Repeating the Pattern

A few years ago, after several negative experiences in the dating arena, I gave up.  I just quit.  I quit going out, I quit pursuing people, I quit making eye contact with guys, I just quit.  I still made new friends, and I had a couple of romantic encounters – though even those are years back now – but the idea of even attempting anything stable or real was foreign and unreal.  I was so tired and so broken down. 

This last year has been one of the most difficult I can remember.  But, for all of that I’ve made some incredible progress.  I’ve learned to be ok with myself – to even like myself.  I still hide, and I have no idea how to interact with members of the opposite sex, but I’m not walking around assuming that I’m a pox on society anymore.  I’m even trying to do things that help people – legitimate things, even though they are almost always bureaucratically impossible.  But next year 17 poor families will have new safe and clean homes partly due to my efforts.  And that means something.  Kinda. 

Over the last couple of weeks I had a run-in with my neighbor that went from unwanted and annoying to creepy to downright threatening.  I had to get the police involved.  And I made a couple of discoveries.  I can think even when things are going completely wrong.  I can analyze risk and asses responses and make decisions based on projected future outcomes, not just the immediate situation.  Granted, I didn’t take action soon enough in this case, but I didn’t wait until it was too late either.  I did find one thing, though, that disturbed me.  I’ve come to associate this kind of behavior with all men.  At least all men that I don’t work with and that I am not friends with.  I’m excepting those men because they are work-mates and friends before they are men.  Also, they’re all married or seriously involved.

Yet it would not be wrong to say that I’ve written off the vast majority of the male half of the species.  And I haven’t switched teams or anything so convenient.  I’ve just been alone.  Very alone. 

I’ve learned how to be ok being alone most of the time.  It’s a mix of being very very busy, keeping the stress level at the very edge of manageable, and spending anything remotely resembling free time occupied by something eminently distracting.  No introspection allowed.  And most of the time it works.  I haven’t felt lonely in a long time. 

Yet when the police were over last Sunday the officer taking my statement said something about how it was just me here in my house, just me, and I know that what he was trying to do was to emphasize my vulnerability.  But what actually happened is that I had this sharp pang of loneliness like I hadn’t experienced in a long time.  It felt like part of my insides were shriveling up all raisin like.

It is fascinating to me – as much as I’ve grown in my own personal view, I still don’t see myself living another five years.  I can immerse myself in work as much as I want, but it doesn’t erase the fact that I’m alone.  Some people see that as vulnerable or stifling.  I don’t see it that way.  Being alone is like standing on the top of an amazing mountain watching an amazing sunset and having nobody to share it with.  Eventually even the most amazing sunsets become difficult to fully appreciate without the opportunity to occasionally see it through someone else’ eyes.

I have a friend who has moved in with her boyfriend and his children.  She is struggling so much, and I watch her and feel a sense of dread.  I can’t help wondering what it is she gets out of the situation to make it worthwhile.  I can’t figure out if I’m missing something critical or if she’s just putting on a brave face.  My bosses daughter recently went through a mental breakdown because her relationship ended.  I cannot fathom ever letting someone else in that close that their absence causes that much disturbance. 

I think I’m the odd one here.

A good friend warned me last night about letting this most recent negative experience jade me on men for good.  He tried hard to remind me that not all men are creeps and stalkers and dangerous.  They don’t all just take regardless of the other person’s feelings.  They are not all inherently soulless.  It is sad that I need that reminder.  But the truth is that when you don’t put yourself out there to meet people the people you do end meeting are the ones who seek you out – and the vast majority of them do that for a reason.  They want something.  That’s been my deal for years now. 

Last night I signed up on one of the online dating sites – one of the ones that asks for money.  For the first time in five years I have the money.  I’m not well off by any stretch, but I can make my bills.  I can get my teeth fixed.  I can change the oil in my car (or I will as soon as I’m not working 8 and 10 hours of overtime a week).  I can afford the $70 to try a dating site.  But I’m anxious.  I’m anxious that this will be money wasted, that this will be more of the same, that I’m still so busy with so many demands on my time that I’ll give up again.  I’m anxious that it’s too late for me that I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist.  I’m anxious that I will have tossed this $70 that I could really use for a new pair of running shoes or some work clothes or ski poles or a trip to the groomer for the dog. 

Is the possibility of not spending the rest of this life alone worth $70?  I guess that seems like a silly question to most folk, but with the way this last year has gone, it is a very real risk for me.  I won’t make it through another one like this.  I’m sane now.  I’ve been sane for a little while.  But I can hear the wolves crying at the gate; my sanity is a precarious thing, and I wonder how much of that is due to the part where I am always alone.

I had one very clear realization as I was figuring out how to deal with my neighbor.  I realized that if I needed to I could end him.  If he broke into my house or attempted to attack me or did anything to my dog he would essentially be declaring open season on his life.  But I don’t want it to ever come to that.  And the guilt I would feel if I didn’t do everything I could to prevent it from coming to that would be overwhelming. 

This solitude has become a burden and a source of negativity and depression.  It seems like it would only be reasonable that I do my best to fix the situation before I allow myself to succumb to it.  Otherwise why even pretend that I want things to get better?

But $70?  I’ve been so poor for so long that it seems like a ridiculously large amount of money.  And I’m already under so much stress with so many deadlines.  Do I really want to try this?  I have no expectations of success.  I just want to meet people who don’t think stalking is a great way to get girls to like them.

Funny, but right now that desire seems unrealistic. 

Yep.  I’m jaded.

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.

Making up for Lost Time

It isn’t really lost, that time that I seem to be trying to make up for.  I mean, I know where it went.  I even know how it happened.  And I know that a lot of it wasn’t my fault – not all of it, because I did make more than my share of mistakes, but a lot happened that I could never have predicted or prepared for.

So Be It.

What does it mean when your friends stop calling?  Quit asking you to do things?  Are no longer checking to see if you’re still alive?  What does it mean when your definition of “fun” is sleeping when it is still light out?  I have worked myself into a pit.  Every morning I get to the office and it feels like I never even left the night before.  I just went into the ladies’ room and changed my clothes, maybe brushed my hair and fixed my eyeliner and then limped back to my desk.  I limp now not because I’ve been out rock climbing and mountain biking and hiking and running and having adventures, but because the bottoms of my feet hurt.  I don’t know why, but it started when I had to cut way back on my exercising.

I mean way back.

And it wasn’t because I was injured or because I was sick – though I’ve been both.  It was because I had and still have too much work to do.

As someone who uses exercise in place of anti-depressants, this cutback has not been a positive experience.

It isn’t like the workload will lighten either.  Not in the foreseeable future.  And I don’t know what to do about it.  There is just so much, and I can’t seem to get on top of any of it.  Which isn’t like me.  Other people seem to think I’m doing a pretty good job.  They have an idea of what has happened – of the instant and overwhelming increase in sheer workload that came with my still shiny permanent job position.

Fuck it.

That is my attitude about so much right now.  And I’ve been secluding myself – hiding in my house when I’m not hiding in my cubicle – so that I don’t end up exposing my friends to my shitty attitude.  Or maybe it is so that I don’t end up exposing myself to my friends.  I’m at my limit.  I don’t know that very many of them have seen me this way.

Probably because I always go into seclusion when it happens.

The worst part is that I’m not actually feeling negative about life in general right now.  There is so much I want to do and so much I want to try.  The problem is that I feel smothered.  I’m not even trapped – I’m way beyond trapped.  This isn’t a cage or a set of spring release iron jaws staked to the ground.  No, this is buried alive.  This is Kill Bill – One-Inch-Punch – out of the coffin buried alive.  Only I never learned one-inch-punch.

Something is going to have to give here.  And soon.  And odds are, it will be me.

Because god knows it won’t be my luck.  My luck goes like this – work a year as an intern, take on another full time employee’s job in addition to internish tasks (which were always way above intern level), fight for a month with HR to get a real position with benefits, end up classified as an assistant (second lowest pay grade) doing managerial (mid pay grade) level work, work 50 to 60 hours a week without overtime, continue indefinitely.

Only I won’t do this indefinitely.  2 years tops.  If this job isn’t my bestest most favorite thing by then, I’m out.  I have a plan.  I will figure this out and I will make things go my way for once.

But right now I just want to drive my car off a bridge.  I’m thinking get drunk first and do it at night.  Much less chance of accidental survival.

That’s how it feels.  That isn’t how it is.  I know this.  I know the chemicals in my brain are all messed up right now.  I know it.  I just don’t know what to do about it.  Because, see, I would go exercise, but I just worked 12 hours straight – without lunch – for the third day in a row.  And now all I want to do is get very very drunk and pretend that tomorrow is never going to happen and that I do not have to get up at 5 am and that I do not have to spend another 12 hours staring at spreadsheets and legal documents and god-awful accounting.

This is not to say that I’m not making progress.  I am making progress.  I’m checking stuff off the list.  It is just that the list is so very long.

And my thesis…  My poor thesis.  I’m so close and yet still so far.  I thought I had a solution, but it turned out not so much.  I’m constantly on the verge of a migraine and it seems right now that anything that even slightly messes with my brain chemistry sends me right into the land of sunglasses at night.  And not in the fun clubby “I’m Mysterious” way either.

Speaking of mysterious… SEGUE!!!

(This is a reward for anyone who read through the above drivel.  I am sorry sorry sorry.  But not that sorry.  🙂

In case I’ve never mentioned it before, I have a deep distrust of huggy people.  Generally speaking, I require that I know someone for quite a while before I allow the hugging.  The hugging makes me uncomfortable, even when it is family and close friends, and so a person must generally earn a certain level of trust before I will do the hug – the “ok, I’m going to make myself totally physically vulnerable here, so please don’t stab me in the back or do anything too suspicious” full body contact hug.  I just gave myself the willies.  Seriously.  Now the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end.  It is unpleasant.

Anyway, I have a methodology to avoiding the hug.  It is a careful balance of reduced eye contact at the conclusion (or introduction) of communication combined with an equally careful distancing of myself from the other person.  Because even the most socially retarded individual will not cross a room to hug a person who has not looked them in the eye at all during the last 10 minutes.  I seldom have to go that far, most people, even huggy people, pick up the physical cues pretty easily.  Naturally even.

Not my neighbor.

I have a new neighbor who had decided that he is very attracted to me and that he wants us to be an item.  I will don’t go into detail except to say that even if I wasn’t absolutely overwhelmed with work and with my thesis, and even if I wasn’t suicidally depressed, and even if I was possibly considering maybe thinking about someday trying to see if there could be room for a relationship, it wouldn’t be with him.  It is not that he isn’t attractive or the like.  I’m sure some women find him very attractive – especially in my neighborhood.  Just not me.  Probably because at least 1/3 of what I say goes right past him like he never even heard it and probably because he is horrible at picking up my verbal and physical cues.

He’s been coming on strong for a few weeks now – leaving stuff in my mailbox and coming by at least once a week – usually two or three times – to say hi and chat for a couple of minutes.  He often waits until my lights go on just after I get home from work – when I am both exhausted and starving and in absolutely no frame of mind to hold a conversation.

That was what happened tonight.  I was still changing out of my work clothes when the doorbell rang.  My dog, who was also starving, was so busy stuffing her face with her fresh bowl of dog food that she didn’t even bother barking, which is telltale of just how common this is becoming.  I knew he was at the door before I even opened it, and I knew that he knew I was home so there was no point in trying to hide.  Because if I could have gotten away with it I totally would have hid.

I opened the door and he started going on about how beautiful I looked – BULLSHIT – and how attractive I am – MORE BULLSHIT – and the rest of it that a guy who is looking to get laid throws out there.  I was not ready to be rude, so I changed the subject and asked about the pile of trash that had magically migrated from the street to the yard of the house where it originated.

See, a couple of months ago the people moved out of the house behind me, and left all of their furniture, food, and trash behind.  The landlord died before he could do anything about the house.  And there it sits even now.  People have been going in and taking stuff out and throwing it in the yard or in the empty lot across the street, but no real solution has presented itself.

And the roaches and rats are having a field day.

I do not like roaches or rats, and I hate navigating a pile of trash every time I try to back out of my garage.  So when I saw that the trash had moved from the street to the yard of the offending residence, I was pleased.  My neighbor said that he had done the moving.

This is where I made my fatal mistake.  I opened my glass security door and stepped outside to talk to him about the trash and the neighboring house and about his thoughts.

I kept my distance.  Of course I kept my distance.  Because I always keep my distance.  And at first he seemed to be aware and respectful.  We chatted for five minutes, and then it was time to go back in and get my dinner.

This is when things get weird.

I’d been doing my reduced eye contact thing.  I’d been increasing the physical distance.  Still, he hopped up on my porch and made the “hug me” pose.  There is no way to ignore this pose without being insulting.  No possible way.  Unless you are sick – and that’s a card you have to play early for it to work.  I had not played that card.

So I hugged him.  I’d planned on a quick back thump – masculine style – and an even quicker retreat into my house.  Instead he grabs me and kisses my neck and then immediately kisses my mouth.  And we aren’t talking European style lips to lips here.  There is instantly tongue pushing against my lips and trying to penetrate my mouth.

I jerked back and pushed him out to arms length.  He’d win in a strength contest, but I can still be surprising – even as out of shape as I am.  I made some sort of cliche remark – something like “easy, action” or something and completely cut off all eye contact.  He proceeded to tell me how attractive he found me and how he was going to pursue me and how he could take it slow and work with it for a couple of months, and this whole time I kept thinking “yeah, and what if I don’t want it?  Because I don’t want it.”

I am dismayed to state that I was too disoriented to do what I needed to do – which was set him straight right then and there.  The last thing I need is another psycho stalker type experience – especially from a neighbor.  I mean, I’ve been civil to this particular guy, but I’ve never been encouraging.  I do not volunteer.  And I do not go looking.  Civil.  Polite.  Neighborly.

I never asked him to stick his tongue in my face.  I never even hinted that that might be ok.

This is why I can’t stand hugs.  Huggy people are just too unpredictable.

I did hurry back into my house and I did proceed to rush to the bathroom and rinse my mouth out and spit and try to rub away the feel of it all.  I did this without really thinking about it, though now I can still feel where his tongue touched my lips.  BLECH.

This is the purest definition of “do not want”.  This is anti-want.  The opposite of want.  Want not.

He’ll probably be back around some time this weekend.  I’m going to have to be explicit, I think, with how things stand.  I hate this kind of shit.  Hate.  Hell, I’m even hiding from my friends, can’t my neighbors take a hint?  I’ll do it though.  Because, now, it needs to be done.

Unless I simply work myself to death in the meantime.  Here’s hoping!

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.

Enter the Weekend

It is another weekend, and I promise that I will not spend it in isolation.  I will not lose whole days to sleeping and reading trashy comic books and waiting for the sun to set so I can sleep some more.  Don’t get me wrong, the sleeping is wonderful.  Lately I’ve been going the whole week on about 3 or 4 hours a night and by the weekend I’m so exhausted that I feel ill.  I’ve given up the sleeping pills.  They work, but everything has side effects.  I’m sick of the side effects.

For the last three weeks I’ve been learning new knife techniques.  The first time that my instructor drew the dulled blade across my throat I cringed with the kind of squeamishness that comes with movie scenes involving close-up scalpel cuts – which is to say that I almost gagged on my own discomfort.  I’ve done knife work before, but it was always along the lines of “bad guy pointing knife at you” and never along the lines of “bad guy slicing you to ribbons”.  The second is much different from the first.

I’ve finally gotten ok with the concept of a blade against my throat or across my gut.  I still get unnerved by the stab from behind.  It is so undefensible if you don’t see it coming.  But the rest – I’m learning a new sort of acceptance – or maybe it is resilience.  If I’m going to think about this realistically, it’s necessary.  In a knife fight, one tends to get cut.

I’ve also started throwing knives.  I can already tell that this is one of those activities where  I become proficient, but never quite excellent.  But it is fun.  In a “good god, watch out for your toes” sort of way.  I hadn’t realized how much a part of me the martial arts are until I went without.  I’m no badass.  I’m definitely no ninja.  But I’m not afraid.

A few years ago I made the mistake of thinking I was strong.  I thought I had sufficiently healed my mental and emotional wounds and that I had strength to spare for others.  I was wrong.  I had simply put bandages on my wounds and seriously overestimated my strength.  It is humbling to realize how little I had then.  And it is revealing as to my true strengths now.  And that is not in a good way.

I got the dog a while ago in part to protect me and my property and in part to see what happens when I am regularly around another living creature – to see if I could become attached.  It’s been over a year since she came to live with me and I know the answer to the last bit.  I care for her.  I am affectionate and attentive – though not as attentive as I should be.  And I’m planning what I will do with my life once she is dead.  It doesn’t include another dog.  I really like her.  But I am not attached.  Leaving her would be similar to leaving my furniture or my car or my house – any of it is leave-able.  Which answers my most important question.

Which was, can I be in a relationship?

No.  At least, not a real and serious long-term relationship.  Not the way that most people commonly think of relationships.  This is good to know though.  It will prevent wasted effort.  This has come up in conversations with a couple of my friends and their reactions have been similar to the child discussion – the “you will change your mind some day” reaction.  I’m swiftly nearing the end of my childbearing opportunities and the desire is even less now than ever.  It is not something I can fathom.  Just like actually being with another person is no longer something I can fathom.  It all seems too strange and unreal.  And I don’t feel that I am missing out.  Not really.  I’m so tired of the media interpretation of relationships – of listening to my neighbors fight and my coworkers complain – I’m sick of the way that everyone seems to have unrealistic expectations – I’m done catering to others.

I’ve learned to say no.  It’s a great word.  “NO”.

For the first time in my adult life I no longer hate myself.  It’s strange, and I get confused sometimes.  I have moments where the old me would have had fits (work-out tights on my heavier than usual ass) and I ignore it.  It isn’t there – not in the same way.  I still know what it looks like or feels like or sounds like – I just don’t care.  I’m not going to beat on myself just because I’m not model material.  Just like I’m done beating on myself for not being intelligent enough to avoid each and every of my life mistakes.

Shit happens.

But I am still depressed.  I still think about death a lot.  It is strange to be depressed and not hate myself.  Which proves that the depression is really a chemical imbalance and not based on my inherent flaws.  Because I’m learning to accept my inherent flaws.  But the depression… it sneaks up on me.  It starts slowly, with a feeling of general malaise – things just aren’t right.  And it ignites with a tiny voice whispering in my ear – nothing you do will make any difference.  You will leave nothing of value.  Your life is a waste – a drain on the environment.  You have no future. – and I try not to listen, but it is low and smug and so very insistent and suddenly I’m thinking about driving my car into the freeway meridian.  Head on style.  At 90 mph.

I can see the depression so much clearer now and I know the feelings for what they are.  I am not in the same fog as before.  But the words that little voice shares – they are not entirely wrong.  And I find myself asking the same question fairly frequently.  Why am I doing this?

Far too often the answer is totally unsatisfying.

And maybe this has something to do with my ability to handle the feeling of a dull knife drug across my throat.  Though it hasn’t helped in the part where I have to drag the knife against someone else’s throat.  That part still gicks me out hardcore.

I will be productive this weekend.  And maybe it will chase away some of the funk. Or maybe it will just mean getting a lot of old work caught up.  I’m ok either way.  I don’t think I’ll ever be completely not OK again.  I actually kind of like the person I am now.  I just wish I felt that person had something to hang around for.  Cuz right now it’s not looking like there is a lot of demand.

Once Upon a Time…

Once upon a time I was dangerous.  Once upon a time I trained myself to fight everything and anything that came up against me.  Once upon a time I thought up ways to hurt others.  Once upon a time.

I am searching for a new motivation.  For years I lived off of anger.  I was so angry with the world around me and at the things that had happened to me.  And I was angry with myself.  Then one day I woke up and the anger was gone.  I floundered a bit and began to punish myself for the floundering.  I punished myself for not being as strong as I wished I was, for not being as self-disciplined as I thought appropriate, for not being as pretty or as smart or as charming as I thought I could be.  And I fed on that punishment.  It was my motivation.  I’m tired of punishment.  I will not do it anymore.  I have no anger.  I have nothing to punish.

I am unmotivated.

I have attached my motivation to negative emotions for so long that now that I have decided that it will no longer be that way I don’t know how to motivate myself.  I don’t know how to make myself do the things I need to do.  I’m so tempted to go back to the punishment – but I hated it so much.  It made me so unhappy.

I don’t know how to be ok with myself.  I don’t know how to be happy.  I look back on my life and there were only a few years in my childhood that were not difficult or painful.  Not that having a difficult childhood is a bad thing.  I am not complaining.  The path that has taken me to where I am has been an incredible one, and I have few regrets.  Ok maybe that one night in New Orleans.  But only that.  But I have never learned how to be happy.  Every moment of happiness came with strings – kind of like laying in the guillotine.  Sure it may be comfortable, but that blade is going to drop any moment.

I am gradually trying to work my way back into the martial arts.  Something tells me that it is the answer to the question I am trying to ask.  It is blatantly apparent how much my body has changed, and I resent aging.  I resent surgery.  I resent all the injuries that have compromised my strength.  And I wonder how I overcome it.  I don’t doubt that it can be overcome.  Martial artists do not live much past 40 if they do not figure out how to overcome the repercussions of their choices.  Not as active martial artists they don’t.

Which brings me to the question – what am I?

I used to be dangerous.  Today I was in a meeting and I surprised myself by how much I knew about the topic.  Last Sunday I tried to remember my kata and found that I could only reliably perform half of them.  It was as though I could not connect my body to my brain.  My body knew what to do, but my brain… it wasn’t sure what time zone it was it.  There is no reconciliation.

For a long time I tied my identity to my ability to defend myself – and anyone I cared about.  I would still probably be a pain in the ass in a fight – though I am not the fighter I was.  But it is not my identity.  Nor am I a scholar.  Nor a public servant.  Nor a wife or mother or lover.

I am lonely, but not in the bad way.  I find that I crave solitude.  And I am a little unnerved by the strength of that craving.  My friend tells me that this is a sign of change.  I can taste the change.  It is in everything I do, everything I try and every time I fail.  And I fail a lot.

But what I wish I knew is what comes after?  Change… and then what?  Because I want to know how much energy to invest.  How much time to allocate.

Or maybe I should just give in and rejoin a dojo.  It would be beautiful to work at a single identifiable goal again.

Oh Rats.

I have been having an ongoing battle with rats in my house.  There are lots of reasons for this – though my general slovenlyness is not one of them.  I’m not a neatfreak, but I do what it takes to make sure that I don’t have problems like ants, cockroaches, and yes, rats in my house.  But not everything is up to me.

A neighbor of mine – not sure who – has chickens in their back yard.  I know this because, despite the fact that it is illegal inside city boundaries, they have a rooster who likes to make noise in the wee hours.  Combined with the constantly barking dogs and the sirens and the loud music and all of the other general noise in my neighborhood, a rooster crowing half-way down the block doesn’t generally bother me all that much – which is to say I hear it, I wake up, I grumble, and I go back to sleep. 

There are numerous empty houses in my neighborhood – empty overgrown lots as well.  Garbage in the street and on the sidewalk is common.  And my next door neighbor’s back yard could challenge many small-town landfills for sheer trash accumulation.  Plus, he butchers his own goats.  Which is to say that between the chicken breeder, the empty houses and lots, the trash, and my neighbor, my area is prime ground for rats.  They’ve chosen my house as a prime target because long ago – before it was my house, when the people who lived there were slovenly and unkept and when it sat empty for a few years – it was a regular rat habitat. 

There is a theory that one of the key advantages of humans is that they can share their collective learning across generations – so that each new generation can pick up where the previous left off instead of starting over from scratch.  I would postulate that the rats also have some of this ability because it is highly likely that the rats who are now invading my house are one or two generations removed from the rats that originally infested the house.  They shouldn’t have any memory of the infestation.  But they do.  Oh, they do. 

I consider myself a jack-of-all-trades who can generally handle the vast majority of issues.  But this time, partly because I simply did not have the time or the resources to deal with this problem on my own, I enlisted the help of a professional.  A very expensive professional.  The first time he came out he spread some repellant, gave me instructions on how and when to fill the access points, and a wrote him a nice big check.  The second time he spread some more repellant, gave me some more instructions, and I wrote him another check.  Yet the rats are still there.  In fact, they are worse than ever.

Last night I could hear them in the wall between my bedroom and my laundry room.  There was the obligatory scrabbling.  But there was also a lot of gnawing.  You’d think that the gnawing wouldn’t be so loud – but you can actually feel it when you touch the wall or even an adjacent wall.  This is a kind of noise that surpasses the dogs and the roosters and the sirens and the helicopters.  It lasts for hours and now that the rats know that I can’t directly access them, there is nothing that will make them stop.  So I lay there listening as they chew on my house, watching the spot on the wall where the sound is coming from.  Only last night something else happened – the rats finally saw the fruits of their labors.  They broke through the plaster of my wall and made a hole into my bedroom – while I was lying there watching them. 

This changed things for both of us.  As far as the rats were concerned, the fact that I was sitting right there watching them and now had immediate access to them encouraged them to get the hell out of dodge for the time being.  But for me, I knew that as soon as my house was quiet for a few hours the rats would come back, finish opening the hole to allow them full access and then proceed to run rampant through my house.  And while I have ant and roach proofed my residence, I have not taken the measures necessary to protect against plaster eating rats – which is to say that I don’t have every last bit of food stored in hermetically sealed steel containers.  So I did what any jack-of-all-trades would do when rats suddenly poked a hole in the wall at 1 in the morning.  I shoved the bits of plaster back in the hole and covered it up with duct tape. 

If this were the sum total of last night’s rats-capade, that would be one thing.  When the rats got out of dodge in my bedroom, they didn’t head out into the great wild of my back yard.  They simply went next door – into the laundry room.  They have been taking a different approach to accessing the laundry room.  They are trying to come in through the floor – even if that means chewing through numerous joists and subfloor layers and ceramic tiles.  Even though this is in the other room, it is still noisy enough that I can hear it from my bed, and after listening to them chewing under the threshold of the laundry room door to the back yard for about an hour and a half, I lost my shit. 

I think that up until now my neighbors have considered me to be eccentric but generally harmless – if they considder me at all.  If any of them were paying attention last night, that impression may well have changed.  At 2:30 in the morning I went charging outside and begain banging on the walls and the foundation walls of my laundry room with a shoe, trying to make enough noise to at least get the rats to stop for a moment.  At one point I could tell that they were so close to where I was beating on the wall that when I stopped I could hear their bodies rubbing against the siding.  Yet nothing I did could stop the chewing.  They would pause, rustle around a bit, and then get right back to it. 

I finally gave up around 3 in the morning and went back inside and turned my music up so loud that I couldn’t hear the chewing and tried to sleep through it.  I dozed some.  Not much, but some.  And I kept an eye on the duct tape patch just in case the rats decided to resume that adventure.  This morning, I went to call the exterminator again to have him come back and handle this issue for reals, and discovered that my cell phone was not working.  I had to take care of a chain reaction of events before I could even contact the exterminator, and now I’m waiting for him to call me back.  If he calls me back.

My plan, regardless of what the exterminator does, is to take the three weeks that I am going to be gone as an opportunity to thoroughly poison my property.  Dog will be gone.  Nobody should be wandering around, so I will put poison everywhere.  I will poison the garage and the studio and the crawlspace and the attic and all around the house.  I will put poison out in the open and in crevaces and everywhere I can think.  I’m going to make a map of my property and note where I put the poison so that when I get back I can make sure to collect all of it before I bring Dog back.  And if I manage to kill a few rats in the meantime, I’m ok with that too.  Hopefully they won’t die in the walls, but if they do, so be it.  Summer is comming.  Rat carcasses dessicate quickly in 100 degree heat.  I can live with the stink.

It’s better than sleeping with one eye open – waiting for the duct tape patch on the wall to wiggle.

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.