Holiday Lull

Almost Christmas. I'm trying to feel it. I've got my shopping done, been listening to the songs, watching the movies, blah blah blah. It will go smoothly. And then it will be over. There will be much drinking involved to carry me through. And that is good.

I don't have any crisis at the moment. My fall classes are finished and I aced them all. Money is okay. Kids are alright (I said that in Roger Daltrey's voice). Work...well, it's always one part boring, one part alright, and two parts big fucking mess, so that's nothing new. It's like there's this big lull, a sigh, a pause. And I don't know what to do. It's too quiet.

I realize I've got to find something wrong with everything. When things are going the best, I'm bracing for the worst. The after-Christmas hangover is coming, and that will last at least a month or two. So it's time to enjoy THE FUCK out of this Christmas, dammit.

Nice night

Tonight's a little better. Bad time at work, but good night at home. I always regret drinking after the fact, but in moderate amounts, it feels as if it helps. I can relax and connect easier. We were just out looking at the stars. Things felt good and normal. Planning for Halloween. Being stupid and ridiculous. How things should always be. Yeah. I feel good tonight.

Apology

I've become a downer over the last decade, which is about the same amount of time I've maintained this blog. It seems the more "good" things that happen in my life, the more shitty my personality becomes. I can't pretend to understand why. And I'm sorry. My mind is a poisonous place as of late, no matter what happens, I'm an insufferable asshole, incapable of chilling out and enjoying anything. I drink too much. I'm lazy and boring and stupidly predictable. I either irritate, offend, or just push away anyone I've ever loved. Trust me, though. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm human. Hopefully I'll outgrow this phase of being horrible to everyone around me.

Independent film material, my life is not.

When I'm up by myself late at night, after a few drinks, sometimes I feel like I ought to have my own soundtrack. It would be instrumental, mostly sad piano music. More than that -- my life is a quiet, quirky, independent film. Starring me. All internal dialog. Segments of dreams, daydreams, me just standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the side of the refrigerator, looking lost. Long sighs. Really pretentious artsy shit.

Yes. I realize this would be a very boring film.

It would need a great soundtrack.

Something I have. That I can label and everything.

Since I was little, my mind has assigned genders and distinct personalities to all letters and numbers. They were sadly made up of mostly males, but a lot of those males had varying degrees of masculinity. The only female letters were (well, are, as I still see things this way) K, P, Q, U, V, X, and Y. Female numbers are 4, 6, and 9.

I also saw numbers as young or old. For example, 1 was a mischevious baby boy, 2 was a tidy British schoolboy of about 8 years old. Each consecutive number was a little older, with 9 being a woman of a motherly age, maybe in her 40's. 9's personality was similar to Morticia Addams. I'm not even going to go into the personalities of the letters, but they all have them. Every last one. All unique.

I only now, this very morning, decided to google this phenomenon to see if this was a thing that other people did. And voila! It appears that I have ordinal linguistic personification, which is a form of synesthesia. This is actually a thing. I have this thing in common with other humans. I don't feel completely unbalanced now. This is a perfectly ordinary and accepted form of crazy.

BOOM! I can go back to bed now.

Labor Day

I tried to get to bed at a normal person's bedtime tonight, but I could not ignore my body's insatiable need for dessert, pumpkin beer, and the internets. And the desire to drift over to the piano every half hour or so and play for the rapt audience in my head. Shit. It's 2:26 in the A M. I don't even understand why I can't cooperate with myself.

My family members always seem to die on holidays. My PawPaw died on Independence Day when I was 16. My aunt died on Christmas Eve. Nanny died on Columbus Day. I get nervous when a holiday approaches. I think if I had to pick a holiday to die on, it would be April Fools. Anyway, today is a holiday. Labor Day.

I bring this up because...

My grandpa died this morning. I hadn't been terribly close to him, my dad's side of the family have never lived close enough to me to establish a strong bond. I'm not devastated, as he was 91 and I had known that his health was failing fast. The whole family seemed prepared for it. I haven't cried yet, so of course that makes me feel like a monster. I cry for no reason on the drive home from Walmart, for fuck's sake, why can't I cry in a relevant situation?

I know this will definitely fall under the category of TOO SOON, and would also not have been found humorous by my late grandpa, but...yeah, I think it's pretty damn funny. So. My grandparents had given my parents a hinged double photo frame years ago. On one side is a photo of my grandma, on the other side is my grandpa's picture. It's the sort of frame that has a voice recorder built in so that you can record and save a message. There is a button on each side, and a message for my parents from each of my grandparents. I honesty can't remember what grandma recorded, but when you press the button under grandpa's photo, his voice says, "If I could get out of here, I'd join you for a cup of coffee!" Would that not be PERFECT on his tombstone? Yeah? Huh?

*silence*

*crickets chirping*

I figure, if I can't cry, I'll try and laugh instead.

Time passes.

It is now 4 in the A M. Charlie's alarm will go off in about 15 minutes for him to get up for work, and I will be sneaking into bed, trying to play off that I had been there the whole time. But, yeah, he never buys that. Damn you, brain. Damn you, internets. Good night.

Some shit that I'm thinking that I decided to write down. As usual.

It's too fucking hard to think. I get up KNOWING I need to work on my homework (which, for the first week, is ridiculously simple), but I don't want to do anything. I want to hide in bed and pretend none of it exists. I can't do this. I mean, I CAN do the schoolwork, what I can't do is blow it off and fuck up my very decent GPA because I'm a fragile minded little asshole. I've been away from it too long. I thought taking a week off from work would help me ease back in to school, but it just gives me an excuse to sleep through the time I'm supposed to be doing my schoolwork. Maybe I should have gone with in-person classes this time. I dunno. I'm going to force myself to stay up after the kids go to school tomorrow morning, go for a walk and get my brain working. My brain wants to dwell on stupid stuff I have no control over instead of focusing on what is SUPPOSED to be important to me. I have no willpower. I feel lost. Blah blah blah, don't you think I know how pathetic and self-centered I sound? Fuck off, I'll figure it out. Hopefully.

Ordinary Do-Nothings

I can't seem to start today. I haven't strayed too far from bed. I got a Bukowski poem book for my birthday and now I'm buried in that, then I lie around. I had terrible and strange dreams last night and this morning. I'm still colored by those a little, I guess. It's hard to take ordinary life seriously. I have classes that started online yesterday that I haven't done anything for. I can't function today. Yesterday was good. Like a muted good. My family was here celebrating my birthday. I was so tired, but everything was still nice. I've got time off work now, so it's too easy to just space out and not do anything. I just want to lie around and live in my head.

Just woke up

I'm totally wasting valuable time sitting around in bed, propped up on my elbows, Facebooking until my pinkies go numb. It's after noon. Kids are in school. Charlie's at work. I got the kids on the bus this morning, ate a donut and went back to bed. I'm a lazy turd.

I start classes Monday. I took a huge break from school, but now it's time to pick back up with it. Or else my family will assume I've given up (not that I haven't thought about doing that), in which case they will pester the fuck out of me.

I really have nothing more to say.

Melancholia

Paired with intoxication and piano, melancholia can be both beautiful and horrible at the same goddamn time. Tell me how that's even fucking possible.

Possibly the rum is disguising the shit I'm feeling as art? Probably.

FuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK.

I'm awake when I shouldn't be. I have to take the kids to the dentist in the morning and then work in the evening. It's 3:30am. All I'm doing is reading news articles, taking online quizzes to see what mental disorder I might have (tonight it's BPD), listening to sad piano music and feeling mopey. I'm afraid of having another of those Supernightmares tonight. It wasn't horror movie terrifying. It played off my emotions. I was a disaster this morning. I ached in my chest. My heart had taken a beating (no pun intended) all fucking night.

I feel stupid and fragile. I'd like to just not give a fuck. I'd like to sleep soundly and wake up normal. I want the dreams back that used to play out happy fantasies.

On another note, I found out this evening that my grandpa is dying. Probably quite soon. I haven't seen him in something like 12 years. It makes me feel shitty.

Nightmare

I'm lying in bed, fresh from sleep, already feeling low. My dreams from last night and this morning all seemed to play out my worst fears. Not death or spiders or clowns. None of these compare to rejection. Humiliation. Loneliness. Why does my brain have to be so terribly cruel? It's a sick joke, to do this to me when it knows how much I look forward to the relief of sleep, where I can dream and temporary let go of all this crippling insecurity.

I'm not even going to post these dreams, because hell, they're much too embarrassing. The problem is, now that I'm awake, my mind is trying to convince me that the underlying theme of the nightmares are true for my waking life. All along, it's been telling me that no one really cares about me and I've been trying so hard to ignore it. But to have an entire dream, what feels like the equivalent of a three hour long movie, dedicated to showing me that I'm worthless, and that the people I care about don't give a shit about me or my stupid little feelings (it gave many examples, worst case scenario of this)... it's hard not to give my asshole brain the benefit of the doubt.

I'm groggy and torn apart when I'm supposed to be fresh and ready for a new day.

Fuck. Me.

Happy time. Instance #1.

It was late evening, winter, so all was dark. 1993 probably. Richland, WA. I was with Mandy, Leah, and (I think) Colleen. We were at the Uptown Mall, which was a strip mall, and we were all slowly trickling out of an antique store. I was first out, sitting on the curb out front in the cold, waiting for the others to make their purchases. I wore a long black puffy coat (no, not for stealing anything). My pockets were filled with CDs for my Discman. I was always wearing headphones. It was also shortly after I started smoking cigarettes, and I had a Camel Wide dangling "sexily" from my awkward mouth. I felt amazingly cool.

In those days, for reasons I have long since forgotten, I wanted to be called Robin, although I was instead dubbed "Roy," which has stuck with me to this day. We were all young and ready to reinvent ourselves, and then the next week we would re-reinvent ourselves. Because we still could.

We were waiting for one of our mothers (not mine) to come pick us all up and cart us to one of our houses (also not mine) where we would babble to each other and listen to records. None of us drove yet, as were all Freshmen in high school. Sitting on that curb, smoking, waiting for my favorite people in the world to join me, after sifting through vintage toys, books, and records and deciding not be buy anything (because I probably had no money)...I felt perfect. It was one of those rare moments in my life where I felt no worry, just love and contentment. All was right. I was with the few people in the world who understood me.

And I'm pretty sure I had an entire boxed set of Journey CDs stuffed in my coat.

I delete half the posts I write.

I start to write something and then erase. I change my mind and assume no one will care to read it because none of it really matters. Sometimes everything seems better off not said. Someone else has already said it, probably more eloquently than I, and it's useless to add my dull take on the matter. I'm too tired not to give up on my silly ideas and daydreams right now. The physical life around me is too full, time is short, I just need to let the current carry me along and stop dragging my feet every time I see something shiny.

Odd

I'm odd. I suppose everyone is odd, they just seem to be odd in a more acceptable way than I am. I'm an antisocial snobbish sort of strange. I don't trust, unless I see the same sort of strangeness in someone else. Right now, well, I've been drinking quite a bit. So I'm going to be a bit stream-of-thought nonsensical. I think about small things and frozen moments. Things that have happened where my memory has saved so much detail, yet I have comfortably filed it all away as unimportant. Until I hear a song, or smell something forgotten, and I'm there again. Cringing. There are past situations that I haven't really analyzed until now, moments and relationships that could have turned out better given some more age and time. People that seemed so strange and...less, in that moment, but it just took a decade of growing for me to realize their beauty and genuineness. I've fucked up a lot of friendships with people that are the same sort of strange as I am. I wonder if I could travel through time and meet my younger self, whether young Jenny would give older Jenny the time of day. What am I going to be regretting ten more years from now?

Falling apart.

Sitting here at work, I've started getting this weird shitty burning sensation on the top of my toes. I took my shoe off, not so bad but still hurts a bit. Put my shoe on and stood up, DAMMIT, I JUST WANT TO DIP MY FOOT IN ICE WATER. I have no idea what's wrong with it. It's not red. There's no rash. It can't be athlete's foot. I didn't do anything to it, although it did ache earlier around the base of my toes.

I overreact whenever my body does something unexpected. The older I get, the more surprise aches and pains I get. I google symptoms and find the worst possible scenario, then I start picturing my funeral. Never once do I entertain the idea of seeing a doctor. I'm hopeless.

Giving up vs. Giving in

It's been a peaceful few months. A bit too comfortable, superficial. I'm surrounded by Good but can't feel much, aside from aloofness. I'm lazily letting go of the sparse social interaction I had been mustering. Which was primarily online. I don't get out. Not much. Not at all, really, unless it's with my kids. I don't know if an evening spent at the grocery store with my family really counts as "out." I'm in a cozy rut. Not sure if I'm giving up on things that seemed to be so important just a few months ago, or whether I'm just accepting my life as it is, myself as I am, and such whatnot.

Nonsense and Garbage.

I miss the days when I used to sit down and write a blog about nothing. I didn't need anything gnawing on me. I waste all my nonsense on Facebook, man. People read that shit. Who reads this anymore? Pffft. Barely anyone.

Pffft. I actually made that noise. With my mouth. So yeah, that was sincere.

This is the second or third time now I've slept through thrash morning. I heard the truck coming as I was waking up, groaned and fell back into bed (notices the amazing typo I just made and leaves it -- but I would totally wake the fuck up for THRASH MORNING). *ahem* Trash morning. I find myself ridiculously amusing sometimes. Anyhow, now I feel guilty. The garbage is piling up by the side of the house. I said I'd do it. But instead, I had blissful dreams about Christmas and doorways. Was re-entering the dream after the kids left for school worth missing the trash truck? Yeah, I'd say so.

I'm in an okay mood, aside from the garbage mishap. I hopped up on the scale upon waking to find I have now officially lost *drum roll please* 35 lbs. I like this. I have more to lose, but damn, that's a nice number. So how am I celebrating? By...not...exercising. That's probably a bad idea, but I slept late and I work soon, so I am going to spend the afternoon drinking coffee and daydreaming.

I miss a lot of things this morning (well, this afternoon...I slept through "morning"). I miss the way my brain would conjure great things and fixate intently on them. Unfortunately, this would also trigger the bad feelings, so it's odd to miss that. But today I am feeling good. Not particularly deep, but peaceful. Why can't I have the deep emotions and the peaceful feelings at the same time? I think whenever I let myself feel something too deeply, it hurts a little. And sometimes I want it to hurt a little. But right now, I'm okay just whistling and enjoying my coffee, so fuggit.

And Boom. Just because.

Speaking to other humans about depression.

I tend not to share my feelings with anyone that doesn't understand what having depression is like. Well, aside from spelling it out here, for all to read.

Those who haven't experienced it sometimes want to listen. Mostly not. Most pretend to be interested, ask if I'm really okay or what's bothering me, but then get uncomfortable and tune out when I start to describe my Blah. And when they do listen, they sometimes want to "fix" me. Get more exercise. Read a book. Go out in nature. Spend time with your family. Just get out of the house more. *sigh* I know they mean well, and those are all great things to do. But none of that will cure me. I'm not a sulking teenager. I don't just snap out of it. When I am down and go for a walk, I am still down when I come home. The chirping birds mock me.

Then there are those who have experienced depression and anxiety to varying degrees, from seasonal to chronic to debilitating. I feel for them all, yet again, I don't share my feelings with a lot of them. There are those who seem to want to turn it into a Who's More Depressed contest. I'm not trying to win anything, I just thought, I don't know, maybe a little empathy? I'm not looking for pity, goddammit, and I'm certainly not about to give any out. People want to be listened to and understood, not outdone.

This. This is why I just write it here. Hardly anyone comments. Just reads, or clicks away. But if someone reads this horribly depressing blog and relates...*hug*

Fighting the creeping numb. That creep.

I don't feel part of a collective consciousness anymore. I'm here, moving among bodies, flesh and meat and hot air, not minds or souls. My thoughts aren't shared. My thoughts aren't worth sharing. I'm moving. I'm living. I'm wishing I was either a part of it all and apart from it all. Not hovering here in between.