Living Life to the Furrest...

Thinking out loud and probably saying things I shouldn't say... but who is reading anyway?

2012-01-29T03:23:00.002-05:00

The only things I miss about tv are the ability to tune out advertising and the ability to do other things while watching tv. Now, I can't anymore. Television is so loud and obnoxious that it takes my entire focus.

One time, we were eating (real!) popcorn while playing a board game at the cottage when we were little and I was drinking a ginger ale out of the can, and I went to take a sip and there was a popcorn seed in my drink. I was all, "What the hey?" or whatever it is kids say to that effect, and my cousin looked at me horrified.

"I thought you were finished," she said.

Yeah. Just a random memory that came to me when I was writing the first paragraph, so I figured I'd throw it in here since it's all ramblies anyway.

I sent my guy an email at 5AM this morning to say I went to bed far too late because I figured he'd have no idea what time I went to bed and would go about business as usual and get the wrathies. At the end of the email, I threw in a wishful, "If you want to walk the dogs while I sleep in, then yey," or something, but I really didn't think he'd actually do it. And then I drift out of sleep at the crack of dawn to the sound of the front door shutting and him walking away. It made me smile so hard I woke up far more than was his intention.

He's a sweet guy.

me: You realize that this means that by the end of today, you'll probably get the yellies because I'll forget you did this, right?
him: Yeah.

Later (about maybe three hours later?):
me: When do you ever do anything for me? Nobody ever does anything for me.
him: I walked the dogs this morning so you could sleep in.
me: Oh yeah. [smiles innocently]

Today, I spent far too much time on the internet shopping for wedding vows. It's amazing how much information out there just doesn't fit. Things like:
"Today, I choose you to be my husband," along with all the other choices involved.
"I love you because...." at the beginning of each vow sentence.

Not to mention all the formal, traditional and overly verbose sets of vows out there.

I just want something simple. Why can't it just be from the heart? Like a letter to my guy now and later. Something like:

Dear Boy I love,

I'm going to marry you today. Who would have thought I'd actually make it not only to the day, but to actually saying the words in front of real live human beings? Not me, that's for sure. And even if I'm not the marrying kind, I am here and I always will be. You're my favorite person and my best friend, but that's not why I'm marrying you. I'm marrying you because you're the only person in the world who fits me, who challenges me, who is always on my team and who makes every day better. I really would rather a million days of you crunching cereal in my ear than one day without you.

I can't promise I'll never yell at you or lose my temper or say things I don't mean or sometimes not be there in the way you need me, but I do promise to spend every day for the rest of my life learning who you are and how to love you better. I promise to be loyal to you in every situation and to give you the benefit of the doubt. I promise to do my best to trust you more and more with every bit of time that passes. I promise to love you through everything- the happy times and the harder times, the sickies and the healthies, the yellies and the laughies, the times when we have stuff and the times we have less stuff, through babies or no babies; whatever happens, I will always be by your side.

I promise to do my part to make sure you stay happy, healthy and protected. I promise to do my best to make sure you feel loved every day of your life. And I promise to always laugh with you, especially when it's most inappropriate.

I promise to hold your hand in the scary times and to let you hold mine when I am most vulnerable. I promise to turn to you first, rely on you first and trust you first, before anybody else. I promise to let you in to the darkest and most private places of my soul and to strive to break down any walls and boundaries that come between us.

I promise to remind you you're sexy, lift you up when you're down and encourage your dreams and friendships. I promise to fight for us when we're shaky and learn to enjoy the lighter times when we're doing alright.

I promise to love you for who you are and not try to change you for my benefit.

I promise to stay a work in progress. I promise to keep growing always, to grow in love always, to work to conquer my fears always and to never die (unless it is absolutely necessary).

I can't promise our life together will be easy- I can't even promise it'll be easier with me than without me- but I do promise that it won't be boring and that it will be funny and that you will be loved to the utmost that I am able to love.

I promise to only tell you I love you when I mean it.

By becoming your wifey, I am promising all these things, but I also promise to try my best to let you love me too and to give you the opportunity to fulfill your promises to me.

I love you forever and ever.

I guess that's a bit long. People would probably tune out halfway through. But if we're not doing readings or anything...?

And then I figure when we do the ring part, instead of the whole, "With this ring, I thee wed," thing because that's kind of redundant, I think, I'd reverse it. In my head, I'm not giving him his ring and he's not giving me mine. In my head, I'm putting this ring on that we bought together, right? So instead of the usual line, it'd be like, "I will wear this ring because I love you and I want the world to know I love you. And when I hear my ring clink against something or when its sparklies catch my eye, wherever I am, I will always be reminded of this day, these vows and the love and life that we share."

Maybe. We'll see I guess. Things are still far away.

I'm going to sleep.

When I was your age, my brother wore yellow pants. Well, they were actually red pants, but he wore them inside out...

2012-01-28T02:53:00.003-05:00

I used to be a huge fan of Burton. Back in 1996, I painted houses for an entire summer just to be able to afford a last-year's-model Shannon Dunn 144 snowboard. Even though I was a tomboy at the time, adamantly so, somehow, my snowboard ended up pink, with dragonflies and lily pads on it. Obviously, dragonflies are tomboyish, but the pink?

(And now my wedding dress is pink- go figure.)

I remember my first day on that board. I'd ridden so many Burton boards as back in the day when I was learning, the end of the 1994/95 winter season and the 1995/96 season, Jay Peak somehow had brand new Burton boards for rent. I usually rode the Air 155, mainly because it was the first one that was available and somehow, when you're a snowboarding virgin, you ride what you know, not what is right.

My stance was huge. Way, way too wide for my body height. And honestly, it's not much different to this day. I like my stance wide.

So there I was, riding in a small bit of powder, my board rolling over the bumps far more flexibly than I was used to on account of the size difference and I remember thinking, "Please let me love this board," as I couldn't afford another one.

In the end, that Burton board and I bonded to the point where it felt like my feet. I strap that board on and I feel like I'm home. Now, the white parts are yellow and there are cracks in the paint, but still, this board is my board more than ever.

It doesn't matter that I have a red jacket and brown corduroy snowpants and burgundy and red snowboard boots. It doesn't matter that my new helmet is black either. What matters is the feeling of the snow passing under my feet- my feet being my freshly waxed board and me.

My bindings are so tight that my pinky toe and the nameless one next to it lose feeling every so often, but I need them tight so that the board moves when I move without any leeway in between.

We're one. And I'm home.

I remember the Matt I dated a pajillion years ago used to say, "It's for the cause," when one of us would spend more money than we had on snowboarding.

I remember buying my first helmet after bashing my head in on my first day riding the halfpipe when I was around sixteen.

I remember the magic.

And though snowboarding and I have had a tumultuous relationship since that fateful day in April 2001 when I fell my hardest fall and ruined my eyesight, it still is home to me. My heart aches at the shattered dreams, but it is calmed when I'm actually riding. I miss it every day I am not on the hill.

There are other causes now- dogs, a mortgage, debts to pay off, but I can't help but feel that one day, I'll get back out there. One day, I'll ride more and more instead of less and less. One day.

Today, watching youtube videos of a particularly prominent female snowboarder, she broke my heart. First of all, when you google her, you get more pictures and videos of her in a swimsuit than on a board, and that's just fricken sad. But watching an interview with her where she said her most favorite thing to do is to get away and lie on a beach? That's what snowboarding has come to? The people who have made it, the ones who the younger people aspire to become, want to get away from it? And the way they talk about it? They train and they win golds and they achieve and they profit. It's fucking horrible. It's not horrible if that's what they want, but man, it's horrible for me. It's horrible to watch this sport that is so magical and that is my home be somebody else's tedium.

Add to that that back in the day, snowboarding was about pushing each other and encouraging each other and today, Burton posted a picture of some dude who won the x-games and blurred out the other two riders. That's just... not what it used to be about.

My brother was my inspiration, I think. He pushed me to be more fearless, made it ok for me to be weird and never cared what other people thought of him. He got these Ocean Pacific snowpants that were red and grey and patchy and when those went out of style, he flipped them inside out and wore them like that, the lining being a bright golden yellow. He didn't care.

And I wore my ten pound Airwalk jacket that was about seventeen sizes too big for me but was so, so waterproof and windproof and my black snowpants and my white boots with my white and pink board and my burgundy helmet (that I would eventually ruin by slamming my head into it) and it never even occurred to me when the time came to replace my coat or my pants or my boots to get matching shit. Never. I bought whatever was the best fit technically, financially and for comfort for me at the time.

And to this day, when I go out on the hill, especially since I got my brown corduroy snowpants (I mean, come on, corduroy snowpants? Seriously. What is more me than corduroy snowpants?), I can't help but feel like even if I'm the worst dressed mofo on the hill on any given day, I was there when it started. You know? I was there when I was the only snowboarding girl on the hill, wherever I went. I was there when snowboarding was banned still at the majority of hills and frowned upon where it wasn't. I was there when the retro board we envied was the Jeff Brushie 1994 board and there was still a chance of buying it somewhere as a last year's model. I was there before snowboarders were famous- unless you read the magazines or bought the videos. And I was (and always am) warm and cozy too.

I fucking miss it, you know? I wish the next generations of snowboarders could know what it's like to really surf the snow. To feel it under their feet and be at peace. God knows they'll never feel like they're doing something outside the mainstream when they do it.

Man, I feel old right now. :D

I started snowboarding seventeen years ago after putting my skis in the car (I started skiing at four) and using my lunch money to rent a snowboard for an afternoon. I never ever looked back. I never skied again and I didn't miss it. Snowboarding was just my thing.

I miss it.

And it's funny because after my concussion, it was so hard to go back to the hill because I felt like I wanted the hill to remember me as I was- the fearless, crazy big air girl who spent all day in the halfpipe or in the terrain park- and now, it's like the whole sport is something completely different anyway. Maybe snowboarding would rather I remember it the way it was too. And every now and then, we can be like old friends, bonding again over how ridiculous kids are these days.

Maybe.

Either way, we're fucking magical together.

None of the above. Fuck it, cut the cord! Lights out.*

2012-01-25T02:47:00.000-05:00

It's amazing how one little thing can affect you so greatly without you even noticing that it was the cause of subsequent events.

I think my ex hit my blog yesterday and when I saw it, I didn't really care, but within about ten minutes of seeing it, my mood turned to foul. There are still so many things I am angry about.

Sometimes, as I drive around for frivolous errands, I picture what would happen if I ran into him. Without a doubt, he'd see my ring and fake smile about it, but what angers me when I think about it is if I know him at all, whether I bump into him or he reads the blog, he'll wonder what could have been had I not been "the one that got away," but it's bullshit. It's all fucking bullshit. I didn't "get away". He didn't "let me go". I left. I left with ample warning. I told him over and over what had to be done to fix things because I wasn't happy and he wouldn't budge (and he didn't care) and so I left. I gave him at least six months' notice. There is no lamenting and no regret allowed when you have such ample opportunity to figure your shit out and to wake the fuck up.

So fuck you. I'm not the one who got away. You never had me to begin with because you never loved me. You never bothered to know me. And isn't that what it's all about? How can you miss somebody you never knew? And not only that, but how is lamenting the past now any different than lamenting it when I was around? Either way, the present never was or is good enough.

All of them, you know? Whether it's the guy in England who secretly wishes me misery in my marriage or the guy out east who hopes I wake up and realize I'm miserable before marrying this guy or the guy we refer to as evil who goes about his life pretending I never existed or the aforementioned one who somehow paints me as a martyr he can't move on from, all of them have regrets, but their regrets are from inaction. They regret not stepping up when they had the chance. Whether it was to want me or to get rid of me, in the end, I was the one who had to man up and get shit done after the expense of me was too great. Well, in the case of the guy in England (he's not actually in England, but that's just a way of keeping it vague without being so vague I don't remember who he is later on) and the guy out east, I didn't really have to do anything there. Shit just faded away and I only found out about their feelings after the fact, when it was too late.

That's what bothers me, I think. The too lateness. All I wanted was a guy who knew before it was too late. And I got my guy. I got one who realizes what's going on before it even becomes a thing. I have my guy and I do love him and I am happy with him. And then these remnants pop up and make me angry.

You know what it's like? You're at the theatre and they're in the middle of a soft, quiet scene wrought with emotion and somebody comes storming in slurping a coke and crackling a bag of chips.

Hey, you're too late. You missed the point and you will never know how beautiful the story really is. You missed it. And your lack of respect, lack of self-awareness and lack of common decency is repugnant and overwhelming.

What I really need is a bouncer at the door who confronts these slurpers and tells them they can't go in because the play's already started.

I hate that they knew my dogs. Well, the two in particular, not the ones that never happened. I hate that I let my dogs know them. I hate that my dogs wasted affection on them. I hate that I wasted affection on them. I hate that even now, even if it's anger, I'm still wasting emotion on them.

I suppose being that I jumped from one to the other without a break in between, I never did digest what had happened in the six years prior. Especially since I didn't really talk about it with anybody. And now, it seems like I have it all, so I shouldn't look back, but I can't help it because of nights like tonight.

You know what tonight was? I saw the hit and then I just wanted to yell at somebody for all the things it stirred up. I wanted to yell at somebody for not being there for me when I needed them, for not caring about me, for not taking care of me, for not being reliable, for not being dependable, for not being responsible, for not being accountable and for making me feel alone for so long. And for making me feel worthless and useless and lazy and unappreciated. I wanted to yell at somebody for all the things that I'm still angry about. I wanted to yell at somebody for how I got yelled at all the time for things that weren't even my fault. I wanted to yell at somebody for damaging me so much that I yell about these things to this guy who doesn't deserve any of it. I want to yell at somebody because I just want to be left alone. I want to not remember any of it. I want to forget it. I don't want to wonder what it would be like to bump into anybody because I don't want to know anybody exists. I don't want any remnants of it anymore. I want to be free of them. I want to forget it ever happened. And I don't want to feel bad about feeling this way and saying these things because they might not be able to handle it.

Well, who ever protected me? Who ever looked after me and made sure I never got hurt? And I'm not even doing it to be malicious or controlling either. (They don't have to read my blog, do they? They can fuck off, can't they?)

And I am not a better person for any of it. I'm a weaker person with less confidence and more baggage. I'm a hurt person with a shit ton of anger I can't even deal with properly.

I got treated like shit for six years and then another year and a half after that.

I look back and try to find the good memories, but none of them were together ones. None. They were always things either one of them did to try to be funny, but I could have been any audience. It wasn't about me. You know what I mean?

With this guy, the good memories are us. Exhilarating memories. Kissing him on the median in the middle of René-Lévesque as cars whizzed by on either side of us. Hiking in North Carolina with the dogs. Wherever we are, grabbing him suddenly by the hips for a hug with momentum that feels like this except with less balance, more giggling and far less gracefulness. It's all togethery. Every memory I have with him is togethery. The nights where I have felt alone are the nights where I forget how he is. I forget who he is. I forget he's with me.

You see why I'm so angry? These are the things I forget and the rest haunts me constantly. I forget that he loves me but I don't forget how many times they told me they didn't. I forget that he's there whenever I need him, but I never forget the times I found myself alone.

I want to have one day where I don't ask him eight thousand times if he still loves me. I want one day where I can be with him and just him and be in the present without worrying about things turning into what I'm used to. I want to be comfortable in this without feeling like I'm going to lose it at any moment. I want to be able to love him freely and passionately and vulnerably without hesitating and without panicking and without cynicism.

I want to be less angry. It doesn't benefit me in any way to be so angry.

I want to be able to post a video of two random people doing a spin on figure skates in a really, really cheesy context and not think twice about it because it's the truth, even if it is really, really cheesy.

We got matching wedding rings. We're going to be a couple who has the same wedding ring. It'll be like when you're away from somebody and you look up at the moon and wonder if they're looking at it too, except on our hand in the form of a ring hammered in such a way so as to create a cascading waterfall effect as the light hits it....

I just realized that we're even inadvertently cheesy in that he proposed way up above a waterfall and now our wedding rings will be hammered with a waterfall effect. That's pretty funny. I didn't even make the connection till now. We're fricken adorable. Even by accident!

Ok, I'm going to sleep. I'm behind in my work, but so far, I've gone to bed before three every day this week, even if by going to bed early, somehow my wake up time is still the same. But hey, long sleep hours means no hyperthyroidism, right? *high five*

Also, don't tell my guy, but I may or may not have bought these pants. In black. Because they were on sale. And they're corduroy. Corduroy. Like, it had to be done. Had to.

[Mainly because the only time I feel sexy is when I wear corduroy.]

[And every girl should feel sexy. Fuck yeah!]

I'm very sweary tonight. Well, sweary on the blog. I'm always this sweary in person.

Ok, goodnight.

*Rage against the Machine, Guerrilla Radio. It's a rage week.

Faily McLazy...

2012-01-22T03:23:00.002-05:00

I should be asleep. The fact that I spelled that "alspee" the first time says it all. The fact that I hesitated before fixing it because there was a delay in processing what happened says it more.

I cleaned for the brunch (today).

And my guy felt ill earlier so now, of course, I'm panicking. But it doesn't really matter because I stayed up till somewhere around five thirty last night because of the panicking and he wasn't ill then. I know what I'm panicking about too.

My job is kind of in limbo and I'm lacking the confidence in myself and the confidence in my abilities and my determination to go into something for myself. And as a result of that, I have this feeling like eventually, my guy will know and believe that I'm a fuck up with no ambition and lose respect for me.

Granted, the last time I was in this situation, my ex didn't respect me even before I was out of school and not working, but at the same time, I was ill back then too, so a little slack would have been nice...

I don't want my guy to lose respect for me. But then I think about lying in bed in the dark for days at a time and wonder how he wouldn't lose respect for me.

Maybe I just need to pretend that I can do anything I set my mind to. And that if I set my mind to something and I hate it, I can set my mind to something else. Life is short. Why should I force myself into one career path?

I'm freezing. I'm on Jemma's sofa and she's in my bed spot and I'm just freezing.

I should just go to bed.

I wish I had three days at home with my guy. Two isn't enough when there are visitors and cleaning and things.

I just want to lie in bed in the dark with him for an entire morning and afternoon.

Goodnight.

Ode to the man I will marry...

2012-01-21T05:16:00.000-05:00

If we were just souls,
If all this material
And these obligations,
Were stripped away,
If we were just souls,

I would love you anyway.

You know what you know...

2012-01-21T04:12:00.001-05:00

I still miss the old blogger interface.

It's funny how people react to the news that I'm getting married. Well, in particular my male friends. It kind of makes me uncomfortable, primarily because they all seem to assume I'm not happy about it. Like I'm talking to them hoping they'll give me some sort of out. Except in my brain, we're friends and I'm telling them good news. So... like...

And I read this on my facebook:

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go....
- quoted in the movie Chalet girl, written by Dr. Seuss

And I thought it was fitting for this week.

And um... I'm too tired for anything else right now.

Long day. Many things (left out)...

2012-01-20T03:23:00.000-05:00

Blogging takes precedence over work tonight.

I didn't get fired.

Instead, I suppose the gist of it is summarized in one sentence:

"You're easily replaced."

I don't know if blogging about it would be in bad form, especially since I'm still fairly upset by it all, but we did it over lunch and at one point, I just remember finishing hearing something that made me completely lose my appetite before even taking a single bite and I sat there in disbelief for a few minutes while she ate. And then she said, "Eat. Your food will get cold."

It was a strange thing. I really want to write all of it, but like I said, bad form.

All I can say is yes, employees should appreciate the benefits they're given. Yes. But employers need to appreciate employees also. Telling an employee she's replaceable every chance you get probably doesn't accomplish what you intend for it to accomplish, unless it is your goal to lower morale incredibly.

And while working at home is great, it is a fairly reasonable expectation that in the not-too-distant future, many employers will save office costs by having virtual employees. Having an expensive office, in all its unproductive glory, just isn't worthwhile anymore. And that being the case, working from home does not replace health insurance, vacation allotment nor an annual salary increase as far as benefits go.

I asked for more vacation. In my head, that means two to four percent more than the four percent I get right now, which is the minimum required of employers by law. Considering the average wage increase to cover cost of living for this year will be around two point six percent, so they say, and that many employers offer new employees three weeks in order to stay competitive with other employers, it was not unreasonable for me, after a year and a half of employment, to suggest a vacation extension to cover this amount. "If I give you six percent after only one year of employment, it will set a precedent I don't want to set for future employees." She went on to explain, "I already give you more than the required statutory holidays. I'm supposed to calculate it based on your earnings and I don't. I give you the full four hours for each day." And she explained that she knows some hard-ass employers with virtual assistants who work under far worse conditions than I do.

But at the end of the day, is it really about being slightly better off than the lowest of the low? Is that who I am to compare myself to?

Or am I to compare myself to the contractors in the same industry who bring home more than a hundred dollars an hour? (And that's a conservative number.)

She gave me till next week to figure out if I'm content with the status quo or if I want to maybe become a contractor for her. That way, she said, she won't have to pay the crazy high unemployment fees associated with my salary.

I went outside earlier after a short chat with SIL A ended when my guy went to sleep (he ended up staying awake though for some reason), and I shoveled for a bit (my neighbors probably hate me because it was after eleven) and when my body was sweaty and finished, I threw Boo (my shovely protector) into the house and sat on the porch for a bit in my corduroy snowpants and my favorite woolly Burton sweater.

And it was peaceful.

I was so hot though. A fresh centimeter of snow had fallen on top of the ice from the last mixed storm, and I gently laid my hand on it. The snow stuck to me and quickly melted. I did it again and before it melted, crunched the small layer of snow between my palms. It immediately reminded me of the Christmas in 1999 when I swore I would roll in the snow when I got home from Ireland- and I actually did. I snowjobbed myself unhindered.

I pressed my hand into the fresh snow again and crunched the snow between my palms again. My body still steaming hot and the instantaneous cold of the snow felt horrible and beautiful at the same time. I looked up at the low level orangey clouds passing by silently.

It was so peaceful.

And then it occurred to me. After all this time, I thought that having a boy who wasn't a Christian was making it harder for me to find time with God, but it wasn't him at all. It was this job. And when I started to think about the job situation again, I could feel this familiar feeling creep back in and I realized that with this job comes a sort of feeling of darkness. You know that feeling when you say something terrible that you believe to be the truth about somebody behind their back and then you find out it wasn't true? You know? And they don't even know you said it, but just knowing that you put this sort of toxic negativity into the world eats you up. And you just feel this ashamed icky feeling. You know what I mean? That's the closest thing I can think of to how it felt when the job things crept back in during that peaceful moment. That looming I'd been talking about for months in regards to this job just became more tangible, more explicit and more unnecessary.

At the end of the lunch, it had basically been decided that if I needed to take time off for surgery or radiation, I'd give her as much warning as I could, and her reaction was to somehow impose on me that I should give her at least four months' notice and even that isn't much time, she said. So I can't have more vacation because she gives me the minimum that the Normes du Travail established, but the Normes du Travail established two weeks notice of departure is not applicable from my end...? Granted, I'm not the type to screw somebody, but... I'm also not the type to be ok with this sort of, for lack of a less dramatic word, injustice.

I need to find something that I can stick to. I need something I'm passionate about. Something I believe in.

I want something that stirs my heart like snowboarding did.

Speaking of snowboarding, reading the story today about the skier, Sarah Burke, who died after a fall upon landing a jump (so I read, I think) some time last week, I couldn't help but feel lucky as the way the fall was described sounded similar to the way I fell nearly eleven years ago, except my head slammed against the hill a few times as I kept flipping back up into the air after each impact. So many skiers and snowboarders die for milder hits than I endured. I'm lucky to be alive, you know?

"Sarah was a person who I think in many ways was larger than life and lived life to the fullest," said Canadian Freestyle CEO Peter Judge in that article above.

That's kind of what I aspire to be- hence the name of this blog, even.

Am I doing it now? I don't know.

And at the same time, it made me realize that had I not bailed miserably eleven years ago, it still would have ended this way anyway- or worse. Yet the way it did end, I have Boo, Jemma, my guy and Littles (in order of appearance).

That's not such a bad outcome.

I just have to figure out the career part...

[I paused earlier while looking for that article to draw this which is an exactly drawn copy of this picture myself (not me) took and to see Boo stomp at a sleeping Littles, trying to get her to move so he could get up on his sofa. She woke up all frazzled and wtf-y and he got up and lay down, slapping her in the face with his tail. Hehe. Poor Littles.]

[I also spent about two hours reading up on how to start your own company here in Quebec. Recently there were protests at Revenu Quebec denouncing how many services they offer in English. I, for one, am fricken grateful for their more than adequate translation of their website. Yey for making things far, far easier to understand for us anglos. :)]

Ok, I'm going to sleep.

Inconvenienced...

2012-01-19T03:11:00.002-05:00

Thursday.

I don't know what else to say.

I wish I was better at standing up for myself in matters of career and finances. But I'm not, so it's Thursday. Lunch with my boss at half past noon.

Who knows what'll happen after that?

Not me.

Random conversation with my guy that happened today a few hours after I got ridiculously upset after I deleted a long, long email draft accidentally by trying to copy and paste something while using my blackberry playbook:

him: You're not a failure, Princess.
me: Yes, I am. I screw everything up all the time.
him: You have to distinguish between what failing is and what's just a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.
me: I got eggshell in my eggs today too.
him: What?
me: I got eggshell in my eggs. See? I can't do anything right.
him: Princess, that's not failing. That's... being inconvenienced.
me: Fail.
him: When you called me this morning, I thought the dogs died or something. You need to relax.
me: You just don't understand what it's like to fuck up all the time. Everything I do, I fuck up.
him: That's not even true. You do tons of stuff right and they're not even fuck ups, Princess. They're inconveniences. It's not the end of the world.
me: Yes, it is.
him: [laughing] No, it's not. It'll be ok.

I dunno. It feels pretty end of the worldy to me.

I wonder how many people screw up everything they do every day.

I put too much leave in conditioner in my hair after I forgot to condition it in the shower.

It's cumulative.

I hope I'm coherent for my firing tomorrow.

After the firing, remind me I have to get cereal.

And candy.

And some milk.

And flour for firing day pancakes. (It's a tradition. ;))

Ramblies of a girl who stopped rambling for some reason...

2012-01-18T03:31:00.001-05:00

I remember eons and eons ago when I started to blog- hang on, lemme tally up a number for you... 3258 posts ago (spread across a bunch of blogs, not including the couple of guest blogs I did at one point- it was hard to get into, but then, after the break up in 2007, I started to say everything on here. I was unrepressed and free. I never ran out of things to say.

Now, I do.

And I thought it was just because my life had gotten simpler, duller even, but that's not it. I'm still me. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I make it more complicated than it has to be. So why am I running out of things to say?

The same reason the Golden Globes got boring (from what I heard; I didn't watch it). We're all struggling to get ahead, I guess and the only way to do that is to stop coming across as unpredictable firecrackers with volatile opinions.

I used to blog about work, albeit not in that much detail, even if the big boss used to read my blog daily. I used to blog about friends and when they'd read their sometimes negative reviews, I'd deal with the consequences in real life and know that even if they were hurt, these were things I just didn't have the courage to say out loud, even if I should have.

That's what this blog did for me before- it gave me the courage. It was my outlet for not being able to stand up for myself in real life. I could say it here, people could read it and either react in a "Wow, I didn't know you felt that way" way or a "Ok, so you're an asshole and I don't want you in my life anymore" way. (Both of which, I might add, are starting points for intimate discussion.)

But there, in the brackets, lies the problem. I'm not intimate with anybody anymore. I'm blocked off and antisocial because I don't want to be that downer everybody bitches about before cutting out of their lives.

But that's what I am right now.

Maybe I'm depressed, but I don't think so. I think I'm just not me.

The one thing I was ever good at that I felt good at was snowboarding. I felt myself improve every day. I felt my love of the sport. I felt exhilarated and passionate every day. I'd wake up early (the only thing in the world that could make me wake up early voluntarily), drive up to two and a half hours to the hill and ride my little heart out without taking any breaks till the hill closed or till I was injured, whichever came first. That was what I lived for.

Until I broke my head.

And since then, I've tried not to lament the past and the shouldas and whatever other regrettable feelings I have about it, especially since the life of a high level athlete does eventually drastically change. You can't keep up that level of performance forever.

But I miss it. And the truth is, nothing has really replaced it. The only thing I see when I look back at the time between then and now is a whole bunch of tangled, unfinished paths. It's as if every time I settle on something, the rug gets pulled out from under me and I have to completely reorient.

I have had so, so many different jobs in my shortish little life. And somehow, I thought this one was it. It was challenging and changed a lot compared to other jobs. But now? Now I wonder if it's where I should be. And not only that, I wonder if I'm going to get fired on Thursday.

Last week, at the factory, I brought up that I'm going to compartmentalize my work a little more because it was starting to spread across the week and I was running out of time where I felt free. And I told my boss that in lieu of a raise (which was never offered to me a year and a half into this job), I'd kinda like a little more vacation.

When I consider the sacrifices for this job that I wouldn't have with other employers:
- having to use my own laptop and pay for its repair (one week's pay) when the screen died, most likely because of lugging it around;
- having to buy my own supplies (including the indispensable USB key);
- being paid by the hour even though we both know I work much, much more efficiently than anybody on salary;
- not being able to claim expenses as a contractor (like internet, equipment, office space, gas and mileage, etc, etc);
- not having sick days;
- not having health insurance (which isn't as big a deal in Canada, but for the dentist and medications and tests, it is pretty handy);
- ... not getting a raise after one year of service...

There are benefits:
- I work from home most of the time;
- the pay is ok;
- my boss has been fairly understanding about my desire to not be in meetings and most importantly, to not work in the mornings (which is pretty awesome);
- I have learned quite a bit about the system of regulatory affairs in Canada;
- it does let me apply my degree to a certain extent.

But while I was getting comfortable-ish, there are things missing, I feel, as an overall career path:
- if I am working with my biology degree, I always sort of assumed it'd be to the benefit of animals somehow;
- Apart from my degree, I feel like I should be writing more, being more creative.

I do live in a house that is beyond my means, and my means are beyond what I'm willing to put out, I think. What I mean to say is I work twenty hours a week and I find it hard to do those twenty hours. I guess a majority of that lethargy and poor work ethic is based on my lack of motivation and lack of passion, but is it possible that I'm just a lazy brat?

Nobody likes their job, right? Why is it that whenever I get bored in a job, it feels like there are ten thousand pound weights on my body? Why am I such a baby about it?

I guess part of it is that I just don't care enough. Maybe I haven't starved enough or been deprived in other ways enough. But I don't know if that's it because I'd settle for less. Hell, before my guy moved in, I only bought food half the month. The other half of the month, I'd eat whatever scraps I could come up with because I couldn't afford to buy anything else. And by "half the month", I tend to mean from the first to the twenty-first because that's when my visa bill would get printed.

Am I going to get fired Thursday? Probably. She relieved me of most of my projects this week and seems to not want me going near the factory, even if I have to print the work I did already. She asked me to email it to her instead and I said I could just as easily go print it after our lunch on Thursday since it'll be right next door. She didn't answer that.

So probably.

Am I a bad employee? Probably. I'm smart and I problem solve easily and happily, but my ability to do menial work is pretty low (and bratty). I'm easy enough to get along with (at least for her anyway) and I meet my deadlines. But.... I'm not as outgoing as she'd hoped. I'm also not as driven as she'd hoped. And getting sick pretty well cemented that idea, I think, especially when I asked to reduce my hours to twelve. I'm not getting as much done as I used to and it's taking me more time to do the things that I do.

But again, part of that is because I'm just not motivated anymore.

How am I supposed to stay motivated? I don't know.

Maybe I am depressed.

Maybe I need to find a new career. Or maybe I need to change my attitude. How are you supposed to know when to do one over the other?

I don't know.

[pause for random internetting]

I've been off my meds since the sixth and my giant belly went down last week at some point but now it's back and bigger than ever, so that's a little freaky. I'm thinking maybe I have to get a GP (family doctor) to deal with the junk that is apart from my graves'.

Speaking of meds, within a few days of being off the meds, I felt less like I wanted to die already, so that was good. It's weird to talk about (even if I have a million times already), but I have this thing where I have always had a sort of underlying suicidal tendancy, but my rational brain can talk it away whenever it creeps up, but on those meds, for some reason, that part of my brain is somehow silenced and suddenly, offing myself becomes an entirely rational concept. It's the most disconcerting thing, especially because there's this little voice that is all, "Something's not right here," and the bigger inner voice is all, "It is right. Here are reasons." And I'm sure that on a regular non-medsy day, those reasons would be incoherent and nonsensical, but on the meds, they're plausible and convincing.

All I can say though is thank God for being off the meds if I'm going to get all fired and shit. I'm having enough of a time trying not to feel like a complete failure about this already that I can't imagine having the meds around to drop my defenses even further.

Maybe I am depressed. Or maybe I just need a change.

Self-fulfilling prophesy, maybe.

What if I don't get fired?

Will I be disappointed?

Will I beat myself up over feeling disappointed?

Why is it that when you have something that other people want, it's so much harder to admit that it's not the right fit for you?

If I can compartmentalize my work more and put it out of my brain more and free up my brain for other parts of life more, then maybe I'll spend my free time doing something other than procrastinating. Maybe I'll spend my free time doing something constructive. Maybe.

Or maybe I'm just lazy.

It's so hard to figure out the line between what the truth is about me and what is just criticism I've absorbed from years of derogatory forms of abuse. I'm expecting my guy to call me a gold digger and lose all respect for me, and that will be accelerated if I lose my job. I picture myself wallowing for just long enough for it to become my norm and then he'll look at me with that cold, distant gaze they get when they realize they're going to have to get rid of me but they don't know how.

Every week, it's something else.

I wish I knew why my belly was so huge. I still have my abs and I haven't gained any weight, so like...

I should go to sleep. I'm hungry too. Jemma was my backrest all night until about five minutes ago. I guess being squooshed made her feel protected. She doesn't appreciate wind noise.

Oh, and I decided I have to start editing my posts again, even if it adds a good half hour to my blog time. I'd gotten into the habit of blogging till I couldn't even keep my eyes open anymore (getting there now), but I think for me, the part that helps me figure shit out after blurting it all out is the rereading. You say things you don't intend to say and in rereading, you catch them more. And on the other hand, some things you meant to say never get said unless rereading what you've written sparks something up in your brain about them.

Goodnight.

I even thought, "I could maybe wear the short one to somebody else's wedding...?"

2012-01-15T03:26:00.001-05:00

Today, I took down my Christmas tree. I was appalled at how few decorations I had put on there and at the fact that two boxes of my favorite ornaments weren't even opened this year. Psh.

Needless to say, it didn't take all that long to take it down, which was really sad. I hate the end of the Christmas tree, even if it totally didn't feel like Christmas anymore.

It is weird to invite this creature into your home, celebrate with it and then throw it outside, cold and naked, to be thrown into the back of a truck to be chopped up into tiny pieces... I wish I could have an indoor conifer.

Anyway.

So I'm upset by this tree business and my guy's tired and struggling to stay awake and that somehow makes me more upset and then it suddenly hits me: Why him?

After every guy who has ever shown any interest in me (even as indifferent as they were in the end) has treated me like crap and has told me at some point or another that I'm not wifey material, why is it that this one is different?

How can it be that this guy, the first guy I've been with who has been empathic, loyal, respectful, honorable, sweet, generous, caring, sexy and smart, is suddenly the one who wants to marry me? How can it be that I wasted so much time on terrible men who never wanted me and then this guy, this amazingly awesome guy, does want me? It's just impossible, you know?

Why him? Of all the people I could have ended up with, how did I get so fricken lucky?

I don't know.

Anyway, so I was upset and he fell asleep, so I did what any self-respecting sad girl would do: I put on my wedding dress and frolicked about in the bathroom. I should mention, for those of you who haven't been here, I have this abnormally gargantuan bathroom, so frolicking in it is totally possible. As is swooshing, curtsying, and maybe even doing the twist (but I wouldn't know that firsthand. It's more just educated speculation. *coughs*). And I kind of meditated about it for a bit, wondering what it would be like to have to say the words in front of so many people and the odd thing is, I had no trouble picturing myself saying them, but when it came time for his turn, I really couldn't hear the words come from his mouth. I couldn't picture it. And so, I guess I'm still fairly "certain" that he'll change his mind or otherwise find a way to not marry me.

Anyway, I'm too sleepy all of a sudden.

I don't think I could get away with wearing either dress for anything but my own wedding (and frolicking in my bathroom). So like... Oh, and they also still don't give me a panic attack no matter how long I spend in them (which is apparently a long time on Christmas tree de-Christmasing days).

Ok, I'm not sure I'm coherent anymore.

Stifling...

2012-01-14T04:35:00.001-05:00

So I have this thing where I can usually tell a lot about somebody I don't know at all by a photograph of them that most looks like them (i.e. not a picture that shows them badly). And I also have this thing where I can tell what it is about my closest friends that impedes their progress as a person and I may be a little driven to fix those things. But somehow, neither really applies to my guy. Well, the first one doesn't apply to any guy I'm interested in. I end up going in blind when I would otherwise be able to tell the worst things about them almost immediately, prior to any sort of interaction. It's weird.

That's what was interesting about seeing my guy walk down the steps to his apartment that time when he shaved his beard off and I didn't recognize him. I got to see him as if I wasn't attached to him, as if he was a stranger who I could read objectively. And my judgment that day was that he was the kind of guy I could never get. It was like how I saw my friend Josh about ten years ago. In Josh's case, he was this intriguing guy who, by default, always had a girl he adored and treated so well. Being that he always had a girl, he was so off the market that he wasn't even an option. It was only a couple of years ago that I found out that his girl left him abruptly to marry somebody else and that he'd been equally intrigued by me too.

But still, even knowing that I wasn't totally out of Josh's league in terms of datability, I still felt, as my guy walked down the stairs with that equal aura of impossibility, that he was the kind of guy I just couldn't get. He was that nice guy with the girl he adored and to whom he was totally devoted. He was that kind of guy. I guess it's the kind of guy who is so sweet and caring that he's just never not in a relationship so there's just never any point in even asking yourself whether or not he's attractive or whatever, you know?

Except that this time, he was in a relationship with me. All of a sudden, I was the girl this caring, sweet, devoted type of guy was with. How bizarre.

Along the way, I guess I forgot that he's a human being too. None of us is perfect, and I knew that he had some things that he had to work on (mainly things he had to detach from), but I never really saw anything too serious blocking his progression in life. But somehow in the past couple of days, as I stopped trying to make everything so perfect all the time (mainly by screwing everything up all the time), I've seen this other side of him that I didn't really notice before.

Maybe it's not proper to air it out on the blog, but I guess he'll tell me in the morning...

I've always pushed him to say things in certain situations, mainly (I thought) because I'm a far more confrontational person than he is, and when things would go badly, I'd feel responsible because had we done things his way (passively and silently), bad things wouldn't have happened. But this week, I started to wonder if I was right all along. I started to wonder if his passiveness isn't just rooted in kindness and a lack of desire for confrontation, but a general shyness. Shyness isn't bad or anything, but when it's the stifled kind, that's something that has to be worked out, you know?

There are a bunch of reasons somebody might be stifled into shyness- a lack of confidence, being beaten down for opinions or during discussions or whenever they speak, having your words constantly not be taken into account- that sort of thing. But somehow, I can't really figure out why he'd be stifled. I guess he has been shot down a lot. And he's been bullied into silence in a variety of ways over the years too.

I hope I don't do that to him.

Anyway, my point wasn't to point out his junk, but to say it kind of sucks that I can help everybody work through their stuff, even my dad sometimes, but not my guy because I simply don't recognize what he needs. I wish I could. It's just sort of this block thing, I guess.

Anyway, it's way past my bedtime...

Because it's true?

2012-01-14T02:43:00.000-05:00

“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

A not blogging fail of sorts...

2012-01-13T02:57:00.000-05:00

I'm not blogging today. I'm imagining lying on a cooshy couch under a window, you know that kind that's a million tiny panes of glass divided by wood?, and it's snowing outside and there are big old trees all around. Every now and then, the fire crackles and my guy sighs in his sleep and a dog comes over for a snuggle.

I wonder if we need new energy resources, not because we're running out of oil, but because we need something that runs efficiently in ice-agey-type weather.

I posted on facebook that this guy was the first guy to ever really love me, but that's not true. The first guy to ever love me was my Hershey, my red dobie who would do anything for me (and even then, in between him and Pablo the fosternewf is Boo...). June 18th, 1988, I got my Hershey (for my birthday! kinda) and December 24th/25th, 1998, he died. He was my soulmate dog and I treated him terribly.

Teenagers, you know?

We're at day two of not yelling at my guy. I think that's some sort of record. I am more peaceful after my unloading. I forget that the reason I'm so messed up is based in repression. That's part of the reason I started this blog in the first place. Well, the other blog that is now hidden away and collecting cobwebs.

On the old blog, I found a post about how I will be perpetually single and can't commit. I talked about how some people in my entourage at that time were husbandy material, but I didn't want them anyway. It was a curious post given its timing, which was when I would have felt very attached to certain people who would later betray me terribly. It's curious because in my memory, I cared about him far more than I actually did. You know? In my memory, I didn't heed red flags and I was free and idealistic. But reading that old post made it clear that I wasn't.

Plow went by again. I guess it's time for some midnight shoveling? So exhausted.

He's my best friend, this one. We don't do much, we don't change the world or have the drive to accomplish greatly significant things- outwardly, anyway. But we do have ridiculous amounts of fun doing nothing together. We do laugh a lot, even if it's just because I have this God-given talent for making bizarre noises with my voice. :D

*reeeeeeeeeeee*

He takes away my shyness and makes me incredibly shy at the same time.

Teehee.

Ok, shovelies.

Skeletal...

2012-01-12T05:17:00.001-05:00

I guess there is this loomy feeling when you get into a new relationship and it goes well and you just wish your skeletons could stay closeted but there's this constant rapping at the closet door. However hard you try to drown it out, it just gets louder and louder and you wish it would just go away but it doesn't. No, instead, this sort of weird destiny thing happens where people all around you start to say things like, "You know, you can't regret any of the bad things that happened because they led you to where you are today," or "But would you be the same person you are now if you hadn't lived through those things?" So then it becomes this thing where you can't pretend it didn't happen because you are this different person, but at the same time, you can't talk about it because that's considered living in the past and even if you're who you are today because of these things, carrying them with you is frowned upon. No, you should just let them go.

So, basically, in a nutshell, you have to let the past go, yet still somehow be the person the past created you to be. And you shouldn't talk about the past, yet let the past be part of who you are... Right?

Except that that's not at all what I want. I don't want the past to have a bearing on who I am today. I mean, undoubtedly it will, and sure, some things happened to shape me for the better- I probably have more empathy and compassion and humility than I would have had if nothing bad had ever occurred in my short little life. Sure. But there are other things I really wish weren't there. Like when I'm cutting my dogs' nails and I'm growing more and more impatient because they're not staying still enough for me to cut their nails smoothly. I'm not growing impatient because they're not sitting still. No, I'm growing impatient because if they are not smooth when I am finished, there will be wrath. Except there won't be. It's just a wrathy skeleton rapping at the door.

I do wonder what would have happened had I met this guy in high school. It's amazing that our paths never crossed except the one time I remember seeing him in the hallway. That time kind of bothers me, in a good way, kind of. I remember him. Just a glimpse of him and I remember wanting him in that glimpse but then it was over and I never saw him again after that. He was exactly my type back then. Exactly.

I wonder whether or not we'd have made it, whether this whole, "who you are today" business is a load of crap. Because if we do it right, we fall in love with the core of a person and back then, even if I was angry and depressed, I still blew exams because instead of studying, I stayed up all night on the phone talking to friends who needed me. I was still me. Did I really need to go through all the horrible junk in between then and now in order for us to work?

I'm not sure.

[pause for conversations in the middle of the night with SIL A]

Anyway.

The other day on the phone with SIL A, she said, smilingly, something like, "It's amazing that you found somebody who is so like you. It's so impossible and you found it." And it's true. I'm a weirdo and I was never supposed to have a soulmate. I was just supposed to have a variety of people who told me they were my soulmate, when inside, I'd just kind of shrug them off and go on with my life. And now I have this guy, and even if it's so hard to cope with things sometimes, he's it. Like, if there was a "one" for me, he would be it. The only thing he's missing is some doubt. :D

And so I'm chatting with SIL A tonight (sometimes it's fun to be the only other person awake at this ungodly hour) and I'm telling her how all this skeleton business is basically rooted in the idea that I'm the only one who knows it happened, so sometimes I feel like it didn't happen. But then there are these scars and these disproportionate reactions that come out of me and I can't deny that these things happened. And it's not the worst thing in the world to be told not to eat ketchup... when it's the only thing you're told not to do.

By the end of my relationship, I'd lost so many friends. Some of them made it feel like I'd been living on some far off continent where I was unreachable for six years. It was weird.

And what kind of person pays your family to take you away? He paid them. The truck was loaded up and he thanked them and paid them. It's so messed up.

And what kind of person punches a girl in the head over a football game anyway? Especially when it's a football game that has nothing to do with anything. It's not like we were playing and had that adrenaliney surge of testosterony aggression.

I do have some good memories in there somewhere. But at the same time, I remember that before I wised up, I thought evil was the sweetest for getting me ice when I was heat stroked. I was too shy to ask the woman again and he went and asked. But then a couple hours later, he criticized me for falling asleep during a movie because of the heat stroke. And then he criticized me for being clingy because I fell asleep with my hand on his chest. You know what I mean?

I remember it all, but it just feels like I'm not supposed to remember the bad things. It feels like I'm supposed to forget they ever happened. But I don't. And I'm still so angry.

I think I didn't give myself enough time between relationships and so I never got to work through the damage the six year relationship caused on me. Instead, I jumped into another horrible relationship, and since it was a different kind (long distance), I didn't have to work through the issues I had acquired from and about living with somebody. And on the other hand, I gained a whole bunch of trust issues relating to words being said without any follow through or meaningful honesty. So rather than working through things, I just piled more on. And then I took a year and a half off and ended up dating crappy douchebags again before landing in this relationship.

How is a girl supposed to cope in this situation?

You spend years of your life (I'm too tired to count them) being trained to believe you're useless, worthless, unlovable, that you do everything wrong, that you don't do anything, that you're not good enough, that you're missing fundamental characteristics that would make a person marriable, that you're not worthy of respect, that you're not worthy of honesty, that you're not worthy of trust or even friendship.... I could go on and on. And then you meet this person who is patient and kind and seems to have this unwavering love for you no matter how hard you try to show him he's wrong... Where are you supposed to file that?

When every person you've ever been with has said, "I want to be with you, just not every day," or some facsimile thereof and "You'll make somebody a great wife one day, just not me," what are you supposed to do when you meet somebody who is all, "I want to be with you every day," and "You'll make me a great wife"? You know what you do? You stand there silently, waiting for the sentence to finish.

"You want to be with me every day but...."
"I'll make you a great wife except...."

And his reply is, "No but. I just want to be with you every day," and "No except. I want to marry you, Princess."

What's a girl supposed to do with that?

Be all, "YEY!" or something?

Well, I'm not all, "YEY!"

I want to be all, "YEY!"

But I'm not. Instead, I'm all, "For how long?" or "But what if [x] happens?" or "Will you still love me if I lose my job/never recover from the graves'/disappear and never come back?" Or I'm all, "How do I know you're telling me everything about you? How do I know you're not going to change when I marry you? How do I know you're really who you say you are?"

It's the skeletons rapping. They rap and they rap and eventually, a girl has to just open the door so she can finally see that there is a big difference between a rotten skeleton and this man, flesh and all, ready to face them with you. There's a big difference between these skeletons of past hurts, betrayals and disrespect, these skeletons of neglect and unlove and this real person with a real heart and real affection. There's a difference between having a closet busting open with current skeletons on a day to day basis and trying, alone, to cram them back into that closet in order to survive and opening that closet yourself to get rid of them all, while having somebody there on your side to help you clean the mess.

There's a difference between being abused and being loved.

That's what it comes down to.

We all hurt each other. We do. It's unavoidable. But I was hurt deliberately over and over and that's over. This one does not hurt me deliberately. Not even- this one doesn't hurt me. In a year and (fucking math in the middle of the night! septemberoctobernovemberdecemberjanuary) nearly four months, there have been misunderstandings and miscommunications, and in spite of me lashing out a million times and hurting him a million times, I can't name one clear time he's hurt me. I can name one time he yelled at me. Two! even.

1. We'd watched Elf, and there's this part where Buddy asks to be tucked in. James Caan proceeds to tuck him in really tight by doing these sort of choppy gestures all around his body, ramming the blanket in as he chopped. And so, when my guy was nestled all snug in his bed, as a joke, I did the choppies and I tucked the shit out of him in (that makes no sense written down, but I don't care). A few hours later, I was lonely and needed a hug, so I climbed up on him and gave him one. He woke up and freaked out and yelled at me to give him space. He maintains he never yelled. I maintain his tone of voice was yelling enough. But still, he only got riled up because he'd been trapped so tightly under that blanket the whole time he'd been asleep. I suppose it would have been akin to waking up in a coffin with somebody sitting on the lid, if you will. So ok, that's not all that terrible a reaction, given the situation.

2. He plays this video game sometimes that is really frustrating. It's one of the only times I ever see him really, really aggravated. So obviously, the thing to do in that situation is to poke him, right? Literally, I mean. I poked him in all the places that bug him the most. And he told me to stop (probably several times), but I just kept going anyway. So I guess that one could be anybody (I wouldn't have even been able to get out the warning shots he'd given me...).

You know what I mean? Those are the best examples I can come up with. Otherwise, it's like, he doesn't like it when I yell at him all the time. Or he doesn't like it when I project things onto him. Those are the things he gets irritated about. You know? Instead of getting yelled at or criticized for eating things with ketchup or not playing softball, I get told things like, "That's not me. Stop projecting."

So yeah, these skeletons kind of have to go out on the big garbage day. (You know, the day the city picks up the big things?)

Yeah.

Ok, too exhausted to think anymore.

And then, somehow...

2012-01-11T04:32:00.003-05:00

Seeing this picture just washes everything away and makes my heart feel light and full of possibility.

I am really, really lucky.

And then I remembered other things...

2012-01-11T04:23:00.000-05:00

As soon as I posted that thing last night, so many other things came into my head. And then today, other things. If yesterday was for things said, today was for things done, especially after I lashed out at my guy (yet again) about not being there for me this morning, about being so unreliable that it'd be easier if I just did everything myself and never relied on him at all to spare me the constant disappointment.

"Um... Princess... It's the first time I forgot to put the garbage out."

The car went silent for most of the rest of the way to the train as I realized what I was doing yet again.

So maybe here's another list. I don't know what to call it, but it's a list of things I remember, again, but I guess it'll be less neat since they're not soundbites or short things, also with no order or deliberate relationship references.

He whispered "I love you" in my ear on a chilly summer night as we sat on a park bench together. It was the first time anybody had ever said it to me and somehow, it was much, much colder than I'd ever imagined. Maybe it's like they say about dog training- if the dog misinterprets your voice as angry or something, whisper because it's much harder to convey any sort of tone with a whisper. Maybe that was it. Maybe I couldn't hear tone. Or maybe there was none. It just wasn't the stuff dreams were made of.

Ok, this one will be hard. I'm emetophobic, right? Extremely so. And he came home so, so, so drunk from a work party that I wasn't invited to and he got so sick. And he spent hours in the bathroom and finally came to lie beside me in bed and the stench was unbearable. Absolutely unbearable. I told him to sleep on the sofa. "I own this bed. You sleep on the sofa." I explained that if I slept on the sofa, he'd pass by me every time he went to the bathroom and I couldn't handle that. He said, "Too bad. This is my bed." Keep in mind here that I'm absolutely overwhelmed with panic at this point. Phobic panic. I turn my body and push him off the bed with my feet. He stands up and he's got that look in his eye- that glossed over look, you know? And he grabs my arms so hard I get instant bruises where his fingers are. I slip out of his grip and he shoves me into a corner and comes at me. He grabs me again and when I get out of it this time, I punch him in the face. He comes at me again, even more ragey and I punch him again and flee my corner.

Eventually, from my hiding spot, I hear him getting dressed so I go see what he's doing. In his drunken state, he takes his keys. I grab the sole set of back door keys and I lie in the hallway, which is conveniently the exact width of the length of my legs if I sit with them straight on the floor, and I use my feet and locked knees to hold the apartment door shut to prevent him from leaving. This only makes him madder. He threatens to throw up on me if I don't move. And he would too, judging by the goings on so far that night. In my absolute panic, I manage to stay there anyway. He walks away for a bit. I close my eyes and pray to a God I don't yet believe in to please make it stop. He comes back and starts kicking me in the thigh. "Move," he repeats between kicks. Finally, I move and I run to grab the phone and I call his mom. Mamma's boy kryptonite. I put him on the phone and I go back to sit by the door again. Within a half hour, she's there and she tells him to pack a bag. She tells me I need to leave this relationship. I deserve better than this. But her tone isn't concern. No, instead, it's condescension and manipulation (she always hated me).

Soon, they were gone and I was alone for the week.

It was an ice stormy night I don't even remember what started it, but I just wanted it to stop. I told him I was going to kill myself. He said, "Quit talking about it and just do it already." I took whatever coat I could find and headed down to my ice-covered car. I think I've told this story a thousand times, but as I scraped my car off, the cold tears and anger relentless, a stranger approached me and asked me if I needed help. He'd help me scrape off my car and all the while I thought, "he's helping me die faster." But he made me promise that I'd be ok, which is such a weird thing to do. At the time, and still now, I guess, promises are everything to me. You don't break a promise. "Promise me you'll be ok?" And even though I knew that it was wrong that a stranger cared more for me than the person I lived with, I went for a weepy drive and eventually found myself back in the apartment, crawling into bed with him again.

He'd called me a gold digger so many times and put me down for being in school rather than working and every day, he'd come home and tell me I'd done nothing all day when I was applying for jobs like crazy. His car died for some reason (he had about four accidents a year) so he used mine to go visit a friend of his early in the morning. My interview was at one at a downtown hospital in a breast cancer research clinic. He assured me he'd be back in time. He showed up at twelve thirty. There was no way I would make it. I was so disappointed and upset and his solution was to drive me so I wouldn't have to find parking. He drove (and is the worst driver imaginable- ragey, taking risks that are completely unnecessary and unbelievably dangerous) and dropped me off at the wrong door. Needless to say, I was late, frazzled, upset and otherwise useless as far as a job interview might go. When I got to the clinic finally, my interviewer had gone for the day. That was the end of that.

I was in my corduroy coat that I wore around the apartment like a housecoat because it was just long enough (but not all that long) and warm. The button holes had warn out though, so it opened randomly, so it wasn't like I considered myself covered or anything. It was merely to keep warm in the house.

The incredibly old landlord knocked at the door. I heard them talking in the hallway and half a second later, there he was, in the kitchen with me and you could see that he was just as shocked as I was, that somehow both of us could see how it was inappropriate and a disrespectful violation for me but he couldn't. After the landlord left, I asked him what he was thinking agreeing to let the landlord in when I wasn't dressed and his reaction was this sort of vague confusion, like he could not see how he did anything wrong. He could not, even after explanation, see how I was affected. It was like I really didn't matter to the point where explaining that I do matter was something so far beyond his comprehension that he just blanked out.

He got this huge tv from his cousin for two hundred dollars. It was a fifty-six inch projection tv. And we were sitting on the couch and he had the remote and was just flicking channels, not watching anything in particular. He came across a dark movie, right in time for a horribly graphic scene where a girl's boyfriend ties her to a bed and invites all his friends into the bedroom to rape her. And she's screaming and it's the worst scene in the history of movies and I told him to change the channel because even the "milder", less graphic scenes of that nature I can't stand to watch or even hear or be anywhere in the vicinity of and he just wouldn't. And so I'm yelling at him to change the channel and he looks at me irritated and says, "Why? I want to see what happens," and looks away. I had to leave the house. I got into my car and I drove for the amount of time it takes to run through an entire movie, just in case. And when I came home, he was asleep on the couch and I slipped by and went to bed alone.

My brother came to visit to help tile the bathroom or something (i.e. to do all of whatever it was they were doing) and as they worked "together", somehow, the subject turned to me. I was sick with the same thing I have now, except that I nearly died last time and for a long time I was on four of these pills a day plus four beta blockers and I was told to keep my activity to a minimum on account of the dying thing due to my heart rate being so high all the time. And they worked and chatted and I sat in front of the computer doing the only thing I could, really, while my body failed. (After this time around with these pills, I don't even know how I survived that flare up. I have no fucking idea.) Anyway, so eventually, they're done, and my brother leans on the half-wall separating the kitchen from the living room where I am and asks me why I don't get off my ass and get a job. You know what that's like? Having somebody convince a person who actually does love you that you're a lazy gold digger who does nothing? When you're dying too? I ended up getting into a screaming fight with my brother and he stormed out and I was left there in that house with a guy who seemed oddly satisfied.

He fell asleep on the sofa nearly every night. And during the day on weekends, he'd criticize me for not planning anything to do with him and for being utterly boring. So around seven or eight, I'd ask him what he wanted to do. "Nothing. I'm too tired," he'd say and he'd promptly fall asleep in front of the tv. Eleven o'clock would roll around and the phone would ring and suddenly, he's in the shower, putting the smells on and styling the things and just as he's about to open the door to leave, I ask what he's doing. "Going out to see [his friend] at a club downtown." And he'd open the door and leave. Just like that. I don't even know how many times that happened, but at the end of it all, I started to wonder if he was gay.

He joked that I didn't trust him and I retaliated that he didn't trust me either. His response was, "Oh yeah? I do trust you. My email password is [password goes here]. See? I have nothing to hide." After the first infidelity I found out about, I grew even more distrusting until one evening, when he wasn't answering his phone, I plugged in the password. It wasn't right. He had lied to me. I texted him by email that he was a liar and he called me immediately to do damage control. In the process, he gave me his real password, but also convinced me that using it was unnecessary but if I did, that was fine because, again, he had nothing to hide. A few days later, it had eaten at me until I just had to do it. And there, on the screen, were examples of more cheating. I was so upset I could barely breathe. Somehow later on, he managed to explain it all away and I felt slightly better but wary.

The following night, I had to go to a friend of mine's show and while I was there, I thought of all the things I wanted to ask him and when I got home, something didn't feel right again. I went back into his email to prove myself wrong and found myself digging a little deeper, where I found even more horrible things. Devastating things. I texted him immediately, calling him a variety of names intended to make it known that I knew he was a huge liar and cheater. He called me right away to do the usual damage control, but when it seemed futile, he said he couldn't talk because he had to go to a Hallowe'en party. I asked if he was serious. He said yes and a rude goodbye before pausing to wait for mine. I sat there in silent disbelief. He said he'd call me later and repeated the same rude goodbye. "How can you do this?" I asked. "I have to go," he said before letting out one more rude goodbye and hanging up. I flooded him with text messages. Finally, he broke apart from the party (which was in his building) and webcammed with me. He was smiling. I was busted up and he was smiling. "How could you do this to me?" I asked. He replied, "I guess that means we're breaking up?" and then, still smiling, he waved at me. A sarcastic, artificially cheerful wave. I was livid. What kind of person does that? Turns out he was pretty wasted, he'd tell me the next day after waking up feeling horrible. He tried to do damage control, but I wasn't very consolable.

Later that night, he called me to talk things out, but I guess he didn't count on me being me and after a bit, he lashed out, saying, "Can we just drop it? Just drop it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. Talk about something else or I'm hanging up."

It's actually harder to come up with specific examples than I thought. It was more of a general feeling the whole way through. A feeling of not being good enough, but instead of it being a question of self-worth on my part, it was actually deliberate on their part. Telling me I'm not the right girl because I don't play softball and he always dreamed of being on a softball team with his future wife. Telling me I looked horrible in whatever clothes I was wearing. Telling me that trying to hug him in public made me a disgusting and inappropriate person. Hiding me from his friends- one time even literally. He hid me in a room with the door shut and told me to be quiet. And that general impression you get when you're with somebody and you know they're embarrassed by you and everything you do or say.

To be honest for a change about this, the first time I got off the plane in February 2008 and met evil for the first time, he looked terrible. I remember it so well. He was sitting there with his left arm up along the top of the airport seats, wearing frumpy pants and the frumpiest of hoodies unzipped to reveal a more frumpy tshirt underneath. He looked how you'd picture anybody who spends too much time on the internet, you know? Out of shape and inadequate. I barely looked at him until we were in the car, in the dark. His hands were mutantly tiny. Smaller than mine, both in size and girth. Tiny hands. We stopped at the pharmacy to get me a toothbrush and when I talked about getting lube, he left to go sit in the car without me. I got some anyway and the cashier joked with me and as I left said, "Y'all have fun now," and let out a chuckle. It was funny. I got into the car and told him what the guy'd said and he rolled his eyes and told me I was embarrassing.

It seems so absurd now, you know? It seems like this alternate universe where it's so obviously wrong. Like that every day had a million reasons why I should have left every single relationship till this one. Every day. Like waking up on Sunday morning to the smell of crepes and walking into the kitchen only to find they'd all been eaten already. "I didn't think you'd want any." I taught you how to fucking make them. Why wouldn't I want any? Who makes an entire batch of crepes to eat them alone? And that recipe makes something like nine crepes too.

Just him saying, "Everybody sees potential in you except me," was enough to leave. But no, that was in month three and I stayed six years.

Or the other telling me he'd never marry me and then deciding maybe he'll give me a little more time to grow on him. What?! And when I'd ask him if he even loved me, he'd say, "You're growing on me."

The worst was how one would fight for me, even if he didn't actually want me. Why bother with the damage control if you want out? And the other would just quit. "I guess that means I don't love you," he'd say, not even making eye contact.

And yet, at the end of the day, that's what this relationship is missing. It's missing this thing in his eyes where he's got this underlying panic and need to run away. That's what he's missing. An overwhelming, yet stifled, insecurity. It's as if I would feel more comfortable if I knew he was more defective than I am. And even if I know that a relationship that broken is so unhealthy, I can't help but wish I wasn't such an underdog in this relationship all the time. In the other ones, deep down, I knew I was better than them. But in this one? It feels like I'm constantly messing up, constantly ruining things, constantly making this amazing guy's life far more difficult than it should be.

It sucks.

I love him to death, but sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get over this feeling like I'm just the interim girlfriend between his icky past and the easy, content, stable girl he's going to end up with (and who he deserves). It's like he's my foster. I take him in, fix him up a little, and then he moves on to his foreverfamily.

I can't shake this feeling that I'm just not good enough for him.

Maybe I am supposed to be alone. Maybe I'm too detrimental in pairs.

You make your own happiness, they say and I wish that was true. I wish I had the coping mechanisms and selective amnesia to make that true. I wish I didn't carry with me all the hurts and patterns of indifference, disrespect and betrayal of trust. I wish I wasn't so compelled to predict what might happen next in a futile effort to protect myself. I wish I didn't project all the most horrible things I've come to know to be true about doing life with a boy onto this one who, if I'm honest, is only hard to deal with if I make him that way. I set him up every day. And I yell at him every day. And I criticize him every day. And all these things have absolutely nothing to do with him, but this shitty version of reality I'd become accustomed to.

The damage isn't so much that we are wronged by others- that's inevitable. The damage is when we become convinced that those wrongs, the horrible treatment and disappointment are normal, or sometimes even right. The damage is when we begin to believe that we both deserve this treatment and that we somehow cause it to happen.

That's the worst part, I think. I have this idea in my head that the minute I go all in emotionally, the minute I let go, that's when he'll dig his fangs in and take advantage of my vulnerability. That is what I am trained for at this point and I know it's a huge lack of trust on my part as well as just a horrible judgment of a person so not deserving of it. He just doesn't have it in him to take advantage of anybody, let alone me, the person who he loves- but actually loves, not just whatever it was I'd grown used to where that word gets thrown around and its backing is empty promises, disappointment, disrespect and infidelity.

Anyway, I'm done writing. How do you say that? I'm written out? I'm wrought? :D

Goodnight.

Things I remember... probably every day...

2012-01-10T04:10:00.001-05:00

[This covers my relationships from about May 2001 to January 2009, all mixed up, in no particular order nor classified by relationship. It's just a jumbly mess of things I remember.]

Getting yelled at or sternly criticized for:
- Not changing the sheets often enough to avoid fur (especially on pillow cases).
- Not waking up early enough (i.e. before 8AM) on weekends.
- Being a night owl and not spending enough time sleeping beside him.
- Being too clingy.
- Not being clingy enough (there was even a post-it on the kitchen cupboard beside the stove to remind me).
- Being a horrible person to come home to.
- Being horrible to live with.
- Not vacuuming often enough.
- Vacuuming too late at night.
- Doing laundry too late at night.
- Touching in public.
- Being overly affectionate in public.
- Eating ketchup.
- Using cinnamon.
- Wanting to drive.
- Lying about being a snowboarder.
- Being too slow to get to the hill.
- Drinking tea while driving.
- Over-windshield wiping.
- Being on the computer too much.
- Spitting when I brush my teeth.
- Being lazy.
- Walking my dogs late at night.
- Being nosy.
- Being messy.
- Ordering a gift from far away.
- Being a gold digger.
- Being in school instead of working.
- Not wanting to get my babies baptized (when neither of us believed).
- Not playing softball.
- Pointing out how biblically illiterate he was (when he'd gone to church his whole life).
- Talking about a drug problem (not mine).
- Scratching a wall I was thrown into.
- Not agreeing to sex.
- Agreeing to sex.
- My ring scratching him at any time, especially during sex or "arguments".
- Having exams.
- Studying for exams.
- Having job interviews.
- Wearing baggy clothes.
- Wearing skanky clothes.
- Wearing black clothes.
- Having dogs.
- Forcing dogs on him when he never wanted dogs.
- Having inside dogs.
- Putting swept up fur in the garbage.
- Not making us go anywhere or do anything outside the house (that I would have had to pay for with my no money).
- Cooking with tomatoes.
- Not being ok with drinking and driving.
- Not waking him up when he fell asleep on the sofa.
- Waking him up when he fell asleep on the sofa.
- Fur on the new sofa.
- Having fosters.
- Lying about the neighbors yelling at me nearly every day when I'd walk the dogs.
- Being overly dramatic.
- Using gastroenteritis to get out of working, which is proof that I'm a gold digger.
- Not being French.
- Not being from the south.
- Being antisocial.
- Not saying grace before eating (neither did he, but apparently, it was on me).
- Not wearing make up.
- Not dressing like a girl.
- Not doing anything around the house.
- Eating mustard.
- Not taking a bath with him.
- Not being wife material.
- Not being mother material.
- Wanting to go to vet school.
- Being in school "forever".
- Not loving him.
- Not trusting him enough (when he was cheating).
- Bringing up the fact that he cheated on me four times (there'd be a fifth too).
- Not letting the cheating go already (the day I found out).
- Dragging him to family things.
- Never going to his family things (I always went).
- Not being feminine enough.
- Being crass in public.
- Bugging him during a football game.
- Bugging him after a football game.
- Shoving him away when he tried to kiss me while I slept.
- Lying about being held hostage because I could be pinned down repeatedly without freaking out all that much.
- Being too aggressive while trying to get out of being pinned down.
- Not being adventurous.
- Not having innate gifts of telepathy when performing certain unmentionable acts.
- Being consequentially terrible at those acts.
- Ruining things for him by telling him what to do (so as to avoid injury, if you know what I mean).
- Having short hair (not feminine).
- Having long hair (gets in the way all the time).
- Changing my tires without oiling the lug nuts (so like... NEVER oil your lug nuts unless you want to die).
- Not trusting his tradesmen friends after his friend "adjusted" my car's hood latch till the $300 cable snapped.
- Not wanting him to see his friends (I just didn't want them around me. They were creepy).
- Counting how many joints he smoked in a day.
- Moving the decorative pebbles on the kitchen counter.
- Reading the wrong book (Catch Me If You Can) while I hid in his bedroom from unexpected guests.
- Hugging him in an elevator (that got me a shove too).
- Going for a walk on my own.
- Buying orange juice with pulp.
- Not making supper.
- Faking graves' disease (he convinced some of my family of that too).
- Not picking up the shit often enough in the backyard.
- Not mowing enough.
- Not shoveling the driveway properly.
- Buying a fridge on boxing day (he made me return it so he could buy the same fridge for $20 more).
- Eating pickles.
- Eating strawberries.
- Helping people too much and not leaving enough time for him or making money somehow instead.
- Talking on the phone with my friends.
- Talking to boys.
- Talking to boys about the relationship.
- Blogging things that should be private.
- Being open about things that should be private.
- Being inappropriate in public (i.e. when sitting on the couch with him alone).
- Wanting to meet the parents.
- Falling asleep during a movie after getting heatstroke.
- Messaging the fifth girl he cheated with.
- Having a friend stand up for me after all the cheating.
- Not being happy for him when he bought a $1500 painting after making me pay for his plane ticket.
- Being too demanding on messenger (i.e. expecting him to reply during a conversation).
- Getting him fired (he didn't get along with his boss and was miserable, so I told him happiness was more important than a job, and shortly thereafter he got fired and never forgave me for it... because somehow, it was my fault).
- Getting Jemma when he clearly didn't want her.
- Having dogs on the bed.
- Playing with Boo at night.

Hurtful things said to me:
- "Everybody sees potential in you except me."
- [When I said, "I really think you abused me this whole time"] "Yeah, I know. But I didn't think I'd make you sick."
- "I want to talk to you, just not every day."
- "You'll make somebody a great wife one day. Just not me."
- "But you are my temporary girlfriend."
- "You'll never be the mother of my children."
- "My sister is right. You are a lazy gold digger."
- [In the car, after a disastrous family party where his family ganged up on me and tried to humiliate me] "Why would I defend you? They're entitled to their opinion."
- "Don't touch me. I thought you said you weren't clingy?"
- "I'll never marry you." [And yet, he kept dating me for another year after that...?]
- "You're so embarrassing. I should drive you back to the airport right now."
- "Why would I protect you? You're not my girl."
- [Between an all-nighter of studying and my exam] "What kind of couple never sleeps in the same bed together? Obviously not one that's in love. I think you should move out. Yeah. When your exams are over, get out of my house."
- "You know, I think I never actually loved you. You should really move out."
- "I promise I won't miss you."
- "Why do I say these things? Because I don't love you, I guess."
- "You were never real. You were a vacation. You were just for fun. I was lonely. I'm not lonely anymore."

I'm totally forgetting a whole bunch. But I guess you get the idea?

Anyway, I thought maybe by writing this list, I could let it go a little and stop expecting my guy to say or do the things that have been said or done to me so I can stop reacting so badly to him all the time.

The truth, I guess, is that it all still hurts. A lot. Even if they're little things, hearing them constantly for so long just... well... trains a girl.

Invested...

2012-01-09T02:04:00.001-05:00

I just realized that my boyfriend is as flexible as I am. It's like a weight has lifted.

Chatting with a friend of mine online after I got my first work email after two weeks off, I was seething. I told her I really don't think my boss grasps the concept of my health being a priority on account of it failing right now. We decided I have to set aside four hours a day and that that be the only time I am available. I will not check emails or be reachable outside those hours.

My guy had been trying to get me to make myself a schedule for me, to get me to finish my hours quickly and less painfully each week, but I guess I resented that idea because the way things have been working out is that I end up working a full time job as far as availability goes and yet, at the end of the week, the concrete hours I put in don't match up. I don't charge for the bits and pieces and for the simple disturbance in my life. The looming gloom is just this weird reality with this job, even if I don't feel like I put in my twenty hours.

And then I said to my friend, "I kind of hope I get the flu," and she was all, "Noooo, you don't need that," but I do, I said. "I need to teach myself a lesson."

And then, picturing myself lying there like a flu-ridden cadaver, I said, "Some things just aren't worth the emotions."

And then I flashed back to my semi-cubicle job, where I'd detached completely from the work, much to the chagrin of my bosses. That's what I need to do. I need to not be emotionally invested. I liked my boss in my old job and I did my job well, but I also did it quickly and matter-of-factly and at the end of the day, I got into my car and I severed all the ties. And if I couldn't sever them, if something had happened that emotionally damaged me that day (i.e. blatant and disgusting sexual harassment), I wouldn't go in the next day. Plain and simple.

It's just not worth the emotional investment. Not even a little bit.

Right now, my health is it. It is all I need and it is much harder to find than a job, even in this economy. So no, no more. No more full time job on half time pay. No full time responsibility with part time benefits. No full time availability without adequate compensation and proportionate time off.

No.

We need boundaries here. I need boundaries. Hardcore, rigid shit.

No more looming.

And back to my first point, when I was alone, this house was my security blanket. I'd quit everything, sell this house and use the proceeds to move to the middle of nowhere in a tiny shack that costs next to nothing. And I guess my fallback plan of stressfreeness disappeared when I got this guy but it doesn't have to. He'd do it. Right? He'd flee to the middle of nowhere where cost of living was next to nothing. We don't need all this. We just need us. And some doggies. And maybe a car. That's it. And an internet connection.

Done and done.

I'm going to do other things to take my mind off shit.

Forgetty McForgetterson...

2012-01-06T02:46:00.002-05:00

Too late to blog. Spent too much time googling things I can't remember. The downside to having access to news on the internet is a lot of the major news sites delete content quite often and that leads a girl to believe she invented said stories, when she knows she didn't.

I hate that.

Especially when my memory is bad.

I decided I'm going to start writing shit down. Shit like what I'm supposed to do tomorrow and what I'm supposed to do there. It's gotten that bad. Today, I was supposed to go to the factory to get my paycheck and I didn't remember till late this evening. It's, like... really hard. The pause is because there aren't really words to describe what it does to me. I never realized how much I relied on my memory and frankly, my brain function till now. It's frustrating and sad.

Feeling like this is the exact reason I don't smoke pot. I cherish my memory. Even if it's full of bad things. Without my memory, knowledge becomes less of a bankable, buildable commodity and more like the idea of the goldfish swimming around the tank and having no memory of doing it ten seconds prior.

Please, God, let it just be the pills.

Ok, off to write some lists for the doctor's appointment tomorrow. Hopefully I'll remember to bring the lists.

Starfish...

2012-01-05T04:04:00.002-05:00

Hiding out in the kitchen tonight, honing my new skill of buying things and researching whether or not it was a good idea after the fact. After reading a pajillion negative reviews, I decided the purchase I made today is ok for what I intend to use it for (i.e. an alternative to the laptop and consequent typing noises and bright screen that keeps my guy up at night). I have this idea in my head that a handheld device will be less electromagnetically invasive too, but that's probably just anecdotal speculation.

Littles screamed tonight and I whipped my head around only to see Jemma walking away from her. I don't know what Jemma did, but frankly, I'm a little sick of her shit lately. She's snarly and barky and just generally irritable. I grabbed her by her thick neck fur and I think in the process, I might have broken my finger or dislocated it or pinched a nerve or something. I didn't grab her all that hard even (her fur is really thick). I told her that I was sick of her growling all the time and enough is enough. She made a gesture to snap at me, so I had to correct that too, all the while worrying if something is up beyond the whole, "I hate that they got a third dog" thing. I hope she doesn't become one of those unbearably snappy old dogs.

After a little break, Jemma and I snuggled for a bit and I took her for a walk and while we were walking, I realized I don't trust her nearly as much as I used to and I don't listen to her either. What I mean is, Littles is a screamer and they were beside the food and it's likely Jemma was correcting her for going near the food, which is ok. I forget sometimes that Jemma is a really, really good dog. She does deserve a little leeway and yeah, she is barky but I really don't play with her enough lately. She needs attention, affection and one on one playtime. Of all the dogs in this house, she is the one who really needs one on one time the most and at the same time, she's so easy that it's easy to forget her.

Poor doggy.

On my way down the driveway, I wiped out something brutal. I don't know how I went down but I ended up slamming my knee on the ice and spinning into a starfish on the ground. By the time I stopped moving, I was lying on the ground in the opposite direction I was headed. I just lay there for a while, savoring the pain (sarcasm) and taking a breather. Jemma had run back to the house. I don't know what she would have done if I didn't get up.

I mustered up the gumbies to stand up and we went on our slippy slidy walk anyway. As I walked through the pain, I realized that I think I was a self-harmer too, except instead of cutting or whatever, I threw my body around. As long as I can remember, it was a dream of mine to get a black eye. It sounds absolutely absurd to say it out loud, but it's true. And when I finally got one, I think it was in grade eleven, after getting elbowed in the face when I tried to take down a girl twice my size in a rugby game, it was brutally painful (I think I even chipped my zygomatic bone) but I was so, so proud of my amazingly black eye. I mean, this was the black eye to end all black eyes. Instant shiner and it stayed shut for days.

That's apparently what it takes for me to not feel like such a failure...?

Anyway, between rugby, anorexia and the endless throwing around of my body that went with snowboarding, I guess it felt empowering. If I didn't have any power in the world, I had the power to do these insane things to myself. And not only that, but I magically healed from them too.

I think that's the self-harmy part, but instead of doing it to relieve the pain, I think I did it to heal it. You know what I mean? These were wounds, amazingly catastrophic wounds sometimes, and after a little while, they were gone and I was stronger for it. You could see the healing happening. You could feel it. And it was inevitable.

I think the turning point was when I got my concussion. Suddenly, there were permanent repercussions. Suddenly, I'd gone so extreme that I could not fully heal from it. Suddenly, my body had limits and those limits were very clear.

I think that, mixed with the graves' disease, which pointed out even more clearly how vulnerable I am, made me lose a lot of power in my life. I think it's part of the reason I get so hurt so easily now. I don't have this outlet that shows me that I'm strong. I just don't have that at all anymore.

It's amazing too that when my knee hit that ice, the thought that hit me instantly was that my snowboarding season was in jeopardy. It's amazing that after all this time, that's still who I think I am at the core of my person. I remember after snowboarding in early 2001, before I went out west, I'd have to ice my knees. After the drive home from the hill, they'd be swollen and red and felt like there was sand in the joint. My knees were so abused. Even kneeling in the snow one time would cause them to swell up. They just couldn't handle anything anymore.

In 2002, my knees hurt all the time. I remember going to school in the fall and walking from my car to school was so uncomfortable. Especially the left one, which is the one I press down on the hardest to take off when I jump on my snowboard.

So there I am, lying on the driveway and my knee has that same sort of pain as it used to at the end of a day of riding. And I think that's what gave me the gumbies to walk after that. I missed walking off a really bad bit of pain. I actually missed it. Pushing through the pain as I walked felt good, as messed up as that sounds. And the rest of me, as the night has progressed, has gotten sorer and sorer and I can't help but feel that same sense of distorted pride, like I somehow kicked that ice's ass today, even if it clearly got the best of me.

Tomorrow, I'm taking a pregnancy test. That's the plan. Unless my belly goes down by then, which hasn't been the case so far. :/

I think I decided a long time ago that it wouldn't be my genre to hide it for the eight weeks, you know? So whatever it is tomorrow, I guess I'll say it out loud. (Most likely negative, just so you know. And I mean it too. It's not wishful thinking. Statistically, I'm not preggers. But I digress.)

I tell you though, if I am preggers, that's some scary shit because we've been careful. Like, really. Like, terrified of getting preggers right now careful.

Anyway.

So... yeah.

So Jemma was really good the whole way on the walk. That's what totally reinforced the idea that maybe I need to give her more benefit of the doubt before disciplining her so strongly. And maybe she needs a little spoiling too. She does feel left out, I think. It is a lot of dog in this house and being that she's always good and never demanding, she does get pushed aside too often.

Probably why she's getting barky. Gets you noticed, you know?

Anyway, I'm going to sleep. I miss my boyfriend even more when I'm in the other room all night. :(

In which I describe things I don't know and you don't want to know, you know?

2012-01-04T03:42:00.000-05:00

Alright, an explicit post, so avert your eyes if you're easily embarrassed.

Ok, maybe not that explicit.

But still. I have things to say.

Serious things, I guess.

(I don't know when it came to be that I was so easily made awkward... I have to get over that again.)

So I went off the patch a couple of months ago (I count November 6th as my starting day) and I think something's not right.

I have this thing where I can gain, like, ten pounds in a day sometimes and for the past week or so, my belly's been excessively huge. Like, where you catch it in the mirror and your eyes get all wide and you're all, "Whoa. What the hell." And I suppose a normal person in my position would be scrambling for a preggers test or something, but no, something's just not right. I don't know what it is, but something's going on. I don't really feel anything, like I don't feel ill or any sort of belly or reproductive malaise and my appetite is as normal as can be, I guess, with the graves' and the meds.

So yeah.

I just kind of wanted to say it out loud so it might go away. Whatever it is. I guess I give it three more days to disappear or I'm totally poking it in front of my doctor. (This is totally what I picture happening on Friday.)

It's weird- for all my worry and needless anxiety, this does worry me, but not all that much. I'm not going to lose sleep over it or anything. It kind of made me realize though that in the end, I am pretty good at taking things as they come, especially when they're catastrophically life-changing or brutal. So we'll see, I guess. Hopefully it'll be gone by morning. Or something.

You'd think I'd have some sort of symptoms or something.

Anyway.

I should go to sleep. I don't really have much to talk about other than the eye-grabbing belly. I'm on vacay till Sunday. Unpaid vacay, but still!

I miss my boyfriend. I feel like I barely saw him today.

I spent a lot of time with Boo though. He's been extra snuggly three days in a row. Freaks me out a little bit. Even Littles was weirdly snuggly tonight. At one point, she just came over, hopped up on the bed and lied down peacefully beside me in a little ball. She doesn't usually do that. Usually, she tramples the shit out of your ovaries on the way up and then stands there for a while hovering in your face before deciding she didn't want to be on the bed at all anyway and re-tramples your ovaries on the way down. This time, she was all discreet and snuggly.

Ok, goodnight.

Because I like it...

2012-01-03T03:55:00.003-05:00

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." - C.S. Lewis

And then I told him to move out...

2012-01-03T03:46:00.003-05:00

Today, I told my guy he has to move out. It started with spending every last bit of my patience cutting dogs' nails (fifty-three of them, to be precise- nails, not dogs) with really dull dog nail clippers and getting kicked in the face one too many times in the process and interspersed in there was brushing Boo, who seems to be shedding insane amounts of fur too. And I kept telling my guy from the other room that my patience was gone, but I guess he didn't take me too seriously because when I got back to the bedroom, his new drum was taking up my spot and my laptop had shut down because of being unplugged and he started to watch his irritating police brutality youtube videos that he watches just because they end up in the suggested videos.

So I left the room.

Or, if I'm being honest, I yelled some things, flailed my arms a little and then left the room...

So there I am, lying in the sulk room (that's what we call it on account of that being its only purpose), my tears burning the dog feet scratches on my face and it hit me: I have to end this situation. "This situation," of course, is the one in which I am always a giant failure.

If you're alone and you fail, it's like it never happened. If you're with somebody who is far, far better than you are and you fail, it's like it gets amplified. Every time. If we were to use the tree in the woods analogy here, it'd be the difference between the tree falling when nobody's around versus the tree falling and crushing a man right in front of his wife. You see what I mean? It's bad. Way worse than if nobody knew the tree fell.

So I went back upstairs and Jemma made me let her out, which only further delayed the agony that was about to happen.

Finally, when she came back in, I lay beside him and I told him I think he has to move out. I think that's what has to happen. And I gave him my plausible reasons why.

"Yes," I said, partly to myself, "you need to live somewhere else."

It's settled, I thought. Sure, it felt horrible, like jabbing a pen into my soul, but it had to be done. He had to be set free and my silent forest had to be restored.

Done and done.

*deep breath*

The room was quiet for a minute. I had no idea what he was thinking or what his reaction would be.

Finally, he spoke.

"No, you know what I need?" he asked, turning towards me. "I need to give you the kissies. Lots of kissies." And he straddled me and pinned my arms down, kissed my face and neck like the fury, then paused to gnaw on my chin for a minute before joking about how when I'm old and have many chins, he'll have to bite them all and then he proceeded to kiss my belly till I screamed, every now and then repeating, "It has to be done, Princess. It has to be done."

I guess he can stay. :D

One of the things we talked about afterwards was that the truth of things is that I'm back to filtering myself among my friends. I'm just not ok and I think it's at the point where there aren't very many people who understand how not ok I am right now.

A friend of mine sent me a message the other day venting about how she's just not ok and doesn't know what to do anymore and I just sat there for a while, wondering how the hell I'm supposed to answer that when I'm not ok either. In the end, I guess I said just that- I'm equally not ok, so I guess we can be not ok together.

It's hard and my guy gets the brunt of things and I guess I'm getting used to my friends thinking I'm deliberately trying to ruin things. I'm actually not. When I freak out on him, it's not because I want to distance myself from him or that I want him to leave me or any of that. It's because I'm just not ok. And then it escalates and at the end of it, I just think he shouldn't have to deal with this anymore. And I think he gets it now, but at the same time, there's no way it can't hurt him too.

He surprised me today though. I mean, he surprises me so fricken often, but today... he's just the most awesome person alive. I wish I could give him a better life than this.

"You just need to relax a little," he says. I totally do. I need to take a break from kicking my own ass so much.

Tomorrow is the day.

You'll see.

There will be singing. And smiling.

I hope.

But no playing outside, probably. It's going to be fricken freezing.

How did I get to be so lucky?

I wish I could be ok with not knowing the answer to that. I wish I could stop wondering why he loves me. I wish I could just be grateful without trying to find reasons that I just can't seem to find.

Goodnight.

Ramblies of a grateful girl lacking in focus, sleep and sappy filters...

2012-01-02T08:40:00.000-05:00

Apparently, it's really, really stormy outside. I have to get up and drive my guy at six, but not just to the train because the trains are on a holiday schedule.... I have to drive him downtown. In the storm! Like...

Shiiiiit.

Go go gadget awakeness...?

Shiiiiiiiiiit.

In other news, it feels like Christmas is over. I'm dreading taking down the tree, the saddest of all traditional activities. It doesn't help that my town only collects the trees on the two Mondays following New Year's. That means tomorrow and next Monday.

Unlikely.

In other, other news, I think I'm ready to set a date for this wedding and let the chips fall where they may. Or let my guy decide things. Either way. And then it becomes just about finding a place to actually have the wedding itself and then the real planning can start. We have to read this, I guess. And make the person we choose to officiate fill out the forms here.

[pause for 3 hours of internet searching.]

[pause for quitting and sleeping an hour before getting up begrudgingly to drive my guy and for driving my guy.]

I saw the most amazing sunrise on the way home. So pretty. It lasted all of a couple minutes before the sky turned grey, but right before that, it was layers and layers of deep reddish orangish pink. I don't see very many sunrises relative to sunsets and whenever I do, they tend not to be all that special, but I'll never forget how much joy my grandmother got from watching the sunrise from her apartment once she'd moved out of the house she'd lived in for eons.

I miss my grammy.

I freaked out a little last night after my ma sent me an email congratulating me and my guy for being a couple (um...?) and I turned to my guy and said, "You know what's going to happen, right? I'm going to end up feeling too guilty and invite her to the wedding." He got up to have a shower and I promptly called SIL A, who I don't talk to enough anymore, I think, and she explained to me a whole bunch of things and made me realize that I can't feel guilty anymore. It's not right that I feel guilty for mistakes my ma made and never bothered to fix. At every opportunity she was given, she chose to cut and run, to not be involved and to just not keep up and I can't carry that burden for her. The truth of the matter is simple: she was not there. I want supportive people at my wedding and I just don't think she would be supportive. Supportive is not just fancy, pretty words. No, supportive is actually putting some might behind those words.

I haven't been all that supportive lately. Yesterday, we bailed on a new year's brunch thing and I owe SIL A, like, ten hot Cs and I owe my friend A a breakfast and my friend G and his wife a brunch. And frankly, all I ever want to do is curl into a ball and stay that way all day.

It's getting harder not to die these days. When my guy is around, he keeps my mind off things, but when I was alone the other day, it was a struggle. It's like I'm in this deep funky depression right now that hangs over me like a dark haze. All sorts of amazing things happen and I'm grateful for everything and I laugh a lot, but then as soon as the dust settles, the funk returns, but in this eerily powerful way. I still blame the pills, simply because I know it was like this last time too. I can't wait to get off these things.

Please, God, heal me so I can get off these things.

Thank God for a patient boyfriend too. I don't know where I would be without him.

Last night, before falling asleep for those ten minutes or whatever after searching forever for a wedding venue, I wondered if I really did want to marry this guy. Sometimes, it just feels too easy. I meditated on it a little bit. If I didn't, wouldn't it be easy to say the words out loud, I wondered. I couldn't even think the words. I could think them for every other person, but when I'd put his name in front of it and picture his sweet, loving face, there was just no way. I want to marry this guy. Like, with all my heart I do. I don't think I'm worthy of him, I definitely don't deserve him, but if, by the grace of God, he should happen to love me in a forevery kind of way, I really would (will) be the luckiest girl in the world.

Every time I look at my ring, it's utterly perfect. It is not at all what I would have pictured on my finger at this stage of life- especially since marriage wasn't in the cards as far as I knew- and I know no matter how far my imagination might have stretched, it would never have gotten this far.

I love sleeping next to him. I love ending my day and having his peaceful narcoleptic body breathing so soundly beside me. And somehow, in spite of being deeply sleeping, he manages to tell me he loves me. Every night, in the middle of the night.

And when I said gbye to him in the car this morning, the way he looks at me? That's what I pictured when I couldn't even think the words. It just melts the most cynical bits of me into a puddle on the floor and then he gets some paper towel and mops me up and reforms me into a better version of me.

And I know it's probably horrible to say, but I think the times when I feel the most loved are the times when I've failed miserably or I've hurt him terribly and he takes me into his arms. It's like in those moments, there is so much patience, so much affection, so much forgiveness... It's just explicit unconditional love, hanging out there in the open, undeniably tangible. In this unlovable girl's eyes, it's a miracle. It really is. Both that somebody could be so full of grace and that that grace is shown to me.

In spite of a number of Christians pretending it is wisest to "get unengaged" simply because he doesn't say the whole Jesus mantra, I really don't personally know anybody who has displayed behavior and heart closer to what a Christian should be than he has. He's always the same too. Whether it's with me or at work or with his family or with my dogs, he's always the same: full of kindness, love, dignity and respect. He has a beautiful heart.

Anyway, I guess I'm especially sappy because I'm so exhausted and I miss him already.

I am so lucky. I can't wait to know him in sixty years. I bet he'll be a hot old man.

Goodnight.

The usual list of things for 2012...

2012-01-01T03:46:00.003-05:00

Even though I have a serious disdain for new year's eve (I just don't get what there is to celebrate), every year, I do this list, so here goes.

Ok, so first, the evaluation of 2011:

Things I want to do in 2011 (a hindsight checklist, three years running):
19. Learn to dream. Still a work in progress, but this guy helps me dream. He makes me feel like almost anything might maybe be possible. But I'm still skeptical. :D
18. Have the confidence in myself needed to do whatever it is I dream. Work in progress... still.
17. Find a new career and direction that will be fulfilling and uplifting. Last year, I put this one as done, but now... um... reevaluating.
16. Focus a little more. This has gotten way worse with the meds and the graves'. Shitty.
15. Learn to forgive others a little more. Work in progress.
14. Learn to forgive me a little more. Yeah, I still need to work on doing that.
13. Go snowboarding more. I went once last year. This year, I got a new helmet, so I was hoping to go, but so far, my energy level and enthusiasm are severely lacking. God, I miss it though.
12. Spend more time with nature. We did that a bit while on vacation, but I do still need to get out more.
11. Build my self-respect, self-worth and confidence in new social situations. My God, this one got worse this year. With the graves' my anxiety skyrocketed and with the graves', my self-respect shot down because of feeling like an utter failure at life. Self-worth is probably at an all-time low right now too, probably because of the meds (hopefully) and because I am really hard on myself because the line between medical issue and personal issue is very blurry. So yeah, I need to get my shit together.
10. Go on a roadtrip. Yeah, we did that. We went to North Carolina and it was pretty amazing. See posts here, here and here.
9. Learn how to compromise without compromising my person. Work in progress, but because of the current living situation, relationship situation and health situation, I've been forced to step up the speed of progress. I can't keep living like I have to sacrifice everything all the time because I just don't have enough life in me to do that right now.
8. Learn to fight a little harder for me. I am, I think. I just have to learn to carry it over to the careery part of my life too.
7. Learn how to start my own company and website. Um. No, I still haven't done that.
6. Work on my ability to commit to things. I think I commit when my heart is in it and if my heart isn't in it, I should move on and find something I feel I can commit to. I need to listen to my gut more, but also have the confidence to follow through.
5. Keep my doggies healthy and happy, bring them on more adventures and love them to the utmost of my abilities. We did have adventures this year and I was so, so proud of how well they did in the tent, on the hiking trails and in the car (but not Boo on the way there... but that was my fault for giving him prozac to which he reacted badly).
4. Keep learning. Always.
3. Love me a little more. I don't know how to do that. I've been struggling to move forward in that all year, and I haven't budged. If anything, I love me less now than ever. Wtf.
2. Love others a little more, learn to be more tolerant, and be less selfish with my time, money and resources. Work in progress. Always.
1. Stay passionate about God things and matters of my soul. I am. I do need to be more involved though, if not in community, then at least in reading and learning.

Things I wanted in 2011:
7. six inch iron skillet I still haven't gotten it!
6. ~~car wheels that don't shake at higher speeds~~ Yey! Nevermind the trouble to get them that way.
5. a right front car speaker that works Meh. A luxury now that I don't drive nearly as much.
4. better light fixtures for my kitchen (non-cold-fluorescent) One day.
3. ~~a tall, narrow bowl so that when I use my kitchenaid mixy thingy, it doesn't spew all over my kitchen~~ Got it! On sale! But then my kitchenaid mixer died, and my guy's parents got us a new kitchenaid stand mixer. Double yey!
2. a tea pot that isn't irritating to use Meh. Luxury too. And I found out my shitty tea pot now sells for like $150, so maybe I under appreciate it? I just wish it was double walled so the outside wasn't scalding hot.
1. that's all I can think of but there's definitely more stuff I whine about on a daily basis that I just can't remember at the mo'. Always.

Things I wanted to do in 2011:
15. Get my wheels fixed so they stop shaking (eee...). Done.
14. Try to get out of debt. (Emphasis on the "try"...) Um. Work in progress.
13. Finish watching all the Kids in the Hall box set. Work in progress. We're about halfway through. Savoring.
12. Go snowboarding at least a couple times. I think I went once... It just didn't work out otherwise. :(
11. Find the best home possible for the little dog and make sure all three dogs are happy, healthy and having fun. We did. :) I think. (I hope.) They were a little bored though...
10. Convince my guy that it's not horrible to live up in the middle of nowhere. DONE! YEY!
9. Paint the inside of my house (i.e. especially the bedroom, livingroom and kitchen). Not yet. I guess there were other more important things to do (and I don't care all that much). We'll see what happens this year.
8. Go on a road trip with my guy and the doggies. DONE! YEY! Best trip evar.
7. Learn to be a little more self-disciplined. Yeah... Um. *avoids eye contact*
6. Learn to trust a little more. I think I have, but I have a long way to go still.
5. Learn to need a little less. Yeah...
4. Learn to accept myself the way I am a little more. I think I regressed here in some ways (self-worth, thinking I am good enough for my guy, etc) but progressed in others (I'm ok with my DSPS now, but I guess I'm still not ok with the graves'...).
3. Allow myself to be a little more human (sometimes). I think I've had no choice here, what with living with a boy and having graves' disease too, but I still hate it.
2. Grow in life and love with this particular man person. Work in progress, but I adore him more than ever.
1. Be more optimistic. Also a continuous work in progress...

*sigh*

Things that didn't change in 2011:
10. I still live in the middle of nowhere.
9. My hair is still short, but we're reevaluating what's going to happen with it now.
8. I'm still a light shade of blue.
7. I'm still slightly masochistic.
6. I still love snow.
5. My doggies. YEY! (Thank God for that.)
4. I'm still standing (albeit slightly teetery this year).
3. I still think too much. (If there is such a thing...)
2. I still do nothing, if given the option to do so (unless I'm hyperthyroid).
1. A lot of things on the list for 2011 that I wanted to change...

Things that were different in 2011:
9. I got gravesy again. Boo.
8. I got mary-janes. YEY! They weren't on my new year's lists, but I've wanted mary-janes for years now.
7. I bought a wedding dress...?
6. I got a new camera as a result of being ridiculously spoiled on Christmas.
5. I should just say, "I got spoiled rotteh," without listing individual things, because I did. I even got pearls. Yey! (But it is ridiculously humbling too.)
4. We took a road trip to North Carolina for our first trip together (all five of us).
3. My guy moved in with me officially in May.
2. My a teeny tiny fosterlabbie became my teeny tiny Littles B'gaackers, aka our third dog.
1. I got engaged to a great man who is full of awesome.

Things I did in 2011 that I'm proud of:
4. I stayed alive.
3. Moved my guy into this house without help, with extreme time limitations (we had the truck for, what, three hours?) and when both of us had the flu.
2. I kept my dogs happy, healthy and alive. (YEY! Or God did. But still, YEY!)
1. I kept my boyfriend, in spite all my efforts to the contrary (and he says he still wants to keep me, so that's coo').

I have to say that right now, in the state of mind I'm in, I'm actually having a really hard time coming up with things I'm proud of this year. I feel like this was a regressive year in many ways, in particular because of the graves' and especially because of my reaction to it and to being on the meds again.

And for 2012:

Things I want in 2012:
7. Six inch iron skillet (Yeah, I still kinda do want it).
6. Car tires for the summer (my summers are dead).
5. To witness something beautiful or awe-inspiring.
4. To want less. Way less.
3. To have a wedding that honors the love my guy and I share and perhaps inspires those around us to love each other more deeply.
2. My health back.
1. My three dogs to still be alive the next time it's year end list writing time (I know, out of my control, but I really, really hope and pray and wish).

Things I want to do in 2012, a fresh list, in no particular order except for numbers one through four:
25. I took it off, but apparently, I still haven't learned to number these things till the end, so it goes back on.
24. Decide if babies are in the picture or not.
23. Pray more.
22. Fix my graves' situation. Either through medical procedures (by the grace of God) or by prayer (by the grace of God).
21. Get more physical activity. Get back into reasonable shape.
20. Learn to be more patient. Deep breaths and such more often. Also goes with #7.
19. Finish my book, even if I hate it and probably have to start over.
18. Something I'm proud of so writing the things I'm proud of on here isn't so bleddy hard next year. Staying alive shouldn't be something a person puts on a list as some sort of accomplishment.
17. Try harder to get out of debt.
16. Finish watching all the Kids in the Hall box set, the Seinfeld box set and sadly, watch the last season of NewsRadio.
15. Go snowboarding a couple times. Obviously I have to try out the new helmet.
14. Spend more time in nature.
13. Paint the inside of my house (i.e. especially the bedroom, livingroom and kitchen) in time for the wedding if we choose to have it here. (I have ideas! Ideas that will make it less tedious!)
12. Um... To have a wedding that honors the love my guy and I share and perhaps inspires those around us to love each other more deeply...? (It fits here too.)
11. Learn to be a little more self-disciplined or find something to do that isn't so tedious (and thereby learn how to start my own company and website, if needed).
10. Disconnect more often. Do life more often.
9. Learn to want much less and go back to appreciating what I have, but at the same time, not getting overly possessive of the things I have. I have to learn to let go of the stuff again.
8. Learn to try to control things far less than I do now. I have to let gooooo. And with that, also panic less.
7. Learn to not worry so much about things that ultimately don't matter in the big picture. (And, um, also panic less...)
6. Learn to accept myself the way I am a little more. And not be so hard on myself to the point where I become paralyzed by self-deprecation.
5. Allow myself to be a little more human and make mistakes and yet, work really hard so that the mistakes I do make, especially the ones related to this disease, are not painful for those around me.
4. Kiss my guy more.
3. Spend more time with my dogs. Quality time.
2. Grow in life and love with this particular man person. Always.
1. Trust more. Trust this man more, especially. Trust him more than the memories banked in the darkest places of my mind.

It's funny because this year, I feel like I have everything I need and after this Christmas, definitely everything I want and had I not had last year's list to go by, I don't know where I would have started for this year's.

All I know is I want my doggies with me as long as possible and my guy and I to grow together. Those are my main wishes and wants for 2012. After that, I want this thyroid business sorted out and I want our wedding to happen, but even then, at this point, I just want to be married to this guy. I don't know if I'll regret it later, but we're talking about having the wedding somewhere pretty and the reception right here in this house. Will I regret it? Somehow, I think I'm more likely to regret spending so much money on things we don't need when, right now anyway, things aren't all that certain financially. I just want him to be my husband. That's all.

You know what I want? I want that relationship couples sometimes have in movies where they're just so old glovey that they just know what each other is trying to say and there's nothing to hide and no inhibitions. You know what I mean? Like everything has already been said or brought out and both people are still there and still in love, so that's all there is- the love and the friendship and all of it completely unconditional and enduring. I want to be able to love him and to trust him that much.

Usually, I start this list a couple of weeks into December as I feel all nostalgic and whatnot, but this year, I kind of forgot about it till today. So there you have it, on a whim, but every year, I refuse to edit it later on to add or remove things because what's wished for is wished for, you know?

Goodnight.

Jumbly ramblies of a girl whose up is actually down and to the right...

2011-12-31T04:59:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I realized I still fully blame myself for everything that has ever happened.

My guy went out with his brother and is staying at his parents' tonight and somehow, I was ok with it until around ten thirty, at which point I just became an absolute mess. It was like I "knew" that this was it, that it was just me and the doggies again. It was like he was making this conscious decision not to come home because I stopped being important and he stopped loving me or maybe he realized he needed time away or something.

I've been meaning to blog about it all evening, but it's just so hard to explain.

I think I've always felt that it was my fault that I ended up with the men I ended up with- these men who didn't love me at all and who never actually ever did and who left me, basically proclaiming that as explicitly as possible. Even though people say you can't make somebody love you, I've been under the impression that I could. I could totally make any guy love me, not because I'm lovable but because I'm manipulative enough and more importantly, I'm smart enough to do it. And it is partly true, but at the same time, any guy with any decency at all would know how he felt about me the entire time. You know what I mean? Manipulating somebody whose sole interest is using somebody for their own selfish benefit is easy. You give them what they want and because they're so spiritually and emotionally decrepit and frankly, morally lazy and inept, they stay. They stay because it's the easier thing to do. The harder thing would be to actually be a man, have some respect and be honest about intentions, motivations and true feelings. Because I could count on the men in my past to not take any sort of moral high road, they could be manipulated to suit my needs- my needs at the time included belittling, poor treatment and various other forms of abuse, of course.

Anyway, my point is if you're a reasonably pretty girl and you're especially smart, witty and manipulative, you can get pretty well any guy in any situation, provided that guy is not a man of quality. And that being the case, I really did feel responsible all this time for creating a situation where I... well... seduced these men into long term relationships. So the day that they finally decided that they were in too deep and told me they never loved me, I chalked it up to two things that I already knew: a) I'm unlovable and b) I tricked them into enduring as long as they did. The only reason they stayed as long as they did was not because of who I was but because of what I did for them and eventually, inevitably, that would stop being enough. Eventually, nothing I could do could compensate for my unlovability. (That should be a word because it exists. Unlovableness? No, that's not considered a word either. Dictionary writers just don't know.)

I'm still so far ADDed to maintain proper blogging.

So yeah, so ten thirty rolls around and the dogs and I come to terms with the fact that the longer my guy is away from this environment, the more likely it is that he's come to realize that he doesn't love me, that being in this environment tricks him into thinking he does, when really it's just all the stuff I do for him that is pleasant.

I am hard to live with though. I flip out fairly often and I'm really demanding and nothing ever settles down, really. It's like every day is a new day, rife with volatility, predictable unpredictability and just general waves of malaise. And so if anybody stays with me because of the stuff I do for them, the difficulties of being with me eventually do overshadow the other stuff because let's face it, if a girl does your laundry, cooks for you, cleans and provides you with everything required to satisfy the majority of your basic needs, eventually, you will take all that shit for granted and that's when you'll realize you're living with a very difficult individual of whom you just aren't very fond. You know?

And I told the others what would happen when I left. I told them explicitly. In spite of being excessively difficult, I also manage to make myself indispensable. I manage to permeate every aspect of their lives and in doing so, when I'm gone, their lives have this added emptiness that just can't be fulfilled. I am the Prin-of-all-things. I'm funny, resourceful, responsible and my interests lie in a vast variety of areas. You can't find that just anywhere. The fact that I'm everything ironically makes me unique. And that's probably why I have a 100% return rate, even if I warn them very clearly before leaving. They always choose the out and even if I say I'm not a redater and they know I'm not a redater, they all eventually come back. Even evil, in spite of getting married, comes back to read the blog (fuck off, asshole).

So yeah, so as time passes and the odds of my guy coming back here and still loving me decrease exponentially, I guess I grieved the future loss of this one too. I know I'll be ok in the end. I know I'll manage to find my rhythm alone again and find my peaceful happiness in independence again. But that doesn't mean I'm at all prepared for the speech I expect tomorrow about how I'm going to make some guy a great wife one day, just not this particular one.

So then he calls a little while ago and I'm a mess and I know that being mess on the phone will only speed up the process of him figuring out I'm more trouble than I'm worth, so I explain to him how I'm mentally preparing to hear that speech tomorrow and that it's ok if he wants to move on and so on. Of course, this guy is different, so he tells me that tomorrow, he'll come home and he'll love me and we'll live life and nothing will be different. But of course now that I've freaked out, his family will be all, "Why was she upset?" and decide I'm a completely unreasonable person and turn his 48% doubt into an 82% doubt, reminding him that he deserves somebody better and life in a relationship shouldn't be this hard.

There's only one problem though. As I was explaining things to him, the tone of voice in his responses wasn't what I'm used to. It's hard to describe, but it was kind of a baffled disbelief, I think. So when he said something to the effect that my whole reality wasn't real at all, he actually seemed believable. And weirder still was how he didn't seem swayed by me waving an out in front of him. Like, "Hey, you can leave. I'll understand," or whatever I said more articulately and convincingly to that effect didn't really change his perception of the situation.

But I still can't figure it out. It's like how I can't manipulate his closet to get him to wear certain things. Like, no matter how deliberate I might manipulate the arrangement of his closet to get him to wear a certain shirt, for example, the next day, he never wears the shirt I intended him to wear. In that respect, my usual techniques of manipulation just don't work with him.

If he does come home tomorrow and still loves me, I don't know where to file that. I don't think I've tried to be overly manipulative with him, other than maybe a little when I was trying to get him to move in here for good, but even then, he did it on his own schedule in spite of my prodding. The rest of the time, I've just been me and I've laid everything out in the open and he's seen the worst parts of me and I don't think I do all that much to make his life easier at all, and for some reason, even though the shitty bits far outweigh the reasons he might have for staying (according to my assessment, not his), he stays anyway. I don't get it. I basically give him nothing to look forward to but misery and he still wants to keep me.

And at some point in the conversation, he reminded me how I have a sparkly on my finger and he said something about how all I have to do is look at it and I guess that wouldn't be there if he thought he could change his mind about me overnight, but still, in the moment, my gut is screaming that this is over and I have to get ready.

me: Am I wrong?
him: Yes, you're wrong.
me: Oh.

Again with that tone of voice that was kind of baffled and yet certain at the same time?

I just don't get it, I guess.

Will I ever get it?

I mean, I'm sitting here with a ring on my finger, wearing (*blushes*) the shoes he bought me yesterday and then we walked arm in arm down the street toward the car all smiley and giggly in the freezing cold, and this morning I drove him to the train and sent him a good half hour's worth of text messages to keep him entertained on the train because he'd forgotten his ipod and all his stuff is here and I'm sitting on my side of the bed- what about this picture screams that he's going to leave me? You know what I mean? There's nothing wrong in our relationship. The only thing that might be wrong is me and how I can't seem to figure out how to believe that I'm lovable.

Will I ever figure it out?

Because for the first time I can remember, this hurts. Like, it hurts to watch him try so hard to get through to me and it just doesn't... I wish it did, but it doesn't. And I love him with every bit of my being and deep down, I know he loves me too, but when he's not right here to remind me seven thousand times a day...

How can my love be unconditional and enduring, how can I know that kind of love exists because I am able to do it for somebody else and yet, I can't fathom him reciprocating that same love?

I don't know how to fix that.

Instead, I feel like the underdog all the time. I love him to death and he just puts up with me. I get a healthy, content, forgiving, patient man and he gets a screamy, irritable, lazy, unhealthy, unlovable me.

He has to be able to go out sometimes without me having a full out freak fest on him every time. I mean, it's not even about what he does or forbidding him from going out or anything. It's just my reaction to him being away from me in a way to which I'm not accustomed. I'm used to him going to work. I'm not used to him going out in the evening.

I don't know when it came to be that I became such an insecure mess.

Fuck, I'm so grateful for his patience. Imagine where I'd be without it? I'd be trying to find some douchebag to manipulate into loving me (temporarily). Or I'd have given up by now and I'd have decided we're spending this life as an isolated individual.

Why does it have to be so hard?

It feels like he's standing still with his arms open and I'm running around in circles with my arms flailing.

I have to fix my shit.

Speaking of fixing shit, I just got a fur in my eye, so I was fishing it out with the hand mirror when I realized I was looking kind of diagonally down at it and my nose was straight. I'm not sure that made any sense, but basically, after all the breaks, my nose, about halfway down, is kind of snapped at an angle (I estimate around thirty degrees) down to the right. It's kind of weird that I'm not really self-conscious about such a crazy bend in my nose, but it's probably because my nose, prior to the breakages, was actually pretty perfect. See?

Anyway, maybe they'll fix it when (if) I get my thyroid hacked.

Goodnight. Sorry if this whole post is completely incoherent and nonsensical. I just kind of needed to say it all out loud, even if I know it's ridiculous. They always say, "Trust your gut feelings," but "they" underestimate how much those gut feelings have been messed with...

I hope he still loves me tomorrow.

On things that matter, things that used to be and being too sleepy to explain the difference...

2011-12-30T04:39:00.001-05:00

I tried to get a good picture of the new Chie Mihara shoes I got today on sale. Littles helped.

They're plummy in color, rich plummy suede. I've wanted mary-janes for eons now and my guy knew that and frankly, made it happen.

I tried them on in a 37 and my heel slipped, so I was terribly sad, even though they fit far, far better than the Repetto shoes I tried on. I went to the six and a half rack to see if, by chance, they had a 36 1/2 and THEY DID. And it fit. And yey.

So then my guy was all, "Get them," and I was all, "Naw. They are cute though, aren't they?" And he kept telling me reasons why I should get them. While it is nice to have a man who wants all good things for you, having that man there when you're trying to make sound purchase decisions is not a good thing, especially when he sees the sparkle in your eye when you look at your potential mary-janes.

For a girl with a problem with purple (I actually wrote it "purpo" just now because I tend to type words phonetically sometimes by accident and that's how I say it), I sure do end up buying some pretty important purpley things. Like my car, for example. But we call that color "blue", unless it's next to my brother's navy car and my dad's royal blue car. Or if it's in the sun.

Anyhoo. They're plum, and as you can see by the pics above, in spite of the yellowy glow of interior lighting, they do match my skin tone quite magically.

My stepmother is coming here tomorrow with my dad on their way to their cottage to drop off smoked turkey and inspect the shoes. She actually called me back after I'd hung up with my dad just to ask me what the intended purpose of these shoes is since I never go anywhere. "They go with jeans," I said. Which, to me, means they also go with doing dishes and feeling sexy when sexiness-feelings are scarce.

That's the problem with having good undies. They tell you if you want to boost your morale, wear particular undies, but if you do that every day, you suddenly find yourself needing plummy suede Chie Miharas to prance around in.

Yes.

So here, on one side, I have this guy who is all, "Yeah! I love you! Buy the shoes just so I can see you sparkle!" and on the other side, I have this guy who is all, "I need you to shut your life off at night so I can sleep, ok? And by the way, I'm not coming home today after work because I stopped loving you and I won't include you in my decision-making processes because you don't matter to me," and to be honest, one of those is a fabrication in my head, but I'll just let you guess which one it is.

So in my memory, living with a boy or being with a boy meant not being me and not only that, but stifling any remnants of me, not because I was forced (well, for the most part anyway. Some parts were pretty forced and explicit), but because of subtle hints. Constant subtle hints. The stereotype example of a hint would be a woman asking a guy, "You're not wearing that, are you?" Obviously, she wants him to change. The hints were like that- disapproving, manipulative and condescending.

As I scrolled through the new facebook timeline yesterday night, trying to clean it up, I noticed how things changed. Maybe I got more internet wary as facebook's privacy became more obviously nonexistent, but I don't think that's it. (I swear I just saw a spider in the corner of my eye on the sofa cushion that is shielding my guy from my laptop screen and noises- effectively, I might add, as he snores away on the other side of this barrier...) Somewhere along the way, my openness was hinted out of me. I think because he'd used Christianity and the propriety associated with deep south fundamentalism as a means to belittle me and my method and I am still friends with a couple of deep south Christians who try so hard to isolate themselves from the reality of the world we live in (i.e. the one where a girl is allowed to swear frivolously in conversation and it not really mean anything nor it be contagious...), I have been stifled in so many ways. I don't want to lose these people, but at the same time, who are they to me if I can't be me?

We used to have way more fun, you know? Openness is exhilarating, uncomfortable and rife with growth. It's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. The world lacks honesty and openness and is overrun with deceit, secrets and frivolous shame. You know what I mean? The more we talk about things, the more we learn to communicate and the more we learn that everybody is facing the same junk and everybody is just as messy as any of us are. What are we trying to prove and to whom? Are we trying to get other mere humans to think we're as superhuman as we pretend they are?

Anyway.

I'm not superhuman. I'm messy and gross and annoying and I say things I shouldn't and I fight badly and I carry baggage I should have let go of eons ago and I take people for granted and I get confused when things don't go as I've self-fulfilling prophesied them to go. And I, just like so many people I know, struggle every day with finding worth in myself.

So why shouldn't we laugh about it? Why shouldn't we be lighthearted about the serious things sometimes? Life has enough tragedy and pain without us creating some for ourselves by isolating how we feel and who we are from those around us who might very well care for us and make the journey easier on us if they only had the chance.

I remember how broken I was when I met this guy. Broken. Utterly. And I was telling him today in the car that I've lived through a lot of things and picked myself up and dusted myself off and was stronger for it, but after the last one, I just broke and I didn't bother to repair the damage. I didn't bother to get back up again. And in the end, that made me all the more weak and fragile. I can't handle some things like I used to. Where before, I used to be able to shut myself off to the horrible things and maintain my bizarrely naive idealism, now, I find it much harder. The bitter meanness of the world wears into me and destroys me and it takes me so long to recover.

Christmas wasn't nearly as magical this year as it has been in the past and only because I was too cynical for it. In the end, I got into it, but I'm sad that I had to wait until it was practically forced upon me for me to realize it was happening. That's the thing about Christmas that I like and don't like at the same time: it comes whether you're ready or not. The magic, regardless of what is happening in your life, is there to be had and experienced to the full, and it becomes a very clear decision whether or not you feel it. I don't want to spend another year blind to the magic. You know what I mean? I want to feel it start to finish, not just sneak it in right before it's over for another year.

This year, unknowingly, my favorite Christmas song became Ray Charles' That Spirit of Christmas:

Christmas is the time of year
For being with the ones we love,
Sharing so much joy and cheer,
What a wonderful feeling
Watching the ones we love
Having so much fun...

This year, and I think any year so far, has been about that. If I can't get into it, why not make it magical for everybody around me? I'm not sure I did as good a job this year as I have other years, but I did try. And for a while there, I did forget about the spoons and the cynicism and the fact that people might somehow decide to overwhelm me with reciprocity. God, that was so unexpected. I mean, I'm surrounded by people who have all grown so much in recent years and I am so grateful for that and the way we've grown together and I'm grateful for troubled water under bridges- we know it's there, we know what it's about but we've crossed past it all and we're better for it.

I do have some pretty horrible memories that have shaped who I am today and how I react to things, but at the same time, I can't let them decide who the people around me have and will become. I have to allow them growth into understanding and growth into a better version of themselves while offering them forgiveness and release from the things of our shared past. We all make mistakes and we all start our journey somewhere. If I can be glad not to have met this guy in high school when I would have most certainly ruined things with my anger and resentment, then I can allow myself and those around me that same freedom in the things they weren't so lucky to avoid.

I don't know if I'm making any sense anymore. I should be asleep.

My point is, the only thing (for the most part) that determines the longevity and strength of the bond we share is our ability to forgive. And I think in my family, that's happening. Gradually, maybe, but who cares about a timeline when there is something this magical occurring?

All that to say that while my past makes it incredibly difficult for me to feel lovable and really to perceive reciprocated love, this year, Christmas has brought with it this overwhelm that has made it harder to cope simply because this little unlovable girl cannot possibly deny that she is loved. It's the strangest thing. I'm grateful and my heart hurts with humility, but at the same time, I'm struggling so much with understanding it and believing it and just knowing that I'm struggling so much makes me so terribly sad because even from the depths of the dark places, deep down, I know that I shouldn't feel this way, that it shouldn't be so hard for me to feel loved.

How broken I must be.

But that's ok. Because in spite of my past affecting my reactions and even my motivations sometimes, it is becoming more and more apparent that it's over. No matter what happens from here on out, I will never have to face the things I've faced and live through the things I tolerated before ever again. They won't keep crushing me because they aren't alive in my life anymore.

We're building now, not tearing down. We're growing together now, not growing in isolation.

Ok, I quit. Too exhausted to keep trying to make sense. :D

Christmas time is here... Happiness and cheer...

2011-12-26T03:52:00.001-05:00

I started this evening off feeling unsettled because there was too much good going on- new camera from my favorite boyfriend, a surprising and very unexpected string of pearls from my dad, a professional kitchenaid mixer from my guy's parents, not to mention the laughs and snuggles and conversations and togetheriness... It's been overwhelming.

And then I tried to upload a movie of Littles from my new camera... And I tried to figure out how to focus while shooting a movie on my new camera. Turns out, you can't do either. And I can't figure out why. Also turns out I bought the wrong SD card (you need a minimum of a class 6 and we bought a class 4... Who knew? Probably Canon, but they didn't bother to put that in the manual anywhere.) so the videos are choppy, unless it's my laptop video card that can't handle the HD, which is entirely possible too.

So that kind of set me right again, making me angry at my new camera. Was it a mistake to get this camera? Should I get my guy to return it? Should we have waited till we could afford a better one?

That's the thing though. I didn't want a better one. I wanted the basic one because I like my digital SLRs bare bones and not overly compensatory. My dad's camera likes to adjust for cameraman error, while more mediocre Canons tend not to do that. Why is it that when we buy something for a specific purpose and then discover that it doesn't do a secondary thing (we never intended to use it for anyway) all that well, we bitch about it?

I dunno.

On that note, here's the video, finally approved (youtube wouldn't do it) and out of focus and too dark. (Practice makes.. um.. a girl read the manual?)

Teehee.

And because that took so long, let's end with pictures instead of explaining how hard it is to be happy when you're used to being unhappy and how such happy things feel like a dream or an alternate universe, thereby messing with your head and stuff.

So here we go.

First, Littles posing with the new camera (before the battery was charged and before I gave the old camera to my bro).

I told my dad to hold my camera while I put the presents down at his house...

My middle brother's acne angel (the green one.. it's got staples on its chin) and my teethy angel we made in grade 3/4 and the bag of mystery surprises on my dad's desk. :-o

Me and Littles, stalling before going to Christmas dinner early today.

This is what going to my guy's family for Christmas looks like tree-wise. It's pretty intense. Like. Way.

My guy and his mummy.

My guy and his (other) new drum.

Ella. Parents' doggy, technically my guy's doggy but they wouldn't give her up when he moved out. (Sleeping sitting up. Lying up? Whatever you call that.)

My guy playing his other, other drum (the one I got him).

Ella asleep again.

And this one, from about seven minutes ago. One must always have the highest of hair when one shows off one's pearls discreetly. :D

The end.

I'm going to sleep. It's four. Already.

And still, the overwhelm of earlier, with my new camera on my belly, as my Christmas tree twinkles in front of me as I lay in my fleece sheets (from T!), my three doggies peacefully sleeping to my left and in front of me and my guy sleeping peacefully to my right, also while I wear my new string of pearls that somehow have come to symbolize this thing I've been longing for since my family split up all those years ago- the togetheriness, the support and the tradition all in one unexpected and awesome gesture- I really am spoiled and so, so lucky in so many ways. I am grateful and overwhelmed. It is an amazing experience, and even if it feels like an alternate universe, it's a marvelous one.

Merry Christmas, you guys. I hope your Christmas was as togethery as mine was and that you feel as grateful.

(And maybe that you got as spoiled too...)

And then those things start biting my legs off...

2011-12-24T04:48:00.000-05:00

I can't believe tomorrow (today) is the beginning of the Christmas stuff. I feel like I missed December up to now and Christmas might pass as if it was a dream. I wonder when I'll feel normal again, if ever. I'm starting to question my mental health.

Tomorrow, as we last minute Christmas shop, remind me to get iron pills. My boss suggested that maybe I'm low on iron and maybe that's contributing to my really terrible decrease in memory and concentration. Dunno.

I have this analogy in my mind of a rowboat. I've always wanted a rowboat. It's not the highest of aspirations, but still, it's just a peaceful dream in my memory. And so, I'm rowing my boat and it's sinking, so I'm rowing like the fury, hoping to get to somewhere before I sink, and then my guy's all, "But we're not sinking." And I know my boat and I know how hard it's been so far and it is sinking, so I tell him so and he says, "We're not in bad shape, Princess. We're actually ok." Part of me wants to believe him. Part of me thinks he's not seeing the holes in the boat. Part of me thinks he's in a different boat and I'm only rowing so hard because I don't want him to see the holes in mine. Sinking alone is so much less tragic.

"We're a team," he says. And it should feel reassuring, but it isn't because I so wish better for him than my shitty sinking boat.

Poor guy.

He slept at his parents' yesterday and I missed the shit out of him. Life just felt kind of empty. I explained to him in the car after getting him at the train that he totally is like one of my dogs. If one is missing, the whole house feels empty. Lying in bed with this vast expanse beside me, without any sort of little breather there... It was weird to be without him. Now that he's back, I'm back to being shy. I don't know what it is about him, but after all this time, part of me still kind of shuts off when I'm around him, like I can't love him the way I should, as openly as I should because I just don't want to lose him. When he's away or when he's sleeping, I want to maul him with affection and tell him I miss him and I adore him and I want to be with him forever, but when he's awake and right next to me, I lack patience and focus and overall niceness just because I'm so afraid to lose him. I can feel it too. It creates this tense sort of pressure that kind of looms, just as my unfinished work looms.

I've decided to put my work out of my brain till the twenty-sixth and then maybe that day, while watching Christmas movies, I'll finish it and put it out of my brain for two weeks. I'm looking forward to removing that aspect of the looming for a while.

You know what else looms? This feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing. It's like that first day of class feeling, you know? You can't find the classroom and end up sitting for five minutes in the wrong class, but you kind of know because these people aren't your type of people (generally, they end up mathematicians or something totally unrelated to anything you'll ever do) and so you show up to your real class five minutes late and feel like an ass. The prof goes through the course outline and you just get this feeling of dread, like, "How am I supposed to do an hour long power point presentation on the genome of Bacillus?" except that it's in three months, so you know it'll just loom over you the whole time. And I put that question because imagine you, let's say you're not a biology student, asking yourself that question because you have to do that in three months. You know? It's like, "Holy shit, I know nothing about anything that has to do with this complex thing that I'm supposed to talk about in front of smart people," right? That's what I feel like. Except in everything.

We have a deadline with one of the companies we contract for that's at the end of May. And as soon as I read that email, I was like, "Oh my God, I have no idea what I'm doing." I feel like I lack the knowledge base required to learn these things. Like I'm five years old, just starting kindergarten and they're like, "Hey, what's your name? Princess? Aw, sweet. You drew me a picture? Is it a table? No? Ohhh, it's a dog. That's a pretty dog. Anyway, so Health Canada needs all this work to be done by May. You should sharpen your pencils and get started."

It's like every day has a future full of unknowns, except that the unknowns are not events or trajectories, rather things I didn't know in the past that I do know now that I will suddenly not know how to do. Like, today, I can love my boyfriend to the best of my abilities and try to make him happy. But in a year? I don't know how to keep him happy in a year. How will I be able to keep him happy? I don't know. Or my job? Today, my work is easy. But next month? Next month my work will totally change and I will be way, way out of my realm of ability. Except that with my guy, every day is today, you know? Every day I will try to do what I can to love him fully. And with my job, for one thing, we know it'll be the same every day till at least May. And even if I get new things, not only does my boss teach pretty well (when I ask), but I also tend to figure shit out really quickly (when I don't ask).

It's like when I'm in the car and I have to weasel across three lanes of traffic really quickly. I get this idea in my head that I can't do it because nobody will let me in. Except that I am an assertive driver. I get what I want on the road and politely too (generally). What I expect of my abilities has absolutely no relevance in real life. It's completely backwards. I don't know where that comes from. It takes self-deprecation and self-criticism to a whole new exponential low.

Why does life have to be so scary though?

All the time!

And why am I so uncertain about everything, even who I am and what I already know? It's like I'm preparing to have dementia, like, tomorrow.

So I'm in my rowboat and I'm rowing towards the shore where I dock my boat after every row and I get this looming feeling like I don't know where the dock is. So I'm rowing and rowing and I have no idea where I'm going and the water is dark and murky and suddenly, I'm not even sure I have a boat. So now I'm swimming, trying to figure out where the hell the shore is and trying not to think about what's going to bite my legs off, but do I even know how to swim? And then I realize I'm not breathing. I forget to breathe. I forget how to breathe. And then he's all, "We're a team," and all I can think is, "But I can't even manage to stay breathing. You'd think somebody who is alive would know how to breathe."

That's what it feels like.

I don't know what to do about it.

Sleep.

Letter to the World on the eve of the eve of Christmas...

2011-12-24T01:21:00.003-05:00

Dear World,

I am writing you this letter because I think you're being a douchebag. There is no reason, other than a selfish, "woe is me" attitude, that you should lack compassion for others. Yes, you've had a very hard year this year. Yes, Rick Perry's message is akin to that of a hateful asshole. And yes, there are a ton of Christians who quite obviously aren't really following Jesus via their beliefs, actions and words expressed. Yes, for hundreds of years, people have used religion and God to pursue their own gain.

Yes.

But I am not them. I have always done my best to be kind to you. I have always tried hard to be there for you whenever you needed me. I have always shown you compassion and I have never been deliberately condescending or disapproving of your beliefs (since becoming a Christian, anyway). While I may not believe the same things you do, your belief structure is part of who you are, part of where you derive your personality, and if I enjoy you as a friend, I respect your roots and the foundation of your person.

I am also a new Christian, relatively, and growing up agnostic and sometimes atheist, I do carry the Christmas traditions that I grew up with and they mean a great deal to me. These traditions don't take away from your traditions just because they do overlap with those of a traditionally religious family, nor are they any less valid than they were when I was agnostic.

You know what I mean?

It's not ok for you to mock or berate the traditions I've always had just because you disagree with the faith I acquired two or so years ago. These are my traditions, as yours are your own, and regardless of our religious practices, we hone our traditions into something special for ourselves, as an individual.

Christmas for me, growing up agnostic, was about family, joy, giving, togetherness, anticipation, magic and excitement. Christmas now, as a Christian, is about family, joy, giving, togetherness, anticipation, magic and excitement- the only difference is that the joy I see now as being love from God, and the rest is all a gift to help me see that love.

Christmas hasn't changed, per se, but it has gained infinite depth in meaning for me. And I won't push my Christmas beliefs on you (you can't force somebody to feel magical, can you?), but all I ask is that you don't make fun of mine. Sure, I'll celebrate Christmas however I want and I have faced much, much antagonism about it, both before and after becoming Christian, so I do have Christmas armor already, but I just wish it wasn't necessary.

My Christmas wish, I guess, is that everybody (including me) would have a moment of complete peace to just savor the magic of the season, whatever it may mean to you (or me).

Let's be that peace for each other, okay, World?

Let's.

Merry Christmas,

p

Cracky...

2011-12-22T00:19:00.002-05:00

Blogging first, working later.

Lunch with the boss tomorrow. Freaks me out.

Vet with the two smaller doggies tomorrow. Freaks me out too.

Turns out I'm happiest when I go to bed at 5AM and wake up at 2PM. Those days, I seem to have my shit more together than these days, the ones in which I go to bed at twoish and wake up at noonish. Keep in mind there's an hour in there from about six thirty to seven thirty where I'm up because of driving my guy to the train. It doesn't take all that long to do it, but it takes a while to wake me up and when I get home, it takes me a while to fall back asleep again. Especially days like today, where I'm all riled up and upset.

Why was I upset? I don't really know. Something's not right. I think part of it is the sort of intensity of Christmas and I feel like I'm missing it. I just can't get into it this year at all, partly because being out in public messes me up right now. I think I'm ok until I'm scheduled. That's when my heart starts thumping.

Yesterday, I was woken up at around noon when my dad got here to install the air exchanger and as I stood at the kitchen sink looking out the window over my vast land possessions waiting for the kettle to boil, my heart raced and thumped at the same time. It's as if it was screaming, "Hey, this isn't what we're supposed to be doing right now. Go lie down and sleep more. Now." I don't know what it is, whether it's the meds, the graves' or my overall lack of activity these days, but it's like doing stuff has become scary for my body. So I'm all telling my heart, "Hey, I hear you, but we're just awake. We're not actually doing anything here. You know, it's ok to be awake sometimes."

I calmed down a little, but still took it easy. By the end of the day, my guy went to bed really early, my dad sliced his finger open trying to figure out the cause of this:

... which I discovered behind my box of Christmas stuff. It's icky. After finding that, I promptly marched upstairs, barged into the bathroom where my guy was showering and told him I want to move.

My house is four years old. FOUR. What the hell.

So yeah, my dad sliced his finger open ripping that up, already overly tired from installing an air exchanger to reduce the humidity in my house, and when he finally left, I was left with this feeling like I don't fit in anywhere. And I still have it.

After my dogs were all assholes to me last night, I hopelessly crawled into bed where my guy shifted and knee capped me really hard.

Just one of those days, you know?

And then I lay there awake, not thinking about anything but feeling too lonely and hopeless to sleep.

Four years ago, when I signed the papers, this house was a shell. It had a roof, unfinished walls and a foundation. That's all. And my dad and brother worked really hard finishing this thing and for what? For this to happen:

I contrasted the shit out of it so you can see what I'm talking about.

I feel like after feeling like this isn't home for four years, it finally started to feel more like home after my guy moved in and then this happens and I feel like it's not home again.

Unsettling.

And Christmas is coming and I feel like I'm taking everything for granted and I just don't want to be a part of anything. I don't know if it's the meds or the graves' or just me, but either way, I miss feeling the way I used to feel. This blows.

You know what the worst part is? It's having good days. Days where I'm happy and go Christmas shopping and watch Christmas movies and get into it and stuff? And then the next day, I wake up feeling like death, but not physically death, like not fluish death, but this morbid, lethargic, irrational death, and the irrationality of it is what makes it feel so terrible. Like maybe I could be doing shit or feel happy or something if I just set my mind to it. Who knows? Who knows if it's me or the meds or the graves? I don't know.

I don't know.

I should go work. I'm distracted and slow blogging and if I'm not blogging, I should be working. Bleh.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2011-12-20T04:35:00.001-05:00

Old friend of mine got stuck on a gondola in a snowstorm and it reminded me of the time I got stuck on a chairlift a couple of years ago in a freezing rain storm. My God, that was the scariest thing ever. I think I blogged about it. Lemme go see. Ah, yes, it's on the old blog. (You need to be invited to see it.)

Here's a snippet:

About halfway up, I was right over a small cliff and my chair stopped. No biggie. Within a few seconds, it started up again. We moved a bit and then the chair jolted forward really hard and stopped instantly. The momentum from the jolt sent my chair swinging really hard and because I was far between two posts, the chair sank a good five feet before bungeeing back up a few times. It was kind of freaky. It was the first time in 24 years of skiing/snowboarding that I've ever actually used the safety bar. Like, my body actually hit it. That never happens.

Finally, the chair settled and within a few seconds, we were slowly going again and then the speed turned up suddenly again and then bam! Stopped solid. My chair dipped even lower and sprung up higher than the last time. At this point, I was clinging onto the chair itself with white knuckles.

It did it again and again and again, each time moving forward a few feet at most before jolting back.
[...]
So I'm sitting there on this detachable chairlift hoping like mad that my chair doesn't detach. I mean, they're made to withstand quite a bit, I'd guess, but this was excessive. Never in my life have I been on a chair that bounced so hard so many times.

Scaryscaryscary. I think that was one of the scariest days I've ever been a part of...

As soon as I read that this guy was stuck on the gondola, my mind jumped back to that. I still remember vividly what it felt like to drop down so hard when the thing would stop abruptly. Scariest thing ever, especially since it was a detachable chair. And the fact that they'd already emptied off the entire hill by the time I got to the top? Gah.

Anyway.

Other than that, not much is new really. I'm finishing this week of work (eventually) and then I'm having lunch with my boss (I am going to have to set my alarm for this lunch... gah) and then she's giving me two weeks off. Of course, I'm not getting paid for some of it, but still! Two weeks of not having to think about anything work-related. Ah, yes. And then it's my endo appointment (January 6th) and then the future will be more solid, I think. Or maybe a week later, when he gets the blood results back.

Also, I don't like the new blogger interface. It's missing the simplicity of the old html page. It used to recognize enters, but now it doesn't. Now you need to put the br code thingy in, so it's easier just to use the compose page, but then if the formatting blows, you switch to html and it's one giant paragraph of mess. Sucks.

I wonder what uploading pictures will be like. Gah.

Anyhoo.

Five days till Christmas. Holy shit. I should be asleep. I'm going to do that now.

Oh, and I went to the mall today before getting my guy at the train. I got my guy's mom stuff, but I also got her a bathrobe because she wanted soft mooshy clothes to hang around the house in, and this robe is so cooshy, but the brother's girlfriend got her a robe a couple of Christmases ago and if I give one to her too, it just becomes a contest of sorts. Less than ideal.

I have other things to say too, about the selfishness of the season for some people and how other people don't seem to know what Christmas is about, but I'm not aggravated enough to rant about that. Oh, but I am aggravated enough to rant about how three parcels related to me are all stuck in transit. Wtf. Did the USPS, UPS and Canada Post all decide that Mondays are a holiday? What the hey.

Random memory: In grade 10 French class, whatever class I had before that would always let out early, so I'd be one of the first in the class, if not the first, and every day all year, I wrote how many days left till Christmas on the board secretly. And then Christmas came and went and we returned to school post-vacay and the first thing I did was mark the number of days on the board again. :D

Goodnight.

Treeeeeeeee.

Ramblies of a girl with too much on her mind yet... nothing at all...

2011-12-19T03:52:00.000-05:00

Every time we deal with the Christmas tree, my guy gets kind of sad and I think nauseous too, so today, I tried to encourage him to figure out what his deal is with Christmas tree decorating and the end result was him trying to help me with the higher up stuff by jumping up and jamming an ornament precariously on the upper branches and me freaking out on him. It was really weird for me. I mean, I want him to decorate the tree with me, but seeing him near the tree was so unsettling. I guess because he's always been yelled at and told to stay away from it, he just has no... what's the best way to put it... Christmas tree technique?

It's the weirdest thing. It made me realize how much practice goes into this annual, supposed to be fun, bit of work. You don't realize how much you've honed your skills at handling and hanging these aged ornaments made of really thin glass that are held on by these forks that sometimes don't hold and the whole thing is suspended by these hooks that change angles and change rigidity or sometimes, they're loops of whatever and the knots slip over time or whatever? And so every time you put one on, you kind of hold it just a little bit longer, hoping that when you let go, it won't fall to the ground. You know what I mean? It's a stressful thing, but we've gotten so used to it that it's just what we do innately at this point.

And then there's him.

Taking a running leap to put an ornament up high on the tree.

O.o

And then as I stood below analyzing it, I saw that the hook wasn't secured on any branches. That thing was staying up there by sheer miracle. By another miracle, I managed to reach it even though it was well above my head and pull it down onto the branch.

I turned to him, probably with my face expressing extreme shock and panic and I hugged him and laughed nervously. It's like, I want him to help with the tree. I do. I want it to be a thing we do together. But at the same time, he's had bad experiences about it and isn't comfortable doing it and I'm still a little overly possessive and protective of my ornaments. So what do we do?

There are some things he's good at, like running and reacting at squirrel pace when I yell, "OH MY GOD! THE TREE IS FALLING!" So there's that.

Anyway.

In other news, my guy reads my blog and so sometimes, it's hard to blog things that I know might hurt him. But there are things I miss talking about, mainly because I have some things I have to sort out.

[Meanwhile, Jemma is beside me and is wanting affection in a really pushy way, but she inadvertently woke my guy up and he put his arm around her, and now she's looking at me with this, "Help me. I'm stuck," sad look.]

Anyway, one of those things that I've been trying to sort out is why I'm suddenly back to freaking out about getting married. I think it has to do with the meds. I'm fairly certain that it does. The meds take away my ability to reason properly at some points in the day for some reason (maybe because I push myself past fatigue sometimes?), and during those times, I'm really messed up. The other day, for example, it was the middle of the night, and I felt like a fuck up and then I got an email from the guy who built my guy's drum I got him for Christmas telling me he had a problem with something we did and so that made me feel like even more of a fuck up, especially since I couldn't resolve it quickly and so I lay beside my guy and I really couldn't figure out why my life was worth anything. In that moment, it really didn't feel like living was a reasonable option.

Luckily for me, I fell asleep and when I drove my guy to the train, he explained some things to me that my friend M would re-explain later on in the day about how even if I feel like my life isn't worth anything to me right now, it still carries a lot of weight to those around me and maybe I just need to coast on that a bit until I get off these meds.

"I can't wait to see you again," he said as he got out of the car that morning.

He used to say that every day when he first started coming here. And if he didn't, I'd say, "I hope I get to see you again."

And then I spent the day dreading the UPS guy who would only come right before the end of day cut off time... But I digress.

Oh, and that day, my guy brought home the tastiest piece of meat ever. So tasty. It was like the steak I'd had in the Japanese restaurant with his parents for mothers' day. So tasty.

Anyway.

My point is, there are these things that happen in these moments of irrationality that carry over to the times when I'm ok. It's like, which one is true? Are these feelings really, as my doctor categorized them last time I was on these meds, underlying truths of my person? Or am I just crazy? Like, literally. I mean, I've read some things my ma wrote to my sister I'm not supposed to know about's adoptive but not really but really ma and she's delusional, so I can't help but wonder if it's genetic and if I have it. My guy says she's only delusional because she can't face the truth. Which is true, I guess.

So then this guy, we'll call him C, who I worked with about eleven years ago, I guess, in the record store, came online and we started talking and the end result was him telling me I'm more special than other girls, that I have this thing where I'm really attractive in this staying way. I don't fade away, I guess is what he was trying to say. And apparently that's rare (for him anyway). And he tried to manipulate my seeming hesitation about getting married, trying to provoke me to realize I'm only marrying this guy because it's easy and routine, except that when it came down to it, his manipulation failed because I just kept sort of correcting him. I know I'm not with this guy only for routine and because it's easy, because it is neither of those things. And I know I'm not marrying him because I got stuck in the proverbial snowball that trapped me in either. I can get out anytime I want, and the funny thing is, I know how to do it. I've already done the dividing of stuff and going our separate ways thing. I know not only that I can do it, but also that everybody's life goes on after that. But no, it's not that.

But at the same time, it is that.

Another guy, we'll call him J, who I've blogged about before, eons ago, because he was one of my best friends in high school and ended up doing a horrible thing to me and so I retaliated and he never forgave me for my retaliation (which still wasn't as bad as his original thing anyway), had blocked me and one of my brother's identities (but not the other) on facebook, but recently unblocked me or undeleted his account or something. And so, being that I can't let shit go, I messaged him to congratulate him on his wedding this past summer (I actually am glad he's happy and I hope he stays happy), knowing that curiosity would catch him just right and he'd click on my profile and see that I was engaged. I don't know why I wanted him to know. I think deep down, I feel like he should be happy for me. No, I think deep down, I feel like he is happy for me. Maybe, again, it's because I can't let shit go, but he was my best friend at one point and I feel like he'd want to see me happy too. You know what I mean?

I wonder if what they say is true and we really do use "congratulations" when we mean it and "congrats" when we're politely disguising that we don't give a shit. Either way, I used the long form and he used the short form in his reply to me.

But for some reason, I felt like I had to hide the fact that he replied from my guy this morning. It was the weirdest thing. Of all the conversations with boys I've had, this one was the most explicit about my engagement. I mean, that's pretty well the whole subject of the short conversation.

I really don't know what it is that I am just not ok with.

I think it's the comfort. On the one hand, I have this intense part of my life absolutely figured out and on the other, I can't seem to adapt to having it figured out. And lately, I've put my red-flag-detector into hyperdrive, trying to figure out if I'm missing something. So far, here are the things I'd change about my guy:

I wish he liked Christmas music.
I wish he liked Christmas movies.
I wish he could watch the same movies over and over and over again (but I'm told that's a rare ability to possess).
I wish he could articulate what he wants better. Nobody doesn't want anything. You know? We want shit all day, every day, all the time. Like right now, it'd be pretty ideal if he woke up and told me he loved me and kissed me. I want that to happen. Ooo, and if he could wake up and be all, "You know, I really feel like giving you a long massage right now"? That would be awesome too. But if I ask him if he wants anything, his default answer is, "No." And then I'm left guessing. Sometimes, I guess right (mainly for candies and teas), but often, when it's important, I guess wrong (like when he's upset with me and I don't know what I'm supposed to do to help him feel less upset). There are times when what he wants is clear (to him) and he'll still tell me he doesn't want anything.

What if he wants to get out of this relationship? What if he wants me to change something that really bothers him? What if he wants me to do something differently? What if he needs me to live my life a little bit differently such that he won't grow to resent me? What if he does really want babies but is being blasé about it because he can't say it out loud, thereby choosing to appear supportive instead?

How do I know what he wants? How do I find out? I don't know. There are so many important wants and I worry that he just won't voice them before it's too late to repair whatever damage has been caused. Like if I can't have babies and he wants babies and then waits ten years before deciding he can't go through his whole life not fulfilling this want.... what then?

I don't know.

The odd thing is I started this blog post in the mindset of being confused about this whole wedding thing, but right now, after all this typing, I'm kinda ok. I'm back to being comfortable in a peaceful way, rather than in the scary "I'm never supposed to be happy" kind of way.

Hmm.

That's what it is. That's what my hesitation is. I wrote in my reply to J's question about our wedding date that even though we intend to have it in August, it's all kind of up in the air because we can't find a cottage to have it at and because we can't really plan anything until we know what's going on with me and my health and whatever treatment I'm headed for. That's the hesitation. It's knowing that I'm the weakest link here. Whether it's emotionally or physically or financially or whatever other criteria you can use as a measure, I'm the underdog. And what if he decides enough is enough and this is too much to commit to? What if he decides that a wedding is too much effort given the conditions we're facing, so it's just easier to drift in the status quo? What if he could go his whole life without marrying me and not really care one way or the other?

Very underdoggy. And for some reason, to me, that means I don't get much of a say in anything that happens.

If it was up to me?

Even if I had a gory throat slashing scar, I'd wear the shit out of my strapless dress and marry the shit out of this guy. Even if I was mood swingy as my cells explode and release thyroid toxins into my blood, increasing my heart rate dramatically along with killing my ability to tolerate heat and to sweat like a normal person, I would still marry the shit out of this guy. Even if we'd waste more money than I already owe the bank making this wedding aesthetically pleasing to quasi-strangers, I would still marry the shit out of this guy.

Yeah.

Time for sleep.

(I'll edit this in the morning, so lemme know if you see bad things.)

Forgotten clever title full of cleverness goes here...

2011-12-17T00:22:00.000-05:00

me: What would you do if I broke up with you?
him: I don't know. It's too impossible. It's like asking me, "What would you do if the sun didn't rise tomorrow?" What would I do? I don't know. Become a night owl?

Being messed up is kind of lonely. That's what I figured out today. And it's not a real lonely so much as a sort of incessant imaginary lonely. I suppose it's like when people are lonely because they feel like nobody in the world "gets" them. It's like that, only with a strong dose of self-destruction.

I was the cleavagiest in church today. We went to see my friend Jon sing in a choir. I've been wanting to see a choir sing Christmas songs since I went to the St-Lawrence Choir's Christmas show a few years ago (they stopped doing it after that, which really sucks) and my friend Jon mentioned it a couple days ago, so I decided to drag my guy out, even if it wasn't really his thing and even if it ended up being way churchier than I thought it would be. Add to that that I showed up late, leaving him stranded in the cold for eons.

me: Omg! Your face feels like Boo's ears [when I forget him outside].
him: I know! You forgot me too!

I'm glad I didn't realize he'd be standing outside the whole time or the weaving through downtown streets in a mad hurried panic during rush hour would have been all the more stressful.

After the thing, we chatted with Jon for a minute and I think that's when I got messed up the most. It's like Jon knows I'm messed up and his counter is, "I'm messed up too." Except that he isn't really. I mean, he is, but he still had the charmed childhood and whatnot, as far as I know. I try to help him with his finding a lady troubles and I just can't help him because his baggage seems to come out of nowhere. There's no emotional paper trail, so to speak. The bottom line though is that he will mess up quite a few opportunities for whatever reason, and that's what makes him slightly messy.

So we left and on the way to the car, I pointed out how I was way too cleavagey for church and my guy replied, "I know!" with a big grin. I said my cleav was mediocre too, to which he said, "There's enough. The whole time you were trying to show me the thing about the ass in the program [there was a song about an ass bending over for a ride or something], I was staring."

Apparently, even though he gets to see them every day, it never gets old. Go figure.

Teehee.

But I think that's what it is that's messing me up today. It's like I'm saying, "Look how messed up I am," and he's replying, "I know! It's adorable," and my instinct is to be all, "No, it's not adorable. Look at what it can do," and then press the self-destruct button. It's like I want him to know so badly that this messed upness is not a cute, charming piece of my personality. It's a volatile, easily detonated, all-ruining catastrophe waiting to happen.

Except that... is it?

[I had to change to the new blogger interface just to be able to italicize that. I hate how I get pressured into updating shit just because they eliminate the basic functions that used to be present on the old version. Merr.]

I'm not really all that self-destructive. I mean, I can be, but I also don't tend to do things I regret later. You can't be exceedingly self-destructive and live to have no regrets.

me: What if I fall in love with somebody else?
him: It won't happen.
me: How do you know?
him: It's not in your character.

Of course, I immediately started to evaluate if it was in my character or not, even though I know I've never cheated and really never would, but could I? My mind immediately flashes to the fact that I don't find anybody attractive when I'm in a relationship and then to what his face would look like the minute he found out. It's like this documentary I saw in passing when I was pretty young that was about Elvis and the guy talking about him, a friend or something, said that when Elvis got back from the war, there was just this sparkle in his eye that he used to have that was now gone. That's what I would see in my guy's eyes when he'd find out.

Who the hell am I to take away his sparkle?

Never.

So then why did I get messed up? I guess it was also partly the really awkward conversation I had with Jon the other day (see a few posts below, with vaguely concealed identities).

While we were talking after the churchiness, I was evaluating whether or not what I felt a few years ago was real, even if I had already established fairly clearly earlier this week that it wasn't. The final verdict: well, technically, inconclusive. I couldn't tell if I wanted to marry him or not because every time I'd get a second to ponder it, my guy would say something awesome and bizarrely extroverted. And then I'd look at him and be all, "Man, he's awesome," and look back at Jon and see all the things about him I find unattractive.

It was only later on tonight that I realized that this had nothing at all to do with Jon and past experiences and so on, so much as Christmas.

The first step to realizing it was wondering what it would be like if I could hang out with him the way I do with this guy and I can't. I've hung out with him a few times, and every time, I get incredibly panicky. That, to me, is my measure of whether or not a person is right for me. My guy? Always comfy. I'll be panicking hardcore at his parents' house and when we get in the car, I feel better. That would not happen with anybody else. This comfort I have with my guy is fricken special. For me, after all my experiences, this just hasn't happened before.

The second step was realizing that tomorrow is my guy's birthday and last year, I remember telling him I needed time alone (which is what I was feeling earlier tonight) right before his birthday. I needed a few days, but I hadn't done the math and those few days away from him last year included his birthday. Needless to say, I only needed about a half hour or so last time around before realizing I didn't need to be away from him at all, but realizing that I was feeling the same way now as I did then led me to go read the emails I'd sent him last year at this time.

Man, that was sad shit to read.

I didn't even realize why it was sad, but as I read the emails, the tears rolled down my face. He fell asleep and I went to have a shower, partially to be alone, partially to think about things and partially because having scalding water on your skin is soothing on days when you feel like your spirit needs to be cleansed. And that's when, all of a sudden, I realized why I'm upset this time of year.

My guy doesn't like Christmas music. He explained to me that maybe for me, it was a reminder of the lead up till Christmas, but he hadn't had that, so to him, it's just bad music (for the most part). But here's where it gets important: The Christmas music and putting up the tree and watching Christmas movies and spending nearly the entire month of December doing these things in anticipation of Christmas are my Christmas. There's no culmination at the end. There's no happy Christmas ending. This is it. This anticipation is it for me. So if I don't get these moments of shared anticipation, I don't get a Christmas. That's what it feels like, anyway.

And my emails to him last year were about how he and his family are a team and maybe there's no room for me in there and maybe we need to be apart, and that's exactly it. He doesn't have to try hard. He doesn't have to build up his Christmas like I do. His Christmas is always special to him, so he can just wait for the day and that's anticipation enough. I don't have that. I feel that when I do the anticipation thing, but the actual day itself has generally been lonely. It's been a day to point out that I am not a part of an environment where miracles happen and love is shared openly and joy is had at Christmas- or any other day of the year.

Maybe I've always expected too much from it, or maybe my Christmases really did suck (I mean, having your soulmate dog die on Christmas morning is undoubtedly bad, right?), but the anticipation was always fantastic. My brothers and I would try so, so hard to keep the Christmas spirit in spite of it being the worst time of year to live with my dad (I think he had his own Christmas baggage). I miss it though. I miss decorating the tree with my brother (although we did decorate the tree here together a couple years ago) and watching the same Christmas movies over and over with increasing enthusiasm. I miss my grandmother's baking too.

But yeah, my guy was right. I can't leave this. He is my soulmate. He's the only one for me. Literally! And it's his birthday today. And he deserves to have all of his wishes come true.

<3-<3

Oh, and I forgot to put in the part about how when we were standing there and sitting there and standing and sitting and standing... um... you get the point... in church when the choir thingy was far more churchy than I had anticipated, I was really proud of my guy. I mean, I suck at church (emphasis on the suck) and he was just all casually hanging out, blending yet not. It was weird in a really peaceful way. He's the guy dressed appropriately to my overly cleavaged inappropriate, you know? And as we stood and sat and stood and sat.... um... anyway, I realized that even if he's not churchy, he still is by far one the most Jesusy men I know. And I know when we leave church walls behind, he will still be the kind-hearted, caring, beautiful soul he always is. I love that his heart is so amazing.

Listless...

2011-12-16T05:19:00.002-05:00

Too tired to blog for real so here are some lists.

Things that make me feel shitty:
- Littles is so itchy! It's unbearable to watch. I fucking hate it.
- Boo is bored and keeps licking his elbow.
- Neighbor coated his balcony in plastic and it flaps so loudly in the wind. What an ass.
- I don't spend enough time with my dogs even though I'm with them every day.
- UPS. What a bunch of assholes, I say. It's weird because all the UPS employees I've met have always been sweet. That means it's company policy, right?
- I miss snowboarding. I wish my guy snowboarded.
- Fuck it, I miss snow! It's hotter than spring out there right now. Winter's coming tomorrow though. Freezing temps after a day of crazy rain. You know, just to fuck up everybody's car.
- Hopefully all the animals who are stuck outside won't freeze too badly.
- Sick friends, friends who are in pain and friends who are depressed and cynical. :(
- There is no cereal for me in this house. :-o
- Digesting. The world (read: my life) would be a better place if we (read: I) didn't have to digest. Hate it.
- Not having any Christmas spirit. It feels like Christmas isn't even happening this year. :(
- Being too tired and whiny to blog. But I'll be a good girl and put this section above the happy section I wrote before this one so it makes it look like I went from negative to positive instead of the other way around, which is what actually happened.

Things that make me feel good:
- Seeing Boo asleep with his head on a pillow.
- Seeing Jemma asleep spooning a pillow.
- Seeing my guy smile at his ruined Christmas present (the surprise was ruined, not the present itself) and not caring how much it costed (an arm and three legs) because he likes it so much.
- My guy letting me play his new toy (not an innuendo). It's really relaxing and it's kind of like snowboarding in that the learning curve is pretty quick.
- The sound of the wind.
- The rare moments when I have these epiphanies of memory that remind me I still have a memory.
- Making people laugh, even if at my expense.
- Having a friend who is very career driven drop what she's doing at work to be there for me.
- Gifts in the mail (from Newfoundland and Pennsylvania).
- Doggy hugs.
- Boyfriend hugs.
- Boyfriend having a two hour phone conversation with the guy who made the thing I got him for Christmas.
- An amazing guy-made meal after a horrible day. (I totally didn't share it either.)
- Hopefully tomorrow I'll see a choir singing Christmas carols. I hope I have the energy.
- Realizing I really do want to marry this guy, even subconsciously, after a conversation wherein a boy tested my loyalty unbeknownst to me.
- Seeing my ring looking all huge and totally noticeable in this video of me (badly) playing my guy's Christmas toy:

- I do love my ring. <3
- And what it represents. <3

Goodnight.

Inability to cope...

2011-12-15T16:27:00.000-05:00

Things I learned today:

I cannot wait for deliveries. I just can't. It's too upsetting. Or not upsetting, but distressing. I don't know when this happened. I think it's this house, because the way it's set up, when the doorbell rings, all the dogs run to the door and because of the way the landing is by the door, there's no way to get them out of the way without forcing them upstairs, which is difficult. And on top of that, for some reason, it takes longer to get from the bedroom to the front door than most people are willing to wait. So I stress ALL DAY, constantly checking the window, hoping to beat the dogs and not miss the delivery guy and it's so fucking distressing for me.

So now I know: unless a package is taking forever, I'm totally not looking at the tracking online. It ruins my day. I know it shouldn't, I mean, really, what kind of person can't handle a delivery? I just don't want them to cart this thing around more than they already have too. And my guy is overly excited about it and ugh, it's exhausting. Too much pressure. I have to calm down.

Why does my street have to be so rumbly and car-door-slammy today? Sucks.

Ramblies of a nobody who can't seem to do anything right these days...

2011-12-15T03:32:00.002-05:00

Holy shit, I can't concentrate. I've been thinking I've been being a slacker all week so far, not doing my work like I should be, but I can't do it. I can't focus. I sit there and my mind blanks and I regain focus and a few seconds later, I forget what I was doing again. It fucking blows.

Even doing this, I find myself staring off, completely blank, yet preoccupied at the same time. It feels like I'm forgetting something. And then it feels like that lack of concentration you get when you should be in bed, you know? And so then I'm all, "Fuck it. I'm going to sleep," but I haven't done my work yet and I've only been awake a fraction of the day.

You know what would be an awesome advancement in health care? Being able to do your own blood tests at home when you have a chronic disease.

Wake up, BAM! Hypothyroid. Then I know what to expect. Hyperthyroid? Medicate. Done and done.

Because this blows. It's like, am I even hypo or am I just a giant slacker? I don't know. All I know is my throat has been burning all night, like I'm hungry to the point of being ill or something and I can't focus to save my life. I was having conversations with people and fifteen minutes after they said something, I'd see their message and be all, "Oh, right, we were talking." I think I did that to three people tonight.

Blows.

I just did it again, staring off into the distance, totally forgetting what I'm doing. Gah.

It doesn't help that I might have messed things up with my guy's Christmas present and I can't fix it till tomorrow. I hope I didn't screw things up.

Also, there's a certain courier company that is pretty scammy as far as NAFTA stuff goes. I'm kind of pissed about that. They refuse to let you fill out the NAFTA forms so they can charge you brokerage fees later. What a bunch of assholes.

I wish I could feel normal.

I have so many things on my mind right now, but not enough focus to think about any of them adequately.

The worst is the little stuff. Like movie titles or actors' names. Big ones. They'll come up in conversation and I have to look them up to finish the conversation when these are my favorite movies and such. You know what I mean? Things I normally remember are just gone. Giant blank spaces in my mind.

Makes me almost cry until seconds later, when I forget what I was thinking about.

I wish being hyperthyroid wasn't so detrimental. I'd much prefer it to this. I'd prefer physical invalidity to mental.

Fuck it, I'm going to sleep.

I also wish I could go one day without screwing shit up. ONE DAY. Fuck.

Memoirs of an imaginary girl...

2011-12-14T03:45:00.003-05:00

I had an awkward conversation yesterday with an old friend of mine about a thing I've never really told anybody. Basically, I felt like there was some unresolved stuff, partly because when I started dating this guy, I never really expected to have to drop everything I was doing and be in a relationship, and "everything" included the mindset that I wasn't going to find anybody like him.

Anyway, what I realized through that conversation (or after it) is that I don't think I would have survived this long without my imagination. In the time I'd spend alone, I'd imagine possible things that could happen if things worked out a certain way. They were usually good things. People would behave a certain way and say certain things and feel in ways I could control. It was the perfect imaginary world to compliment the world I actually lived in, which was probably pretty hopeless, if not just completely broken.

Of course back then, it was easy to decipher reality from imaginary because the majority of the best parts were in my imagination, but now, so many of the things I'd come to believe were solely in my imaginary world have become real, so I think I started to wonder what was real and what wasn't of the things I had left unresolved.

I don't know if this makes any sense to anybody else but me, but the important thing is that when I talked to my friend about it, he decidedly had no idea what I was talking about and so, my unresolved issues weren't necessarily resolved so much as made figments of my imagination again.

I think there are a lot of instances in my life where I was very vulnerable without realizing it. It's what got me into my long distance dabblings with evil, what made me believe the nameless guy was my soulmate (even though he wasn't all that nice to me) and what made me tolerate the bassist and the philosopher as long as I did. I wanted to be loved differently than the non-love I had known before and I think I hoped for it so much that I neglected to notice the reality of some of the things (and people) I was encountering.

I think that's what makes this relationship hard on me sometimes. I even blogged an ode to my imaginary man at one point (in the first month of this relationship) because it just didn't and still doesn't feel real. And I don't mean that in the "oh, pinch me because I'm dreaming" way, but in this kind of half-terrorized, "I wonder when the other shoe will drop" way. This isn't what reality is. This is what the imaginary world (read: the world that will never happen) is. It's a strange feeling.

Unsettling.

I guess that's why I felt I had unfinished business. Somewhere, there is something that will throw this off the rails and if it's not my guy, then it must be me. There must be some skeleton somewhere that is going to spring out and be all, "Hey, remember me? Yeah. Well, I'm here to ruin everything."

I just can't figure out what it is- again, because all the best parts were in my imagination. I mean, sure, there is a possibility somebody will show up at my wedding and declare their undying love and affection for me (it really is a possibility), but as far as I know, in the real world, there is nobody who could make me change my mind about this guy. In my imagination, there are plenty of people who could change my mind about this guy. Not because I love them even remotely, but because my imagination is a very dramatic place with unexpected plot twists. I even thought about writing a book about it, but then everybody in my life would wonder if that is what I really believe will happen (I don't. I mean, I don't even think this is happening and I'm actually living it).

You know what I mean though? It's like all my life, the leaves on the trees were blue and in my imagination, they looked better green, and then one day, I wake up and the leaves are green. It's like, I know they're not green. They're blue. They have always been blue. Even if deep down I always knew they should be green, from everything I've actually experienced, they're blue. From everything anybody ever taught me about anything, they were blue. Except maybe in movies.

That's what this is like. And I go to sleep and dream who knows what because I don't remember these days, and wake up and everything is still the same.

Unsettling.

It's probably why I like it when he's sleeping. I can look at him, all pretty (man pretty!) and imagine that this is all in my imagination and suddenly, it feels normal (for a change). To be honest, those are the times when I love him the most peacefully. It's when my two worlds line up in a way that doesn't feel alternate universy. Those are also the times when I doubt everything the least. I look at him lying there and he just feels right.

And then he wakes up and I can't handle it as well. I mean, I do, but at the same time, I don't. On the one hand, I love every minute and can't stand to see him upset and I am a normal non-crazy person, and on the other hand, I feel like a part of me shuts off because it just can't categorize what's going on. There's just this block there.

In my imaginary world, life once that block is removed is magical.

One day.

I'm going to sleep.

And then my blog became a tumblr...

2011-12-11T00:24:00.003-05:00

I want to get married here.
Or here.

Maybe we can just use the wedding money to flee and get married somewhere pretty.

Can't ice a cake prettily? Problem solved.

And this? I just want to rub them till they have no fur left.

That's it (for now).

Timeline.

2011-12-10T04:34:00.000-05:00

I just watched Betty White on Jon Stewart from a couple of days ago. She's totally one of those famous people you wish you could know in real life, kind of like Jenny, the Bloggess, Wil Wheaton or Chris d'Elia. If I could invite those four to my wedding? *nods with "that'd be rad" eyes*

In other news, I'm absolutely exhausted, as I have been every day this week, except that for some reason, between 2AM and 5AM, I get this burst of energy and I feel like I should start my day all over again. It's the weirdest thing. Maybe it's the tea I drink late at night now or the sugary gluten-free apple cinnamon cereal or something, but WOO! (for now).

Other than that...

Tomorrow is a very large dog food day. It kind of blows really. I want to try Boo on Solid Gold Barking at the Moon but it's hard to get across the border or something so I ordered two bags to give me enough time to order more if I want more, and I also ordered a bag of Natural Balance Venison, which is too low in protein to be fed alone, so I'll use that to bulk up the Solid Gold, but I also have to special order that one too. All of the food came in yesterday and today at two different dog food stores, so tomorrow, if I have the energy, it'll end up costing me like $240 in dog food in one fricken day.

Gah.

Add to that that I didn't think either food would get here in time, so I just bought another bag of his current ridiculously priced food too. It comes to $100.34 once you factor in taxes. Fucking ridiculous, especially since he eats nearly double what he used to eat in Orijen, which has more meat, better ingredients and is cheaper. (He was too gurgly on Orijen though, so we set out on this failed experiment.)

But Boo is ten, going on eleven and I just want him to fulfill his contractual duties (i.e. live till 25), so I have to do my part too. You know?

And since I started going halfsies with canned food for the past week or so, he hasn't been nauseous, which is awesome considering he'd gone through half a pack of gravol in a week before that.

Anyway, enough about dog food.

Babies?

Let's talk about babies.

The more I think about it, the more I think I'm going to push the partial thyroidectomy. Here's my timeline (all speculation):

<3 months:
Get off these meds after stabilizing (if I can ever reduce my fricken hours to reduce my stress, gah)

3-6 months:
Stay stable (dream on)

6 months:
Surgery

6-9 months:
Stabilize again.

9 months:
BAM! Preggo. Just like that. It's that simple. Oh, and the wedding should be around this time too, causing people everywhere to question whether or not it happened before or after Jesus validated our commitment.

9-18 months:
Be worry-free as my immune system is suppressed happily (nevermind other preggo symptoms).

18-21 months:
Heavy monitoring to see if I become hypo.

21-24 months:
More intermittent monitoring to prove me right.

24 months-forever:
Freeeeeeee.

Wishful thinking, maybe. But it could happen.

Alternative (read: unfavorable) timeline:

<3 months:
Get off these meds after stabilizing
3-6 months:
Stay stable (dream on)

6 months:
Radioactive iodine treatment. :(

6-12 months:
Let my tissue slowly die, constant monitoring, mood swings as cell death releases tons of thyroid hormone into my bloodstream. [Wedding goes here?]

12-18 months:
Wonder if I'm done, continue monitoring and probably start taking medication to replace thyroid hormones.

18-21 months:
Monitor still, wait for hormones to stabilize.

21 months:
Preggo.

Um.

If you have issues with cracking bones or joint noises, don't read the next two paragraphs, ok? Ok.

In other news, when I open my mouth, my jaw makes the most horrible swishy noise in the world on the left side. Holy crap it's horrible and yet, I keep opening and closing my jaw, which is becoming more and more painful, but I can't help it because having a swishy jaw is just so ridiculous. (I just did it for, like, a minute straight and now my jaw hurts like a sumbitch.)

You know what I think it is, the more I listen to it? Bone on bone sandy noises. (I just did it again for a while in different ways and holy shit is it a bad noise.) You know what it sounds like? Like when you swish listerine around in your mouth. That sound. Except more like if you were swishing very forcefully between your teeth, like. Icky, right?

/end sandy bone conversation.

I'm falling apart, I tells ya.

Ok, fuck it, I have nothing important to say (do I ever?) and I should be asleep. I thought I had something to say earlier, but my memory is shot.

I guess that's it, other than that my dad came over and worked on my house a bit and painted some stuff and he even tried to let me sleep a little (I'd sent him an email at 5AM this morning saying I was probably not going to be too entertaining on account of being exhausted). I am glad that after all our ups and downs, I do get along with my dad. I mean, he has his moments where he upsets me greatly, but I think he has grown a lot in recent years and continues to grow, which is a great quality.

Oh!! Maybe I shouldn't blog about this but I have to because I find it so ridiculous.

Somebody I know... (let's leave it at that) lives with his girlfriend and she potentially has a job that will have her traveling for four months. So this guy calls his mom and is expecting his mom to validate his desire to forbid her from going. But she doesn't. She tells him he has to let her live her life. So he asks my dad for advice and he suggests if he wants to keep her, why not propose to her before she goes? And so I say, "Yeah, but he should propose to her before she gets the offer or it'll seem contrived," so my dad forwards along the suggestion and the reply? "Oh, I'm not ready for that kind of commitment yet."

And my reaction? What the hell? Clearly, this guy wants to have his cake and eat it too. It's like, "You're not allowed to go because I want to control your life while I am free of any commitment to you." What is that bullshit?

And the worst part is that she is an awesome person. He would be lucky if she said yes. LUCKY.

What an ass. I remember back in the day, I was so fed up with these man boys who are just waiting for some ideal unrealistic dream person to come along and it's just pathetic.

If this guy happens to read my blog: Hey, you're lucky she has tolerated you this long. In fact, you should be glad this girl takes any interest in you at all, ffs. You're really not that great. She is. Grow up and grow a pair. Quit being so selfish and stupid.

Done.

I think my dad totally wasn't expecting that response from him either. The loyalty in our generation is astoundingly abysmal.

I'm glad I have one of the two most loyal men in the world (the other, according to SIL A, is my brother).

I am a lucky girl. Lucky for who he is, for how he loves me, for how we get along and for how he grows with me. You know, through all this, this is the first time my dreams with somebody have been malleable. I could have this man's amazing babies or I could not and I know it'll be ok.

Suggested alternate (possible) timeline:

<3 months:
Get off these meds after stabilizing
3-6 months:
Stay stable (dream on)

6 months:
Sub-total thyroidectomy (that's pretty well complete, except they try not to slice the vocal nerves or damage the parathyroid gland, so they leave a bit in there).

6-12 months:
Stabilize on synthetic thyroid hormones. [Wedding goes here somewhere.]

12-24 months:
Back to work in full force.

24 months:
Debt free, buy new car of my dreams (TBD), travel, play, snowboard, etc.

*nods*

Keep in mind though that none of these timelines provides a cure for this disease. They're all just a way of keeping the symptoms below killing-me-abruptly levels.

Ok, goodnight.

Ode to the memories of the present...

2011-12-10T00:54:00.001-05:00

And then the pictures show
What remains but in memories
And when explored
With the depths of the imagination,
Nostalgia aches,
The heart moans,
For things that once were.
For the good times
Of the past
Are writ in stone
And the good times
Of the future
Might be few
And far between-
The certainty resting
Only in the uncertainty.

Ah, but the pictures, moving and still,
They stir it up again.
For what is time,
But an arbitrary
Consciousness?
What sets it apart
From imagination?

The sights, the sounds, the feelings,
All perceivable with eyes closed
And vivid thoughts.

Is it touch?

What is it about the present,
The slow instant passing of time,
That makes it more real
Than the things we already know
To be true?

Even your heart can ache
From your memories
Of the present,
As each one is filed away.

This day,
This one which has ended,
Will never again be,
But can it be?

The heart aches
In the present,
For soon,
This will be but a memory,
Too.

And I look over as he sleeps,
Beautiful and peaceful,
And my aching heart soaks in
As much as it can
So when I look back
It doesn't ache at all.
Instead,
In every moment,
Through every passing day,
And while other memories fade away,
My heart,
full of this moment,

Will always know this to be true.

On messes and other things of random interest...

2011-12-08T05:01:00.004-05:00

For some reason, half of the United States is searching for "dear boy I love" and ending up here, probably disappointed. Why are you all searching for that? And why am I the only one on the internet with that exact quoted phrase on my blog?

In other news, my head has been a mess of mess the past few days. Probably exacerbated by the fact that I've worked through the night every day this week so far. On the upside, I only have four and a half hours left this week and also on the upside, I've had energy, but on the downside... this mess.

In order to focus, I have to put music on my ipod in an elaborate set up. First, my ipod usb cable is plugged into my laptop and my ipod is plugged in. Then I "safely remove hardware" so it stays charging but it's malleable. I have this idea in my head that if I never use my ipod's battery, it will last forever and considering it's from 2005ish and still lasts hours and hours, I think I'm right about that (*knocks on wood*).

Anyway, so then I have to pick the music, which is really hard because it has to be lively enough to keep me awake and can't be so lively that I'm distracted by it. Ratatat usually works because it's lyric-less, but lately, I've been craving lyrics anyway, even if I have to tune them out, so yesterday was a couple of songs on repeat- Pearl Jam's Parachutes and Eddie Vedder's Without You, and the night before that it was Radiohead's House of Cards. Tonight, we're going all out and listening to the whole Gish album from Smashing Pumpkins. I've listened to it so many times that it blends in with my brain activity.

So in trying to find music that suits my mood and the purpose, I end up trying some songs on and they end up being complete misfits but in the process, they mess me up. Parachutes was actually one of them, but it tricked me into thinking it fit.

I think I'm not explaining this right. Or I'm using far too many words to do it anyhow.

I lack concentration and the ability to formulate longer thoughts these days. It sucks.

Anyway, so Parachutes reminds me of the nameless guy (remember him?) but not even in a bad way. And it doesn't remind me of him so much as that period of my life, right before I met this guy. And in spite of all that, I still really do like the song and the lyrics actually fit my current relationship far more than they ever fit any other part of my life thus far, albeit in a slightly dark way. So the song is on and I get to thinking, "What's he up to?" even though he seems to have blocked me from any sort of communication, which I guess is alright, even if his block is of the relationship variety and somehow I'd still like to be his friend, and so within seconds, I discovered that he did follow through with his plan to move to England, even if a year or so later than he intended, and I'd like to say he seems happy, but in spite of jovial writing, his face doesn't seem happy so much as anxious and like he's putting a ton of pressure on this endeavor.

I wondered about our conversations about happiness over a year ago. My approach: pretending reality is different than it actually is (i.e. faking it) doesn't change reality, so it's best to make the best of what you have, to be able to see the light in the small things, the lucky things, the positive things, no matter how few and far between they may be. His approach: maybe I didn't fully understand it, but it was something about brainwashing yourself, first through positive vocabulary and then it was supposed to infiltrate the rest of your life. And I can't help but feel sad for him because knowing he thinks like I do, he could never accomplish that much self-delusion.

Anyway.

I got to thinking a lot of things and so I wrote him an email, half knowing he probably wouldn't get it on account of the blocking. And I can't help but think, as I blog this, that I'm actually doing alright. From the three sentence update I gave him on my life, I have it pretty good, not because of what's going on but because of how it feels. It feels like life. I said I'll probably have to get surgery or radiation this winter for my graves' and I'm hopefully getting married next summer.

And I know what I've written about him in the blog before and sometimes I wonder about the intensity of the things I felt but other times, I know it's just the timing of it and the method of it that were the main affect. He was the first evidence that I could have something more, and not because he treated me right, but because he did think similarly to me and more importantly, he explained parts of my past that altered my self-destructive path entirely. Those kinds of interactions, the kinds that change you forever, you just never forget. But late, late, late at night when the soul is exhausted, they are kind of harmful to consider.

Why was it so hard to write that I was getting married?

I noticed his friend, the first guy I ever kissed, on facebook and said hi, hoping to get some clarity. It was also really hard to tell him I was getting married even if he's engaged and happy also. When we hung up, I realized what it was that made it so hard.

Telling people you're getting married is an assertive thing. It's declaring that you've found this person that fits your dreams, your goals, your values and your baggage. And I can't help but feel unassertive when I tell these two people who, for lack of a better description, thought I was less than. The nameless guy judged me wrongly and fled and I think telling him I'm getting married is like telling somebody who has zero respect for you that you're happy. They just don't care. But I can't help it. I had to tell him only because I guess I had to make him understand that he's wrong about me. I don't know why that was important. I guess it's the same thing I've felt since high school where I just want to stifle people's cynicism. Like a, "hey, see? I'm taken off the market and I still care what happens to you," kind of thing. Because people don't care without ulterior motives very often, as evidenced by how many friends I lost by announcing my engagement. And I do still care. I think if we had dated, I probably would have gotten graves' a lot sooner.... but I think he'd be a good person to bounce ideas off of sometimes. And maybe snowboard with.

I guess I miss Josh too. I wish he didn't have crippling arthritis and could ride again. Speaking of snowboarding.

Ah, I miss snowboarding.

All this is reminding me of the time I had a crush on a guy in cegep but it turned out I only really liked his shoes. I got myself a similar pair and suddenly the crush absolved.

I wish my guy snowboarded. That's what I wish. And I know it's so wrong to say this out loud, but if I was being completely honest, I'd say I wish that he would snowboard more than I wish he'd be Christian. It's wrong to trade your boy's soul for a snowsport, but I can't help it. It's my home, you know? I want to be able to share it with him.

See? Messes.

Anyway, so then while talking to Matt (the first guy I ever kissed back in 2000, then he fled to Switzerland), telling him I was getting married was weird too. It felt oddly like telling a big brother who would not approve. Probably because he called the guy I was seeing after him and told him to stop seeing me. Is it weird that somebody you dated back in the day feels like a brother? He does though. And I'll love him forever for a number of reasons, the most important one being that without him, I don't think I would have handled the whole hostage thing very well at all.

So after all these messes, I started to wonder if I was being fair to my guy or if my mind really was on other things (even if it was past 5AM, I never seem to be able to chalk my messes up to fatigue unless they involve some sort of breakdown) but then I looked at him, peacefully sleeping, all man pretty and whatnot and he is home to me. He's the first person I've ever been with where I don't worry about my boundaries. And to be honest, it sucks sometimes because sometimes, I get angry and spiteful and think, "Fine then. When he comes home today, I'm just not going to say a word. Pshh," and then he comes home and I'm all, "Teehee. I missed you greatly," and then I bounce around him like an eejit with too much energy. And even if he complains that I keep him up too late with my sudden need to talk about the most intense things the minute he shuts his eyes, I know he'll still listen when I do it.

You know what I mean?

A guy I can't scare away. It's like a Christmas miracle. And he really is fricken pretty when he sleeps too. And when he's awake too, but that's not when I get messy, so it's not as important.

On a more frivolous note, I love my engagement ring. I thought maybe I'd regret not getting a diamond, but having diamonds on one hand and this topaz on the other has shown me that they're complimentary rocks. When one doesn't sparkle, the other does. It's a perfect system of sparklies. And when there is no sparkling at all to be had, the topaz does these weird refracty things and creates its own little system of bewilderment. Even in the dark, it seems to find little fragments of light to impress me with. And then there are other times where I look at it and it's absolutely clear. Those are the freakiest times. And then there are the times when I'm mad at him and take it off and hold it in my hand for a while and the weight of it because we got it filled in makes it so I can't forget that he's there, even if I'm angry. And if I ever do dare to put it down (only when I'm doing things that are dirty, greasy or just generally icky), when it sits on a counter or table, it sparkles more than ever.

So yeah. I like it. :)

Ok, an hour till I have to drive this guy. I should snuggle.

You know, I am a really lucky girl. I'll go to sleep and tomorrow, I'll worry that when he reads this post, he'll feel hurt by it, but he probably won't because he knows I'm messy and he knows that at the end of the day (and the middle of the day and the beginning of the day and all the times in between), he's my guy. I would never risk this for anything in the world. You know? It's like every now and then, I freak out and question things and wonder if I'm doing the right thing, but it's only because I've taken for granted (temporarily) that he's everything I want. Nobody has ever come close to matching me this well.

And really, a girl like me can make anybody laugh, but if you make this guy laugh till he cries then you really do have it made. I have made a lot of people laugh in my day, but seeing him laugh is by far the best thing in the world.

[Editor's note: I have to add that this radically uncharacteristic tonguey behavior came about by accident probably and then was amplified and used as a torture device when he discovered that I have a problem with saliva. Hence, my icked out face about halfway through the video. :D]

Ok, goodnight.

On babies and self-worth...

2011-12-05T16:16:00.000-05:00

A fifteen minute quick post before I go get my guy at the train.

Yesterday, it occurred to me that I might actually want babies. I mean, I've lived most of my life not wanting babies and then a few years ago, I realized that I'd let a kid of single digit age decide whether or not I'd have children, so I reevaluated things and decided that if I found a guy who was 200% in, I would do it. And then I met this guy, who wanted to be a stay at home dad, and it was exactly what I wanted because I could have my babies and not be overburdened with the responsibility of them. (I know, not the best frame of mind with which to have babies.)

But then over the course of the past year, I started to wonder if I'd be any good at it. I do have a pretty low patience level, which is exacerbated by the graves', but at the same time, I drop my life if I have to take care of somebody. If Boo is sick, I'm up all night. If my guy is hungry, I stop what I'm doing and take care of him. I do hate doing chores but I know that if I have to do them for somebody I love, I won't hesitate.

But do I have enough strength and selflessness to maintain a child for eighteen years?

I think my fears about not being able to do it stem from my lack of self-worth, self-confidence and self-critical nature, but also from the fact that my ma just couldn't do it at all. She was given five opportunities and failed them all. Why she kept going is beyond me.

Was it selfishness?

Would it be selfish of me to have babies?

Wikipedia says there is a seventy-something percent link between graves' and genetics, but an article I found had it in the thirties, which I tend to believe more since I'm the first in my family to have it.

We inherit so many things that are detrimental to our ability to cope with the world in so many ways. Is knowing one of them a reason to not have kids?

I remember judging a friend of mine because her husband has type 1 diabetes (as do his siblings) and her aunt has type 2 (I think it's type 2 anyway) and she wanted babies. How could she take such a high risk of her babies being diabetic, especially when she sees the effects it has had on her husband's family?

I would never do that.

Except that now, I'm in a similar, albeit less certain, position.

If a disease is not supposed to make you less of a person, does it make a good reason to not create a person?

We were talking about something similar in the car on the way home from my guy's parents after the Muppets the other day. I spent at least a year before meeting this guy trying to assess my self-worth apart from my sexuality, and while I think I do have a better grasp on that now, especially from being with a man who values me for me rather than just for my body, this disease has brought to light that I have other idols, other areas from which I derive my self-worth apart from God, that I also have to work on.

With this disease and the meds, I'm left partially incapacitated and I can't perform like I normally would. I can't change my tires without needing three days to recover, the house is a mess (more so than usual, almost unbearably so), I don't do laundry as often as I should and I definitely don't take care of my dogs as much as I should either. All these things make me feel like less valuable of a person. I feel like he'd be better off and have an easier time in this situation if I wasn't in it. But what that means is without my performance, I am not a worthwhile person. It means that just sitting still, I have no worth. And that's not right either. It is a more acceptable idol in the world we live in right now, but that doesn't make it any less of an idol. Our person, who we are, not what we do, should be enough. Always.

Anyway, my fifteen minutes are up.

I don't believe everything happens for a reason in that the outcome will somehow always be good or whatever, but I do believe that everything happens to show us God. These hard things show us our selfishness, the places where we put our energy when we shouldn't, the things we worry about that we have no control over and from where we derive our personal value and sense of self- all these things detract from this spiritual wholeness that is trying to find God in all those things. We shouldn't be selfish because we have all we need, especially those of us with internet... We shouldn't put energy in things that aren't spiritually constructive, both for us and those around us. We shouldn't try to control the things over which we have no control, rather trust that God has given us the resources to persevere. And our personal value and sense of self cannot come from things external either. The soul is where the value lies and that is determined by God, who created us to be who we are and molded us in ways, good and bad, that never detract from His ability to deem us lovable.

Mini-Me...

2011-12-04T03:16:00.000-05:00

So you know how I always wear this toque, right?

Well, as we were coming out of The Muppets, there was this oldish man walking with a little girl and she had a sort of younger, more innocent version of my hat on, and upon further analysis, she seemed to have on a coat similar to mine (but turquoise) and on top of that, she even walked like me.

me [to my guy]: Look, it's Mini-Me.
him: It totally is!

As we followed them down the hall towards the door, she got more and more me-like and we were laughing hysterically. The old guy didn't seem too appreciative, so I tried to explain.

me: She's Mini-Me!

He wasn't impressed.

Whatevs though, this sevenish year old tiny person was totally the younger, smaller version of me. Except that when I was her age, I didn't share her style. But basically, if she went to that fortune telly machine in Big, she'd wake up as me.

Anyway, the Muppets movie was pretty awesome. It was like an hour and a half of being a kid again (minus a little of the care-freeness).

I only had about three manageable panic attacks during the movie and most of the panic was caused by me worrying about being trapped in the room after eating so much popcorn and drinking so much seven up (I got a pass thing that included two drinks and a popcorn. They don't make movie popcorn like they used to. This stuff was probably the shittiest movie popcorn I've ever had). But they were, like I said, manageable.

After the movie, we had to go see my guy's parents because I had told him to invite his mom since we were going near their neighborhood (the closest movie theater that actually plays English movies is that far away), but he only asked his dad and of course his dad wouldn't be the type to watch a Muppet movie, right? Anyway, so then they were all, "You have to come over after," and whatnot (paraphrased because I was in the shower), even if it was going to be midnight.

So we did that and he had coffee and fruitcake (you guys, I actually know somebody who eats fruitcake now. I don't know what to do with that bit of information. Before tonight, the only uses fruitcake had involved prankery and weaponry. I even have an idea for a short film that circles around fruitcake in a tragic way) and I pet the dog, trying not to panic (the panic was still pretty fresh).

While his mom dragged him down the hall to see his sister-in-law's future Christmas present, his dad asked me how work was going. I told him I'd cut my hours and he was really supportive. It was kinda nice. Nice in a way that I'm not fully equipped to handle, but nice anyway. :D

Ok, I'm going to sleep. Long day and I didn't get to sleep very much last night. I wish my guy was less of a morning person sometimes (i.e. on weekends).

Goodnight.

They make me forgetful...

2011-12-02T04:55:00.002-05:00

Dear Twenty-Seven Year Old Me,

How did you do it? You've been on these pills, four a day plus beta blockers!, for nearly two years now. How do you get out of bed every day? I can't do it. I cut my hours and this week is the first week the cut takes effect and now my boss is overloaded so I have to do more hours, but I'm not actually sure that I am physically able...

And so I'm sitting here wondering, how the hell did you do it?

But I guess I'm forgetting that you didn't.

I'm forgetting that you didn't work and you were called lazy every day. And I'm forgetting that you were told in the beginning, nothing over a slow walk or you'd die. I wasn't told that this time. It feels like I'm just expected to keep going with my normal life.

I'm forgetting how many times you asked the endo when you could stop these drugs because they made you want to die.

I'm forgetting how you'd get up at three in the afternoon every day, just in time to have exactly the right amount of time to panic about your then-boyfriend coming home to yell at you for doing nothing all day.

I'm forgetting how he forced you to get a summer job painting various parts of a friend's house and you broke down while wire-brushing the porch because you were just physically unable. And you cried quietly on the porch, gathering up the courage to go inside, hating yourself more and more every minute for being so useless. (Luckily, she didn't seem to mind. I should really email her one of these days.)

I forget all that because it was pretty horrible.

So...

I guess if you got through that, I can get through this? Am I as strong as you are? I'm happier, I know that much. And I have God too, but sometimes I wonder if God cared about me more when I didn't know Him than now that I do.

So what happens now? What if I get fired? What if we lose this house after all this struggle?

Sometimes I wish I was alone so I didn't have to worry about dragging somebody along for such a terrible ride.

And then other times, he's the smile of my day.

Every day.

To make him smile, even if just once in a day, makes it not for naught.

Please let it be one more month. Otherwise, these pills will be the death of me.

How did you do it?

Wish me luck,

p

In other news...

2011-12-01T03:25:00.004-05:00

My new piano is tuned.

me: I guess we'll never find the serial number on it... I'll never know how old it is. The internet said they stopped making them in 1966 though.
him: I'd say it's about [fancy French word I can't remember that means "a century old"].

Wicked rad.

All in all, he said there wasn't much to change immediately (other than maybe sanding the hammers a little) and that the broken hammers that were fixed with glue and tie wraps are ok because they still work.

I think he missed tuning two keys, but they're at the really low end and I don't think I'll get skilled enough to touch them anyway. In the meantime though, he did teach me exercises to get my hands working separately, so I have to try to do those (they're so exhausting for my left hand though, holy crap).

Anyway, I have to go to sleep. Tomorrow, in spite of my reduced schedule, I have to go to the factory to reprint a bunch of stuff the new girl seems to have misplaced... or something.

Goodnight.

Speechless.

2011-12-01T03:23:00.002-05:00

me: If you could go back in time to the day I found out I had graves' again and told you what to expect, knowing what you know now, would you still choose to stay?
him: Yes.
me: Really?
him: Yes.

:)

I'm in a glass case of emotion...

2011-11-29T04:33:00.003-05:00

I have to bring Boo to the vet. I've been putting it off, but I can't see him this way this often. He just gets nauseous frequently now. I'm going to change his food, but still, I've gone through about a half a pack of the US generic version of Gravol that we picked up while in NC. At least they help. I don't know what to do though. Blood tests? X-ray of his belly? For now, he's curled up on his sofa, gravolled out and elastic wrapped to try to calm his panic.

I really hope it's the food.

Tomorrow, I'll go find his new food (Barking at the Moon, tentatively) because he's near the end of this bag already. We'll see what happens.

Vet first or wait the food out for a bit first?

I don't know. He's up to about four cups a day once you factor in all the half cups I give him at random times now. Minimum three though.

I just want him to be ok.

In other news, one of my teeth is cracked. It kind of sucks. I think I have to get a veneer on it or something.

Also, I'm down to twelve hours a week this week and so far, my boss has only sent me work I've already done. So... I don't know what that means.

Being that I'm only going to work twelve hours a week, my salary will drop forty percent, which sucks, especially with the two aforementioned expenses and Christmas too.

In other news, I had an extreme blow up this morning after sort of honing in on one sentence add-on and using it to define our whole relationship.

In the middle of it all, I fell asleep without drinking the tea he'd made me. A little while later, he left the room, taking the tea with him, figuring I wouldn't drink it.

Sensing the pengy cup's absence, I woke up and lit right back up into a fiery rage. He decided he should not be in this kind of environment (the yelly, screamy kind) and I might have decided he shouldn't live here anymore.

And then just like that, it was over.

He lay next to where I was sitting on the bed and put his arms around me.

You know, I think that's why this relationship works. It's not because we don't fight (nobody can be with me without some fiery verbal brawls), and it's not because we don't fight dirty either. It's because one of us always seems to snap back into big picture mode and ends it all in a second. It's like one of us is thinking, "Wait. Whoa. What's happening here? I love you and I will hug you and look at you with a vulnerable, loving gaze and that will be that."

And that's that.

We fell asleep snuggly until I had to go to the garage for my appointment to put my remaining two tires on and get them balanced (shaky wheels, you know). And then I went to costco and bought him cereal and a meaty pie for supper and when I got home, he was all happy to see me.

Later on, I explained to him how shitty his life was. He wakes up in the morning, has all sorts of chores before trying to wake his girlfriend up, which either ends in yellies or whinies (or both!) and then his girlfriend drives him to the train, bitching about how one of these days, she wishes she could have an undivided sleep for a change. And exhausted, he gets on the train, gets breathed on, mooshed against, and sardined- if he gets a seat at all. And his girlfriend goes home to sleep until she doesn't feel like sleeping anymore. And then he works his ass off all day, rushes to catch the train, goes through the whole riding in (train) cars with (rude) lepers thing, only to be the last one picked up at the train station, long after all the other train people have gone. He gets into the car, where his girlfriend asks him how his day was and disregards the one word answer and starts talking about herself and how her day was filled with lazy nothings. And then they go home, where she picks up her laptop and ignores him all night. And then when he's exhausted and ready for bed, she keeps him up, demanding attention and he knows she'll cry if he doesn't give it to her. Finally, he gets to rest, but she wakes him up in the night a thousand times, either by noise or by direct questions (i.e. "Ooo, the MacGyver box set is on sale!" or "Spiderrrrr!").

Rinse and repeat.

I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty miserable in that life. Add to that that on his weekend, he fought with me twice yesterday and once today and with his mom yesterday too. The guy needs, like, an apartment in the city without cell phone service or something.

I don't know why he's still here.

He's fucking awesome, I know that much.

I'm lucky to have him, especially since he somehow is able to endure the mood swings associated with this current flare up of this disease, with the remnants of the last flare up of the disease, and with my general underlying mess. I don't know how he does it, but I'm grateful.

And so, so, so, so lucky.

Goodnight.

(Title reference here.)

Dirty laundry...

2011-11-28T00:44:00.003-05:00

I understand that I'm not easy to help. I know that. But I do hint. And I am a very repetitive person, especially when it comes to whining. If I'm an idiot and I stay up all night cleaning for guests the following day when my body has been utterly incapable all week, wouldn't you expect me to break? Wouldn't you expect me to have to stop at some point?

If I take a break for a while and then get up to get something and complain about how my whole body hurts and then whine to you, "Why does my whole body hurt?" does that not mean I'm done? Does it not tell you I have nothing left to give?

And if all that happens, when does the lob-sided distribution of household responsibility tip to the other side? When does it come time for me to stop having to be responsible for everything that happens here?

I mean I know I don't work hard, especially these days, and I know that people who work need time off, but I just can't do it anymore. I do it because I have to and then at the end of the day, like today, everything hurts. Everything cramps whenever I move and everything upsets me. I have nothing left. And tomorrow, I'll wake up and still have nothing left.

So when you're hungry and I feed you an elaborate Sunday dinner and when the floors are a mess and I mop them and when the dogs ask to go out and I go out in the rain with them until I'm completely out of patience and when there's laundry sitting in the washer and dryer and on the floor of the laundry room too, just know that I do it all, not because I can, but because I love you more than I love me.

Littles: A year later...

2011-11-27T04:14:00.003-05:00

In reverse chronological order (as best I could anyway).

We've come a long way, haven't we?

Happy First "Gotcha Day", Littles.:)

Priorities and a piano and a bored dog and an angry dog... and I don't take enough pictures of Jemma anymore...

2011-11-24T03:12:00.003-05:00

So after reading about a journalist who has been arrested somewhere in the world and is being beaten (she's somehow tweeting from jail?) and about how some northern communities in Canada are living in squalor to the point of it being declared a state of emergency, I'm settling down to blog a fast post before I go to sleep which will be filled with trivial whining. Yey!

Um.

So I asked my boss to reduce my hours from twenty to twelve on account of being not-so-functional and she seemed to agree, but not too happily. My friend ME thinks I'm going to get fired. I'm not sure. The thought of having to find a job again? Bleh. Job hunting is the worst. So here's hoping we're good to go for the next month.

And so yesterday, I decided to change my tires before the first snowstorm of the year and I couldn't get my back tires off. I thought it was just me and I was a weak sickee, but then this happened:

So it was probably not me. To be fair, I was using a pipe to make the tire iron longer to give me a better lever, but still, I've done that for years and I've never bent a tire iron. It pisses me off because these bastard garages who do this leave me unknowingly in a state where if I get a flat in the middle of nowhere, there is nothing I can do about it. I hate that.

It's not even the right way to do it either, clearly.

Anyway, so after that, I was pretty tired, but I had psyched myself into believing that my power and strength were still in my body, so I was ok. I ended up hanging out with my guy a bit, tweeting my MP something like forty responses to her superficial reply to me asking me to tell her about the Canada I want (yeah, don't ask me a question like that unless you mean it) and working about five hours or something in the middle of the night.

And this morning, I woke up to the piano guys parking outside and that's about it. they brought the piano in, I tipped them (based on what the internet said) and they left.

And the rest of the day, I don't think I did much other than write that email to my boss. I'm just spent. I have nothing left to give this day. Hopefully tomorrow will be more energetic.

Remember that "spoon theory" blog article thingy? If not, you should read it. But yeah, when I woke up today, I realized I had no spoons left. And what became really clear is that I have become a spoon person. I have become of the ilk that has to be careful how spoons are spent throughout the day.

And to be honest, that kind of sucks.

But at the same time, it's a relief. The main thing in my experience with this disease is that you have to realize that. You have to finally get your priorities right. Saying you're going to de-stress and then not giving up any of your workload is bullshit. It means it hasn't yet occurred to you that your current situation will kill you.

It's a bit strange though because I don't know if the clarity is because of the circumstances of today or because of the drugs working. I remembered earlier that I had blogged in the spring or something about how I missed being able to sit and do nothing at all with my guy, about how I was feeling antsy, like there was something I was supposed to be doing that I wasn't doing. Now I think that that was the graves'. It's exactly that feeling that burrows in and stays there at a low level all the time, boosting stress and the likelihood of another flare up of this disease.

But when you're hyperthyroid, you do feel urgency all the time. ALL THE TIME. So who knows what comes first?

Anyway, I have a lot more to say, but I'm too exhausted to say it.

Oh, I forgot to move these.

Boo, bored because I was fiddling with the piano for too long.

Littles, with her full head tilt because of a howling youtube video. (Deliberately played to get her to put her angry face back on, which she had been sporting all day until the camera came out.)

Littles listening with intense paws. This is also her angry look. It's the look she gets when she's walking around the house trying to find me, and the look she had on all day (probably because she was annoyed with the snow).

Ok, goodnight.

On making my blog private...

2011-11-23T03:17:00.003-05:00

It was an almost unrelated conversation, but it made me realize something about me:

And so, for now anyway, my blog is unprivated.

For now.

My new favorite picture ever.

2011-11-23T03:06:00.006-05:00

They both are looking at me the same way... teehee...

And then I woke up and everything was different...

2011-11-22T03:44:00.001-05:00

I wasn't going to blog because I'm sleepy, but meh. I'll be brief...?

Today was a melancholy day. See, this is what normally happens:

4AMish: I go to sleep.
6AMish: He wakes me up to drive him to the train. I wake up begrudgingly and there's a 50/50 chance I'll get ragey before we get into the car and a 50/50 chance that if I am not ragey before we get into the car, I will become ragey and/or weepy on the way there.
7AMish: I'm back home, snuggly and asleep.
noonish: I wake up groggy and unrested.

This is what happened today:

4AMish: I finish blogging and go to sleep, excited to tell him about my discoveries in self-exploration (see post below). I have to pee, but I'm too lazy to get up and decide I can wait the two hours till he wakes me up.
11AMish: I slowly fade out of sleep and, I'm not kidding, before I open my eyes, I think how crazy it is that I'm awake before his alarm goes off. I open my eyes and the room is light. I start to panic. I look around the room and my doggies are all passed out. I listen for my guy. Nothing. Panic. I grab the phone and start to dial and realize I have no idea what I'm doing as I'm about to call a number in my phone's phonebook that is not at all relevant to the situation. I press the "off" button and start over, thumbing through the rest of the numbers, wondering what the hell I'm looking for. It's 6AM! Far too early for brain function, even in this alternate universe.

Finally, I call. His phone is off. I call his work directly. Guy asks who is calling and puts me on hold. I wonder if he's going to pick up knowing it's me. I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. He picks up (YEY!) and I ask him to reorient me. He says sweet, sweet things (like how he wanted to let me sleep in so he walked to the train in the freezing cold at, like, 5AM, and how he figured out how to fix our argument and that he's sorry- even if I've already decided it was my fault, which I was supposed to tell him in the car) and he tells me he'll call me later and we hang up and go about our day.

I have to pee like madness. MADNESS. Lesson learned.

But there's no time for that because I'm too busy bawling my eyeballs out because I'm still too traumatized by the fact that it's 6AM and it's as light as it is at noon outside and my boyfriend's gone. Fiancé...

Oh, and add to that that I totally didn't get snuggles this morning either. I woke up and none of my dogs cared that I was awake. I have no idea why. It's like they thought he'd moved out and were blaming me. Rightfully so.

I pulled myself together and realized that aside from the newly acquired crying headache, I am remarkably well-rested. Felt goooood.

Fast forward to four o'clock. My new sister posts a status that I think is funny, even if it's horrible, about how the "next time" anybody tells her she's adopted, can they tell her after midterms or something of the sort. It was funnier than I'm telling it. There were aliens and transvestites involved too. It was funny, so I put one of these under it: :D

And that's when the trouble started.

I got another ripping apart from my cousin (I'm still selfish and immature, etc etc) and after a couple of weeks of it and of one of my aunts going around "liking" her posts about how I'm miserable and want to ruin people's lives to spread my misery or whatever, I was done. Just done. So fuck it, I thought, and blocked the shit out of them all. Done and done. Aunts, my cousin who ripped me apart and... well... a couple of my uncles were already on my blocked list anyway. I didn't have the heart to block my ma though. Not yet. But she liked one of the comments too at one point in the past couple of weeks, so she's on thin ice. I also kept my new sister person.

But to be honest, it was a relief. I had cut all those people out of my life probably about fifteen years ago now and aside from a blip a few years ago when I was a moron and went to my Opa's 80th birthday or something (where I was treated like a leper for bringing my dogs), they were out of my life. And then facebook comes around and they find me and I wonder if it's a test in forgiveness. I'm older, wiser, less heated- maybe I can handle it, I thought.

But naw. Just naw.

If I want to be involved in a conversation were I'm being ripped apart, I'll have lunch with my middle brother. At least then I'll know that at the end of it all, he still loves me.

Maybe.

He definitely doesn't do it for shits and giggles anyway.

But naw. They were absolutely toxic all those years ago and they have not changed at all. So naw.

And it's a relief because I don't have to feel bad about not inviting them to my wedding. I don't even have to think about it anymore. And my ma, even if she wasn't directly involved in the recent arguments, she didn't own anything either. She's letting me be the scapegoat for her mess. That's just not right.

Anyway, so that was today. In a nutshell. Alternate universe day.

It ended nicely with a conversation with my new sister person in which I suggested she watch The Snow Walker and after she hung up, I made me some expired popcorn and watched it myself. I love that movie.

And at the end of the day, my guy is lying beside me ready for snuggles (he doesn't know that yet because he's dead asleep) and my doggies are sleeping quietly and I don't feel too gravesy today and yeah. Shit's ok.

It's all about the follow through...

2011-11-21T03:54:00.005-05:00

I don't know where I heard it, but somewhere at some point in my life, somebody said that when you're in a relationship, the arguments that recur are not about the relationship itself, but about something else entirely. And in the moment, it doesn't feel true at all. Who knows if it is even true? But let's go with it because that concept helped me figure out what was going on tonight.

My guy and I have a chore problem. He needs me to tell him what needs to be done and I need to never have to tell him what has to be done because I want a partner, not an employee. If it doesn't occur to him to do things on his own, I end up doing everything and resenting him for it.

But why don't I just ask for help? What is it about telling him what I need that affects me so negatively?

We talk about it (often) and the end result is the same: when it comes to chores, he just doesn't seem to know what I want him to do and when. I'll be clear (e.g. "The floors have to be washed,") and then when the weekend rolls around and he's worked a long week and dealt with my mood swings like a pro, I'll give him a reprieve (e.g. "No, don't wash the floors today. Take a day off."). And then I'll do my chores and he'll have taken the day off and at the end of it, I'll resent him and start to freak out about it. And then we'll have the same discussion again and he'll tell me he does plan on participating and the same thing will happen again.

Cyclical.

So tonight, after making supper, doing the dishes, making cookies (I didn't wash those dishes yet...), making my guy some tea, changing the sheets and vacuuming, I went for a drive to cool off and be alone for a while and the concept of these cyclical arguments being rooted in something apart from the relationship popped into my head and even though in the moment, what I was feeling was valid, it was true.

On the one hand, I want to take care of him. I know he works harder than me, works longer hours and commutes around an hour each way. He works way harder than I do. And then he comes home and has to deal with my mood swings. By the end of it all, he's exhausted (and highly under appreciated). I get that. That's why I do what I do. On a normal day, I don't resent him. On a normal day, I know that what I put in in chores (let's face it- I'm no... whatever those wives are called who do everything and have a spotless house) does not even come close to what he does at work, even if you add my work hours in there.

But we have a problem now because I'm sick. I need to have more time off, even if that sounds ludicrous. I need more time to sit and do absolutely nothing. I need more time to detach.

So let's say his time (work and commute) and my time (chores and work) are equal. I need to cut my side of things for the time being until I claw my way back into remission, so where does that work go? He's exhausted. I don't think he'll ever say anything about it, but I have a sneaky suspicion that the commute terrorizes him a little. I think being crammed on the train, surrounded in rude, obnoxious, selfish douchebags really bothers him. At the very least, it makes him considerably uncomfortable. So if that's the case, it's not a regular commute for him and it does contribute significantly to his fatigue and general life stress. But I could be speculating.

Anyway, the point is, who does those hours?

Being that he is the awesome guy he is, he does offer to do them. And I know he would do them if I asked. I know that if I said explicitly what I needed help with, he would do it.

But here is what makes me freak out: the follow through.

The minute he agrees to do something (literally, the minute), I start to panic. Outside of that minute, I know he will do it. The only time he doesn't is when things are really unnecessary (even if I think they're absolutely necessary, but I can't really give a reason why they are absolutely necessary other than "because it bugs me"...). Nevertheless, as soon as the verbal agreement is made, I'm on him like fungus on a jockstrap.

Anyway, so I'm in the car, remembering this bit about it not being about the relationship and it occurs to me that it is the follow through that I panic about and I go back in my history to all the times when follow through blew up in my face. Here are two significant ones:

- Empty promises from my ma (too many to write out), and then her telling me she loves me? If that's not a false declaration of love, I don't know what is. Anybody can say they love somebody if they never have to actually follow through.
- The person in this blog we refer to as "evil", who made all sorts of false assertions about us and dangled a tailor-made portrait of the future together before declaring it all a joke and revealing that he was just using me the entire time. Anybody can put on whatever façade is needed to manipulate somebody, especially when there is no intention for any sort of long term follow through.

In both of those instances, the words were there, but the follow through was replaced by brutal disappointment and even betrayal.

And so, in the car, I decided I am terrified of what happens when there is no follow through. Even with my ex, there was this looming lack of follow through. I rarely tested it because I knew that if I asserted my need for follow through on anything in our relationship, I'd either get criticized and verbally assaulted or simply get the boot.

There is just nothing good in my life that has ever come from a need for follow through.

This guy says he'll help me but needs me to meet him halfway by expressing what it is that I need him to help with, but I can't do it. I can't put in even more effort just to find out I'm alone anyway. I can't do it. It'll just hurt too much. It's just a thing that has been so abused in my little lifetime that I just can't cope with it anymore.

Except that every day, I have on my finger sparkly proof that he does follow through. He said he'd propose one day, and how many times did we fight about it before he did it? So, so many. Even the day he proposed, we had had a fight earlier in the morning about it. I told him something along the lines of how I hated not knowing where this was going and how he seemed to be just stringing me along, telling me what I want to hear with no intention to follow through on any of it. We'd argued about exactly that over and over in the month prior, all the while, he'd had hidden the ring in this house. The ring was in this building and I was freaking out on him about how he didn't have any follow through.

So yeah, if this is any indication, when the argument is cyclical and repetitive, odds are it has nothing to do with the relationship at all. Instead, in my case anyway, it's rooted in my own cynicism, brokenness, unresolved hurts and insecurities. I can't even tell you how many times in the past few weeks I've told him he can leave if he wants to because now, in the throes of gravesy mood swings, I don't see a reason why he'd stay. That's how bad it is- in my head, the odds of him following through (in spite of proposing) are so slim that I feel the need to give him outs every other day.

Honestly, I don't know how people resolve their junk without looking at their past. I really don't. All our major overreactions are buried in baggage and lingering pain. How are you supposed to fix your shit if you don't know why you do it?

If I didn't look at the root of all this, I'd be stuck on the idea that he just will never do what he says he's going to do and probably ultimately leave this relationship, even if I had intended on keeping him forever. That's how deep this self-destructive thing that is actually a complete non-issue in this relationship burrowed into it. And it would have sucked to have lost what I have with this guy to damage caused by other people long before him.

And it's weird too because in between my freak outs, I am actually really happy. Any other moment of the day, I am so grateful that he is who he is and he's my best friend and I wouldn't change a thing about him. And then I vacuum and BAM! panic city and I'm ready to throw everything out the window and never look back.

It's horrible because the thought of losing this life- losing him- hurts so much. The mere thought of somehow ending up in a place in my life where he is not around is devastating. That's part of the reason I did know to try to look past the relationship: the unwarranted, intense fear that triggered my "run away" defenses. I guess it's fairly safe to generalize that if something that is otherwise insignificant happens in a relationship and your first instinct is to get angry and reconsider your entire relationship, odds are a deep wounded fear was triggered. *shrugs*

Anyway, I probably said too much, but meh. At the end of the day, this guy is pretty fricken awesome. And if anything is proof of his follow through, it's the fact that he's still here after all my rabid mood changes over the past few weeks. Even I need a break from me and still, he's always here.

I'm going to sleep.

Outside, inside, inside, outside...

2011-11-19T03:36:00.001-05:00

There's this blog I read about a long distance romance, and even though it's been going on for a long time, there's still that beginning anticipation and uncertainty and you read the blog and the blogger is so graphic in her texts that you feel it and it's sweet and glowy and at the same time, it stirs up your cynical bits and you just know it isn't going to work out, but still, it's an amazing thing to witness, the sweet, innocent beginnings of two infatuated opposites.

And then this wave comes over me as I settle back into real life. Everything she is hoping for in this uncertain, clearly hopeless endeavor is exactly what I have lying next to me.

When I used to read that blog, I'd feel kind of hopeful, but at the same time, it stirred in me this pessimism after my own experience of that ilk and I couldn't see how this girl could not realize that all long distance relationships end the way mine did. And still, a part of me was slightly jealous too.

But now?

Now I'm jealous of me, if that makes any sense. There's the me in this relationship, this perfect (for me) relationship. And there's the me who reads blogs and who knows what's what in the universe and where things fit, and that me hovers on the outside, ever the misfit, wondering what it takes to make this feel real. What does it take to make this feel old glovey?

Do I want it to be old glovey?

Right now, I kinda do. Old glovey, where I can take him for granted enough to not worry about whether or not this disease (or more likely, my pessimism and victimization because of it) will cause him to lose all respect for me and leave. I don't want to think about him leaving seven thousand times a day. If he leaves, which he says he never will, I want to be caught completely off guard, even if that might hurt way more. But I know that will never happen because hovery me tends to overpower the comfy me. Hovery me is totally the root of my graves'.

Today, I called him at three thirty, wondering why he hadn't called me from his train yet, and he was at work, having his staff pint that he used to have every day and now rarely does on account of running for the train. And to be honest, I felt betrayed. Not because he was drinking (that's fine), but because he was having fun without me. He was somewhere being happy because of things that had nothing to do with me. And I immediately felt icky for feeling that way. But this is how it starts, no? If life is miserable outside the house, then he'll come home and I'll brighten his day. But if life is great and then he comes home to me, wallowing in this disease...?

That's when a man starts compartmentalizing his life and knowing where I am now, my compartment will be very tiny and isolated.

I do feel kind of alone in this. I guess I complain about feeling alone here in the blog anyway, but I'll make this different by saying, "but this is different". He doesn't want to read about my disease. He doesn't want to know all the horrible things it can do. He doesn't want to know how limited I am and what this is doing to me. And I know that's ok because for the first... well, until spring 2010, really, I did the same thing. I had had my disease for five years and never once did I research it and never once did I even ask if it had a name. I didn't want to know either.

But now I do know. And I want him to know because I want him to be able to decide things with all the facts about this disease.

On the other hand, I want him to decide things with all the facts about me, except that right now, I'm not me. Right now, I'm a giant whiny wuss.

I remember when I was dating, if I felt some sort of hesitation on the guy's part, I'd whip out my disease. I'd even use the "r" word about it even if I fricken hated that word because no, I wasn't in remission, I was fine and the two are (and always will be) mutually exclusive concepts in my brain. Remission means it'll come back. Mine wasn't coming back (even though I read tonight that the majority of the time, it does come back, but I didn't know that at the time), but still I used it only in that context, only to scare them away.

I did it with this guy too. Except he didn't seem to mind. And now, ironically enough, the shit I used as a threat to scare him away is the shit he has to live with every day.

I feel terrible about it.

If the theory of this is fodder to scare a boy away, what is the reality of this supposed to do?

So shitty.

I wish he had a blog so I could read what was going on inside his brain.

I'd want to know how he felt about these things:
- Me.
- Babies with graves'.
- What I should do for treatment.
- What the future looks like.
- The current situation (i.e. me becoming more helpless and wallowy) and the effect on his perception of me.

But I guess I should do what he says and go with the flow a little more because I really can't control whether or not he stays and I have to stop worrying about it too. If he leaves, I'll figure things out. I'll manage. And if he stays, I have to stop worrying about how quickly his opinion of me is declining.

I have a disease that makes me fairly useless right now. It's just how it is. I have to quit swimming against the current and be useless and let things resolve themselves on their own.

Hopefully how they resolve is by throwing outside me to the inside for good.

Goodnight.

Gravesly... A summary of things.

2011-11-19T02:34:00.003-05:00

Things I learned in the past 24 hours:

- Pregnancy suppresses the immune system.
- But often not completely and antibodies can cross from the mother to the fetus.
- In the case of Graves' disease, those antibodies act on the TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) receptors and stimulate the baby's thyroid to overproduce.
- Effects of that can be pretty horrible (preemie, still birth, very hyperthyroid baby, heart failure, etc).
- Thyroid hormones fluctuate depending on the stage of pregnancy and the stage of development of the baby's thyroid.
- Being the case, even if I was to get my graves' under control, pregnancy can actually be a cause of a graves' flare up.
- During pregnancy, RAI (Radioactive iodine) is never used due to the risk of cooking the fetus's developing thyroid. Surgery is only used as a last resort because of the risk to the fetus and is only performed somewhere in the middle of the pregnancy if antithyroid medications don't work well enough to avoid endangering the fetus.
- During pregnancy, Propylthiouracil (PTU) is the antithyroid drug of choice. The drug I'm on, methimazole (Tapazole) can cause birth defects in the first trimester.
- In anybody other than pregnant women, PTU seems to cause liver damage (including in kids).
- Methimazole might be resumed after the risks go down, but it does affect the fetus too. Not only that, when breastfeeding, minimal amounts are transferred to the baby too, more so with Methimazole than PTU. :/
- 8% of women develop inflammation of the thyroid after giving birth (this is all women, not just gravesy women). The inflammation causes excess thyroid hormone in the blood (which might trigger graves' disease in gravesy people, I would think).
- Graves' disease typically gets much worse in the first three months post-delivery. I guess that would make breastfeeding pretty well out of the question...

- RAI (Radioactive iodine) is the preferred treatment pre-pregnancy because of the risk to the vocal chords of a thyroidectomy (removal of all or part of the thyroid) and because the risks of hyperthyroidism during pregnancy are high.
- RAI seems to carry with it a risk of ophthalmopathy (an eye disease) and thyroid cancer in the distant future.
- 20% of people who do the RAI treatment have to do it again.
- 80% of people who have a successful RAI treatment are hypothyroid and have to take thyroid hormones (i.e. synthroid).
- After RAI treatment, a person has to stay away from people entirely for three days, pregnant women, children and pets for 8 (I think?) and they have to use disposable utensils for eating, only touch things that are disposable, flush the toilet 3 times after use, wash anything touched or used thoroughly and separately from other people's stuff, and of course, no physical contact for those three days.
- There seems to be an increased risk of thyroid cancer with RAI.

- In twins, there is only a 35% concordance for the disease. (If I read that right.) Where I learned diabetes is 66% dependent on genetics (i.e. if you have all the genes necessary for diabetes, you have a 66% chance of getting it), this particular disease is more dependent on a combination of factors, both genetic (they haven't figured out entirely what genes contribute to it) and environmental (in my case, namely stress).
- The above is a bit of a relief, but not entirely a surprise considering I'm the only person I know of in my family with an autoimmune disorder...
- This article from that same site discusses the overly complicated genetic issues involved in graves'...

- In a discussion at the factory the other day, the boss guy (who is the guy who is friends with my dad and who got me my job) suggested that due to the fact that some of our DNA might actually be foreign (namely due to a crossing of species early in our human genetic history), if those particular genes are somehow switched on, the body might react to the proteins that are made as if they are foreign bodies and therefore, trigger an autoimmune reaction. This tends to agree with the speculation that graves' can be triggered by a viral infection. Viruses incorporate into our DNA and trigger our own mechanisms to read their genetic code and produce the proteins that are harmful to us. In doing so, maybe the virus causes us to read the foreign DNA too, and once we've fought off the viral effects, the effects of the foreign proteins are still felt in the body and the body doesn't know how to react, which might end up causing even more of these proteins to be produced. Maybe. I'm just thinking out loud without all that much (if any at all) background in immunology.

- Water sources that are rich in sedimentary particles can be goitrogenic (I don't have a goiter, but it's good to know considering the Montreal area, as far as I know, is mostly sedimentary.

Ok, I quit for now.

Diseasedy: A stolen list.

2011-11-18T02:39:00.009-05:00

I found a pretty awesome gravesy blog and I decided to steal the meme from it, even if it was an old one so here goes:

1. The illness I live with is: Graves' Disease, an autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks the thyroid. (Verbatim her answer, since if I answered it, I'd have just said, "Graves'", so like, thank her for the explanation...)

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: August 2005 (I think), and again in July 2011.

3. But I had symptoms since: Probably at least 2004, if not 2002. This time, I had no symptoms and didn't see the graves' coming. (In hindsight, there were some, but they weren't too disruptive.) It was at most six months, I think? I'm lucky I'm so closely monitored.

4. The biggest adjustment I’ve had to make is: Trying to be more kind to myself rather than excessively critical about how things are and how I feel and how I react to both of those factors. Oh, and also running out of energy before being able to properly edit my blog. (So embarrassing sometimes.)

5. Most people assume: That it's not a big deal, that the effects created by the disease or by the drugs are things they wish they could have. Sorry, but no, you really don't want to sleep a couple hours a night, lose weight this way or conversely, sleep eleven hours in a chunk every single day as a result of the drugs. You really don't. Especially because you can't pick and choose what you get to experience and what you don't.

6. The hardest part about mornings are: um... mornings. Waking up to get my guy to the train is getting harder and harder. Some days, my muscles just don't want to do anything. It's like they're numb and weak and utterly useless. The only way to do it is to be aware that I am strong, that my muscles can support me and get me where I need to be, even if my body says otherwise.

7. My favorite medical TV show is: That one that starts with G. I'm so ashamed. :D

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is: I don't know. I would have said my laptop, but after having it shipped away for a couple of weeks, I can live without it. Can I say my car?

9. The hardest part about nights is: Well, the hardest parts are more related to DSPS rather than graves', so I'll skip this one. :D

10. Each day I take __ pills & vitamins: 1/2 a tapazole pill (2.5mg, for now. Last time I was on 4 a day + 4 beta blockers), 1000 IU of vitamin D and now, 1mg folate. (Prenatal vitamins made me crazy nauseous, so no. Maybe once in a while, but generally, no.)

11. Regarding alternative treatments: Skeptical. Skeptical of non-alternative treatments too. Everything has its dangers. Alternative meds are less-than-tested and pharmaceutical meds are tested but I feel bad results tend to be hidden.

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose: Graves'. I'd rather the known than the unknown right now.

13. Regarding working and career: I don't know. The first time I had graves', I wasn't working and I couldn't work. I was lucky. This time? I wish I could afford to not work. I wish I could not go through not having enough energy to do my work and feeling like it's looming and that I'm failing at it. None of those things help me with this. I also wish I could feel less pathetic about not being able to do a measly four hours a day. What kind of person can't work four hours a day? Exactly.

14. People would be surprised to know: Hmm. People generally aren't surprised around me, are they? I guess if people think I'm lazy on a regular day, they'd be surprised to know I don't like being this incapable. I actually like getting out of bed in the morning and doing things. They might not be the things you view as productive or meaningful, but they suit me fine. And this level of laziness right now hurts.

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been: Accepting (or not accepting?) that I failed at keeping myself calm enough to avoid this second go around. :(

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was: use it to convince myself to have babies. Now that I'm on that baby train, I kinda don't want to get off it.

17. The commercials about my illness: n/a

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is: being invincibile.

19. It was really hard to have to give up: my pride, I guess. Even if I see my endo every six weeks, I still feel like I'm faking. Last time, after nearly dying, it took my endo saying, "It was touch and go for a while there," for me to feel validated and genuine.

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is: whining? Hehe. Who am I kidding? That's an old hobby. Sleeping? :D

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would: Smile? Oh, no, probably walk around the house singing the Trololo song. YES. (Sorry for the ad.)

22. My illness has taught me: Life is short and you can't control everything and if you try to control everything, it just makes it that much shorter.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: When people try to paint things in a positive light, like being unable to do things is somehow a blessing in disguise. Perhaps it is, but let me determine that for myself - I don't need any coaching from you, especially if you have never had a lifelong illness. Totally keeping her answer for that one. The only thing worse than what she wrote is people saying, "It could be worse." Yeah? Well, it could be better. And the things you complain about? Yeah. This is probably worse than any of that. I mean, think about it- if I said to you, "It could be worse," this could be it. This could be your worse. (Unless you're [you know who you are] who has it worse than me. Then you're awesome and you're the only one(s) who can tell me it could be worse.)

24. But I love it when people: (believe it or not) tell me horror stories about people they know who have had graves'. It's like, "YES! It is hard! Yesss. I need a nap."

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: (I feel guilty for deleting her Bible quote...) I'm going to say n/a because it's my guy and my doggies who do it for me. God too, but that's a given.

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them: "Ah, shitty." And then my endo's number if they're local and maybe what tests to ask for.

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is: the fatigue? Is this supposed to be a positive response? :D I think it also amplifies how hard I am on myself.

28. The nicest thing someone did for me when I wasn’t feeling well was: Everything my guy does. I still don't believe that he doesn't see me as lazy and useless, but he does take care of me. He even offered to let me coach him while he changes my tires this weekend so I wouldn't have to do it (because right now, I am physically unable). <3

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because: Well, I'm like two months late for that and this has been mostly cathartic narcissism, so I won't degrade what they're doing by trying to justify it. :D

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel: like maybe I shouldn't have been so whiny? :D (Sorry.)

The gist.

2011-11-18T00:40:00.004-05:00

Snippets tied together to maintain context:

doctor: What's that shirt say?
me: "Here come the bastards." I wore it just for you! Hehe.
doctor: Why?
me: 'Cause you told me to have babies!
doctor: [chuckles]
me: I even stopped the patch!
doctor: WHAT?! Well, that's not good. We don't like that.
me: But you told me to have babies! You said "now!" so now it is.
doctor: [shakes his head] Is there a guy who will cause this pregnancy?
me: [waves engagement ring around] Yeah, I'm getting married next summer.
doctor: Next summer? So why not wait till then? Have honeymoon babies.
me: You said now! You said, "Why wait? Get on it now!"
doctor: I didn't realize you were getting married in the summer! That's fine. You're not that old. You can wait till the summer. I just didn't want you to wait two years or something. Now what are we going to do?
me: What do you mean?
doctor: If you're not on birth control, you might get pregnant anytime and if we're going to do the radioactive iodine, you can't be pregnant. Why would you go off birth control now?
me: I figured after these drugs are done, I could use babies to barter my way out of getting the radiation. I thought babies would fix this. [does an all-encompassing body hand gesture]
[pause]
doctor: When you're pregnant, your immune system is supposed to shut off, but after you have the baby, it'll kick start intensely and you'll have a huge flare up.
doctor: And if your immune system doesn't shut off when you're pregnant, you'll have to be on the tapazole and we don't want that while you're pregnant. It's not a danger, but it's not preferable to expose the baby to it.
me: So the radiation followed by synthroid every day is safer?
doctor: Yes.
me: Oh.
doctor: We have to get it sorted out first. If you do have a flare up while you're pregnant after we've cooked you, that won't affect you because you'll be cooked, but it could affect the baby.
me: Oh.
[pause]
me: So is there anything I can do on my own to reduce the autoimmune part?
doctor: [goes into a meditative position]
me: Oh.

So yeah.

Babies are off the table for about six months now. Or they're on the table immediately. It's kind of a one or the other thing.

Snippet #2, no idea where this fits chronologically. Somewhere after the shirt but before all the "your immune system will kill your baby" stuff.

doctor: So how are things?
me: I don't know. I'm exhausted and now I'm getting weepy too.
doctor: What do you mean by weepy? What upsets you?
me: Nothing. That's the thing. I just burst out into tears out of nowhere.
doctor: You realize you're a woman, right? [patient inside joke, probably makes him look bad, but I find it funny]
me: Hey, I'm not a real woman. I don't get weepy.

At this point, I remembered the first time I ever met him and I was on one hour of sleep a night and my blood pressure was crazy high and my pulse was insane and I was sweating like a donkey and I was so, so weepy. :D

doctor: Are you pregnant?
me: Haha, no. [It occurs to me that without birth control, I actually have nothing to back that statement] God, I hope not! I'm not ready.
doctor: Why'd you go off the patch then?
me: Because I have to wait a few months after going off the patch anyway so I-
doctor: Who told you to do that? [My gyno's name]?
me: No, people. [Gyno] told me I only had to wait three days.
doctor: [chuckles] And? What's the plan?
me: I don't know! You said now! What's the plan?
doctor: That's something you and your boyfriend have to decide.
me: But you said now!

*sigh*

I'm guessing when doctors tell normal people "now", they think about it for a while and start saving money and whatnot and two years down the road, they start to warm up to the idea. You can't tell me now and expect me to do it eventually. Naw.

I even bought the shirt!

It's sad that I have to do the radiation and that it probably won't fix everything either. But it is kind of a relief to be told to wait.

He also didn't think that my graves' would get worse with time, which was my gyno's concern. He thinks it's more of a steady thing, especially since I'm being followed closely. It's not like a defective thyroid that deteriorates with time. This is stress-induced autoimmunity and my thyroid works fine, aside from the overstimulation by my immune system.

Sucks to have to get radiation though. :(

So I'll have a broken nose that looks nothing like my real nose, fake ears, fake teeth and now a fake thyroid? Will anything about me be real by the time I get old?

Going to sleep. Or something.

There is no mention in this post that I found thirteen dollars and twenty-five cents in my work jacket today. It's just a bonus in the title.*

2011-11-17T02:48:00.000-05:00

My blogger edity screen is still blue. -.- Affects my train of thought.

One of my earliest childhood memories is running over to my dad in a store and grabbing onto his leg (like tiny kids do), except a few seconds later, my dad walked over and pried my grip of death off this strange lady's leg, apologizing profusely the whole time.

I don't know why I remembered that tonight, but it flashed through my brain when I was explaining to T how my family's having another sort of intervention, only this time, it's of the caring variety.

Catches me way off guard.

Too many things on my plate, they say. But even before that, last night, I enumerated them with my guy and I decided on this list:

1. Marrying my guy.
2. Buying a cottage.
3. Babies.

I suppose I left out graves', but that's not really something I have to worry about. As my doctor says, "That's my job." So that's his job. There's nothing I can do about it other than loosen the grip the stress of things has on my neck and upper back.

Last week, I didn't work till Thursday. I think I worked a bit before then, but the bulk of my work started Thursday. And I think I needed that. I needed the time off. Hooky time. In being at my boss's disposal at all times, I've lost my ability to have free time and in doing so, I've lost... um... it's hard to explain, but it's like this glow of freedom I have around me wherever I go. I have to get that back. And that's what playing hooky last week was for. I did all my work, but I just put it out of my brain until I had no choice but to do it. I did it Monday too, but work was a little more loomy because I knew I'd have to go to the factory all this week.

But basically, here's how it breaks down:

Above all else, I want to marry this guy. But like he said as we discussed the list, we don't want to do it in a hasty way that we'll regret later. We do want to do it right and make it as special to us as we can. And that means buying a cottage. Ideally, anyway. So those two go together.

And the babies? Well, the way I see it, my doctors are pushing me to have babies as soon as possible and the rest of the world says if you wait till the right time to have babies, you will never have them. Nor will you ever be ready. Nor will the timing make anything particularly easy (or even easier). You just have to do it.

If it was up to me, I would go back in time, meet my guy in high school that fateful day when I vaguely remember seeing him in the hallway, fall in love with him then (in spite of all my deep-seeded anger things), live in sin for eons until we were ready to get married, marry him, then take a few years to be married and then at the ripe old age of thirty-one, start considering babies.

But I'm not Stephen Hawking and I can't go back in time or alter the universe. So this is where we are and I'm thirty-one now and this relationship is still early, in spite of its foreverness, and I have a disease that might be fixed with pregnancy and I have a disease that might get worse with time and might adversely affect my babies and the chances of that increase the longer I wait.

That's how it is.

So I figure I either decide right now that I don't want babies, that it's not right to bring a child into the world the way it is with the potential trouble my genes might create (although, I'm fairly certain my graves' is not genetic since I'm the only family member who has had the autoimmune aspect of things as far as I know), that I am too selfish and flighty to create an individual who will depend on me fully for a couple of decades and partially for a few more after that and I take the radioactive pill and condemn myself to a lifetime of medication OR I decide that in order to create a circumstance in which the odds are the highest for success and both my health and my babies' health, I start the process of having them right now. If I choose to have babies, it is in no way a guarantee that my graves' will go away, but it is one of the only potential options other than the radioactive pill.

So that's that. And to be honest, I would like my guy to be as involved in this baby concept as he is in the other two, but I think he's having a bit of trouble with it lately, now that it has become a more tangible reality. I don't want to make this decision on my own. I don't want to pressure him. I want him to weigh things as much as I have and help me decide what's best for us and potential babies (if any at all).

Because the truth is, we do have to face these things. Even tomorrow, while I'm getting my blood drawn, I have to face them. That is just the reality of where I am right now.

I am also in the reality where I can't stir cookie dough without becoming quickly exhausted. My mixer broke on the weekend or something and I have to make do because we asked my guy's parents for a new one for Christmas (a crazy one, but we'll see because I feel so fricken guilty asking them for that), so I mixed my cookies by hand, but by the end of it, once I figured out I'd made a mistake in the ingredients, I added what was missing and had to get my guy to stir it in. I just had nothing left. My shoulders cramp up so fast. I hate it. I don't know what it is that causes the cramps, but it's shitty.

And I'm exhausted all the time anyway. I wake up and it feels like I've woken myself up two hours earlier every day. And when I wake up to drive my guy, it's more and more brutal every day. Some days, I wonder if I'll be able to wake up at all. You know? Like it is so, so exhausting that I wonder if I can actually keep my body from falling asleep even before I get out of bed.

Anyway, I'm going to sleep. I have to wake up early to get the aforementioned blood drawn. Here's hoping I pass these tests this time around... *sigh*

*And I will spend it on post-blood test hot C and a cookie. Yeah!

Ramblies of a girl who keeps ending up overly drowsy while blogging...

2011-11-16T03:02:00.001-05:00

First, the stuff I started with yesterday and never finished:

First, Fluevog's got mary janes.

Second, they also have a design contest, which I've been informed, is a sleazy way of getting graphic designers to submit their awesome work free, which is lame, especially when the company can afford to pay them properly. They could at least make the prize the amount it would have cost them to hire a graphic designer. At least.

Third, I've never tried any of their shoes on, so I don't know if they're comfy or not.

And now for today's.

My blogger window is light blue. This is a new, and therefore unwelcome, development (change is bad! Baaaad!).

This made me hurt in a bunch of different ways.

And Boo has been nauseous for the past few hours. *sigh* I thought we might make it one week without a doggy illness, but no. I gave him an American Gravol, even if Americans seem to not know what gravol is (at least not in the south), even if they have an equivalent hidden among the ample over the counter meds...

He drank a ton after that, so here's hoping it dissolves quickly and more importantly that he doesn't react badly to it since so many drugs we try on him end up having opposite effects. Gravol is supposed to make him less nauseous and more sleepy. So far, the sleepy seems to be happening, which is awesome since that's the part that usually ends up backwards.

Anyway.

I'm exhausted. Again. I was woken up twice this morning- once by the stupid diabetes clothing drive thing even though they prank called me last night too and once by the Purolator guy delivering a thing I got from my reward points. I'm being intentionally vague because I'm not sure if we'll keep it or give it away as a Christmas gift. I'm not sure anybody appreciates this sort of thing as much as I do, so I'm not sure anybody would like it as much as I would, even if it's way bigger than it was supposed to be, which could be good for certain purposes...

Yeah, so the Purolator guy came and I rushed to get dressed and ran down the stairs, moving several doggies out of the way. When I opened the door, Purolator guy made a joke about my name that actually made me laugh. I think it's the first joke ever about my name that made me laugh, and I realize now that it only made me laugh because the part he made fun of was my last name. Irony, you know? So now you know- if somebody has a weird first name and you have an overwhelming urge to comment on it, say something about their last name instead. They'll never see that coming.

Boo is up again.

And now he's down with a big sigh. Sighs are good. They mean life is hard, but not too hard. Relaxing hard. The licking is starting again though.

Come on, gravol!

I love my Boo. What I learned tonight is even if I promise to stay up all night if he needs me to stay up all night, I'm fucking exhausted and can't keep my promises. If I wake up and his soul is gone, I will have two such regrets to live with for the rest of my life.

On that note, goodnight.

Sunday ramblies of a potential maulee...

2011-11-14T05:33:00.008-05:00

I'm extra weepy today. I think it was a combination of my aunt stopping by with my dad and talking about the wedding plans and I showed her my dress and stuff and then later tonight, I was foraging for candy and I thought about making a cake and I thought about how we decided to make cake balls for the wedding and earlier in the day, my aunt said I should rethink my buying flowers in bulk and making bouquets myself idea because there would be too much on my plate that close to the wedding, and as I looked into the cupboard on my forage, it occurred to me that this is the one time in my life where not having a mom affects me. And I closed the cupboard, walked to the bedroom, and crawled into bed beside my guy and decidedly had a small meltdown on him. I think it's the only time in my life I've ever felt like I was missing something in that regard. I've never felt like I lacked something I should have had, because I never had it. I never knew what having a mom was like, so how could I know what I was missing? But then, when you're overwhelmed by your wedding things and you're supposed to make cake balls and you're supposed to wrap bouquets, who should be there at your side to take the load off?

My guy quickly reminded me that I have my dad and his wifey (who is eager to help) and his mom and his dad and my bridesmaids and my brothers. I'm not without support or without resources.

After my aunt saw the dress, it somehow came up that my doctors are pressuring me to have babies (probably as a result of me pointing out that there's room for babies in my dress), and so I told her about the graves' and she decided that I had too many things going on at the same time. Her solution, I think, was to put off the wedding. To do one thing at a time.

My solution in reaction to that is to realize that all these pressures are a luxury. They are a gift I never thought I would have. I never wanted babies, nor did I ever expect to have the kind of man with whom I could have babies. All of this- the wedding, the babies, the cottage, the life- is in consequence to this guy I love loving me back so perfectly and wholly, so they should all be a sort of celebration of that fact, you know? They aren't independent events that should be wrought with worry and complication. They're going to grow out of this thing we already have built together. And if stuff doesn't work out, if the wedding plans crash and burn and we can't have babies and can't afford a cottage, we'll still have this thing we built. We'll still have everything we need, which is everything I never dreamt far enough to even fathom.

I mean, when a girl lies awake in the night, angry at the world, aimless and outcast, why would she ever picture herself in the basement learning how to play the didgeridoo as explained by her sweet and amazing man who is upstairs on a different didge?

That's just absurd.

And really, all the things I wanted? They're absurd too.

I cry every day now. Every day. At least once. The fucking mood swings are horrible. And every time I cry, he takes care of me. Whatever new reason I come up with out of the blue to be devastatingly upset, he's there as if it was the first. (And writing that makes me weepy too.) That's all I ever wanted. And all I ever wanted was a guy who read my blog. And this one does that and encourages me to write more too. And I wanted a guy who never uttered the words, "I want to talk to you, just not every day," and I got this guy who not only doesn't say them, but says the opposite, "I want to talk to you every day. I love talking to you."

And we laugh at our faults and our mistakes, and he doesn't complain when I'm up all night, even with the tappa tappa tappa on the keyboard right beside him ("I would have killed for tappa tappa tappa." Had to stick that in there...). And we fight all flamey (because that's what fighting with me is like) and instead of resolving things by compromise, we resolve them by realizing the entire thing was either a misunderstanding or caused by the above mentioned faults and mistakes we end up laughing about later on. We admit when we're wrong and admit where we need to grow, even if sometimes that growth is slow to come.

I got everything I wanted down to the last detail. I really don't know what else he could have that I'd want that he doesn't have already.

Anyway. 'Nuff about the weepy.

In other news, some furry beast peed on my back porch tonight. I figured out it was a dog because Littles decided to do her dominant bitch three-legged pee thing on it after Boo smelled it for eons. A couple of hours later, Boo started barking rabidly at the back door and there he was, a sheltie about to pee on the same spot. I moved Boo out of the way (with brute force because he was a persistent little monster) and went outside only to have this sheltie, who shall be non-affectionately referred to as "shithead" for the rest of this post, if you don't mind, bark loudly at me while standing in the middle of my lawn.

I stood at the top of the stairs and shithead just kept barking, louder and louder. It was already around one in the morning and no doubt my neighbors were going to think this was my responsibility. I went back in the house, unsure of what to do. Of course, as soon as I was inside, shithead was at the door again, taunting Boo. I put my shoes on and a coat and went back out. He barked louder and louder and throatier and throatier.

I remembered seeing barky shelties a couple houses down from me across the street, so I decided to go over there. I rang the doorbell and a woman in a morning coat answered. I apologized seven hundred times and explained the situation...

It wasn't her dog. She had poms. I swear in my memory they were shelties.

Anyway, I apologized some more and she said it was fine, they weren't sleeping and didn't have to work in the morning either. They said shithead probably lived in the trailer park and wandered into our neighborhood.

I went home and decided to go into the backyard to see if he was still there. Shithead started to bark at me when I got to my driveway. What kind of asshole barks at somebody when it's not even their property? Like, go home! Why are you staying if you're scared or whatever? This is my fricken land!

He started snarling. Like, hardcore. I talked in a low soothing voice and the shithead charged me. I got my kicking foot ready and I was seriously intending on booting the shit out of that dog if he came near me. He charged up to about three feet away and then backed off, still snarly and barky. So throaty. What a freaky shithead. He charged me again, and I quickly discovered I couldn't break eye contact with him or he'd pull this shit. What a psycho. He didn't respond to anything. If I tried to scare him, he just got worse. When I tried to talk to him, worse still. Stomping? Worse. Everything goaded him on.

I walked slowly backwards to my porch steps, maintaining my footing in case I needed to boot the shit out of this shithead. At the top of the steps, I shut the gate, and the whole time shithead just kept barking and snarling, still in the middle of my lawn.

I stomped on the porch and shithead snarled even louder. I've never met such a freaky nutjob of a dog in all my life, including the foster I had with the suspected brain tumor...

Anyway, eventually, he disappeared into the bush (finally), and Boo calmed down only now, after the gate's been shut a good three hours. That's how stressful it was.

Gah. So I've been up till now trying to calm down after that.

What a crazy shithead.

Goodnight.

More roast beast....

2011-11-13T03:24:00.000-05:00

him [in Homer's "are you ready to laugh?" tone]: Are you ready to parent!?
me: Um. That came out totally wrong.

He thought about it for a second and we both burst out into the usual pre-babytime nervous laughter.

Soon enough, we were on the road with two doggies and a wedding dress in the car, on the way to his parents'.

Right before the first speed bump on the road leading to their house, I got this rush of panic. I mean, I was panicked before that, but this was an intense, "I can't do it" rush.

me: Paniiiiic.
him: There's nothing to panic about.
me: Paniiiic.
him: It'll be ok. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do.
me: But I can't leave.
him: You can leave if you want to leave. If you have to go outside, just go.
me: But then everybody will worry and when I go back in it'll be even worse.
him: No, it won't because I'll explain everything.

Somewhere along the day, he'd explained to me that I was just going to have to get used to the idea that people care about me and in consequence, I'd have to stop panicking when they show concern. Easier said than done.

And so, I nervously went in after some doggy wrangling, trying to stay calm. I sat on the couch with him and Boo was a good distraction, playing in his weird way with Ella, the red dobie, who also plays in an equally weird way. When they stopped playing though, Boo was pretty well freaking out the entire time, which made it worse for me. Meanwhile, Littles just stayed in the kitchen all night. When everybody was in the livingroom, she'd lay down in the doorway, ensuring she'd never miss anybody crossing through to the place with all the food.

We talked a lot, I guess, especially after dinner. Before dinner, it was about wedding things and cottage things and things that made my blood pressure rise, but somehow, when I sat down to eat, I was ok. That never happens. Eating is usually the trigger for extreme panic.

I think what changed was what was out in the open. Before going, they'd called to ask what else we wanted to eat and I said not to bother with me because I was panicky, and my guy transmitted the message and his mom asked why I was panicky.

me: Just tell her I'm diseased.
her: What did she say?
my guy: She said to say she's got graves' disease.

Turns out they knew what it was on account of the granny having had it pretty badly. "She could barely walk because of it," my guy's dad said. I don't know how that would happen with graves'. I mean, the symptoms are diverse enough that you can have pretty well anything happen, so I don't doubt that it's possible, but I just hadn't really considered all the possibilities that the smaller symptoms could become.

When I was first diagnosed back in the day, I was told nothing over a slow walk because at the rate my heart was beating along with my skyrocketing blood pressure, I was at a very high risk for a heart attack. I remember going to school and having to take the elevator (nobody on the campus I was on ever takes the elevator except the wheelchair peeps) and feeling like an invalid. (The lazy in me has to write that I did fully appreciate the free ride though. :D)

Anyway, at supper, it came up somehow that I exhaust my guy with my rabid mood swings and they were all, "Really? Do you get bad mood swings?" and I was all, "Yeah, pretty bad," or something of the like, and I think getting that out, just voicing that I am just generally not ok, took the pressure off me.

It's kind of like how in high school, if I was having a bad hair day, I could tell one person, "Man, my hair's so bad today," and then I would completely stop caring for the rest of the day. It was as if just because one person knew, everybody else knew too and the openness of it made it fine.

After the roast beast, there was zucchini loaf and some sort of meringue thing, and we moved to the living room, where the topic of conversation was how much trouble we were as children. Turns out his mom was probably the worst kid among us.

Somewhere along the way, his ex got brought up. I don't remember the context (oh, right it was about how she wouldn't let him play video games), but as soon as her name was mentioned, his mom sighed and rolled her eyes and said she seemed so controlling. His dad began to explain how from their perspective, my guy was absolutely miserable when he was with her. Just a wreck, he said. And his mom added that she was glad when this girl was gone. And while I hate that my guy was treated so badly, the part of me that has been broken and uncertain the past couple of weeks lit up. And later on tonight, he jokingly scolded me for being so gleeful at this revelation.

But it felt so good.

In the car on the way home, I told him I know how I am. I know how hard this situation is on him and with my moods so flamey, I didn't see how I was any different than her (and she was bad). But this? This conversation with his parents showed me that even on our worst day (or in the midst of our worse era), we're nothing close to that. Our baseline together is much higher for both of us than it was before.

And I remember him telling me a while back that his dad had said that he looked happy and he was glad my guy was finally happy.

So when you add the two together?

Glee.

I just wish I could remember this in the harder times.

him: Why are you so gleeful?
me: Because! Do you know what this means?
him: What?
me: It means that you're lucky to have me too. TEEHEE!
him: I've told you that before.
me: Yeah, but not lately!
him: I'm always lucky to have you.

Teehee.

Anyway, I'm exhausted. Need to sleep.

One more.

On the way out, his mom told us we should start putting money away for a pension because we might not have one from the government. I said our generation was trained never to count on the pensions anyway.

my guy: We're just going to rely on our inheritance to use as a pension.
his mom: What?!

We high fived, snickering mockingly.

his dad sounding jokingly spiteful]: Well, for my retirement, I plan on spending all that money.
his mom: Yeah, I plan to travel.

They burst out laughing and high fived each other. It was pretty funny.

Anyway, I keep dozing off, so goodnight. I'll fix this in the morning...

On how many people it takes to change a lightbulb...?

2011-11-12T04:14:00.006-05:00

First, the anthem of my youth. I haven't been able to listen to it in, like, fifteen years on account of it stirring up all sorts of bad memories. Now... it kind of makes me well up if I listen to it too closely. I really did feel so alone back then. And I was probably depressed. And I know I wasn't keen on living either. In that lame section of the yearbook for our graduating year below each person's picture, there was a little questionnaire thing we had to fill out and all I remember was the words to remember me by (or whatever it was) and I put Smashing Pumpkins lyrics from a different song, "Dead eyes, are you just like me?"

I wonder why nobody ever reached out to me. Or maybe they did, but I was too deep in whatever I was wallowing in to notice.

It's weird to listen to a song of that era that was so important and so defining of my situation when I'm now in this situation.

It bothers me how no matter how bad things used to be, as they get progressively better with time, they don't get better. The problems of today, however tiny and pointless compared to past ones, seem disproportionately affecting.

I listen to this song, Soma, and feel how alone I was and it was so alone that it's hard to describe. It's not even a loneliness, but a pure aloneness. Isolation. It was a comfortable sort of isolation, as if I was wrapped in this heavy blanket that kept me apart from everybody and everything around me. My own little world where I understood me and everybody else was an acquaintance. It was this sort of permanent aloneness, as though I knew it would never ever change. It was just the way things were for me.

And tonight, after probably two weeks of battling with my guy because of my insecurities, partly brought on by this disease and the meds and partly underlying things bubbling up to the surface, I just feel like I've hit this point where there's nothing I can do. I can't make him love me, and I especially can't make him love me the way I want him to, or even the way I need him to. And it feels like the only option becomes stifling how I feel and I'm not good at that anymore. I'm not good at it because I got used to not being so alone anymore.

I'm not even sure it is insecurity. I don't think that's the word for it. It's more like if my world is a dark place and you intend to shine some light into it, every so often, you have to change the bulb. If it burns out and everything fades to dark again, even if there's the body of a light-producing organism there, it's still in the dark and I can't see it. You can tell me it's there all you want, but if it's not lit, my world will still be dark and that is all I will know of dark and light. Memories of light quickly fade away when everything turns to black.

And yes, my perception shouldn't be dark and black. Sure. But it is. For whatever multitude of reasons, that's where I am, that's where my baseline is and apart from that, things are shut off. You know what I mean? I can't fake understanding that somebody loves me. I can't do it. If my baseline is that I'm unlovable, then I am not lovable, which doesn't mean you can't love me, but it means if you're trying to get through, there are only certain ways to do it and even then, when the dust settles, I'm back at my default setting. And yes, it's something I have to fix, but as far as I have tried, I can't do it. So it becomes something we just have to work around.

I don't want to be alone. That's not to say single, but meaning I don't want to wrap myself in my blanket of isolation again, comforted by the knowledge that even if nobody will ever be my soulmate, I am gifted at being alone. I want somebody to get through.

And this guy did get through. He emailed regularly and spoke to me often and through all means possible, he shone his light at me, scalding my cynical isolated retinas. He did make me feel loved.

But lately, I have been giving him a really hard time, especially since starting these pills, and he stopped. It's like the bulb went out and he's too (understandably) exhausted to change it. And so, the world turns back to its soft shade of black...

Until I put that song on.

It's not nearly as dark as it used to be, but without knowing how deep the old black was, I would have thought there would have been no difference. I think that might be one of the worst things I have ever taken for granted so far- that my baseline moved so much farther up than where it used to be. I think even at my wallowiest right now, I'm lifetimes away from anywhere I thought I would be back then. This sadness compared to that is a light in itself. Compared to the light my guy shines into my life when he's not exhausted by me it may be dim, but it's way more intense still than I would have thought had I not taken this obscure trip down scary lane.

I don't even know what made me do it. Trying to stay awake to work, I guess. Yesterday, I listened to Gish, which is Smashing Pumpkins' first album, because it doesn't carry the bad memories the other albums do, simply because every time I bought it (which was three times), the tape/cd would die on me for whatever reason, so I never really got to listen to it as much as the other ones. (Who buys an album three times? This is why we have mp3s now.)

Anyway, I have no idea if any of this makes any sense, but it does to me, so I guess that's all that matters for this sort of thing.

I know he loves me. I just have a really hard time feeling it. Absorbing it, I guess is a better phrase for it. But to expect somebody to have the endurance to constantly flood me with affection such that a tiny fraction might sink in is unrealistic.

And that's where I end up alone, pretending (badly) that I'm ok.

I can't wait to get off these pills. I just need to know once more where they end and I begin because these days, the lines are blurring and I'm starting to wonder.

Goodnight.

What it's like to live inside my head for a minute...

2011-11-11T01:55:00.004-05:00

This morning, my guy heard the coffee machine go off at around five ten, an hour before he was supposed to get up. He got up and woke me up and I asked him what was up and he said the alarm hadn't gone off. I looked over at it and said, "It's five ten." He explained that the coffee machine beeped and I said I'd left it set for five since every now and then, he takes the early train and it's just easier to leave it that way than reset it every time.

He crawled back into bed and fell asleep again as I gleefully pondered the awesomeness that is getting to spend another unexpected hour snuggled up to my guy.

The hour passed and he got up to do the doggies and stuff and when he came to wake me up, I was crabby as hell.

As my feet hit the cold floor and my skin exposed to the chilly out-of-blankets air, I thought all resentfully, "Man, I wish that one day, just ONE DAY, he could be all, 'Oh, nevermind. Go back to sleep for just a little while longer.' Just once!" followed by a string of colorful expletives.

Also, I got my "Here come the bastards" tshirt (finally, after nearly a month and miraculously intact after being shoved into a gnarled up package that wasn't even taped shut). Turns out it makes me look like I have... like... fake... like... um... it's just cut funny...?

Here's a tiny (but not as tiny as I'd hoped) picture to show you what I mean.

With that shirt, there should be bastards around in no time.

Back to work.

[Also, one of these days, I'm going to get my hair styled so I look like a normal person again, rather than the current "freaky shut in" look I'm strutting around with right now.]

[All I need is a beard and a manifesto.]

Short and wishy-washy.

2011-11-10T03:24:00.001-05:00

This hurts my heart tonight. I haven't seen so much as a flurry.

Also, I blogged this a couple days ago, I think, but never posted it, so lemme get it out of the way:

And so it's settled. After years of keeping this ridiculous secret that should have never been a secret to begin with, my baby sister outs it and my middle sister asks me for the truth and I tell her the truth and now I'm the family scapegoat. It blows my mind.

It blows my mind mostly because I think I'm the only one who thought it was absolutely ridiculous and just plain malicious to maintain this secret and every now and then, I'd confront a family member about it and ask them why the hell nobody is telling my cousin slash middle sister what's what and I'd get shot down and told things to deter me from getting involved.

And now that it's out, it's like they're trying to pin all the stupidity that I never agreed with in the first place on me. Like I'm the one who did this horrible thing to her. I'm the one who was selfish.

Since when is the truth selfish? That's what I'd like to know. Since when is it not selfish to presume that withholding the truth is somehow altruistic?

'Nuff said, I think. Except that in replying to my ma's question on facebook as to my new middle sister's email address, I invited a reply saying she's coming into town and wants to see me.

What for?

I don't know.

I'm deciding that I have to bite the bullet and be undiplomatic in the wedding invitations. Even if I was to try to please everybody, the end result would be the same- somebody somewhere would be insulted or hurt because they weren't invited.

The hard thing is the list changes all the time. I know too many volatile people whose friendship seems so fleeting. One day, they're invited without a doubt and the next day, they're calling me irrevocable names. It messes me up.

I still want my dad's side of the family there, minus some who will not contribute positively to the day. I don't want any of my ma's family there except my new sister, depending on how things go there. I honestly don't know her well enough to know whether we get along. And friends? Well, that changes constantly. You have the old friends you never really talk to but who mean a ton to you and then you have the old friends you've drifted apart from who you don't miss at all. And then you have the people you talk to every day who are more important than you realize and the people you fight with on a regular basis who you doubt completely. You have the people you've never been honest with who will undoubtedly be insulted if they're not invited because they have no idea you feel the way you do and you have the people with whom you can be completely yourself. Then you have the demanding friends (the ones who have invited themselves and/or have particular requests for the day already) and the invisible friends (the ones who care about you but never really say anything because they don't know how).

Who does a girl invite?

Dunno. But I have to sleep. Exhausted for no good reason.

Goodnight.

It'll all turn out in the end...

2011-11-08T03:32:00.001-05:00

I feel better today. Everything went wrong all day, but it ended well, so that's all that counts.

I woke up to find no doggies around except Jemma. But even Jemma, lying on the floor on the other side of her sofa, wouldn't come see me. I eventually gave up and got up only to find Jemma had thrown up in her sleep, which is worrisome. I fixed all that up and brought my doggies out, cleaned my yard for a while, came inside and distracted myself a little from the goings on of the morning before getting up again to make my breakfast. I had no bread left, so I went to the store to get some.

By the time I got back, it was somewhere around one and my appetite was quickly fading. I made my breakfast and drank my tea and decided I had to wash and wax my car on account of seeing some abnormal rust spots on the hood. Not good. My car isn't old enough for that sort of crap. :/

I called my guy to assess his train situation and got up to get everything ready to wash my car and Jemma threw up again, only this time, it was partially on one of my shirts in the bathroom. Good times. Especially since before today, she'd only thrown up two or three times in her entire life.

After that, Boo decided he wanted to be tied up outside, but just before I opened the door, that malamute who is infatuated with Littles showed up at the door, which drove Boo insane. I'm starting to wonder if he is the asshole husky-type dog who used to terrorize Boo through the windows. Boo's reaction to him certainly made it seem so...

I called the dog's owner again (third time in not that long of a time span) and tied him up on the clothesliney leash thingy outside and went about my business, muttering about how lame it was to have to put my plans on hold because they're too dumb to keep their dog in check.

I washed my car like the fury and waxed it like the fury and got my guy five minutes late like the fury. I told him I'd booked an appointment for Jemma tonight and so we spent the evening pretty much in limbo waiting for leaving time ("limbo" meaning eating too many experimental cake balls, which were tasty but slightly deadly).

We left for the appointment, settling Boo and Littles down with a tiny bone each, and got there with a minute or two to spare.

The lady before us went into the exam room without an animal. I looked at my guy with my "this is not good" look and soon a kitty started to scream fairly loud screams and I overheard the vet tell her, "We're really doing him a favor," probably explaining that the kitty was in a lot of pain or something like that. The woman came out in tears, got her kitty's crate and put his lifeless body in it. I guess she'll bury him herself. It's so devastating to watch that, you know? We'll all have to do it, but man...

We were next and I was nearly in tears already, but a quick exam showed Jemma seemed to be ok otherwise, so he gave her an antibiotic shot and anti-vomiting shot and said he wouldn't bother with blood tests yet. She should get better soon. If not, we have to go back and reassess.

But for now, she will get better soon. Which is why today is ok.

She slept most of the evening since the appointment, which is good, I think.

Meanwhile, people on the internets seem to all be coming down with the flu, except it's not influenza but the other kind people mis-name. So in spite of being hungry since about nine thirty, I didn't eat anything and I wonder if I'll ever eat again. I hope my guy is careful for the next little while when he's immersed in dirty public transit people because I seem to catch everything he brings home. :(

I wonder if I'll ever eat again... Doubtful, I say.

Anyway, I should go to sleep. Goodnight.

User error...

2011-11-07T01:38:00.005-05:00

First, this (The Knife).

Second, I think I have a glue hangover. Luckily for me, in spite of the empty naproxen pill bottle in the cupboard, there was a mystery naproxen pill left over on the diningroom table. Like any normal person undergoing the effects of glue withdrawal, I obviously took it. Hopefully it was neither expired nor exposed to a variety of elements that might render it harmful.

Third, why do we suck so bad at loving people? And by "we" obviously I mean me. Or maybe you. I'm not sure. Anyway, there are any number of examples I could pull out of the air, but let's do three short ones.

A) Why are we aloof friends? We don't keep up with each other's lives and as a result, when push comes to shit hitting the fan, we have no idea what to say or do to make things better. Or worse, when the shit that's hitting the fan is actually good stuff, sometimes all we seem to be able to do is say the wrong thing, subconsciously hoping that somehow, by dimming their glow, we might find a way to restore our own.

No such luck.

B) Why are we distant relatives? Why don't we see our relationship as having more potential for depth? Why is it that of all the people who have crossed or will cross our path, family people are the ones we take most for granted? Is it because we don't feel we've met them by chance? If you think about it, they're far more chancy than anybody else. I mean, meeting through common interests is far less unlikely than meeting through a variety of combinations of ancestral DNA. Why were we put into this family? Why these people? What is it we're supposed to do with them? Why are we so quick to write them off? Why are we so slow to write them off?

There's always a dichotomy there. In some cases, we're much quicker to forgive than we normally would be with people outside family and in others, we're far less likely to forgive than we would with even strangers.

*shrugs*

C) Relationships. Why do we ruin them?

I love this guy. Ok, so I can't be an asshole and be all, "You have no idea what this feels like," because chances are, if you're lucky, you do (even if from the outside, Judgy McJudgerson (aka me) totally thinks your relationship doesn't even compare).

Just kidding.

Except that you know I'm not because you feel the same way about other couples around you, but I'm the only one who seems to ever say it out loud. Doesn't everybody at some point see the dynamic of a relationship in their surroundings and think, "Thank God I'm not married to him!" or "How does she even put up with that?" No? Still just me? Fine.

But we are special. My guy and I are quirky. I'm weird and unpredictable and he's weird and unpredictable and he totally can predict what I'm going to do a lot of the time and I can totally predict what he's going to do after he's already done it. See? We match.

Ok.

So I lie on his shoulder and he strokes my hair and I look at him and I love him so much more than I've ever loved anybody and I want to marry him and have his babies and grow old with him and spend every minute of every day with him and take care of him and make sure he has everything he needs and make him cake to spoil him and avoid making cake because I want him to be healthy and clean his burns from work and stroke his hair when he's sleeping and hug him when he looks sad and turn his frown upside down and make him laugh at the most inopportune moments and make him laugh when he just needs to laugh and just make sure that he's happy and healthy and satisfied.

Except that I ruin it. I go into the kitchen and work myself up into a frenzy and blow a gasket and release the fury all through the house and I go find him and he's sitting/lying/standing there with that look he gets when I've just crushed his spirit and it crushes my spirit and I'm faced with the brutal knowledge in no uncertain terms that I am a horrible person who crushes the man I love the most in the world.

Why can't I just love him? Why do I have to let shitty small bullshitty things get in the way of that? Why is life such a frustrating chore with no relief or release except though smashing into his crumple zones?

I went downstairs to the sulk room (it's for sulking), and I realized that there is no reason for him to love me. None at all. I fail at everything I do, I make his life miserable more often than not, I'm useless and pathetic because of this disease and my general underlying self-loathing, I'm off the patch too now so there's the looming threat of pregnancy to deter him from coming anywhere near me- the list goes on and on. Why the hell is he still here? I think I've broken up with him like eight times in the past week. Not for my sake, but for his.

him [while watching something...? I can't remember. Naproxen kicked in...]: See, Princess? If you love them, you let them goooo.
me: I know! I keep trying to do that but you won't fricken go!
him: Teehee.

It's funny, but at the same time, it's not because I'm serious. How do you stay in a relationship when you know you've got nothing to contribute to it?

I don't know. And as a result of that, I'm quite the volatile person to live with, on top of the moodiness and irritability that comes with this disease. I'm not fun to be around right now.

I don't get why he's still here.

But at the same time, I love him to death. I love him and I want to be with him and I want to be able to be a normal person with normal reactions to mundane things- or even upsetting things!- and not ruin his day every other day (and by "every other day", I mean "every day").

I don't know why he's still here.

I feel like I need a reason. I mean, I have reasons for loving him. He's smart and goo'-lookin' and sweet and caring and quirky and different and unpredictable and thoughtful and fricken lovable. And he lets me be me too. Bonus.

See? Reasons.

Dang. My Naproxen just kicked in in a crazy way. I need nap.

Anyway, my point is, why can't I just convey that I love him? Why does that message have to get so garbled that at the end of the day, he's uncertain of the one thing I'm most certain?

*shrugs in sad confusion*

Goodnight. I hope this was coherent.