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.

Ongoing Sideways

Today I picked my year old laptop up from the repair shop.  It is actually a year and one month.  That is one month out of warranty.  The problem wasn’t with the laptop itself, it was with Windows 7, which somehow got so corrupted that I couldn’t even get the computer to boot.  This was a problem that, given enough time (like 5 or 6 hours) I probably could have fixed myself.  I didn’t have the time.  I put in four 12+ hour days and one 10 hour day last week.  I was so exhausted that today I spent the first half of the day sleeping.  Or half sleeping – that kind of semi-consciousness where you know where you are and kind of what is happening, but where you also fade in and out of dreams and fantasies and where you are never really asleep, but never quite awake either.  I’ve grown fond of that state.

I think that is why I haven’t gotten sick this year.  Beyond my foot (which still hurts like hell – plantar fasciitis is no picnic) I haven’t had the flu or a cold or anything worse than a migraine, which I can work through, if I have to.  Mostly, though, I spend my down days and my weekends sleeping.  Lots of sleeping.  Because I don’t get a lot during the week.

I’m slowly starting to ease into a pattern.  I have my second gym membership.  I’ve accepted that I’ll seldom see my friends, that I’ll be more lonely than I was before.  I’ve gotten used to working long days – to being one of the last people to leave the building.  I’m still depressed.  It isn’t just the part where I don’t see my friends (who are like my family, since I don’t have anyone else in my life) but it’s the part where if I’m not at work, I’m alone.  I used to go to work, and then go to the gym and spend a few hours most days talking with people and interacting and feeling real.  Now I just go to the gym in the mornings, when it is empty, and then I go to work, where I have worked hard to avoid making friends, and then I go to my second gym, where I know nobody, and then home to Dog, who is the only being happy to see me, and mostly because it is dinnertime.  I haven’t wanted to make friends at work because it has been so disastrous in the past.  I feel that work is a lot like church – a lot of people with very different backgrounds and psychological make-ups in the same place for a single reason.  It is a shallow pool from which to draw friends.  I have people who I especially like, but there are few that I want to confide in or whose company I would seek outside of the office.  And that is a friend – someone I would meet outside the official sanctioned point where we both Must Be.

I do have an emerging crush on a person at the office.  This is contiguous with the crush I have at the gym.  Very different people they are, but both attractive in their own ways.  I will act on neither.  No good thing can come from an office romance – even assuming the very unlikely chance that my ephemeral feelings were reciprocated.  And nothing will come from my crush at the gym where prettier, fitter, more interesting (and less damaged) candidates abound.  So I’m ignoring both.  It is for the best.  I’m not companion material.  My friends (if I were to actually have a chance to talk to them) would tell me that I am just ensuring my own failure.  But this is one area where they simply do now know.  None of them have been like I have.  They all (except one) have mates, and most have families.  They do not know (and some of them have never known) what it is like to be alone for as long as I have been alone, or the ways that it changes you.  I can see how things will end before they have even started.  My one friend at work chides me for this jumping ahead, she says that one must go through the steps or one cannot know how things will really turn out.  I still jump ahead.  I’m right far too often for my own good, and far too often to go back and actually retrace the steps.

It won’t work.  It just won’t.

I get my first tooth pulled on the 3rd of April.  I’ll be doing my taxes on the 4th – while under the influence of narcotics.  And this next week I’ll try to take a day off to work on my thesis.  I’m trying hard to remember that it matters, that I need to keep trying and keep working and keep positive.  It’s hard, because the depression says that none of this matters and that I’m just treading water and that I won’t be going anywhere or doing anything or achieving anything – that I’ll just tread water until I give up and die.  And why not just skip the part where I work myself to death and die now?  But I know that is the depression.  I know it.  I just don’t know how to countermand it.

The sad fact is that a relationship would probably be good for me now.  It’d force some perspective.  I had no luck with the dating site – then again, I almost immediately wished I hadn’t done it.  I’ve been ignoring it for weeks now.  A waste of money, and it is my own fault.  But I’m not the kind of person that can be matched up to a stranger.  I’m too intimidating, and I’m too much me.  I like me, but I can understand why other people might be a bit leery.

I spent a good amount of time with the heavy bag today.  I’m so out of shape that it is pathetic.  I remember when I could do 6 or 8 three-minute rounds like they were cake, and now I’m about to keel over after 2.  And I can’t run because of my foot.  So I’m kind of stuck.  I need to work out, and I need to work out a lot with the amount of stress I’ve been under lately.  But without running, my options are much more limited.  I feel a bit stir crazy from it – usually.  Today I feel calm.  Not as calm as I feel after a fight, but close.  The stir crazy will raise its head again tomorrow.

So yeah, that’s me.  Middle aged, soon to be toothless, out of shape, overworked, and lonely.  This is not how I imagined my adulthood.  Somehow, I think things went sideways.  I just don’t know where.

Shredded

Sometimes I want to take myself apart.  Think pulled pork or shredded beef.  I envision pulling my soul apart until it is nothing but strands of spirit – little shreds of soulness almost completely unlike anything resembling a real soul.  Just bits perfectly sized for someone else’s consumption.  Think about how little that shredded beef resembles a cow.  That is how apart I want to be.

I talk to friends about death and I listen to their interpretations of rebirth or of heaven and hell or whatever their belief structure entails and I’m afraid to tell them what I want, what I hope that death provides.  Nothing.  Pure absolute and complete nothing.  I want to cease to be.  As though I never was.

Just another typo.  Hit the delete key please.

So I know this is pathos and self -absorbed and all that shit.  I know.  I know that it is the depression speaking and I know it is reality and I know.  I know.  I just can’t do anything about it.  I try.  I try every day.  That is why I’m still sitting here in my wilted office chair typing on my wireless keyboard, listening to whatever Pandora is serving tonight.  I fail at taking myself apart.  But that doesn’t mean I succeed at life.  I just live.  It is different.

And it doesn’t change the want.

Tomorrow I go to say what will probably be my last goodbye to a dear friend.  She has cancer, and after fighting for a long time, she is ready to be done.  And you know what?  That is ok.  I understand.  I don’t want her to go, because she was one of the first to accept me for who I actually am – to not judge me by a set of standards that I had no part in setting.  She was honest with me, yet always optimistic.  She understood.  And that meant everything.  She knew it wasn’t my fault.  I was never perfect, but a lot of what happened wasn’t my fault.  And she never even suggested otherwise.  This is all my self-centered perception – my interpretation.  Because the part that meant the most was the part she gave to me.  I wish it could have been otherwise.  I wish I could have given a fraction back to her.

I am not a good friend.  My friends know this.  I disappear for days and weeks and sometimes even months.  I don’t return calls.  I flake out on parties.  I forget birthdays and holidays and anniversaries.  But I will drop everything to help a friend if they ask.  I will risk or give anything to those that I acknowledge as true friends.  And I will forgive just about anything from someone I know to be my friend.  Because, as careless as I am with my friends and as selfish as I am with my own pain and my own weaknesses, my friends still mean the world to me.  They are my family.  My reason for not taking myself apart.

They are my ground.

So losing one is like losing a bit of myself.  Like being bitten by a ravenous animal and having no recourse but to let that chunk of flesh go.   And no matter how much complaining I do about gaining weight, letting some beast take a pound of flesh is not the kind of weight loss I can get behind.

Tonight I was reminded that I do matter.  Maybe not the way that I wish I did, but still, there are people who think about me and who enjoy my presence.  Despite my doom and gloom here, I am not always – not even usually, a negative Nelly.  I tell jokes.  I act silly.  I smile and laugh and tease.  I engage.  For me, being around other people is like a drug.  It allows me to escape my own mind, my own neurosis.  I can act human and feel human and be human.  I’ve been alone for so long that sometimes I forget what human is.

Which brings me back to where I started.  I sit here by myself and I can hear the music and feel the chair and listen to the keyboard and all I can think about is how it would feel to be shredded – to be in so many pieces as to be unrecognizable.  To not be me.

I don’t want to say good bye to her.  It should be the other way around.  I mean, really, I’m not exactly doing anything amazing with this life.  Give it to someone who has something to contribute.  Give it to someone who can make others feel better about their struggles, about their humanity.

Because in the end, that is all we have.

And for what it is worth, I’m sorry.  I know that I am too late.  I’m always too late.  Still.  I’m sorry.  I’ll do better next time.  I promise.

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.

Tolerance

I curse my high alcohol tolerance.  Seriously, of all the things to have, this one is possibly the most expensive and most deceptive.  I should be in the land of fuzzy bliss right now.  Instead I’m thinking about all the things that I need to do at work tomorrow and the fact that I didn’t get jack done on my thesis tonight and yeah, I worked another 10 hours straight, but whatever – it’s an office job.  I shouldn’t be this tired.  Not from that.  I aim for fuzzy bliss because that is where the thinking stops.  And I would give just about anything to get the thinking to stop.  I’m not just talking about the job, but about the debts, the unpaid and unpayable bills, the 10 lbs that just won’t leave, the fact that I do not take good care of my dog, my house, or myself, my constant exhaustion, the panic attack that I had on Saturday, and the thesis.  Always the thesis.

The depression is worse than I remember it being in a long time – both in intensity and duration.  It exhausts me as much as anything else – more even.  Every moment that I am alone is a battle of sorts.   Either I distract myself or I fantasize about everything just being done.  Finis.  It is a very alluring fantasy, considering.  And by considering I mean the fact that I simply cannot do all the things needed to live on my current schedule.  Today, as I was getting home around 7:15 (I left for work about the same time – only AM and that was after walking the dog this morning – I never thought I’d be that person who gets up at 4:45 in the morning – every morning.  It sucks, especially since I don’t usually fall asleep until midnight or later) my neighbor stopped me to tell me that the plastic protective undercarriage to my car was dragging… again.  He offered to help me fix it, but honestly I was so tired that it just didn’t seem worth it.  So what if my car falls apart.  So what if I fall apart.  So what.  I told him I’d tie it back into place, but that next time it happens (next week) I’d get him to help me.  That may have been a lie.  I’m not sure.

Sunday this same neighbor parked his bike in my walkway and came to my door and introduced himself.  He left his business card.  I had been working at the computer and hadn’t properly dressed myself for visitors (no bra and comfy short workout shorts).  This wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been JWs or some other religious affiliate – who seem to hone in on my house like a beacon.  I like making them vaguely uncomfortable.  But this was my neighbor.  And I was wearing clothing that I would never wear outside in public.  And my hair was down.  I never wear my hair down anymore.  I try very hard to look either like an old sour spinster or a lesbian – and sometimes both, depending on the circumstances.  Sunday I looked like neither, and I realized only too late the impression I probably made.  I would have considered it a negative one.  I don’t know that he felt the same way.  He essentially asked me out – with compliments.  I’m not used to that.  Nor am I comfortable with it.

He knows where I live.

Every time I have to walk to the copier or the printer at work I wish I was invisible.  I am invisible in my cube.  Every time somebody looks over the wall and makes accidental eye contact, there is this moment of absolute awkwardness.  I wasn’t there until they looked.  And they look away quickly so as to correct the error – before the space-time continuim collapses or such like.  Not that I’m invisible (god, I really do wish) but that I am other.  Always other.  I don’t socialize.  I don’t personalize.  I don’t share.  Which is counter to everything I am – Hello, Gemini here.  It was a hard lesson to learn, but never again will my work-mates become my friends.  All will remain separate.  Always.

A big part of the problem is that I’m not getting enough exercise.  I don’t have the time or energy to work on my thesis either.  At first I thought I was just being lazy – all those weekends I’ve spent either sleeping or reading trashy comic books.  Then Saturday, after another hard week (on the tail of two months of hard weeks) I interrupted my solo time to go to a party held by some of my best friends.  I knew I was going to have a panic attack as I was getting ready.  I was shaking by the time I walked up to the door.  I knocked twice, not very loud, and then waited.  The shakes got worse and worse and finally I turned to leave.  Only somebody saw me from the window and they rushed out to open the door and call me back.  I was into my second drink before the shaking finally stopped.  And I tried so hard to keep my mouth shut.  Do not talk.  Do not talk.  Do NOT talk.

I still talked.  Too much.

The panic attacks have been worse than ever too, and they’ve kept me indoors more than ever.  I don’t remember the last time I felt comfortable enough in my own skin to go out on my own.  It’s been a while.  Italy maybe.  Which is part of why I drink.  Part of why I’m looking for that warm fuzzy feeling.  Hell, I’d even go for a cold buzzy feeling.  Anything but this here, now, this… empty.  Wish in one hand, shit in the other…

I’ll be getting up at 4:45 again tomorrow.  It is the only way I get anything done during the day.  Not to say that I am not productive at work – I am.  Incredibly so even.  But work takes up so much of my life right now that if I want clean dishes and clean clothes and a clean floor (totally bonus at this point) I have to start early.  And odds are I’ll finish late.  Because this?  This is impossible.  Doing everything to the level expected is impossible.

I’ll keep trying though.

Now I need to go fold clothes.  And do today’s dishes.  God, I wish I was drunk.

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.

The Future is Now

When I started Grad School I knew I was going to be putting my life on hold for a while.  There were the financial considerations for sure, but more than that, I knew that if I was going to do it right I was going to have to commit a huge amount of time.  Not just class time and reading time and writing time, but thinking time and understanding time.  That is about to come to an end.

Granted, it is going to get more intense before it is over.  I know that.  I’m prepared.  But I also know that I’m going to need a reset when this is over.  I haven’t had a real vacation – the kind where you don’t take work or textbooks with you – since 2005.  And those breaks I have had were short.  I think there was one time where I had five days in a row off.

It was between jobs.

Tonight I cleaned out my savings account and bought tickets to Rome.  I didn’t consult with anyone before doing this.  I didn’t ask my employer (it looks like I really will have a job with the City once my internship is finished in a couple of weeks).  I didn’t talk to any friends.  I haven’t told my parents.  There are a handful of logistic issues that will need to be addressed – Dog being the major one.  Three weeks – yes, three weeks – is a long time to leave Dog anywhere.  I don’t want to send her back to my brother’s house to be chained to the patio, but that is definitely an option.  So is boarding her at the vet’s.  They love her there.

I have no idea how I will finance the rest of the trip – the plane tickets cleaned me out.  It will all work out though.  I have a really good feeling about it.  And if worst comes to worst, I have a credit card – that I have once again paid off to 0.  Plus, I think I have a couple hundred euros around here somewhere from my first European trip.  I had food poisoning on the way back and didn’t have the patience to get the currency exchanged at the airport.  It’s been in a ziplock bag ever since.

There is a big change in the works.  I can smell it.  Or maybe that is Dog’s Frito Feet.  Either way, snacky!

I’ve realized two things in the last few weeks.  First, I really need to adjust my diet.  Second, I need to do something about my depression.

The diet – I’ve been on a severely calorie restricted diet for years now.  Most days of the week I ingest 1600 or fewer calories.  Considering that a 1000 calorie workout is not an unusual thing for me, you’d think I was rail thin.  No so.  I’m not overweight, but my body refuses to let go of the last layer of subcutaneous fat no matter what I do.  I’ve finally accepted that maybe that is because my body thinks it will starve to death if it does.  So this week I’ve started a new diet.  I’ve doubled my protein intake and cut my processed carbs and sugars by 70 or 80%.  So far it has been interesting.  I’ve had a little more energy, and, since the protein and veggies I’ve been eating are by default lower calorie than the carbs, I’ve allowed myself to eat more – to eat until I feel full.  I’m not used to eating until I feel full.  It usually only happens one meal a week or so.  Today it happened three times.  And while I did have the sugar craving, I didn’t have the between meals snack attacks that I usually have.  I’ll give it two more weeks to see how it goes – if I have any noticeable changes in my weight/energy levels/muscle tone before I re-assess.

The sugar is going to be the hardest part to give up.  I can already tell.

The other thing is that I’ve accepted that I have a serious problem with the depression.  It isn’t constant – I don’t constantly feel like ending my life.  But periodically, and usually about one week before my cycle, I come down with the kind of depression that could and probably should put me in the mental ward.  I do a pretty good job of hiding it in front of other people.  Then again, I do a pretty good job of hiding all emotion in front of other people.  Unless I make an effort to express anger or happiness or whatever other people generally don’t know.  I’ve learned to make an effort – particularly with positive emotions – because I think that makes other people feel more connected and it lets me experiment with being emotionally exposed.  Which is a good thing.

I was not always like this.  I think my emotions used to be much closer to the surface.  Things have changed a lot though.

But the depression is definitely a problem.  Another month like the last – and I’m not sure what might happen.  That is part of the reason for the trip – it is something to look forward to no matter what.  It’s paid for.  Done deal.  No backing out.  And if it comes down to having something to look forward to and drugs, I’ll take the something to look forward to.  I’m hoping that having that something will help me to keep some perspective when the hormones take over.  I’m also hoping that the dietary adjustment will help prevent some of the rollercoaster that my processed carb diet was fueling.  Mostly, though, if March is like February, I’ll be going to the doctor and doing whatever I need to do to get the uppers or downers or whatever it takes to make it through that pre-cycle week.

Stuff like that makes me wish I had the kind of PMS associated with bitchiness and chocolate cravings – instead of wanting to kill myself.  Yeah.

So, to sum up, I think I have a real job offer in the works.  I’ll know the details next week.  I’ve planned for my post-grad vacation – the one I promised myself I would take but kept putting off the planning until I was almost convinced not to take it.  I’ve changed my diet – hopefully for the better.  And I’ve accepted that if I don’t get a real grip on my emotional variations, I need to get professional help.

And I’m in the thick of my thesis.

There is a chalkboard at work that is on the mid-floor landing of the staircase leading to the second story.  Every month somebody writes something at the top and invites people cruising the stairs to write responses.  Last month was a question about goals for 2011.  I didn’t write anything.  This month the question is “What inspires you?”  This time I had an answer.

A Challenge.

I’m feeling pretty inspired.  🙂

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.

A Bit of Fiction

A friend of mine likes to share the familiar saying – what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.  I like to follow that up with “yeah, or leaves you scarred and horribly disfigured.” but that is just me.  It’s a cliche, the whatever doesn’t kill you saying.  Things become cliche for a reason.  Usually because of their proximity to a truth.

Today I went to my second ever office holiday party.  The first holiday party where I wasn’t deeply wishing there were some sort of spirits to provide some social lubrication – or to at least quiet some of the voices in my head – the voices that are in charge of reminding me that there is so much work to do and so little time to do it and what am I doing at a “party” when I should be writing papers.  Like I would confess to the other voices here.  Whenever I go to a social event like this, I’m always worried that somebody is going to ask me about myself.  A person doesn’t have to ask  very many questions before the answers start to get very awkward.  And I’m not even talking about specific questions.  General questions lead to very strange places in my life.

In the past I’ve been evasive, too truthful, played dumb, just plain lied, and changed the topic when the subject was me.  I can be subtle at this or very obvious.  But the reality is, I like the people I work with now.  They are good people.  And I don’t want to put myself in a position where I have to maintain an overly complicated story.  For instance, when somebody asks me how I know how to do this or that or the other, I don’t want to have to try to remember how much of my story I’ve told them – or worse, which of my stories I’ve told them.

So every time I prepare to go to a social event I plan out exactly how much of my story I will tell.  Just in case.  Sometimes I don’t need it, but more often than not I’m the new person, and the new person is responsible for providing new stories.  This morning, on the way to the holiday party, I prepared my story.  I didn’t need it, thank goodness.  I’m much happier right now being in the background.  I don’t think things will always be this way.  I know they won’t.  But for now I don’t put my name on anything.  I claim no credit, no responsibility, no accolades.  I do my best to be solidly in the margin.

The story I prepared this time is different than all of the other stories I’ve told.  Not in content, because the events are what they are.  But it is different in perspective.  It is not a victim story – I’ve way outgrown that phase.  Besides, still playing the prey when you’ve actually become the predator is difficult to convincingly pull off.  Nor is it still the “I’m responsible for everything” story.  I think I’ve finally accepted that there have been a lot of things in my life that I simply had no control over.  These are things that even stunted my range of reaction.  I did what I could with what I had.  It might have taken me longer, and I might have done it the hard way, but really, I didn’t have a lot else to work with.

This new story is that my life right now is the results of a combination of my choices and my luck.  And neither have been all that great.  At the same time, I’m starting to understand why people come to me when they are trying to figure something out or when they need additional information or a new perspective.  A lot of that has to do with my bad choices and my bad luck – because that is what taught me the most.  Which gives me a new perspective about my choices and luck.  I have been cursing both – I feel like I should be established by now.  But the chances are very good that I’ll never be established – at least not in the way I think I should be.  And maybe I should learn to be OK with that.

In the break room today I was asking questions about what triggered ground cover requirements for recently cleared land.  Yeah, I’m a real ball of fun.  Anyway one of the people I was talking to inquired why I was asking.  I told him about the abandoned houses that have recently been demolished in my neighborhood and how the lots are now sitting open and bare at the start of the rainy season, and how I was hoping they wouldn’t turn into huge muddy messes.  Of course they will, but I’m still stuck on a time in my life when the ground froze during winter, so don’ t hold my optimism against me.  The person who asked me why sat for a minute after I explained the bulldozed houses and then he asked me where I lived.  I gave him my neighborhood and he stared laughing.  “You take the whole living the adventure thing all the way home, eh?”  And I smiled.  “I like to be consistent.”  Which is a total lie, but it sounded witty in the moment.

I’m getting closer to the truth about myself.  The more I’m around other people, the more I talk to them and listen to them and think about them the more I understand my choices and my luck and my role in my own life.  I’m unusual, an outlier even.  But I’m not the only one.  Which is helping me to understand that while I’m sure I am deeply scarred and grossly disfigured, I’m also much stronger than I give myself credit for.  Turns out, all those bad bits didn’t kill me after all.

I know.  I’m as surprised as you are.