Author: pookiebear

Fanciful Delights for April 2, 2016

epbab-baseheader-racingstripes-fancifuldelights
Dear Internet, Here is a compendium of things that struck my fancy this week. x0x0, lisa

Fanciful Delights

þ Other than my birthday, Eurovision is the second best time of the year. “Come for the camp, stay for the geopolitical intrigue.”
þ As you may have guessed, I’m always on the lookout for new (or regurgitated) list/articles telling me how to become a successful person. This list is no different BUT there is anecdotal evidence so one person’s failures / successes are always delightful.
þ I fell in love with turn of the century style and pop culture in 2004 when I went to Paris. To help feed that love, New York Public Library has made available 2000 turn of the 20th century pop culture posters.
þ I am still on the fence about seeing Batman vs Superman, but Lego Batman? Top of my list for 2017. (After Wonder Woman, of course.)
þ This past week has had loads of tragic occurrences (can we just throat punch half the world now?) but the article that Microsoft had to remove their twitter AI after it became a Hitler-loving sex robot within 24 hours cheered me up a bit.
þ Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned I was growing warmer to the idea of the Brontes? Here’s another piece of evidence why I should love them.

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

 

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janus – faced: on being bipolar

Dear Internet,
As I started prepping today’s piece, it struck me as I am also a gemini and if you’re hip to astrology, geminis are dual natured. I don’t think you could make my life any more hamfisted or obvious.
So today is World Bipolar Day! Last year, I discovered the cause a day after it occurred — which is always my luck. Since I’m so prolific about writing about my mental state of being, I thought I would take today’s entry and point out some of the resources, blogs, and books that I use to keep my brain in check.
A few disclaimers.

  1. I am not a doctor or a therapist. I cannot treat or diagnose your brain. What I write on this site is what works for me (including drugs, more of which I’ll go into in a sec), so for the love of fuck do not take my experiences as the end all, be all of being bipolar.
  2. Bipolar is, in short, a chemical imbalance in the brain. Unlike things like anxiety or borderline personality disorder, which are managed by talk therapy, it is nearly impossible to function without some kind of drug therapy, in addition to talking therapy. Yes, yes, I know people have said they manage without drug therapy (or talking therapy) and those people who are successful at managing without any type of therapy, successfully, is tiny. Like really, really, tiny.
  3. I implore you not to self-medicate.
  4. There are several different types of bipolarism. I am bipolar 1.
  5. Bipolar is typically comorbid, which means you can be bipolar AND have anxiety AND so on. I am bipolar 1 with anxiety, adhd, and borderline personality disorder.
  6. FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK DO NOT DIAGNOSE YOURSELF ON THE INTERNET AND I DON’T CARE IF YOU USED THE MAYO CLINIC / WEBMD / OR SOME OTHER KIND OF REPUTABLE SITE. You can get recommendations from your general physician, your insurance company or in Google: psychiatrist “name of your city” to get a listing of shrinks in your area. You’re going to want a medicating shrink for your drugs and a talking shrink for your talk therapy. Some doctors can do both. They will diagnose you and work out a treatment plan for you.

The below are resources / books I use or have used and found success with in my management of my brain. I am listing mainly bipolar stuff and US based sites. I have found in my searches for “bipolar” or “bipolar blogs”, up comess lots and lots of academic-y pieces on the disorder or links to sites like WebMD with explanations of the disorder but not much after that. I have also found a few sites that were more about snake oil then providing resources or information.
Which brings me to: Be weary of sites that always want to sell you something like, “How I cured Bipolar in 10 Easy Steps” and that kind of crap. If someone wants to sell you their life story on them and bipolar, that’s one thing, but the rest is mostly snake-oil.
Now the recommendations. (Amazingly, to me, the Reddit subreddit for bipolar is pretty chill.)

Mine

  • Pinterest board where I’ve started curating mental health stuff website
  • Article at MindBodyGreen, “I’ve Had Bipolar Disorder For 20 Years. Here’s How I’ve Learned To Manage It” website
  • EpbaB tags bipolar | bipolar mania | mentally healthy

Reources

Blogs

  • Being Beautiful Bipolar website
  • The Secret Life of Being Manic Depressive website | facebook
  • Bipolar Burble Blog website
  • Breaking Bipolar (also done by the same person as Bipolar Burble Blog) website
  • Bipolar Mom Life website | facebook
  • Bipolar Manifesto website | facebook

Books

I am a:  Librarian. Writer. Nerd. Geek. Sassy.  Pug owner. World traveler. Pierced. Tattooed. Tall.Music and book lover. Discriminating Guinness taster. Aging, alternative hipster. Eco-conscious. Equally in love with James Bond, Jane Austen, and Doctor Who.
I am not the sum of my diagnosis.
My brain is broken but I am not.

I am more the sum of my parts and so are you.

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 1999

 

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Gratitudes: March 21 – March 27, 2016

epbab-header-gratitude
Dear Internet,
Gratitudes and things that make me happy are a part of my carding coursework, and I track them everyday and I’ll post them here every Sunday. (And I also acknowledge this is going to take me a few weeks to go beyond “I have killer hair.”) You can also find the a list of all my gratitudes here.
gratitude

  1. For having an in-building washer and dryer. While I enjoy doing laundry (the smell! the neat piles of folded items!), not having to schelp it out someplace else is a delight
  2. Spring is finally here. It may flare up my allergies but I love the change from one season to another
  3. Friends who send you random presents! (Especially ones who send you fresh baked cookies!)
  4. Wellbutrin continues to work its magic. Let’s all bless science!
  5. The ability to spend time with friends at mini-vacations
  6. New glasses so I can see the world clearer and in focus
  7. For my tattoos, as each one tells a story
  8. For TEH trading days when to walk the dog so neither of us are getting up everyday when the sun rises
  9. I was not the same person I was yesterday, last week, or six months ago. I’ve grown
  10. For music to help express my moods.

happy

  1. Peeps!
  2. Carbonated water
  3. Pita chips and hummus
  4. 1/2 off easter (and halloween) candy
  5. C2E2!
  6. Begrudgingly Daredevil
  7. Pops!
  8. Fluffer nutters
  9. Trader Joe’s speculoos + cocoa swirl paired with pretzels
  10. A new tattoo!

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2001

 

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what the eff does it mean to “let it go”?

Dear Internet,
I woke up feeling particularly sassy this morning so be prepared for lots of salty language.

I’ve been musing about the concept of letting go as of late. But what frustrates me when I go searching for examples is the lack of real world examples. If you tell me X, what does X really look like? Yes, I get everyone’s path is different but what did you do, specifically, to achieve X? The response tends to be some mystical patchouli method, which are slightly helpful but in the end, kind of pointless.
Here is my explanation.

Hate your neighbor? Let it go. Terrible breakup? Let it go. Fighting with your friends? Let it go. Conflict with a colleague? Let it go.
And on, and on, like the repetition of the Disney song of the same name, does it go on for every painful act in your life, the kneejerk response is, let it go.
But what does this mean? How does one let it go? Out comes vague and jargon filled explanation with the zen conduit of non-attachment. The idea here is that if you remove yourself from something, be it a person or an object or situation that is causing you misery, you will gain better clarity and mindfulness into your own life. Viola, you’ve let it go.
But they always forget you to tell you the following is part of the process:

  • What they don’t tell you is while you’re busy simmering in the feelings of fear, pain, and regret, and letting them wash over you, is how fucking painful that process is
  • What they don’t tell you is it’s a long ass process; not something that goes away with a snap of one’s fingers
  • What they don’t tell you is while banging on how this only works when you make the conscious decision of what to or not accept, you’re going to go through a hundred permutations before finding the right combinations and you’re going to be in a lot of pain while you do it
  • What they don’t tell you is how you let go of something varies from person to person and situation to situation, it is not a one stop shop for everyone.
  • What they don’t tell you is that you’re going cycle through these emotions over and over again. One day you’re going to accept that the thing/person/whatever is done/gone and then you’re going to be wailing in grief another day. When the time between those days gets longer, then you are letting go
  • What they don’t tell you is you’ll be working on this, and yourself, for the rest of your life

I beg you once again: What does this look like in real life?

Most of the populace knows about the breakup between TheBassist and I. I was in a fuck ton of emotional pain and to be fair, it was not just about him but also everything about my life up to that moment finally tipped over when he cut the cord. Side step: I’ve said this a zillion times here and on various other places that I have much gratitude for the break up. Without it happening, my life would be a lot worse right now.
Back to the two step.
If you have been a steady reader since October, you have seen the anguish of the break-up. You’ve watched me writhe in pain because I had to write in pain. Moving on, or you know letting go, wasn’t going to happen unless I accepted what had happened was real and when you’re in emotional pain, you’re nowhere near the state of accepting it, hence the attachment.
It had to run its course.
It wasn’t just the online writing where I was writhing in pain, I writhed in real time, wailing and beating my fist against my chest calling mea culpa, mea culpa. Okay, not really — I chain smoked cigarettes, ate a lot of sweets, and cried obtusely on the couch while watching Pride and Prejudice over and over.
I also have a written diary I started right after the break that has 100 pages, at least, solely dedicated to him / us / break up / related. It’s insane, pitiful, and heartbreaking to read. I have only gone back to read it once and I probably won’t do it again. (The remaining 75 or so pages, which brings up to current, moves away from the break-up and more about what’s happening in my life.)
The grieving was everywhere and I, and only me, had to go down this path alone.
In the beginning I was brave and talked about I had already let him go.
But you know, and I know, that was some self-defense mechanism right there. By telling the world I was fine and everything was copacetic, I was moving on with life.
But I wasn’t. I knew I wasn’t but I was tired of people giving me a fixed timetable of when to stop the pain. “Well, it’s been three months, Lisa. Time to get the fuck on.”
In February I said,

Based upon friend’s reactions these last few months, it’s expected I should be discoing my way to someone else. As time marches on, this round of break up many feel I have already said all there is to say about him, the relationship, and the ending. What more could there possibly be? (A lot apparently.)
I spend most days without TheBassist’s presence hovering on the peripheral and then something benign reminds me he hasn’t been thought of and fuck, there he is!
God dammit.
Every couple of therapy sessions there is at least a brief mention of this occurring, how it pisses me off, and how my heart has ghosts of the devastation, which pisses me off even more.
There is no exorcism to dispatch a broken heart.

and

There is no arbitrary time when one person heals from emotional pain. There is no one fits all recipe. We’re assholes when we try to force the thought of, “Well. It’s been x months. Let them go and move the fuck on.” No one can really explain what “moving the fuck on” really entails or means no matter how much they want to. This is my interpretation of healing. This is how I work. This is what I do.
I’ve said it a million times before: If it takes me writing about it, talking with my shrink about it, or just plain thinking about to get to the point I can be freely undistracted (or triggered) by what happened, at my own pace, then that is totally okay. Fuck the haters.
(We are all changed, even a tiny bit, by the people important in our lives. To attempt to eradicate them emotionally and mentally is fucking impossible, unless you are a psychopath but that is not here nor there.)
These are some of the things I need to remember when the time comes to meet and accept someone or I will not have learned a fucking thing.

Friends always think they are trying to be helpful but to me, to you, in the end we want to punch them in the throat.

The letting go process started in December, when someone in his circle said unto thee,

TheBassist loves me and he always will, but I was a 24/7 flight risk. TheBassist broke down Borderline Personality Disorder and how I was sabotaging my life. He would never say never, but now? No.
It was in that moment when a switch flipped in my brain and everything changed. Something about the explanation of BPD TheBassist gave to the friend was that click. TheBassist knew, he’s always known.

When you end things with someone, doesn’t matter who does it, one of you wants to desperately talk to the other. About what? Doesn’t fucking matter; there is just this urgent need to talk. This is part of the attachment, if we don’t let go then it doesn’t end and if it doesn’t end, then there is hope. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a zillion types of pain because you still have something to hold on to.
So when the friend tells me the above, whatever burning need I had to talk to TheBassist dissipated. Poof. Just like that. This was the first hurdle that I sorely, desperately, needed to start letting him go.
The second hurdle came later which is the day I realised I was okay with the idea of dating again. I wasn’t holding myself to this impossible position of waiting until he came back, if he came back. If he did, great. If he didn’t, also great.  If not him, there would be others. I would seriously deep like again (I’m still doubtful of the whole “falling in love” business) and there would be  future lovers; a girl has needs. I had also accepted, without too much heartache, he is or will be dating again. In the end I just wanted him to be happy and if it wasn’t me, then I had to accept he would be happier with someone else.
All I have ever wanted was for him to be happy.
The third hurdle came when a few weeks ago my therapist noted TheBassist was no longer on my top five list of things to talk about. I was barely mentioning him other than an aside. “I found a present he gave me and I put it in his box”; that kind of thing. Most of my conversations these days were of the “Okay, this is what I want to fix” variety rather than some diatribe about TheBassist or related.
The fourth hurdle came a week or so ago when I came to the realization that other than the occasional mention in passing, he wasn’t dominating my thoughts or actions anymore. I was doing things for me and only for me.
The fifth hurdle, which has been ongoing, has been me not trying to put my hand back in the fire. I do not stalk his FB (or related) pages (truly); I do not read his Twitter; I do not read past emails or messages from him.  I’ve mentioned him on my public FB timeline once, a couple of week ago, as an example for a point I was making. I have told mutual friends I do not want to know if he’s dating. I am still friendly with all of his friends that FB BFF’d me in the beginning of it all, but he is never the topic or alluded to in conversation. Last week was the first time since October I asked a mutual friend how TheBassist was doing. Oh, I knew he was fine and kicking ass all over the place, but I wanted the confirmation, which I got. I asked if TheBassist asked about me and the answer, which I already knew, was “no.”
I wasn’t surprised and I wasn’t upset. I just accepted it at face value.
I do not put myself in positions where I feel I may get hurt or triggered. I have let it go.
There will be more hurdles, I’m sure, coming down my way but the hard parts are over. The next series will be smaller and easier. I have learned much and this will be the guide I need to continue moving on.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a belief where I believe (truly) when treetops sway, the gods are talking to me. I always feel better, especially when I’ve been at Throbbing Cabin, sitting peacefully outside listening to the world around me and especially to the gods.
As time moved on, when TheBassist and I started getting more involved, I could always feel him around me when we were apart and when the treetops swayed. I would marvel, sitting on the front porch of Throbbing Manor, watching the sky streak from daylight to sunset, cigarette in my mouth, how close he felt to me, I could feel his arms around me. No matter where I was, if the treetops were swaying and we were apart, I could feel his physicality against me, his chest to my back, chin on my head, I would wrap my arms around myself and smile, knowing wherever he was, he was thinking of me and that he loved me.
When I told TheBassist this a few months into our relationship, and told him dates and times, he responded he was missing / thinking / loving me at those times. I don’t know if he humoured me because he liked this world I had created or if he truly believed it, but nevertheless, I always felt better to believe that it to be true.
But the crazier I got, the more I was out of control, the treetops stopped swaying and I could no longer feel him. Maybe I should I have listened to the gods all those months ago.
I was outside a week or so ago, walking Thursday as you do, when the wind picked up an the treetops swayed. I hadn’t thought about that otherworldly feeling of him around me in months at least since the break-up. But here we are, me standing in the middle of the grassy knoll, Thursday chasing the wind, and the treetops are swaying like mad. And here he was, around me, nothing said and everything understood. It may seem silly, or too woo-woo, or even you may believe JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, LISA you just broken down the method of letting go and you end with woo-woo and gods and treetops swaying. What in thee fuck?
I think that’s the biggest things these gurus and experts and the woo-woo purveyors also forget to tell us is: We carry our experiences with us, no matter what or who they are and no matter what has happened. We’re shaped and influenced by them, they are a part of us. To dismiss it is to dismiss respect of me or you and who I am or who you are. We’re not going to have the same experiences, or the same interpretation of the experiences, or the same outcomes — but that doesn’t make them any less valid! (That is what also pisses me off — a lot of these explanations are treated as one size fits all. NOT EVERYTHING WORKS FOR EVERYBODY.)
I do not read meaning into the treetop swaying woo-woo or the feeling of him around me, but it does give me comfort that no matter how wide the gulf of us may be, there will always another time and place where for a brief second, our worlds were together and they were perfect.
The regret I carry, and is of mine alone, is the wish I had been less crazy when we got together. Different decisions would be made and of course the outcomes would have not been the same. Even if we still broke it off under different reasons I would do it all over again.
But as we know, me most of all, this is not what happened and I cannot change the past no matter what kind of deals I make with the devil. This is where we are and tomorrow is going to be different but in these times in between, I am letting him go.
(And now I do some fucking yoga.)
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2011

 

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C2E2 2016 – part iii (the lemon happens to still be in play)

Dear Internet,
Sunday was the last day of C2E2 and I left the conference a different person than when I arrived. This is to say I got conference cud and I feel terrible.
I blame the children.
The con, as it is every year, is fabulous. If your nerd / geek, I highly recommend hitting this one up. Now on to the images!


xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2003, 2002

Gratitudes: March 14 – March 20, 2016

epbab-header-gratitude
Dear Internet,
Gratitudes and things that make me happy are a part of my carding coursework, and I track them everyday and I’ll post them here every Sunday. (And I also acknowledge this is going to take me a few weeks to go beyond “I have killer hair.”) You can also find the a list of all my gratitudes here.
gratitude
This week I’m in Chicago for C2E2, the yearly event I have attended since 2012. Instead of my usual ten things I’m grateful for, it’s just going to be one big one, which I’ve been breaking down in bits and pieces over the past weeks:

  1. I’m grateful for everyone who has given me support, cheerled me on, gave advice, offers of hospitality when I needed it, and so much more. I keep telling people the big lesson that I’ve learned in the last year or so is humility and gratitude. My life is still a delicate eco-system and I think on one level it is always going to be, but the foundation is much stronger thanks to everyone who has come forward with help. Really, I’ll probably be repeating this gratitude a lot in the upcoming weeks and months because I really am that grateful for everything that has been given to me. As much as it gnaws at my soul to say that I’m “blessed,” I am feeling pretty beatific these days.

Thank you.
happy

  1. Vintage cameras
  2. Literary maps and cartography in general
  3. Learning a new language
  4. Shield maiden barrettes 
  5. Van Gogh’s The Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum Arles at Night
  6. glitter gel pens

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2003

C2E2 2016 – part ii (the lemon continues to be in play)

Dear Internet,
It’s my fifth consecutive year of C2E2, and I only have my iDevices, so enjoy the images.


xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 1999

Collection of Cunning Curiosities – March 19, 2016

A WEEKLY COMPENDIUM OF THINGS THAT DELIGHT MY FANCY.

Dear Internet, Enjoy!  x0x0, lisa

Writing

Cunning Tales from a Systems Librarian
þ So now you’ve got that in-person interview!

Fanciful Delights

þ If you came of age in the ’90s, you may remember Sassy magazine. Someone put together a list the complete list Sassy’s Cute Band Alert! Oh. Youth.
þ Depending on the time of day, and who you ask, I’m either 5’10 or 6′. They say you’re taller in the morning than you are in the afternoon (though finding a legit site to support this seems to be a tad difficult), which tends to explain the difference (and don’t get me started on people lying about their height either). Having good posture, according to The Art of Manliness, is essential for confidence and looking trim. HRM.
þ While I, too, sometimes gravitate to the obscure, this fellow takes it to a whole ‘nother level.
þ I met my first online -> in person boyfriend in 1995. Who knew I was such a trend setter?
þ I’m really into social history, the more obscure (sense a theme here) the better — can you imagine being this coroner in the 1900s?
þ I tried to bring hugger-mugger back into circulation, but alas, it has not been successful.
þ Now that I know how to take a torc on and off, I obviously need one.
þ Ever wanted to give your books leather covers? Here you go.
þ If I had £10,000, I would buy this
þ This needs no further introduction: Americans bought more legal pot than Girl Scout cookies in 2015
þ In Celebration of Old-School LiveJournal (Just a FYI, my LiveJournal account is still active.)
þ I’m a big proponent of self-care, so anything in that realm is totally helpful
þ Also add in: cable split jacks, Bob Dole, slider boxes, analog cell phones

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2014, 2004, 2001, 2000

C2E2 2016 – part i (The lemon is in play)

Dear Internet,
It’s my fifth consecutive year of C2E2, and I only have my iDevices, so enjoy the images.
P.S. What the fuck is with the lemon? It’s from a BBC radio play, Cabin Pressure, where one character hides a lemon in plain sight and another character has to find it without disturbing where it was lain. Fans have adopted this as the traveling lemon where we take pictures with / of the lemon in our locales. It makes a good ice breaker.


xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 1999

i have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Dear Internet,


Thank fuck for science.
The Wellbutrin is working and you have no idea how happy I am this cocktail (Lamictal 400mg, Wellbutrin 75mg, Risperidone 1mg) is finally giving my swiss cheese brain mental relief.
(I will refrain from giving the low down of my mental medical history suffice to say my usual 46 readers are pretty familiar with the origin. tl;dr if you’re new: I metabolize drugs quickly and always get the side-effects. The current cocktail is the first one years that is actually working for all the ailments.)
I started Wellbutrin two weeks ago, felt the good effects within four days (it usually metabolize is one to two weeks), had a few days of mania (which it’s known to cause), which tapered back down to the chill attitude I was experiencing before. The idea a drug can fix the feeling of awfulness about myself or the wanting to crawl into a hole to hide forever or any variant thereof is pure bliss.
It’s almost better than sex. At least maybe better than chocolate (it would be close).
The absolute concrete evidence, to me, it was working was checking out of Bath and Body Works recently, I didn’t slay the checkout girl about the email/phone number shenanigans they are forced to ask you. There may also have been some giggling during the discussion and a pep to my walk leaving the store.
Somewhere I wrote (where I have forgotten) this isn’t like mania happiness. I don’t feel compelled to BOUNCE OFF THE WALLS or feel overly hyper. I’m sleeping eight hours every night, which is a pretty sure sign it’s not mania. I just feel calm and not ever so angry. A tad cheerful now and then. Not only is it consistent but it’s stable.
There are a few other good effects other than the stabilization of the depression: My anxiety is not ramped up (which Wellbutrin is known to do); I am not as full of self-loathing or hatred for my appearance; I am setting very clear boundaries around people and things and keeping those lines well-defined.
Another sign that struck me things were getting better is that I’m not feeling as abrasive as I once have been. I mentioned to my shrink this week I am more thoughtful of what comes out of my mouth in what I’m saying and how I am saying it. I am not feeling so impulsive to say things that could be construed as being hateful or abrasive as I once did and if I am not sure how to not come off as a raving lunatic, I ask for help. I’m being more considerate towards other people rather than making myself the center of attention in discussions
Things feel easier now even though my life is always going to be a lot of hard work. I am always going to be working on keeping my brain healthy. I am aware this is not a one size fix all solution. I didn’t expect it to be but finally having feelings stabilized is brilliant.
This is exciting. I was thinking the other day how much of this I was feeling before Wellbutrin was added and to be honest, a lot of it was bubbling below the surface but the Wellbutrin is pushing it towards the sun. The meditation, the journaling, the yogaing, and all of the positive things I am doing to keep myself balanced and moving forward are beginning to come to fruition and as long as I keep doing the hard work, things will continue to unfold.
In drawing out how my life has been, I told my shrink, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;” because that is, right now, how my life is being sorted. I have this tick list of things that are continuing to move forward (smoke free: eight weeks, exercising: since mid-november;  silly pictures goal: six weeks; 248 consecutive days of mediation; seven weeks of gratitude lists) and as time passes, I add new things (tracking food to watch how I’m eating is now entering its third week), and those things also stick around. On one hand, I feel self-conscious because these items may seem silly but they are super important to me as I’ve barely been able to stick with anything over the years.
Plus I want my god-damed gold star sticker, so there’s that.
As I said the other day, I am going to bloom like a fucking flower.

What also has struck me in these last few weeks is the solidifying is my personality in the terms of who I am versus what people think I am. A few months ago I talked about the lack of self-image that is prevalent in borderlines. We take on someone else’s like and dislikes and make them our own. This is beyond being influenced by a friend or a lover, this cuts deep.
I also sad:

If you saw I was really a bookish, nerdish girl who would rather knit and read a book rather than get rowdy enough at a bar to get thrown out a bar (like I was at 21), you wouldn’t like me. No one liked me when I was a four eyed square in primary and middle school because I was different from everyone else (hoo boy, things changed when I grew breasts and got contacts), no one was going to like me now. Honestly? When I do show that side of myself, no one really expects it and think it’s some facade. What they can’t figure out is the opposite is true.
And the bitchy sarcastic cuntface continues to live supreme because that’s what people want, and I want them to like me, so it will remain so.

In the last couple of months, that particular flip has also switched. Somewhere along the way my subconscious decided it didn’t want to be a bitchy cuntface anymore (the sarcasm will always stay) and things got a lot easier. I could breathe more. I felt more at ease with myself and not so tired defending the gate of Lisa. The things I liked I’m enjoying with greater pleasure and intensity. The Wellbutrin is helping but it wasn’t just the drugs that is moving me forward, it’s the “…meditation, the journaling, the yogaing, and all of the positive things I am doing to keep myself balanced and moving forward are beginning to come to fruition and as long as I keep doing the hard work, things will continue to unfold.”
Yes, I just quoted myself with something I wrote earlier in this piece.
Ibid.
I also tend to say things like, “As we will forthwith be in Chicago this weekend, we shall start upon our return?” and “I have graphic novel versions of P+P and Emma but besoothe! There are more!”. Yeah, I sound like I drank the Engish major’s Kool-aid, but I’m reading Georgette Heyer at the moment along with Jane Austen pastiches, so we shant be surprised by the rearranging of my nouns, verbs, adjectives, and participles.
(And I freely admit to listening lately to nothing but soundtracks from Atonement, Pride and Prejudice (2005), and so on.)
Like so:

Thursday begins the fifth annual sojourn to C2E2. The bitchy coven of librarian’s contingent is small this year — as far as I know, only Kristin and I will representing. There is a librarian dinner on Friday night with some local crew but as for the core #cmmrb group, it’s going to be one sad year.
The trip this year is funded by airplane miles and crashing with friends at the hotel. I only had to come up for cash and Uber/Lyft, which I did and viola! A vacation of sorts in the frosty days of March. (It’s been in the high 60s / low 70s here in L-ville these last few weeks. My winter coat is getting its first airing this winter — in March.)
I’m excited. I’m always excited for C2E2 weekend. It’s fun, I get to see people I haven’t seen in ages, I get to see pop culture stars (not to humble brag, but Kristin and I had our pic taken with Jason Mamoa. In the same trip, Kristin, Beth, Ryan, and myself had our pic taken with Hayley Atwell.).I get to buy a tshirt and eat crappy conference food.
I get to not have to worry about jobs, money, and status of my health. I get to immerse myself in a world of my own making outside of all of those stresses.
(And the lemon will be in play.)
You can follow me along on IG if you so desire.

The weekly fanciful delights and gratitude lists will still be posting this weekend as I prepped them before I left. Keeping it real.

Today I had a bit of melancholy hovering around. I’m not sad, my heart doesn’t feel hurt, I don’t have Morrissey lyrics floating around in my brain, and I don’t feel that overwhelming sense of despair.
Wistful is perhaps a better word than melancholy. Let’s go with that.
Flying is always going to hint around to the past and the irregularity of the flying is enough to tear at the heart strings when it happens. It is especially poignant when I step off the plan and saunter through the terminal as no matter where that plane may land, I’m always going to be on the look out for a 6’7 mohawked fellow with a coffee in his hand, waiting for me.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2015, 2014, 2013, 2013, 2003