I’m not generally easy to get along with, but I was thinking about the last time I was unencumbered.  Hindsight being what it is and all that, I realize now that I was a bit intense.  It was not unusual for me to pick people up and carry them along with me – often farther and faster than they were ready to go.  I learned the hard way not to do that anymore, but I do wonder what will happen when I have recovered my energy.  I might need to take up a new hobby – or three.  🙂

Mile 3

I know why I over-indulge when I drink alone.  I have no base of reference for my intoxication level when I am alone.  I’m not talking or trying to follow a conversation that I might be expected to contribute to.  I’m not moving around much.  I’m not really engaged in anything that requires specific skills.  I’m sitting and reading or writing.  Sometimes also knitting.  Sometimes also picking out chords on my guitar.  But that’s about it.  I won’t realize how intoxicated I am until I stand up to go to the kitchen or the bathroom and realize that I’m swaying.

I know that right now, with things as intense as they are, I shouldn’t drink alone.  I’m so pent-up all the time – so anxious and so stressed that even the vilest of liquor goes down like water and as soon as I start to feel even a little relaxed I want to feel a lot relaxed.  My self-control goes out the window.

Until 6 am that is.

And that is over sleeping.  That means I don’t get to workout in the morning.  That means I’m going to struggle getting to work on time.

So that was today.  Last night I got done with work and the gym and hit the books and at 9 pm I realized I was clenching my teeth and my shoulders were up around my ears and I was cranky so I had a vodka.  Then another.  Then, because I was feeling alright, a third.  This morning, when the alarm went off at 4:45, which is when I’m supposed to get up if I want to make it to the gym, I turned it off.  When the second alarm (I have to have a backup system.  There are three total) went off at 5:50, I thought it was still 4:45 and turned it off too.  When the third went off at 6, I knew things were bad.  Bad bad bad.

I went to work, and it hurt.  I got stuff done, but it was not pretty or efficient.

Then I went to my noon weightlifting class (Because student loan regulations require that I remain a half time student to keep my deferral and that meant taking another class.  Only I wanted one that had no writing required and minimal reading.) and it hurt too.  Actually my wrist is hurting again, and the weights really accentuate it.  I’m not sure if it is that it is still weak from the surgery last year or if it is the fact that the growth on the tendon is back.  Hard to know.  I mostly ignore it, but sometimes it gets a little persistent.  No matter, no health insurance, no fixing it.

After weightlifting class I put on my headphones and went for a run.  This was the first time I have run without Dog is so long that I can’t actually remember.  I knew that she slowed me down.  I knew that she stressed me out on our runs because I am constantly aware of the other runners and bicyclists and squirrels around me and I have to make sure that she and they are all safe.  And she has this habit of getting distracted and looking one way while she’s running the other and running into me and tripping me up so that we end up in a literal “dog pile”.  This is not to say that I don’t like running with her, but I do not get an endorphin high when we run together.  And I’m often frustrated and irritable after our runs – partly from the extra attention I have to pay and  partly because she must Pee on Everything and the constant stopping makes me nuts.

Today, though, was different.  It was sunny and calm and about 65 degrees.  The trail in the middle of the day was almost empty.  And even though every step hurt and I could feel the alcohol leaching from my system, I kept going.  Then I hit mile 3.  I felt the last of the alcohol leave my pores.  I instantly had my first endorphin hit in a couple of weeks, and for the remaining 2 miles I didn’t think about work or about my thesis or about my sore shoulder or about the fact that I’m 3000 miles overdue for an oil change, or that I need to clean the dog poop out of the yard, or that the leaves have blocked my gutter and there are mosquitoes breeding up there, or any of it.  It was just me and the trail and the sunshine filtered through the baby leaves of the still winter bare trees and the green grass and the river and a good soundtrack.  Who knew you could run to Snoop Dogg?

I didn’t get as much work done the rest of the day as I’d hoped.  But I finished what I’d planned to finish.  Mostly though, I remembered that there is a reason that I’m not supposed to drink alone, and it is because the real relaxation is not in the bottle.  If I want it, I have to make time for it – and not at 6 in the morning or 7:30 at night or whenever I’m trying to jam in my workouts in the dark.  And most of all, I have to quit this thing were I feel guilty if I decide to run without Dog.  She is doing ok.  Skipping a 5 mile run here or there isn’t going to ruin her life.

Mile 3.  It’s the magic mile.  I’d forgotten.  I’m glad I remembered.

Poverty

Poverty is interesting.  As someone who used to be less poor (2010 was the fourth year in a row where my total income was less than $10,000) I find that the longer I spend trying to live on nothing the more of a strain it is on my resources.  There’s the part where I take extra good care of my clothes (almost nothing goes in the dryer) because I cannot afford to replace them.  Then there’s the part where, when I do go out, I choose my food and beverages according to price.  And there’s the part where I’m constantly anxious about my laptop breaking or my car breaking or something else expensive and necessary.

I seldom let anyone know exactly how tight things are.  I will pick up the tab sometimes when I go out with friends because it makes me feel awful when they are always paying for things.  I do not want to be the “broke friend” who uses people.  And if there is something that I feel I absolutely must have, I’ll do a side job or tap into my “emergency money” (which is just about gone) to pay for it.  This is why I was so devastated when my car was broken into.  I am out of side jobs and I am out of emergency money.

Today, though, things hit a new low.  Back when I still had health insurance at my old job, I had a couple of long-term medical problems handled.  Even though the insurance paid a good deal of the cost, a significant portion, say 18% of my annual income ended up charged to me.  I set up payment plans with the collections department, and was assured that it would not reflect negatively on my credit report.  Liars.  I should have known.

I don’t carry a balance on my credit card.  I pay it off every month.  If I don’t think I’ll be able to pay it off, I don’t use it.  I’ve done this for two years now.  So you’d think that my credit would be ok.  Sure I’m poor, but I pay my damn bills.  No.  That is not enough.  The credit card company has reduced my credit limit to almost nothing – without telling me why or giving me any sort of opportunity to argue their decision.  Not only did they not tell me that this is what they were going to do, but the last piece of mail I got from them was a new credit offer – for being a “good customer”.

So imagine my surprise when I went to pay my student fees today – which I have to pay up-front because my student loan has been delayed… again.  Happens every semester – and had my credit card declined for insufficient funds.  Sure, there’s 0 balance, but my student fees exceed my credit limit.  If I use everything in my checking account, close out my savings, and max out the card, I’ll make my fees, but I won’t be making my rent.  So I have to choose.  Student fees?  Rent?  Ask for help from family or friends?  The last makes my throat close.  I will get my loan money and I will be able to pay everything back, but the act of asking makes me ill.  But I can’t not pay rent, and I can’t not pay my fees – I’ll get dropped from the classes I had such a hard time getting, and my student loans will no longer qualify for deferrals.

It’s a rock and a hard place – and my resources are so thin that if I make it, it will be by the very skin of my teeth.  And I wonder why I’m depressed and anxious and so stressed out that I have hives on my hips and don’t sleep at night.

I was thinking this morning about getting my teeth checked up.  The last time I did this – put off dental care until I had insurance to afford it, it cost me $3,000 in extra dental work.  Very bad dental work, mind you.  In fact, at one point I had a broken molar on one side, a broken crown on the other, and a broke filling next to that.  One root canal, two fillings and two crowns were necessary to fix all the damage.  I was making payments to the dentist for a year.  There will be no dental check-ups.  No more toys, no more picking up the tab, which means no more going out.  No more gear, no more extra expenses.  And most of all, no days off.  Not that I was taking a lot of days off before.  But now… Ugh.

I’ll figure this out.  I always figure it out.  But as time goes on, I can’t help but wonder if I’m headed for another total collapse.  It seems that the time in-between hitting bottom is getting shorter and shorter, and the high points are lower and lower.  What happens when bottom is the high point?  Convergence.  I can see it coming.

Liquor is Quicker…

I’m not an alcoholic, I just…

Yeah, that phrase isn’t at all suspicious.

Dog is on a mission to lay down in every spot in the house to see which is best.  She just did her circle and flop routine in the closet.  It’s not even a big closet.  But there she is, wedged between the high-heeled sandals that I never got a chance to wear this summer, and the black satin evening gown that I’ve never worn in public.  If I didn’t know better I’d think she was making commentary on my jeans and t-shirt/slacks and button down lifestyle – the lifestyle that does not involve ever looking or acting like a girl.

Not that I’m all about the nail-polish and the designer handbag.  I have this theory about women, the more high-maintenance their hairstyle/nails/make-up, the more high-maintenance their personality.  And honestly, I don’t have the time or energy for it.

Men, on the other hand seem to feel differently.  I guess there is something to those high-maintenance girls that they find appealing.  I wouldn’t know.  I haven’t been on so much as a date in… well, if I’m being honest, it has been a very long time.  I’m all about making do, so I try to count the things that really don’t count.  I’m great at making friends.  And I’m good at fostering a certain level of intimacy.  But that is not dating.  That is hanging out with friends.  Everyone goes home alone.

I’m not complaining, or rather, I am complaining, but I don’t expect any sort of resolution.  This is my choice.  Or my sentence.  Not sure which.  Someone asked today if I love Dog.  I care about Dog.  I want Dog to be happy and to have a good life.  I want to do what I can to aid in that.  But Love?  Love is a strong word.  I feel the same way about my friends – I want them to be happy and to have good lives and in that way I love them.  But Love?  No.  Not Love.  I think about my life and there are a lot of things that I would really dislike giving up, but there is nothing here now that I could not walk away from – without looking back.

This is what I’d hoped that having Dog around would change.  I’m so emotionally detached from everything around me, I’d hoped she would help me reconnect.  And in some ways she’s been a godsend.  I like having her here.  I like having something that is happy to see me when I get home at night.  I like having something that is excited when I wake up in the morning.  It is soothing to my ego.  I feel a little less invisible – a little less expendible than I used to.

At the same time, I know that my status in her life is a matter of chance.  If not me, someone else.  Or no-one else.  It all ends up the same.  Worm-food.

In a conversation with my mother today I told her I have no expectation of making it to fifty.  She was telling me that fifty feels so young.  I do not doubt her.  I feel young now and it isn’t until I look in the mirror that I remember that I’m now counting my age by decades.  At the same time I want to be done.  So badly do I want to be done.

This is something that I didn’t want to write about here.  I’ve done the pathos thing.  I’ve gone through the therapy and the drugs and the whole deal.  I did not want another of my writing experiments to spiral down into the realm of constant-self pity.  Yet, it is self-pity or nothing at all.  It is where I live.  It is where I’ve lived for a long time now.  I comfort myself these days by promising myself that if it ever gets that bad again I have permission to check out.  To call it good.  To be done.  To die.  And then I keep adjusting the definition of that so it doesn’t include the now.  Because I’m not quite ready yet.   Not yet.  Though I’m close.  I’ve been close for a long time now.  I don’t know what to do with that.

I have the best friends in the world right now.  I have people that I care deeply for and that I know care about me.  I have shelter and intellectual stimulation and a constantly growing set of hobbies.  I do whatever I can to keep my mind occupied.  And when I know that I cannot keep it occupied, I deaden it with booze.  But I also know that I am lonely.  I’ve been lonely for so long that it is part and parcel of my self-identity.  When I dream at night, I dream about what it is like to be alone.  When I daydream about the future, there is no-one else around.  This is it.  Not even my subconscious believes that this will ever change.

The funny thing is that I watch my friends and neighbors as they navigate their relationship drama, and I want nothing to do with any of it.  I almost feel superior – with my emotional detachment and what-not.  Almost.  Then I remember how many years I’ve spent alone.  Years.

I’m living by a new policy these days – get as much life lived as I can as fast as I can.  I don’t expect to live to a ripe old age.  It would be foolish to pretend that I’ll have time to do the things I want to do later.  I won’t.  And as I’m not stuck with anyone else to worry about, there’s nothing to slow me down.  So when this life gets old – and I know it will – I’ll be in a place where I can end it without guilt or regret.

In the meantime, it is a matter of endurance.  And balance.  Liquor is indeed quicker, but just how much booze does it take to erase the lonely?  Maybe I should make a scientific study out of it.

Adrenaline and the Dog Walk

One of the biggest struggles I’ve had since Ryder came to live with me is making sure she gets enough exercise.  She spends a lot of time alone.  And while she seems to mainly sleep during that time, it means that when I get home she wants to play.

She loves the walks at the park, especially when I’m tired.  This is because when I’m tired, I tend to stroll and let her have a loose leash and stop when she wants to smell something and pretty much let her determine our pace.  She is less impressed with the brisk walks where I make her mind her manners.  And she downright pouts when I make her run.  It’s almost impossible to pee on everything that smells peeable when we’re running.

For the last two weeks my ankle has been bothering me.  Mostly it is fine, but then it will suddenly have this sharp shooting pain that will make it very painful to even walk.  Sometimes I can limp through it and it will quit.  And sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.  It is very sporadic, but getting worse, and it is because I need new running shoes.  And also probably a break.  But mostly new shoes.

Today the pain in my ankle was so bad that I was limping by the time I got home.  I put ice on it for a while, but when it came time to take Ryder to the park, I left the ice at home, took a couple of advil and decided to see how it would go.  It hurt at first, and then got better for a while and then started to hurt again when we were at the baseball diamond at the far end of the park.  I decided to sit for a bit to rest it, and she was tugging at the leash to smell the trees and kept getting tangled in the table and in the garbage can and in my legs.

So I let her off the leash.

I’ve done this twice before and both times she came back when I called.  Both times she never got more than about 30 feet from me.  Both times everything was fine.  So I assumed this time would be fine too.  It was late, there were no other dogs around.  Traffic had died down, there were no people about, I thought it would be fine.

It was not fine.

She wouldn’t come back when I called.  She’d stop and look at me, and then turn and keep trotting away.  When she got to the edge of the diamond I realized that she was just about out of my range of control and got up to follow her, calling her all the while.  She just kept trotting away, looking over her shoulder to see if I was still coming, and then continuing on.  I started jogging after her because she was getting close to the edge of the park and would soon have to cross the street.  When she saw that I was jogging, she started to really move.

This is when I realized that she wasn’t going to stop or listen or come back to me by command.  This is when I realized that she would probably run all the way back to where we usually park the car – which meant crossing two streets and a parking lot – and then who knows what would happen when she remembered that wasn’t where we parked the car this time.  This is when I realized that I would have to catch her by then or else…

This is when I started running for reals.

Now, running is a thing I do.  But I seldom go all out for more than what it takes to cross the finish line.  It has been a long time since I tried to see how long I can run at top speed.  Apparently it is a lot longer than I used to.

I had almost caught up with her when she crossed the first road.  Thank god there was no traffic and I thought just maybe she’d get distracted by the duck pond and everything would be ok.  We passed a cyclist who said something in Chinese as he passed me.  And then we passed the pond – she didn’t even slow.  By this time she was loping along, glancing to make sure I was following and having a grand old time.

If I hadn’t been afraid of the cars and the potential that she might hurt someone or that someone might hurt her, I would have handled this differently.  If, if, if.  As it was, I’d run one of the fastest half miles of my life when she cruised on past another runner going the other way.  Apparently she liked him because she stopped for a moment.  This is where I made my mistake.

I started to sprint.

I didn’t know I could run faster than I was, but then there I was almost flying.  I was having visions of her pulling some sort of snarling biting thing – though she has never bitten anyone.  Killed ducks and chickens and goats, yes, but never bitten a person.

There was a couple of seconds where she looked like she was going to approach this person.  He crouched down and called to her and she seemed taken by this.  And then she saw me coming fast and she took off again.  The guy stood up and saw me coming and asked if she bit.

I told him no, but that she didn’t know about cars.  He took off after her too, running as fast as he could.  He had about 60 feet on me so he was closer, and Ryder, well, she thought this was the bestest game ever.

I was right about where she was headed – straight for the usual parking spot.  I also lucked out.  He got there right after she did and when she stopped to wonder where the car was, he called to her and she went right up to him.  When I came gallumping up a couple of seconds later, he had her by the collar and was scratching her ears and she looked all sorts of pleased and a little confused.

I haven’t been that afraid since I don’t remember when.  It was my fault, my stupidity, my assumptions and it could have been a disaster.  When I finally had her leash back on her, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to hug her or kick her.  I was so relieved and so angry.

I profusely thanked the man who caught her.  I felt like such an idiot – taking the leash off of an Akita in a public space was an incredibly stupid thing to do.  All because I was feeling tired and sore.  And there I had just run a mile at full speed and I hadn’t even noticed my ankle, or the fact that I was running in sandals, or that I was so tired.

I can tell you I’m noticing it now.

He was generous and told me it was ok.  No harm done, he’d got a good run out of it.  And when he stood up to leave, I had the very strong urge to introduce myself – which is not something that ever happens, especially when I’ve been caught being criminally stupid.  I found that even in that short of a time, I had a positive impression about him – apparently my dog has good taste – that initial impression is never wrong.  Sometimes I ignore it, but it is never wrong.

I have learned my lesson.  This dog will never get to be an off leash dog.  Next time she gets all wistful watching some other dog playing fetch in the park, I’ll remind her of this little adventure and why she cannot be allowed to play fetch in the park.  Or sniff things unattended.  Or participate in any of those other off leash adventures that more responsible dogs get to do.

God, I sound like a parent.

Things I have learned:

Leashes are forever.

I need to do more all out running intervals – I was thinking today that I wasn’t going to make my time goal for my next race – if anything was going to change that some serious speed intervals would be the trick.

And I need to take a couple of days and let my ankle heal.  Maybe while I wait for my new running shoes.

Oh, and one more.  I think I might start running at night.  🙂