saudade

Dear Internet,
I have no home.
I have people who love me; places I can stay temporarily, but I have no place I can call mine when the chips are down. No place I can recoup and regather. No place that is mine and mine alone. No place for for my things.
I am tired of minimizing my stuff to the point where everything I own can be tied to two bags to be checked at airports around the country. I am tired of feeling like I’m on vacation when I’m not. I’m tired of feeling like I’m interrupting other people’s lives with my own messiness.
I am in Louisville, staying with TSTBEH for the remainder of my sojourn and then, on Wednesday, I fly back to Grand Rapids and move into my apartment.
My apartment. Mine. My things. My stuff. My garbage. My shit. My dirty laundry.
I left the east coast early because my heart was breaking. I left the east coast because I did not know when I would see TheBassist again after this trip. I left the east coast because the thought of maintaining a long distance relationship with TheBassist especially when I didn’t know I would see him again ripped at my being. We have plans, he and I, but those plans have to be on hold. I can’t fix me while maintaining a relationship of any kind, specifically a long distance relationship.  With him.
With anyone.
What I need, what I have to have, is to be alone. Live with no man. Be with no man.
I left the east coast because TheBassist is so part of its culture, its mythos, its world that that is his home. Louisville is now where TSTBEH is finding his culture, his mythos, and his world.
I came to Louisville to hope to find some peace, but find I am still an interloper. I still do not belong.
Maybe I do have a deeply rooted self-persecution complex or I am deeply, deeply, entrenched in saudade.
xoxo,
lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2014

she rides the sky in a chariot drawn by the horse Hrimfaxi

Dear Internet,
This has been my normalized state as of late; the moods cycling like the ever changing weather. I get some work done until my brain decides to be broken and then I stop. I rest. I wait. And then I do what I do best, I hide.
It does not take me long to get tired of these routines, because they are not healthy and also frustrating as fuck. I have shit to do and having a broken brain is not pushing me forward. So I do what anyone in their right mind does in these situations, I make a plan.
I went over that plan with Dr. P. Monday and there were a lot of tears spilled as I spoke (though to be fair, I probably would have cried at the leaves rustling I was so heightened by emotion). And I’m sure, absolutely sure, when this is all said and over, there will be more spilt tears and my own heart is going to be broken a million times over. That was hard to swallow, that realization I had to do this not only alone but that I was going to break my own heart repeatedly to get through to the other side.
A big chunk of that plan is getting back on the drugs. Two weeks ago I contacted my GP to make an appointment to get that recommendation. But her schedule for such matters isn’t free until mid-September. With my appointment with Dr. P. much sooner, I asked him for recs to see if I can get this quick started earlier. I am not in crisis, but I am in pain.
(For those of you playing at home, my previous medicating therapist, Dr. H., is not being contacted for this next journey because he does not take insurance and charges $300/hr. YAY being crazy!)
That conversation with Dr. P. on Monday was the apex of the appointment and I thought my request was easy enough. Apparently, not quite. There is an aging population in Grand Rapids in regards to psychiatry so finding someone to do treatment AND within my insurance network can and could be difficult. Dr. P. gave me a few easy things to begin the search while I wait to see my GP.
The first was to search my provider’s website for medicating therapists, which surprise, turned up no results. They want me to go through the GP first. Okay, sure. That appointment is already made in September. What’s the next step? The second of Dr. P.’s recommendations was to go through a local psychiatric hospital and get in on their day patient list to see a medicating therapist whose sole job is to keep my meds inline.
This is the same hospital where Mumsy was committed after she attempted suicide back in 2001. I can still recall the emotional naked vulnerability of the patients and how desperate I was (and still am!) to not end up in that place. That was my arrogance then, how I was that much stronger than they were. I could handle myself better. I was faster, stronger, and more in control of my disease. Jesus, even as I write this I cannot believe this is how I often feel at times. Like they are weak and I’m the superhuman who could save the world. (But I can’t and my own arrogance is also my own shame.)
Even when I had been adamant for ages on not getting back on the drugs again, it changes because often I feel defeated about my brain. I feel so fucking broken at times that everything with me is opposite of what is supposed to happen. Giving up on the drugs, claiming it is easier to go without then to fix, seems reasonable after you been psychotic because of drug interactions. It all seems reasonable. (It really isn’t.)
But I am telling you, seeing people get their lives together and seeing someone have pure unadulterated joy can begin the digging deep of what you need to change one’s mind. And there is a LOT OF DIGGING.
Here is where the system falls short. The phone calls I’ve been making to the psychiatric hospital? There is a wait. There is always a wait. I am not in crisis, so my needs are not as important. Yes, there is no reason for me to continue being in pain (or suffering), but I am waiting. This is my life now, I wait.
I leave messages and wait for phone calls that come a day later. Which, of course, I miss because I did not hear my phone ring or I’m on the another line. When I return the call, no one answers, and it goes directly to voicemail. I leave my message and the clock resets. This has been the theme of dealing with this hospital this week. They have still yet to return my latest telephone call and it has been over 24 hours. (And they still have not returned my call.)
This morning, however, luck finally decided to hitch herself to my side. I tried the third path of Dr. P.’s which was to call several medicating therapists offices directly and see if they were taking new patients and if they took my insurance. Snake eyes. One of them accepts my insurance AND she’s accepting new patients.
Thank the gods in all their glory for listening to me again.
But there is a catch. (Always.) I need to get my GP to sign off on it (medicating office will fax her the referral, they will fax their assent. Since I already have an appointment with the GP next month, this quickens that process and I can more than likely cancel the appointment). Then my records from Dr. H. need to be sent over, which is a truck load. Then they need to pull my records from 2005 when I was outpatient at another local psychiatric hospital. They can pull out the full list of my drugs from all of the combined records and figure out what drugs I need to get on next. (No SSRIs and no ADHD drugs. Definitely not. I am not depressed. If the bipolar gets stabilized, then I will not need the ADHD drugs.) Then they can schedule me in as a new patient, probably in early October. Now I have a time frame.
Nine years ago, not long after TheBassist and I broke up and I was simultaneously preparing for undergrad graduation, I started looking at getting a more definite clue as to the status of my brain. I wanted nothing more than to be stable and ready for the new life ahead of me. After receiving the results, I said,

There are three main things I want to accomplish with this:
1. I want to be stable. I want to not to feel the alternating mood swings, crying jags, suicidal thoughts, and what have you on a almost daily basis. I want to be able to maintain a job, social network, and intimate relationships without feeling like these are difficult things.
2. I want to keep my personality. I like my personality, just tone down the aggressive behaviour and some of the exhibitionist that seems to pop up occasionally. My experience with legal drugs in the past have left me meandering as a zombie and felt like I had zero control; I don’t want to go through that again.
3. Manage my life more efficiently without this constant UP swing that seems to prevail where I get lots of work done coupled with weeks/months of time where nothing is done and shit just slips by.

And here we are nine years later, better in a lot of ways. Able to handle the impulsivity and other traits better. Able to recognize when the crazy hits and when my brain is on fire.
But even with all of that self-check in place, I am still broken by the hypomania that continues to wreak havoc in my life.
But those three tenets from nearly a decade ago? Those have not changed. They were what drove me back to getting on the drugs two years ago and what drives me now. This may be the recurring pattern in my life — get on the drugs, let me body go to war, go off the drugs. Rest. Began the battle again.
I do not want to exist in this place as a mass of water and bone, just waiting it out until I can collect my pension and then one day die. (If I do not take my own life before hand, because this is also a truism. If I cannot get my brain sorted, I have no problems doing just that. Demons not of your making that cannot be exorcised, haunt me.)
I want to have a fucking life. I want to enjoy the world and not be imprisoned in this gilded cage of my own making.
xoxo,
Lisa
 

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2003, 1999

 

the gods were listening

Dear Internet,
When I come up to the cabin alone, one of my favorite rituals is to sit on the front deck, regardless of time. Morning, noon, or witching hour, doesn’t matter. How a tiny prism of the world, a thousandth of a second, can make me feel so whole I will never puzzle out. But this is not a puzzle I want to complete and I leave it alone in its whole messiness.
I slept about five hours this morning before waking to the sounds of trees rustling against the A-frame. I’ve been alternating between completing my chores before the gaggle of females arrive and sitting on the front deck steps, while even as music has been playing cranked up to 11, there is still a silence that cannot be broken.
You can write things down, you can think deep thoughts, but hearing those same words spoken low to yourself is a whole nother beast. I said few things, to reassure myself of my thoughts. I side-eyed the chipmunks playing tag in the leaves and haltingly went on. I poured forth on secrets and loves, and thought for the briefest of moments to grab my phone to record this sunlight confession and immediately killed that thought dead. No, no evidence. Some rituals need to be completed without verification of proof for the masses. Once those secrets are let loose on the wind, only the gods can hear me. Only they can heed my prayers.
As I spoke, the wind started picking up amongst the treetops, the leaves rustled in agreement which gave me the confidence to go on. Yes, the gods are listening. I closed my eyes and smiled into the sunlight, the shadows moving like a fast forwarded film across my eyelids.
And I continued, I don’t know how long. I offered up a lot of prayers, requests, and pleas, the wind picking up in agreement with each of my punctuations. I poured forth love back into the world and love was returned back to me.
I stopped and opened my eyes, at the moment a particular song had ended. The treetops bowed to my requests and as the wind whirled around me, I knew my prayers had been heard and would be answered.
My ritual now complete, I came inside with the sunlight guiding me back towards life.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2012, 2012, 2008

swallowing me whole

Dear Internet,
It is oh so very late. But is this not the perfect time, my friends, for confessions and madness? Is this not the perfect time for moving back the veil and saying hello to the little man who controls us all?
Yes, yes it is.
Whenever I come up to the cabin, I am always expectant to see a bear lounging on the front deck, a deer moving near the fire pit, some kind of animal making its presence known. I never see those things and I’m almost always somewhat disappointed by the lack of fauna. But today, today was different. Today I saw a lump in a chair and upon closer inspection, it was a dead bird. A robin to be exact. Fresh enough there was no maggots, still full bodied and bright red chest. I called TheHusband in a panic. What the fuck am I supposed to do? This was never covered in Girl Scouts. “Dump it in the woods and wash your hands,” he replies logically. I will, I said. Soon, I promised myself. But the night got carried away with long talks and friends coming round. The bird lays still, untouched by any predator, waiting for its final place of rest to be chosen by me.
So here we are, at 4:30AM and I’m on the front deck listening to the silence. The wind is not rustling, there is no movement within the trees. The driveway leads up to a road, which buttresses up to a t-section. I stared intently into the darkness. There was no light, not even from the stars, and there was no sound. It was utterly still and I thought this is what death must be like. No light at the end of the tunnel, only the ever present darkness that envelopes you into its embrace.
When I was 10, maybe 11 or 12, I decided to write a book about suicide. I began the research at the local library, a small offering in a town of 20K souls, many whom would never leave beyond the confines of the city limits. I can still see myself of the then so clearly, biking to the library, checking out my books, and then riding out to a cove I had found, packed lunch in tow, that was on a shaded embankment on the St. Clair River. I would read for hours, the river rolling by and Sarnia nearly in my grasp, then pack up my things and come home.
Thinking about it now, all these years later, I remember no one knew what I was  doing. This quest of mine to find an answer, a string, a hope that things could change. I was determined then, oh so very young, that I could puzzle it all out. That even the complex and academic texts I was reading would not deter me. I envisioned the book being published when I was 15, I was very adamant about this, and the book was going to be my ticket out that place. I would win awards, accolades, and scholarships. Everything would turn out fine.
So no one knew, and thus, no one stopped me. The librarians left me alone — they were tired of my incessant questions, reading above my pay grade, and winning the summer reading program every year without fail. How does one kid read so many books? But it never occurred to any of them, why is this child checking out books on suicide? Why did no one contact my family? Or take me aside to talk? Why did no one care?
I think of me then – what drove me to do this? What was the seed planted that lead me on that path? Why couldn’t I just enjoy my Barbies like all the other girls my age?
I was so solemn in my youth and so alone. There are flashes of insight of the then. A birthday party here, slumber party there. But I was almost always alone. Every adventure I took, ever place I cycled to, every ice cream bar I ate, every fort I built – alone. What was I protecting myself from? Why did I always feel so isolated from the world? What drove me, at the age of 10, 11 or 12, to want to write a book on suicide?
Tonight I peeled back layers of my armor and let myself wallow in music. I began with the 2007 remaster of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, followed by Interpol’s first two albums, Antics and Turn on the Bright Lights, and decided why the fuck not? And hustled on with Elbow’s first disk Asleep in the Back, moved on to their second disk, and made half-way through their third before finally saying enough.
I cried. I never reached the point of ugly crying, but I did get close. I understood I was grieving; grieving for my father, whose been dead for over a decade. Grieving for that lost soul of my youth, wandering around trying to find answers to questions that were too big to be asked. I grieved for the could have beens, the missed connections, and alternate universes that would never come to be. My heart felt raw and exposed, but I knew I had to push on, to not keep it contained. If not now, it would never happen. To find joy, you have to feel the pureness of sorrow. Fuck, that sounds so cliched, but perhaps because it is a universally accepted truth.
Was the book ever finished? No. I don’t know what happened to the now abandoned project. At some point I must have stopped. But when? And why?
On the drive up, I obsessively listened to two songs. 12 tracks between them. For a 100 miles, before I swapped over to another band, only to pick back up on my quest on the last 20 miles to the cabin. Even now I cannot stop myself from listening to those two songs as I write; as if they had the power to change the past.
I knew what I was doing. The songs themselves didn’t, but the behavior does. It matters to watch patterns. I need to be aware, but the exhaustion of constantly being ON to function within society can wear thin some days. I gave myself goals. I can make it to Big Rapids. Now I can make it to Cadillac. Now I can make it to Kingsley. Now I can make it to Cedar. Just a few more steps, then you are at the cabin. Now you can turn off. But the music still plays on repeat in my head, even when there is silence.
I stopped listening to music a few years back because I couldn’t to bear what it was doing to me. Music was once the surest ways I could feel, but then I stopped feeling and I thought, what was the point? But now, I need to always feel. I need to always feel the needle marking its way across my heart. I need to let the ghosts go free.
It is oh so very late. I am not afraid for I can feel the weight of all that love that surrounds me, keeping me upright and ready; it is what propels me to go forward even when all I want to do is disappear. I wish I could live in a world where all those I love could be always near and not hundreds or thousands of miles away, so that they will never leave.
I have so many people to love! So many of them love me back! I would put weights in all of their hearts and marry them to my charm and grace.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2012, 2012, 2008

make your bed

Dear Internet,
For the last few weeks, I had been working on the piece that was living in this space before opting to scrap all 1500 words for another day. It wasn’t that it was bad, but there was something in the tone of the piece that I couldn’t shake as being comfortable sending out to the world just yet.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the scene from 8 Mile in which Rabbit realises bearing all of his business public makes his haters powerless against him. Not recalling the exact quote, I went digging for the script to help jar the time and location and ended up reading the whole damn thing in one sitting. While it’s speculative that the movie is based loosely on Eminem’s life, reading the synopsis to John Updike’s Rabbit, Run, it doesn’t take much to see where the rest of the inspiration came from. Now I’m keen to read some Updike.
Everything is connected.
Everything.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2011, 1999

shoes

Dear Internet,
It is nearly two years since my surgery and where I should be versus where I actually am are two wholly different things.
Whenever I get angry about the state of my feet, I seem to conveniently forget I was laid up for four months after surgery number one, on a wound vac for another two, then laid up again for another two months before finally being released from care nearly a year after the first surgery. Of course I’m not going to be where I think I should be at — nor would anyone else.
Logic and rational are not players in this game. When the world in my head is crashing, far easier to blame something you cannot control versus something you can.
In this case, the size of my feet.
This was much of my attitude this morning on my way to work. TheHusband had gifted me with a pair of fairly expensive ballet flats for the holidays, a pair similar to the brethren I purchased last summer. Instead of leather, however, the fabric was cloth so when I slid my feet into them the shoes had no stretch.
That is something I have to account for now post-surgery: my feet will be different sizes during the day and I need shoes to be flexible to fit that criteria. The company’s reputation for customer service was earned when a new pair in leather arrived on my doorstep, same size as the previously purchased pair, which I threw into my travel bag when I hopped a flight to San Francisco for a job interview in April.
During that trip, the new pair felt odd but I couldn’t put my finger on why the shoes felt weird. They went on easily enough but they didn’t fit right. I sized the new pair against their brethren and found the new pair was 1/2″ shorter than the pair I had been wearing for months. I contacted the company who sent me out another pair in the same size — maybe the first replacement was a mismatch? Nope. The now third pair of flats were matched up against my happily worn pair also had the same problem. Perhaps my original pair was the mismarked ones then? I sent the request in for another pair to exchange, this time for a size up which arrived the day of my birthday.
A size 12.
For some reason I’m recalling my first pair of adult shoes was purchased when I was 9 or 10, in a woman’s size 10. I have always not been tall, so size 10s at a young age made sense to me. I wore 10s for most of my early teenage years and into my 20s when the 10s stopped fitting — weight gain, arthritis, life — moved me into 11s. A few years ago when trying to size running shoes, the sales person tried to convince me I needed 12s not 11s and I laughed in her face. I don’t care WHAT your scale says, I wear 11s and then proceeded to stomp out the store in due form.
Because I apparently cannot have fat feet.
Feet change and they grow (and shrink!); they are not consistent no matter how much we want them to be. The part of our body that we abuse the most, we treat with so little respect. This is not a treatise to feet, but maybe it should be.
I tried on the 12s, which fit like a glove out of the box. I attempted to get over myself on the shoe size prejudice. A size meant nothing if they fit well and were comfortable and this was true of the new pair. My right foot, now an 11.5w thanks to the surgeries felt great. The left foot? 10.5b felt a little loose. I can make this work, I thought. I added on a pair of secret lady socks to keep my feet in place (leather!) and went about my merry little way.
Except yes, my feet do change. By the time I was leaving work nine hours later, my right foot had ballooned (as it tends to do after a day where I’m on my feet a lot) and was snug in its shoe. The left shoe, however, flapped off my foot like an evil clown smiling to children as I walked.
I angrily walked to my car, feeling as if my frustration of my life was based solely on this pair of ill-fitting shoes. Why couldn’t I own a nice pair of shoes that fit?  How was the first pair I purchased a perfect fit but its brethren were horrible matches? Why was everything so complicated? Why were people such assholes? Why can’t we have nice things?
Why am I so angry over a pair of shoes?
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe:

always on

Dear Internet,
I am growing sleepy and tonight is a perfect night to retire early. The last six weeks have been a travelling cornucopia of locations, time zones, and events. Surprisingly, I’ve mostly stable but the exhaustion of keeping myself normalized is wearing on me. These last few days I’ve been at home have been filled with lots of decompression. I still have THINGS TO DO but I’m pushing those things to the side for the moment to catch my breath.
There is a big announcement coming, from me, but I’m holding off for a final piece to fall into place before it happens. I already know the answer — thanks to Twitter — but I still need the official, OFFICIAL word so I can breathe a sigh of relief and move forward. TheHusband and I wrestled with what to do incase the answer shifted. While I could have seen us going in that direction, and it would have helped us grow in a lot of ways other than just my career, ditching everything and starting fresh yet again was slowly losing its appeal. Maybe that’s the sign I need to finally settle down: When the thought of a new adventure isn’t as golden as it perhaps seems.
While I know if we would have made that particular leap it would have been good, it is more that something was missing. Something is always missing and I feel like I’ve spent most of my life running to catch it. The big announcement itself is another adventure in its own right, but its an adventure I’ve been waiting on for years. So maybe then it is not about losing out on a golden adventure, but creating a perfect adventure specifically for me?
There is a whole wide world waiting for me and I bet it will look even better after I get some sleep.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe:

 
 

góða tungl

Dear Internet,

I can see how they do it, naturally, but with much better grace than I. Into the deep they go, followed by the shallow cut formed by their bodies as they slice through the water.

And that is where we end up, here you and I, circling around until the first one falls.

It’s strangling me, holding me down and keeping me hostage. I am gasping for air, the pulling of the under tow as I move faster against the current. “Come back!”, you yell.
But I cannot hear you.
Somewhere between the worlds I survive, neither alive nor dead, neither a ghost nor breathing. Neither heaven or hell, but who am I kidding? The population here is not 1, it is millions. We just pretend that everything is fine.

Lend all the tired ones your light,
tiptoe in every window,
But leave the suffering hearts in darkness.

On paper it looks good. Admirable. Some are envious of our success. But it is all hollow, isn’t it? It means nothing, it is nothing, it will be forgotten sooner than we think. Whatever legacy we had planned or hoped to plan will be for naught. We are but millionths of a second in a time that spans billion of years.
In the cosmic sense of it all, we are either parasites or carriers. Mainly we are destroyers.
I can see how easy it is for them to move across, make that final cut through the void. Choose life over death or death over life. They made a final decision, consequences be damned. They were in control, and for that we should be eternally grateful.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-universe: 2012, 2011, 2009, 1999

queen’s cushion

Lancelot rescuing a lady from the bath, from British Library Add. 5474, 13th c.
Lancelot rescuing a lady from the bath, from British Library Add. 5474, 13th c.

Dear Internet,
Monday I had a massive panic attack that came out of nowhere and incapacitated me for the entire day. I did breathing exercises, 5 minute meditation, and various other exercises and nothing changed. I called on TheHusband who had me run through a few mindfulness exercises, several times, but it was almost utterly useless. My heart beat so fast and loud, you could watch the skin on my chest bone wiggle.
Somewhere in all of this, I took a shower — for I was to get ready for work, see — and found myself having a hard time breathing in the shower and my fingers were starting to go numb while my heart raged on. I climbed out of the shower, turned the taps off, and padded down the hallway and called in sick. There was no way I was going to be able to dress myself, let alone make it full a full day at work.
I downed a half a Klonopin, waited 30 minutes, and then took a full dose.
I was back in bed wearing jim jams, hair wet, glasses on, and waited for my heart to subside. It took nearly an 1.5 hours from the first dose to that blissful moment when the rapid beating just becomes a quiet murmur and my body is at ease again.
I slept for six hours.
I woke sometime in late afternoon, TheHusband brought me lunch in bed, and  this was the rest of my day. At various points I used the bathroom and the watched TV, but I mostly dozed and  stayed off the Internet.
I took another Klonopin sometime around 9:30PM and was asleep within the hour. From the time I went to bed on Sunday night and to the time I woke on Tuesday morning, I was only awake for 6 hours. Maybe 7.
What caused it? I’ve been known to have had panic attacks while I was in midst of joy, so on one hand, it is hard to say. On the other, I can start to pin point various things that are making me insane. Projects that need to be done, but won’t get completed without me even when other people are attached. Things that I attempt to pass off to other people to take the load off of me, but which are getting dropped and forgotten. My own passions are getting wrapped up in various things that are pulling me away from my goals, but which are more lucrative so I chase them and not my dreams. Then I start to feel guilty for not putting the time in for those dreams because I’m too busy wheeling and dealing over something else.
Then there is the Internet of course, for you are never far from the drama laden land of high school cliques. I can’t seem to shake you no matter what I do.
So it is everything and it is nothing at the very same time. It has the smell of the past, for it reminds me of that very awful time in 2002 when I cut out the cancers and ran far away to reinvent myself. It is clear now no matter how much good work is being done and how forward I push things to make changes, I am forever tilting at windmills. With very little backup to support me, I am running against a system that refuses to change or won’t change or finds the necessary changes to be unnecessary.
But it is interesting how little public support I get on projects yet privately I am told are worthwhile cases to push for. Hardly a single fucking person wants to get their hands wet or upset the status quo. Because it is easy for them to say such things to me privately, they have nothing to lose. But supporting me publicly is a sin means they might get their knuckles rapped and shamed for going against the grain. And I am tired of  the hyperbole being laid at my feet on an almost daily basis, dressed up as supportive words. Either you stand with me or you don’t. If you don’t, get the fuck out of here.
What I can control, and what I can create and thrive, is work that is related to me and only me. That rejection of this work will only make me better, stronger, whereas with the other work, it strips you naked and forces you to submit to a system that steeped in history and heredity. That work, where only the like will talk to like, who will navel gaze until they have become contortionists, and who will only give props to those of their ilk, their kind. Celebration for things that aren’t really all that important but can be dressed up and taken out as if it was the most important things in the world. Work is not important, but showmanship IS. This is what I’ve learned. If you suck enough cocks, drink with enough vendors, and finger fuck everyone else, you too can be part of the inner elite. You too can have BS awards for superficial things that have no meaning other than to a select few. I don’t have time for such foolishness. My time has become, now, ultra precious.
Maybe it is time for me to burn the walls and plant a fuck you kiss to my detractors, and start anew.
Yeah, maybe it is time.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2009

the falls of the gods

Moon Ahead of the Storm
Taken by keebosr, 2010. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.

Dear Internet,
It’s just shy of 8PM and I’m already for bed. Tomorrow I have to open the library and man the reference desk at the unreasonable hour of 730AM. To be sure, however, I’ll need to be partially awake for that to take place and I’m already plotting my caffeine consumption. I am going to need it.
I was in a dark place this morning when I got to work, made darker still by some work dealings that I blew off because if I had taken them seriously, I would have slit someone’s throat. Sometimes people are just obnoxious, but fighting me on a one time change is just ridiculous. Did the world end? No. Now go the fuck away.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon, after my tepid lunch of stale pasta salad and food I ravaged from the vending machines, working on stats.
While I got incredibly engrossed in my stat doing, I noticed the heaviness on my chest and the sense of foreboding that was plaguing me in the morning had almost dissipated. The existential crisis of this morning seemed to just leave a taste of what it was – but I find at times I can’t shake it completely. It usually begins with a Talking Headsesque series of questions (How did I get here? This is not my beautiful wife!) and then leaps into me making tally sticks of what I did have (husband who loves me, a good job, good income, a beautiful home, a cabin in a desired area, anything I could possibly desire) and even then, making notes of what I have — all very good things mind you — didn’t seem enough.
I am hungry for more.
But more what – – ahh, that is the question I can never answer. At least, not sounding like an insane person.
Over the years I’ve come across people who were similar to me and whose lives for a brief moment, joined mine in parallel. Then they move on, and I move on, and later I find that the lives they lead are the lives I want to lead. I have never known abject jealousy before until this happened. And I didn’t know, don’t know, how to handle it.
I know it’s healthy to look up to someone(s) and be inspired by them, and I feel that I’m inspired all the time by many people. But these 2-3 others, whose lives I don’t want to be inspired by, I want to have their lives.  I can’t shake this demon off my back because I would truly like to enjoy them for their products, not be a creeper plotting to SWF them.
[Though, to be fair, one of them has liberally lifted some ideas/concepts of mine that were published publicly on this site years and years ago for their (now published) fiction. So thanks. I guess.]
But that isn’t really it either, this wanting the life of someone else because in my mind’s eye, I’m more than the sum of my parts. I’m more then these adjectives or these people’s lives that I covet so far from the body. But I can’t shake the feeling that I should be doing more, doing a lot more,  and that the doing more isn’t here. It’s somewhere else. And it’s with or without my husband (depending on the time of day when the crisis hits).
Fight or flight.
Pattern for my entire life. I had thought, assumed even, that once I got the degrees, and the boy, and the job, and the house, and everything I worked for, my life would settle into some kind of happy state of domesticity.
I feel like I was wrong.
I kept telling Dr. P. that something big was going to need to happen and then I realised that in order for that something to happen, I’d have to make it happen myself. Then I start to feel strangled, as if I can’t function in some capacity whether emotional or physical. The heavy weight sits on my chest and demands to be petted.
Then I hide in my bedroom until the next day comes and I start all over again. I look at time frames and see self-promises made weeks, months, years ago remain broken and unfulfilled. I am nothing, in the cosmic sense, and it doesn’t seem to all matter. The only freedom is the flight in my brain when the drugs hit  me with a left hook to soothe me down.
Then I wake and start all over again.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #39)

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