I knew it was time to take a break after working steadily on cleaning my office for a few hours when I put the carbon copy of a check in the envelope and sealed it without thinking. And my brain has been throbbing for half that time. UFYH rules say you should take breaks every so often to keep your focus up and your mind engaged, brain fatigue is painful when attempting to accomplish something, and when finding the simplest of tasks become too mountainous, it’s time to rest. (But am I not superwoman, who can do everything?)
I noticed that I am finding myself struggle with brain fatigue quite a bit as of late. Conversations that require me to think beyond the shallow depths of my knowledge, books that require me to be more engaged then a passive reader, thoughts that I should have but somehow I can’t find the words to express. My inner world seems so rich and yet, when I go to articulate it, I sound uninformed or even worse, like an idiot.
I can physically feel this barrier that is pitting me against the world, I find it even in my superficial thoughts to be a skim over the edge but when I dig deep, and burrow myself in to find what I’m looking for, then I find myself scraping against the wall, my voice shouting on the inside to let me pass! But nothing happens, no break through and no release. So my words are strangled in my throat, in the elbows of my arm, for they cannot get to my finger tips, in the unknown reaches of neverwhere, where everything goes to live and yet nothing seems to come back alive.
The pug continues snoring on, her cadence is reassuring and at times, the most honest thing in the world.
Tag: Mentally Healthy
Bone chips and Felix
The last couple of weeks, I have become an emotional hot mess. My mind, and my dreams, has been everywhere and nowhere at once, shifting the lines of reality and maybe madness. My thoughts have not been racing, as they were wont to do in the past, but I am having trouble focusing on any particular thing longer than a few seconds. I’ve come out of a dead sleep several times in the last month or two when I’ve thought I’ve seen or felt things in the dark, only to discover they weren’t there. Then I feel like a fool for when I tell people about what I see/heard, because I sound ridiculous. The other night, I had a nightmare bats were dive bombing the bed and I could feel the bed shiver as each bat landed on the mattress. But of course, after waking with a gulping start, there were no bats, there was nothing over head, and the only sounds in the bedroom were the teeter-tottering snores of TheHusband and the pug.
Tonight, I heard the sound of something scratching at the wood inside of the walls in my office, some kind of persistant “scratch, scratch, scratch” that sounded more like something was trying to free itself from its wooden prison, but I couldn’t find a source of the sound. The sound was coming near a joint in the window in my office, and it was loud!, but of course as soon as I called Justin in to investigate, the sound immediately disappeared. Justin reasoned it was probably a squirrel or some other varmint hanging out in the gutters and the noise was ricocheting down into the office, since my office is in a corner room. To appease me, Justin pounded on the wall around the source of the alleged noise but nothing stirred at his thumps, and nothing has stirred since he left.
In the past when I felt like I was going slightly insane, at least my insanity had a rational to it – I could manage the craziness. But this time is different, between the dreams and the sounds, because what if this all in my head? How do I manage that?
It hurts to think. Sometimes, it hurts to read. I feel like I am drowning in information, struggling to clutch on to what is important rather than what wanted. The air is murky here, because there are no clear paths for me to go, there is vague directions, and no real sign for which way for me to wander.
I need a purpose.
Meijering at night.
Growing up, my mother installed a strange power relationship with food into our heads. I’ve never quite figured out where her ideas came from but essentially her idea was that less food in the house the better. Let me explain further: She would sometimes “forget” to go grocery shopping and or she would buy a few packages of hamburger, American cheese slices, saltines, and popcorn. For a family of four with eating habits for a family of six.
We’re large people and a bit on the tall side (I hover near 6′, Mumsy at 5’10” and brother at 7′. My now-ex step-father is about 6’1″.) While my mother is now borderline morbidly obese, my brother and I are just plain chubbeh. We could stand to lose a few pounds, but, we’re both fairly active (then and now) and are not sit at home stuffing our faces type people. We do, however, have large appetites.
It wasn’t that we were poor, Mumsy made a really good living as a home health care nurse (let’s just say, she neared six figures by the late ’90s in Michigan) and she certainly could afford to feed us, but, without fail, every week she would go grocery shopping and bring home the exact same items:
Continue reading “Meijering at night.”
There is a new sherrif in town
If I had a gun right now, I’d be blowing the smoke away from the barrel but since I don’t have a gun, we’ll just pretend.
The one thing I recognized about myself when I moved on my own is that I have huge issues with standing up to people I like/love/whatever. People I don’t know I can talk smack all day long but this fucking catholic guilt (as in, left over from my youth, not a recent addition thanks), makes me feel terrible when I voice my opinion on something. My mouth is what made me so er, popular with UUnet and why most people were uh, cautious of my mouth. But I have big problems with sticking up for myself, especially in matters that I think it will count in.
With that being said, I took what greentara said about HGFH being passive aggressive and spent most of the day thinking about this subject. I came to a few conclusions.
- I would rather be alone for the right reasons than friends (platonic or intimate) with someone for the wrong reasons. Case in point, HGFH, my brother and Danny.
- I will no longer be someones whipping girl.
- I will no longer back down when someone attempts to correct me and tell me i’m ‘wrong’ or ‘crazy’.
For the better part of my adult life, I realised that those who were close to me (sic) where the ones who often said I was wrong, crazy, or completely off base on everything from how I treat my dogs, to how I wear and what I wear to purchases. It didn’t matter what it was, but I was always wrong and my decisions on everything were always knocked down. I whipped my brother into shape and then I took Danny on and finally HGFH also got some coming to her too. She accused me in a few recent emails of “interrogating her” causing her “humiliation” and “embarrassment” but you know, that’s not how i see it at all. I see it as standing up for myself and if she still wants to me a ‘friend’ when the dust settles and the gun is back in my holster, we’ll see. But chances are, when she gets that email, she’s gonna be upset, and unlike before, I’m not afraid of what her reasons are going to be.
please forgive me
Please forgive me
If I act a little strange
For I know not what I do.
Feels like lightning running through my veins
Everytime I look at you
I SHOULD be working on a paper that is due today, i NEED to finish packing and instead i keep thinking about things that i shouldn’t be thinking about and daydreaming. But hey, i actually got holiday cards out BEFORE THE HOLIDAY so i must be doing something right.
Two main themes keep running through my head and that is: the holidays and love. they seem to be pretty intertwined these days and it doesn’t help that i hole myself up in my bedroom watching chick-flicks when I need a picker upper (exactly what a i need a pick me up from is anyones guess). I could watch Bridget Jones’ Diary 1500 times and I’ll still get mushy knees thinking about the look Colin Firth gives her at the end of the movie.
As we all know, and if you don’t you will now, i hate the holidays, sometimes with the passion that makes others nervous. Without fail something always happens around Christmas time that makes me want to go chop off the heads of the carolers as they come singing about god, Jesus and love. Christmas when I was a child used to be great. I come from a large family (my mother is the eldest of 7, and I’m the middle grandchild of nine) and including extended relatives, we had a good old fashioned German Christmas everywhere.
[The images are not scanned in well, I’ll fix that later]
Christmas 1975
Christmas 1979
14′ high ceilings with 12′ high trees, that were decorated with ornaments my mom had collected over the years. Me and the infallible teddy bear. That one in the picture died shortly after that was taken when I got sick on him. A new one was dispatched and replaced and he still sits quitely by my bed and I still often sleep with him. But I am digressing.
Christmas and love. Love and Christmas.
Christmas 1992: After dating for nearly a year, I find out that Alan has been dating another woman and breaks up with me after Christmas dinner at his brothers house. I would have died for this man. I haven’t been able to say that about anyone since.
Christmas 1994: Shortly before exams, I slip on ice outside my parents house, I suffer double fracture and a dislocated ankle:
outside angle
inside angle
Christmas 1996:My grandfather dies on 12/23/96. I spent Christmas day driving to his funeral and being harangued by my cousins.
Christmas 1999: Spent solitary.
Christmas 2000: Spent in Miami. There is something not right about 80 degree weather on Christmas day.
Christmas 2002: ?
Love and Christmas. Christmas and Love.
This year I decided I wasn’t going to be the grump I usually am come October and thought I’d get into the holiday spirit. I’m TRYING to get into the holiday spirit and it’s getting a bit distracting because it’s not quite going that way. Here we are 14 days before the holiday and nothing is what it’s supposed to be at this time. I’ve told Paul over and over that my gift to him would be a ticket back to Miami for the holidays and i’ve been waiting for him to get on the phone to find out when to schedule this little trip and he has yet to do it. I know that it will end up with him screaming at me about how it didn’t work out and etc etc etc. But I don’t want to talk about that either.
So every year I keep revisiting the old journals and looking at what I’ve written and one thing I can say about myself is that I am consistent in my opinions on a lot of things, but the one thing that really bothers me above anything else is I keep apologizing for who I am. It’s thinly veiled some days and others it’s in your face, but no matter what, I’m always questioning who and what I am as if this would somehow make things better.
I’m sorry I’m loud. I’m sorry I’m obnoxious. I’m sorry I’m smarter than you, wittier than you and TALLER than you (unless you are taller than me). I’m sorry my life is in a constant flux. I’m sorry I’m not blonde, blue eyed or a size 4. I’m sorry that I snort when I laugh, that I am not afraid to eat in front of people, that i twirl my hair, make faces constantly or collect toys. I’m sorry I like sex, I’m not afraid to discuss it and that I’m not afraid to try with relationships even if i keep failing over and over. I’m sorry I’m pushy, demonstrative and aggressive. I’m sorry that I flip switches and push buttons on and off like a light and that I constantly ask why. I’m sorry I have this journal and that if you get involved with my that your life would be published online. I’m sorry for the exhibition streak and the wanderlust streak and the NEED TO ACHIEVE streak. I’m sorry I’m obsessive and compulsive and that I’m passionate. I’m sorry I don’t want to lay down and bare your babies right this minute and be your little haus frau. I’m sorry that the ideas that sounded good 5 years ago, 2 years ago, 1 year ago cause shudders down my spine.
Yes yes, men are shit, women are stupid whores and the world goes on. I’m sorry I don’t want to buy into that self-effacing bullshit and use walls to protect myself. I just keep trucking on, because you know, life is far too short to wear beige and play the games of walls and the whole “i don’t want to get hurt” bull. You never know till you try, and trust me, I keep trying and I suspect one of these days I might get it right.
I’m sorry for everything and anything.
When I was on the drugs, I was happy not to think these thoughts. I was happy that life was going in the direction it was going in and I was content on feeling nothing. Now I’m off the drugs and I feel everything. I cry during movies and when things happen. I daydream so much that i am beginning to hate taking showers or baths because I’m in there for hours thinking about everything and anything.
I just never saw the point of wasting your life on nothing when there is something. I’m tired of being the half-truth and the interim. when will it be my turn?
x0x0x0x
But how many corners do I have to turn?
How many times do I have to learn
All the love I have is in my mind?
thanks to sarah mclachlan, david gray, and of course the incomparable richard ashcroft and the lonly choir mp3 i happened to have.
tears
i do not write because i am depressed.
i am depressed because i do not write.
right now i’m on some hormonal in balance of some sort that i started silently crying in bed. but my crying started earlier today and there was a reason and i must share that story.
as it has become painfully aware, i have a quirky personality. not in a bad way, but as in irc, on-line and rl, i’m very sarcastic and have a dry sense of humour. this sense of humour does take some getting used to, but overall I’ve never had a problem with people being, well, upset by it. They may not get my sense of humour, which is fine, but, it generally does not offend.
as with many corps, we have many internal aliases that we use that splattercast various groups. i’m on quite a few myself, personally.email is an excellent technology tool — when it’s used. There are some discussion on the list sometimes but mostly it’s kept to work related items. which is fine.
we have been having some troubles with our internal software that we use on a daily basis. someone had emailed my local group and i had responded with comments of stale items not leaving after the items had been completed. i put this comment in a format of (complaint) (/complaint). It was meant in good faith. Now there is someone on my team whom has been working there exactly one week longer than myself. In recent events lately, this said person has taken it upon themselves to chastise me for saying, what they have felt was unnecessary things via email and it should never have been splattercasted. Now, if i was constantly emailing crap to the group that was totally non-work related, then yes i can agree. But this specific email was in response to something that was posted. His comments made no sense. But the kicker is, is that this person has been taken a special interest in me and emailing me anytime they feel my email is inappropriate. Keeping that in mind, i emailed this person back and gave the whole delete key speech and ended it if they felt they had a problem with me specifically they need to see our manager and/or they can set up a .procmail filter to send all my emails to dev/null seeing as, this is how they felt they were going.
They mail me back with a long speech about how i misconstrued them and how they were not going to set up filters for me etc etc and that they are not intentionally creating tensions with me because that was not their intent, etc et al. Well the thing is, they DID create tension because this brought up a whole can of worms. And I personally do not feel comfortable when people suddenly decide that i am a target. Am I over-reacting? No, i don’t think so. I pointed out the uselessness of several emails that have gone out lately and asked if this person was taken the time to write the senders of those emails the same kind of response. No, they said, they were not dealing with anyone else other than myself. So yes, i do feel singled out.
i started crying at my desk.
not blubbering tears but just silently going down my cheeks. i was working with a few telcos on several projects at the same time and was on the phone with them. I IM’d my boss (who is this persons boss as well) and she and i went to a conference room where i showed her the printed emails between me and said person and she agreed that the direction they took was unnecessary and the point they were driving across could have been worded better, which i agreed.
later on i found out that one of this person’s friends was killed earlier this week in a car crash.
while i could understand why this person could be edgy, this is not the first time this person has done this and certainly has been a multitude of times in recent memory.
I cried on my bosses shoulder.
I’ve been getting flack from some of my co-workers because I’ve been gone ‘so much’ lately. I don’t think many of them know just how late i stay on average as well as the after-hours work that i do. The problem that bothers me is that if there is an issue, my own manager would discuss this with me, certainly. I brought this up to my manager as well and she said she has not heard of any complaints from me at all — which is great. she also stated she knew how rough of situation that i had going on, mainly dealing with my mother and her problems. i had been sniffy eyed ever sense.
And of course i cannot let it go, because instead of a smart retort that i had written and postponed, i deleted it and moved on for the rest of the day. i’m nearly 30 years old and i still do not feel like i fit in. my work environment is much like that of high school, which in offices and buildings where the same people have worked together for an extraordinary amount of time, it’s bound to happen like that. but i always thought i was at least /liked/ by people. i never heard any relations that someone hated my guts or wanted to have me killed. but apparently, these people opinions matter far too much to me, enough so that i get this upset.
I just can’t win.
There is something about my personality that people other love or hate — which is fine. But those who love it don’t necessarily love it all that much. especially when times like this when i feel like no one likes me at all. that i’m unpopular and i’m unloved. I’ve always known that my personality was a bit more direct than most people like, which is fine but when it comes down to even those i know who like me but only in specific situations, that hurts.
one of the things, my therapist and i, have been going over is basically breaking down the layers and seeing what is underneath. you don’t feel like you’re depressed, but for some reason i feel like since October that my whole world has shattered and gone to shit. i have zero interest in anything and zero energy even more so. i’m being swapped around on anti-depressants so much that i’m moody and temperamental. my mother and i have been growing closer because we are in the same boat. i don’t want to kill myself but yet i can’t stop asking the question ‘what is this life worth living for?’
pink and red
last night i was supposed to do a cut over for a customer at 4am EST, which thankfully never happened.
but thanks to the part i was supposed to do the cut, i took today off for a ‘personal’ day because i felt like i was on the verge of killing people. good thing too.
so i went to ikea and blew 400 on stuff for the house (including a kandinsky print for paul).
i’ve retired the powerpuff bathroom gear and now my bathroom is bright as fuck. i also bought new duvet cover in red and pink and bought brand new pink sheets. paul said he wanted to spooge all over the sheets just so i could get rid of him. i’ll take pictures tomorrow, because it really is bright.
we also rented ‘best in show’ which was supposed to be funny, but it’s only saving grace was that it had parker posey in it. i do realise that it’s a parody but, it really isn’t all that funny.
now i get to go brush my teeth with my sonic toothbrush.
for a friday night, i’m living large!
lisa
high and dry
i used to think creating the titles of my entries were the hardest part of writing and now I’m thinking it’s more like the actual intro.
it is hard, you know, to write something and get dialog going within your head and then putting it out on paper (which actually is just bits and bytes since I’m doing this via keyboard and a text editor, and what not).
i honestly don’t know what’s wrong with me and i don’t have sarcastic repartee in my head that gets me going.
i don’t know what’s wrong.
i wish i had the magic eight-ball to shake and say ‘what the hell is wrong with me?!?!’ and get an answer, but life doesn’t’ work out that way and i can’t say that i blame it.
i used to get so wrapped in fantasy from reading books/movies that i used to half think my life was a sitcom where everything got neatly wrapped up in 30 minutes or at the end of the last chapter and that what i was experiencing was merely the epilogue.
and in the interim, I’m on 900mg of lithium, 100mg of Serzone, 200mg of wellabutrin plus i have some anti-psychotic drugs that I’m supposed to use whenever i get angry. Woah, i realised part of today’s issue is that i went down on my Serzone! woo!). But the drugs isn’t the issue, it’s ‘deep seated issues’ i have and why I’m so fucking angry. But here is another thing, I’ve had these ‘deep seated issues’ for forever and a day, and i always felt okay with myself — even if it was ‘deep rooted’, but it was my deep-rooted-ness and i could deal with that, because i still had a personality and it was mine.
shadow boxer
I slept for nearly 12 hours last night, but I had earned it. I had taken a five hour nap Sunday afternoon and had not gone to bed until after 4am Monday morning. I managed to function on a few hours of sleep and by going to work and was thankful that I had to leave at 2pm to go see Dr. B. for more drug follow up.
She’s changed my meds again so that I’m taking 25mg of Effexor and upping the Serzone to 375mg, which is not even close to being the actual medicated dose, which is 400 or 450, I forget which.
Last night I was sitting there thinking about my friends, both online and off, and their reaction to me. Except for a few emails from a few people who read my journal, everyone else just left me alone. I had not thought of whether or not this made me sad, more than I was disappointed. But I realized, that I really am a tough person to get to know, and it’s fucking hard as hell to approach a conversation with someone who just spent eternity on writing about suicidal thoughts and cutting themselves. How the fuck do you approach that?
You can’t. Even I know that.
But it’s hard though, because I feel like I have to start from point A to start learning social niceties again from the very beginning. Somewhere, back in my past, prior to puberty I would suppose, something changed in me and that brought forth everything that has happened. But I learned that even memories can be deceiving when talking to my mom about the petite mal seizure I had when I was 3, because for nearly 20 years, I thought it was grand mal, which makes a difference.
I always remember being scared, and I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t. I remember I always had to prove myself to someone or something, to say “Hey! I’m here! Hello!” and I don’t know why I did that. I remember, silly as it seems now, when I was living in Toronto that after going to the movies with my dad to see “Pump up the Volume” that I had stood at my window looking at the Toronto skyline and talking into a mini-recorder. I am too easily influenced and some would even say I was horribly naive.
But I suppose that is part of my charm.
When I was getting ready for work yesterday, I realized that I didn’t want to have a kid now because the state of my relationship or my age, but I didn’t want to have a kid now because of the state of my mental relationship with myself. I did not want to put my child through the BS I am going through simply because that to me would be cruel punishment and the cycle would start all over again. I couldn’t let that happen. I realized that my relationship with Paul wasn’t the problem but it proved to myself I had to be somewhere, inside of me, in a grounded place before I could move on to the next phase in my life. I cannot be angry that if it takes me forever and a day to finish school or if I’m 35 when I have my first kid. I just want to be secure in myself and financially before I bring a brat into this world.
Andrew said recently that out of those he knew, i was one of the few (including himself) that he could imagine not getting married or having a child. I suppose I did agree with him that the idea did seem ludicrous at the time, but, the thing is, I do want a child. I want a little girl, and genetically, if the patterns in the family keep on trucking, the first child I have will be a girl and there is an 80% chance that she’ll have brown hair and brown eyes, and basically look like me as I looked like my mother and my mother looked like my grandmother and so on and so forth. I have dreamed, for a very long time, that this child would not grow up in the kind of life I did and all my mistakes would be rendered negative simply by her birth. I almost feel, amusingly enough, that this child would be the second coming to me.
I’ve been at a crossroads for a few years now in my life and I’ve been coasting. I know this. But I did make a lot of changes by getting my ass out of Michigan and out of San Francisco and moving on with my life. Emotionally though, I feel like I’m still in the same place where I was when I had left Michigan nearly five years ago, but I know I have grown and it’s just in minute ways but I have grown. I do not feel almost 30. I look at successful women in their 40s and 50s and realize that I do have a long life ahead of me. I look at my mother as a supporter and a figure of hope because she did go through a lot of fucking shit and she’s still surviving (and even talking about dating again! woo!). But the ties that bind us also seem to gag us and I need to start taking small steps to make that work.
Right now, Dr. B. thinks (and I agree) that I need to work on inner self first before making any major changes in my life and I agree. Some of the stuff seems to work like taking classes online and putting together small goals but I cannot do everything at once nor should I be expected to. But I do have to prioritize and figure out which way to go first.
With that, I bid you a good morning and a happy day.
Lisa
drugco
It’s 3:15am Monday morning, and like all good boys and girls, I should be in bed sleeping. Instead, I stayed awake fretting over the slight idea that my electricity was going to be cut off tomorrow (it’s not) and the added fact that I had a five hour nap lasting until 8pm this evening also did not help.
I’m still struggling with the fact of the amount of drugs I’m taking on a daily basis. Dr. B. says we have to work on my issues one at a time and she’s adding bipolar/manic depressiveness or ADD/ADDH to the mix because apparently while both are similar, I also exhibit symptoms of ADD/ADDH but apparently some of the underlying issues with learning disorders also clearly show to be like bipolar as well. Like how Anthrax has “flu like symptoms.” Bad connotation but you get the point.
I remember, five or six years ago when our GP put me on Prozac and I woke up every morning with suicidal thoughts. Apparently, I am one of the very few that had that kind of side affect happen to them. I think Dr. B. mentioned that Lithium and it’s derivatives are the same way, but the point is to remember it’s the medication and not how you truly feel, which is also my strong point. I’m too fucking stubborn to die. I take my anger out in other obtuse ways, like chopping off my hair (I did mention that I used to pull my hair out in huge clumps when I was pissed back in the day, didn’t i?), dying my hair, getting pierced/tattooed and shopping. When I’m angry, I spend money. heh. Yet I still look at my bookshelf and think I don’t own enough books. I cleaned off my desk while I was getting bills together this morning and found a book I had purchased over a month ago and forgot about.
I keep straying from the point.
So about five or six years ago, GP puts me on Prozac and i felt like a zombie. I did not feel like “me,” i felt like someone who wasn’t me but was sharing my body. I did not know who that person was, but it was pissing me off. I did not feel the highs or the lows like I was used to and that angered me. I wanted to feel the highs and the lows, but that would require me to be off drugs and it seemed everyone wanted me to be on drugs.
It was then and there that I swore that I would use holistics, therapy or other ways to control the body chemistry and not use artificial means. But after having panic attack after panic attack for months in the summer of 2000 and feeling like you were dying will change that in you.
Dr. B. asked me why I was so defensive. heh. I spilled out words to her about growing up in my family and school and what i was like. I was always effing alone when I was growing up. That’s how i felt. I didn’t have many friends and I didn’t have very man confidences. There was me, my books and reading.
Paul was pretty adamant about me going on lithium because he said it was addictive and that he had family members who could not get off of the drug. I asked Dr. B. about it and she said that lithium was not addictive and that really, none of my meds were except klonopin. Even then, because while i have an addictive personality, I’m so afraid of being strung out on drugs or alcohol, I refuse to put myself in that situation. I hardly every drink — last time I had beer was on 9/11/2001 and prior to that was Paul’s 21st birthday. I cannot even remember the last time I did illicit drugs. It does nothing for me. Growing up in an alcoholic family will do that to you, either you become this almost fanatic about alcohol and drugs or you succumb and do it yourself. I choose not to succumb and kept my mouth away from alcoholic pleasures for quite a long time. I won’t say I don’t drink, as I’ve been known to imbibe in a few yummy alcohol laden treats a few times in my life, but I don’t use alcohol as a crutch. Never could get over some of the taste and the smell of whiskey always reminds me of my dad. I never could date anyone who liked drinking whiskey and coke, because that to me along with a few other smells reminds me too much of my father.
I’m still fucking angry at him dying on me. I’m still pissed at my mom. Dr. B. says that I need to let the hurt go and I was almost shouting “I want to! I JUST DO NOT KNOW HOW!”
I don’t know how.
Wish I did.
x0x0x
lisa