diary – Page 5 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

i have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Dear Internet,

If for the last few weeks you've been thinking, "Lisa. You are not coming off as your usual abrasive self" — the answer is: Wellbutrin. A++

— Generation Lisa (@heroineinabook) March 16, 2016

If this is what mentally healthy people feel like, I don't ever want to go back.

— Generation Lisa (@heroineinabook) March 16, 2016

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

your taste in men is weird

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson from the Icelandic TV show, Trapped — Ólafur Darri Ólafsson from the Icelandic TV series, Trapped

Dear Internet,
After several episodes of the Icelandic tv series Trapped, the lead, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, has my current lustful admiration. When I declared he was my one true love to TheExHusband, he looked at me with a quizzical look — “Your taste in men is weird.”
Which I suppose is true.
If you’ve been hanging around me here or on various other social media spaces, you’ll see me often comment about my future husbands (and wives). This seems to make people uncomfortable with one of the biggest complaints of, “If you’re with $nameoflover, why are you lusting over other people?” Many saw it as some form of disloyalty because obviously I wanted more than what was being given in my current relationship.
This is poppycock.
Rebuttal 1. It’s a fantasy. The likelihood of myself partnering up with any of those people is about as great as winning the Powerball. Anyone who says they don’t fantasize is lying through their teeth.
Rebuttal 2. I can control the fantasy. Simple enough: When I’m day dreaming about X, I control the what, when, and where (obviously we already have the who).
Rebuttal 3. It’s not so much the actor whom I’m lusting after but their character in a particular movie / tv series / whatever. All of them are gorgeous in their own right but it’s their portrayal in whatever I’ve seen them is what sets my heart aflutter.
Rebuttal 4. Men have been objectifying women since the dawn of time. While men continue to remain the ones in power, I have no qualms on turning the tables on them.
Rebuttal 5. It’s fun.

Here are a couple of examples of my current loves of my lives.

My darling Ólafur plays Andri, the chief of police in a sleepy, remote hamlet in eastern Iceland, in the Icelandic tv series Trapped (which is currently available on BBC’s iPlayer¹). The series is best compared to Fargo (the tv series). Throw in a blizzard, human trafficking, murders, a titch of romance and it’s obvious Ólafur has a lot to do. He’s 6’5 (always a plus), silent, clever, and brooding. (Brooding is always important.) But it’s not so much the tallness or the cleverness that pulls at my heart strings, whether it’s the simmering passion below the surface. The way he is passionate about his work, how he looks at his ex-wife, how he wants to do always do the right thing even if is at the expense of his own safety. There is depth that remains unexplored and ladies and gentlemen, I want to explore that depth.
(I’m not the only whose noticed Ólafur’s allure.)

Shawn Cortese from the TV series, Nothing Trivial

I subscribe to Acorn, a streaming service that specilizes in British (and sometimes Australian and New Zealand) tv series with an odd movie here and there.² Nothing Trivial³ is a series based in Auckland, NZ about a group of misfits who met via a weekly pub trivia quiz. Shawn Cortese, which I’m sure many would argue is hot in his own right as a silver fox, plays Mac, a staid advertising man going through an acrimonious divorce. His love for Katherine, another pub quiz member, is buried beneath their pretense on being friends. As one does, their love ruptures when they’ve been drinking and ends with, “No. No. We can’t do this.” In one particular scene where he and Katherine are in a passionate embrace, he throws her down on the floor and rips her panties off with his teeth which leant me to giggle lasciviously. (Well, he rips her panties off in a lustful manner, which is the same thing.)
At first glance, Cortese’s character is nothing what you would expect me to generate impure thoughts™. He wears button downs and khakis. He’s in advertising. He has a big boy job. He drinks wine for christ’s sake. If I saw him in a bar, I would grant he was attractive but dismiss him almost immediately. But all it took was that one second action that would have me throw myself at him at first opportunity.
I’m such a hussy.

henryrollings Most of those I meet expect me to woo at men like Henry Rollins. Tattooed. Cranky. Obvious rebel. Creative. Amitous. It makes sense: I’m tattooed. Cranky. Obvious rebel. Creative and ambitious. But there is much more to this world than just obvious physical attraction. The older I get the nuanced my love gets. Primarily, I look for wit and intelligence⁴. How they treat their families and friends. What they are passionate about and what they are interested in. They need to have spirit and soul. The more intense the better.
There needs to be more than great thighs, big hands, and height.
(And may the gods help me if they look at me like they are going to eat me up.)
(Obviously accents help)
It’s not their physical characteristic that makes me crazy about them, which does help, it’s these characters that burns them into my soul. This is why I love these men with the fire of a 1000 suns.⁵

Rebuttal 6: Taking control of my sexuality and sensuality.
When you’re a fat girl, the stereotype that continues to perpetuate is no one will love you let alone find you sexy. You will never find a partner who is going to adore you let alone desire you.
When it’s drilled into your head by words, images, and media you will not now nor ever will be seen as the object of someone’s lust, you believe it. The self-loathing is so deep even masturbation is overshadowed by your own self-hatred and touching yourself is taboo. The longer you go without a partner, the more evident it is, to you, all of those fat girl songs are true.
And the adage of, “If you don’t want you, who will?” continues to reverberate through your brain.
The equation is: No one will find you attractive + your self-loathing of your own body = more proof no one will ever want to date you.
It’s a catch-22.
And if they do love you, desire you, lust after you, it’s because you are a fetish and not a person.
No matter my weight, for most of my life I thought this all to be true.
In my early 30s, as I ended a serious relationship and was starting a new chapter in my life, I started to harness the passion that was I knew was simmering below the surface. Everything was sensuous from the food I ate to the perfume I wore to the fabric against my skin. Everything was to be loved and it would love me back.
And it did.
That is when the world opened up in new ways — the more I loved me, the more others loved me. Despite the often crippling social anxiety tossed about with bits of self-loathing, I was not always lousy with others wanting me but this was different. The confidence I was slowly building helped changed me on the approach and reciprocation of relationships, platonic and romantic. The self-loathing was beaten at bay and with that came self-esteem and self-respect.
All of this is tenuous. Fragile. Delicate. That brief period when I not only was in love with the world and myself was short. All that hard work started to slide when I started dating TheEx and by the middle of my marriage a few years later, the idea of someone finding me desirous was laughable.
It took everything I had to hold a shred of self-respect.
Then as I was then, here I was now: No one was ever going to find me desirable let alone love me and all of this came crashing to a head in October 2015.
It takes everything to hold on to a modicum of self-respect.
From a stranger’s glance, you know this is not necessarily true. Within the last couple of years, I have (had) two men declare I was the love of their lives. I have had many tell me, without fetishizing me, how wonderful was my body. Everything about me has been adored in some fashion or another.
I shouldn’t feel unloved or not lusted after and yet here we are.
Self-loathing has packed its bags and decided I was a long term stay Air BnB. Any good that came out of that period when I was in love with myself has long left. When I look in the mirror now, it’s very seldom I see an attractive person in front me. Instead I see myself as fat. Ugly. Not the least bit sexual or sensual.
Much as I felt in my 20s and late 30s.
At the root, logically, I know this not to be true. i know if I can bring out the sexy goddess who lives deep inside of me once, I can do it again. It’s going to be a struggle. It’s going to be hard. It’s not going to be pretty, but I will rescue her now as I had all those years ago and this time she will stay for good
So yes, there will be much lustful conversations about what turns me on. This body, my body, does not contain an unsensual, let alone unsexual, persona. I keep saying logically, but it’s true, logically I know that what I believe is bullshit — it’s the emotional crap that fucks you up and beats you down so bad you’re part of the floor.
You may not find this to be tasteful or have a purpose or part of your mores, but this isn’t your life, it’s my life. It’s time to tell the naysayers and the evil voices who make my life miserable to suck it haters and I’ll bloom like a fucking flower.
xoxo,
Lisa
P.S. And dimples. Can’t forget the dimples. Also someone who can raise their eyebrow to give you a most stern look. No why that particular feat of muscular control drives me to lust but yes, yes it does.

1. I’ve been raving about the show after mainlining all 10 episodes over the last couple of days. If you can find it, I implore you to watch!
2. Acorn was the first service to have Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries long before it was on PBS or Amazon.
3. I’ve also mainlined Nothing Trivial‘s seasons 1 and 2 and am impatiently waiting for season 3 to show up on Acorn. Maybe if I sacrifice something? I’m on pins and needles here.
4. If you believe in such things, the average IQ score of my previous mens hovers in the 150 range.
5. The conversation with regards to my love life can be distilled to the two most important men in my life: TheBassist and TheExHusband. I loved the others as much as they’d let me but they never quite caught my heart as much as TheBassist or TheExHusband, especially TheBassist. The general quip I hear when I have said there will never be anyone else like him is, “Of course not! Those are separate people, etc etc.” To which I respond, “You poor soul. You have no idea do you?” Fuck ’em.

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014

Gratitudes: March 7 – March 13, 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

The deluge of places wanting to, or have an interest in, interviewing me
Publishers because without them I would have no books
I am grateful for yoga keeping me centered and balanced
The ability to make choices that is best for me not for someone else
For my internal strength. I may get knocked a lot but I always come back swinging
For learning compassion for myself and for others
For learning forgiveness and letting go
For Wellabutrin seemingly working #fingerscrossed
The kindness of others towards me
Continuing to take accountability for my actions

happy

Rugby
Mermaid blue in my hair
My pug in a mug tea infuser
Hotel Chocolat
My collection of Chucks
Hugs
All kinds of kisses (not just the ones from a new lover)
Glitter pens
Jane Austen retellings
Sudoku

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014,

Gratitudes: February 29 – March 7, 2016

Ms. Lizzie Locks for her amazing kindness towards me and Thursday the Pug (She sent Thursday toys and snacks from her dogs, Sophia and Stormy. The dog is going insane.)
The internet, without whom I would not be the person I am today that is how important it is in my life
TheExHusband for everything he has done and will do to keep me moving forward
Potential employers who extend an interview request to me
The pug simply because her silliness makes me smile
Being biologically in excellent health
For people who do not like me for it reminds me that standing by what I think is right and true is the sacrifice I am willing to make over pleasing everyone
That we all want to love and be loved
Friends whom I haven’t spoke to in months and we can pick up just where we left off
I’ve said this numerous times across my site but it needs to be on the list — TheBassist for breaking up with me. It was perhaps the greatest gift he could have given me for it helped deter a terrible crash, deal with my issues, get the help I need, and make me a better person. Thank you.

happy

Freshly washed hair
Bubble baths
Hot cup of tea
Iced coffee
New office supplies
Sharpies
Planning fantasy vacation
Reading
Writing
My collection of fountain pens

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2003

micacious

Dear Internet,
Housekeeping:

I’ve been keeping up with my Silly Pictures goal
I’ve meditated for 236 consecutive days
Wednesday 3/9 marks my 7th week of smoke freeness
I’m making some headway into my 50 Things project
I am still exercising, of some sort mainly yoga, a few times a week since November
Job application status (Start date: January 24, 2016)
- Total: 25
  - Academia: 21
  - Public: 3
  - Other: 1
- Rejections: 4
- Interest: 2 3 (As I’m writing this, I got an offer to do a video interview. Hell fuck yeah.)

I’m keeping better stats on my job hunt, mainly for my own edification. As for the “interest” bit, the “other,” which was a corporate gig, called me on Friday and left a message to talk about the position in question. I returned the call and two days later, nothing. The other interest was from a public library system that wanted me to complete a civil service test which would last an hour. THEN if I passed the civil service test, I would get a call back for an interview, however, there is no known time from the test to the interview. It’s a 10 hour drive, one way, to the city so I had to politely decline.¹
But hey! It’s keeping up with my above average of 1ish in 10 on interest/interviews to applications submitted.
(I have been expecting the deluge of rejections / interviews to start happening around this time. The jobs I applied for at the end of January / beginning of February, closed near the tail end of February so decisions are coming out now.)

I drew up a plan for what I’m going to do on a M-F schedule to keep up with all of my projects. Part of that plan was to write once a week over at the profesh site and in addition to the weekly gratitudes, write here twice a week. We see how well that’s going, but for once I am not beating myself up because things are not on a tight schedule, which is a huge difference from where I was even a few months ago.

Speaking of ThePlan, I had a breakthrough with my therapist this week. For the first time in four months, I sat down and said, “These are the issues I am having and these are the things I want to change.” I know you’re thinking, “Okay, Lisa, you’ve been seeing a therapist for that long of time and you’re just getting to the meat of your crazy?” Au contraire my friend, I’ve been spending the last four months pulling my ass out of the giant hole that exploded back in October. Couple that bullshit with jobs, family, lack of money, and other large topics of discussion, I haven’t had a time to really think about that kind of stuff or really how to fix me. I was more interested in putting out fires.
Along with job hunting process, being crazy is a full-time gig.
I broke down to my shrink about this plan, telling her I was sorting out what I needed to do on a weekly basis (work on TeamTreeHouse, job hunt, DBT, journaling to name a few) into daily chunks and she said, “Lisa. You do understand you’re spreading yourself thin, right?”
Honestly? I thought I wasn’t doing enough. That sounds a reasonable thought, doesn’t it? If you look at my newly planned calendar, I have, on average, six things assigned to each day. Two of them I approximated two to three hours each (and I was being generous). The other four? No idea on time. Just glancing at the remaining objectives, they could last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour each and that is not including time to yoga, meditate, eat, shower, and housekeeping duties that add-on the daily lists.
My argument to her is, “Look. I need to apply for jobs. I need to work on refreshing / learning new skills using TeamTreeHouse. I need to check my email on a regular basis and I need to keep up with my RSS feeds to keep abreast of library trends. I can not not do these things.” “Maybe something has to go?” “Okay, what?” “That’s for you to figure out and prioritize.”
(This is not a verbatim conversation but you get the general gist.)
When I came home from the session, I gave TheExHusband the tl;dr and he agreed with my shrink. “You’re spreading yourself too thin. You don’t have to do everything right this second and at the exact same time.”
I agree.
Obviously the job hunt is top of that list and it buttresses neatly with the day to day stuff mentioned above. That’s the given. But as for the rest of it? I have no idea, right now, how to stagger it so I’m not overwhelmed. As I explained above, I don’t have TeamTreeHouse set for everyday, it’s for twice a week. Writing on my profesh blog is only once a week. Writing here is twice a week.
This type of balancing act is what’s been keeping me in my thoughts this week. I’ve been pretty motivated to keep pushing forward because I’ve now got a history of not giving up on projects. The exercise, the meditation, the quitting smoking, and the on going stuff for 50 Things. I am not as susceptible to starting projects and abandoning them as I once was. I’m not saying I’ve perfected the best balance for home / work, as that’s bullshit, but I have a better control on my life than a year ago.
I’ve always been a fighter, that pretty strongly evident through the course of my life, so it’s never been a big concern that I would not pick myself up by my Chucks. I’ve never thought I wouldn’t get out of here. I may have been pissed it was taking so long, but if anything this last 18 months has shown me, I can do this.
Where as before I would think myself as a loser or failure for not following ThePlan or the calendar or whatever I’ve concocted to a T, I get that I’m not perfect, life is not perfect, and if I want to be happy, I need to be fluid on many of my plans.
And if you read anything prior to the last six months on ThePlan, you know to be true.
So all in all, how I’m handling this makes me proud and gives me the hope I can get an even better grip on my life.

After that, “Go get’m girl!” speech, it seems a little spurious to switch gears, but that’s how I roll.
I’ve been pretty open I’ve been having bouts of depression these last few months or so. It’s different from the blow up in October (manic depression) where I was crying on the couch for hours on end, binge eating (skip breakfast, lunch, splurge on dinner or some variant), sporadically showering. No, this was subtle. Quieter. I wasn’t having suicidal feelings. I was able to do things that I needed to do without feeling much issues. I would feel, “Huh. It’s gray outside. I’m gray inside. Whatevs.” and continue on with my day.
It was super frustrating to know this was depression happening and I couldn’t meditate, yoga, or whatever my way out of it.
So when I saw my medicating shrink a few weeks ago, I gave him the above and told him I felt my depression was around 8 out of 10. He put me on Cymbalta, which is fast acting (takes a few days to kick in instead of a few weeks) and hoping this would be enough.
If you’ve been reading my site for a few years now, you know I’m super sensitive to drugs. I’ve had psychotic breaks on ADHD meds, suicidal thoughts on SSRIs, and a whole host of other problems. The currently bipolar cocktail (Lamtical (400mg) and Risperdone (not sure of the amount of but it’s the beginning dose)) works really, really well. The symptoms are in control and I am so fucking aware of my triggers it’s insane. (“You’re one of the most self-aware people I know!”) The anxiety is kept in check with Klonopin and Hydroxyzine, but depression, however, is a whole ‘nother ball of wax based on the aforementioned problems.
I won’t go into too much specifics but anti-depressant drugs fall into three classes: SSRIs, SNRIs, and Atypical. SSRIs are the ones most people know about (effexor, paxil, etc) and the ones that make me, honestly, psychotic. SNRIs is where Cymbalta lives and last week it showed that after metabolizing it for a few days, I felt awesome (3 out of 10) for a few days, and then the rage hit so hard, I would have beaten up the couch if given a chance. Atypicals, where Latuda and Wellbutrin live, are pretty much my last shots. I was on Wellbutrin ages and ages ago and I don’t remember how I reacted to it, but then again, I was on a whole different bipolar cocktail. Latuda, I’ve never been on.
So to finally put this to some kind of ending, the doc put me on Wellbutrin, which I started today, and I should see some kind of result in a few weeks. (And hopefully not in some kind of psychotic rage. 😀 )
Viva la crazy drugs!
xoxo,
Lisa

1. My clearly out of state address was on the app and the follow up email. I half expected they would reject me based on that information. But nope. Go figure.

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2004, 2003, 2001

Gratitudes: February 22 – 28, 2016

Learning how to properly breathe during meditation
For being able to recognize the things I need to change
For having known my father
My car is in good shape
For falling in love with books to allow me to travel all over the world
My capacity to always want to fall in love with everyone and thing I meet
For finding out I don’t have breast cancer
The changing of the seasons to indicate that nothing remains the same
For people who are kind to me even if I’m not kind to them
For those who teach me about humility

happy

The way my skin feels after moisturizing it
Medium rare steak
The magnitude of available British television
Fuzzy socks
That moment between getting out of the shower and grabbing a towel and the temperature is just perfect
Fresh mani/pedis
Movie popcorn
New journals
Singing
Fleece tights

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2015, 2001, 2000

Gratitudes: February 15 – 21, 2016

For the family I have chosen
For previous lovers who let me view and share in their worlds
For those I have met over the years who have helped shape me into the person I am today
For my pets who showed me what unconditional love really is
For Caravaggio for allowing me to not only fall in love with his work but to finally get what art history really means
For understanding that a million decisions brought me to this point in life
For crazy drugs to allow me to be healthier rather than crazy(ier)
For the wind through the trees to allow me to allow the gods to talk to me
For sticking to my guns for doing the right thing
Believing in the goodness of others

happy

An unexpected phone call from someone I love
Writing letters and the joy people have when they receive them
The smell of fresh cut grass
The feel of clean sheets
Glitter gel pens for making me smile when i write
Chocolate. Because chocolate.
Good burgers
Making snow angles

xoxo,
Lisa<

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2015, 2004, 2002, 1999

Gratitudes: February 8 – 14, 2016

I am thankful for my parents for without them there would be no me
I am thankful for the life I’ve been able to experience
I am grateful there are preventatives for my allergies so I won’t be dead
I am thankful for Kate, the person whom if I tell her I shot a man in Reno to watch him die, she would shoot him again to make sure he’s dead and then ask me where we’re going to bury him
I am thankful I can often make people laugh
I am grateful my body is strong and healthy to let me move the way I need it to
I thankful my car is paid off
I am grateful for my champions when I went back to college, for without them I would not excelled or want to continue with my education
I am grateful for Natalie who gets my Jane Austen obsession and who can really make me think
I am grateful I have the capacity to share all different kinds of love with all different kinds of people

happy

Long, near scalding, showers,
Long soaks in a bathtub, when I can read until my skin is pickled
The way my body feels after I moisturize it with coconut oil
That first snowfall
Gerbera daisies
When I finish my todo list for the day and everything is completed
The smell of just out of the oven baked goods; even more so if I have baked them myself
Sleeping with my teddy bear
The first kiss of a potential lover
Getting cards and letters in the mail

xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2015, 2010, 2010, 2001, 1999

broomball

Dear Internet,
If you missed it, the last couple of days I’ve been recording audio of various love poems. I planned on doing one a day until Happy Massacred Heart day, but I’m currently feeling a little eh right now, so WHO KNOWS if I’ll finish the series.

I’m coming up on nearly a month of being smoke free! With what money I have left in my checking, I’m transferring $12 a week (what I paid for two packs of cigarettes) to my savings to get an idea of how much I’ve saved since I quit smoking.
I expect millions.

I start rugby practice Monday.
I know. Rugby. WHO KNEW.
Level of entry is pretty cheap. I stole clothes from TEH (from his skinnier days which equal my fat days) and the only big purchase was my cleats (I wear a size 11 womens or an 8.5 mens. I had to buy a size 9.5 mens for my cleats because the fuckers run small. But hey! Cleats!) and the small purchase of my mouthguard. I’ll also have to get game day socks and shorts¹ down the road.
I’ve either played or tried other sports before this; tennis, softball, and basketball to name a few. I either didn’t like them or couldn’t play for shit. Rugby seems to take advantage of my size and aggression and it’s a well known fact I have tree trunks for legs (I’m nice and sturdy) plus I love finding new ways to get my aggression out. If I ever move to a place where I can hang a punching bag, boxing is so going to happen.
Wanting to play rugby has been a long time coming. When I was still married, I tried to get a rugby team started in Grand Rapids, but it fell apart as there were only three of us gung ho about the idea and you need 15 people on the field. I don’t know what sparked me to start looking in L-Ville, but boom! Two seconds searching and I found an active team. Practice starts on Monday!
I have games all over the Ohio Valley region through March and April, so if you’re in Louisville, Nashville, Youngstown, Lexington, Cincinnati, or Dayton, let me know and I’ll give you info about those games for you to come cheer me on! (I’ll post the fall schedule, the second season, if I’m still in L-Ville at that time. Yay tree trunk legs!)

How do we get over heartbreak? No one really knows² yet everyone seems to think they have the answer.
After reading Girl on the Net’s piece, I started thinking about my recent heartbreak and the process to heal.
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.

There is, however, only one thing of his that has remained in my life and that is the hair wraps I made out of one of his workout shirts³. The hair wrap thoughts are along the lines of when I’m getting out of the shower with and “Oh. A t-shirt hair wrap.” rather than some deep rooted creepiness on my part. I will admit, however, during the throes of the early stages of the break-up, I swore to never wash the shirt again as it still smelled of him (I sniffed it a lot. Don’t judge.), to never pack it away so I have a constant reminder of him, and all of this has led to letting those feelings go except with, “I need t-shirt hair wrap. Here is one handy. Cool.” (And yes, they do get washed on a weekly basis.)

I don’t have an exact time frame of when my heart began to heal when he broke it off with me in 2005. I know I dated a rebound guy a few months later, which was good times as rebound guy cried on my shoulder about his ex-fiance and I cried on his shoulder about TheBassist. I can safely guess I was open to the idea of seriously dating someone around the time I started dating TheEx in the fall of 2006. Heart beginning to heal sometime before then? Most likely. I was writing mainly on LiveJournal in those days, I didn’t divulge my soul, and I was not paper journaling so the timing is not terribly clear.

Then we had a few months of long conversations and one weekend together. Now we had a year of conversations and many months of living together. Both crammed with so much stuff in those too short times.

There have been twinges of him, sure, throughout the years. I checked TheBassist’s LiveJournal on occasion in the beginning, my heart hurting when he talked about his beautiful wife and wonderful family. Eventually I stopped torturing myself and let that piece of my heart be put to rest. This time after the great FB unfriending⁵, within a few weeks I stopped looking at his profile or any other social media we shared. Currently I’ve been navigating around any type of interaction of him within our mutual friends updates. I am the queen of curating Facebook news feeds.

We once agreed it was all or nothing. It is now nothing.

On some days when I’m alone and feeling particularly sad, there tends to be benign event that gets me thinking, and thinking leads to yearning, and yearning leads to heartache.
Those days are few and far between.

What I think about the most is not what has transpired from our time together, but a fear that at some point I will mark him as a memory of when I was high manic and crashed or I did not love him after all. I was delusional then and now about our relationship; fantasies were never meant to be real. I feel despondent when others tell me he was just the rebound guy from the dissolution of my marriage and all the trappings rebounds entail. That I am more upset my ego was bruised rather than the loss of him. That the words whispered in my ear about his predilections and indiscretions before me or hints of all the promises of forever was not for me alone but also repeated to all of his previous loves.
I was not as special as he said I was.

What I also often fear is one day he’ll put all the pieces together and believe he held out for an ideology rather than for reality so he never loved me at all. That everything he said and promised was nothing more than a huge mistake and he rued the day he found me again.

That is the borderline speaking.
I doubt my feelings, my emotions so I can be easily swayed by others opinions of what I should be feeling. I doubt his feelings, his emotions and I believe he too can be easily swayed by opinions, though history dictates this is not true. But the voice inside my head insists that is true and I get out of control.
It is far easier for me to create a world where it was all a huge mistake, and thus less responsibility for our actions, our selves. Nothing was real, whatever that means.
If I want to heal and move forward, it’s not about reconciling the logic and the emotion the relationships is over because that is already being dealt with but it’s about believing in myself and my feelings. Believing in him and his feelings. Stop second guessing every intent and act. A million decisions lead up to then and now. This is what is true.
Something I am having a hard time in believing as I think I can change the past as easy was with a snap of my fingers and the outcome would be much different.

Knowing I did and do love him. From the way he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a knuckle on his right hand to his rapid fire response when he was passionate about a topic to the way his feet felt when I rubbed them after a long gig.
Knowing he did and does love me. From the way I looked at him with my amazing (his words) eyes to my happiness being dependent on coffee and rides around cloverleafs to how I felt in his arms.
This is not about wish fulfillment of futures yet to be revealed; it’s about taking what I experienced and using it to learn to heal. To move forward. To not make the same mistakes again.

The few times I tried to reach out, in the beginning of the breakup in regards to things that needed to be settled, I was ceremoniously rebuffed. I may write here the longing for him, but I do not go begging back to those who act as if they do not want me. This could be the bipolar megalomania speaking but no matter of how low I am, this is a consistent self-respect I have for myself .
I never have gone begging for someone and I never will.
Remember: He left.

At some point I will date again. I am not going to stop living my life because he is gone. And I will need to place faith and trust in someone without reservation. I need to not assume after fights they are going to leave me and I need not question why they like me.
I have no intention of clinging to our life together as the end all be all to the point I am paralyzed by being alone or with someone else – I am not that unrealistic or truth be told, not shying away from taking a future lover. A girl has needs.
I need to put faith in myself to set boundaries, healthy boundaries, and learn how to negotiate a relationship without expecting the world on a string.
I am, however, pretty damned sure while others may come close (and go), there will never be anyone like him.
And I don’t want there to be.
(You could be an asshole and argue how no one is the same; no one is like another. I know that. He hit all the major points, something only one other person has come close to doing, and that will be what my soul will ache but continue to look for and the likelihood of finding someone like that will near impossible. So I’ll take the lovers and the suitors but it will be a goddamned miracle before I get heavily involved again.)
I need to have faith and trust in myself in all relationships, platonic and romantic.
To be happy.

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.
xoxo,
Lisa

1. No matter what sport I try to play, finding Lisa-sized clothes is always a fucking pain in the ass. The people complain about fat people being lazy assholes but the people won’t provide clothes for the fat people to work out in. I suppose it’s one of life’s mysteries .
2. They also know if you’re in emotional pain, taking acetaminophen can help. No joke.
3. Krazy Kate, whose hair is similiar to mine, convinced me to wash and style my hair with products free of parabens, *cones, and SLS.⁴ T-shirts are more absorbent for hair than towels, which is why I’m being I’ve kept said t-shirt. If you must know, my hair looks fabulous.
4. Too long of list of products I use but for shampoo / conditioner, I’m totally digging Burt’s Bees.
5. Let us not forget after all he dumped me via Facebook, something I quite right have to bristle about.

This Day in Lisa-Universe:

recitations

Dear Internet,
Today’s Lisa-reads-a-love poem is Recitations by Leonard Cohen. I can’t get the sexy swagger Cohen has unless I drink a few bottles of bourbon and smoke another 100 packs of cigarettes, but hopefully you won’t hold that against me.
Recitations by Leonard Cohen

P.S. There is several versions of Cohen reading this poem, this one is my current favorite.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2015, 2003, 2002, 2002