demakat

Geez the last time I said anything my dad had quit his job.

That did not stick. His boss apologized and he went back to work. Which...whatever it's not my life.

( pet death and other bad stuff behind the cut )

But in the end, while I can be upset and offer what little 'do things' support I am able. None of this is mine. I can feel for my friend, be sad about all of these things. Hurt. But this is not mine, in the same way that my dad wanting to quit his job is not my choice or life.

Additionally she is with lots of family and not alone away from adults most of the day like she was on the northside. So she is not talking to me as much (and is probably trying to process all of this terrible). I am feeling lonely, but realizing that I'm getting sucked into people's everything again. I stopped talking to another friend completely because my internal voice had become her voice and it was saying terrible judgy things all the time.

It's so easy to hand all of myself over to someone else. It's what I practiced growing up, it's what I practiced going through the end of college and onward. I think high school was the last time I really did things for myself that felt like choices. I don't mean picking classes, I mean spending my time and being able to hear what it is I want.

I am learning about myself again. I bought a new calculator because I remember loving mine from school. I have little use for it other than balancing my checking account, but I joyfully use it for that. I signed up to be part of a penpal thing because I want more of those and many of my friends don't care for that sort of thing. I covered a small canvas and part of a larger one with paint because I miss it.

I still have no idea where I'm going, and all I can really do about anything else is nothing. I can only explore my own things right now. I can't fix the other stuff. It hurts so bad, and I can't make it better. I don't have that power. Sitting in a tiny boat in the middle of a still ocean.

I feel all agitated lately. Like I'm waiting for something terrible to happen. If I just hang on to all of my money and all of my free time and wait, I'll be ready.
Of course I also know it doesn't really work like that. Coupled with the fact that I just bought myself a camping tent, it feels like I have done something bad that will get us all killed. This is the plot point where things got fucked.

The reason I'm not more messed up in general, is probably because I am extremely lazy. Including worrying about fucking things up. I can only go so far before I get to the worst logical option that doesn't rely on a freak accident. Currently that is, I don't actually use the tent. Ever.

This is most sad because I like camping. I am a simple human creature thing and I need foods and water and someplace slightly less shitty than the ground to sleep. Preferably laying down. Sitting in a chair or the car, no deal. The point is I would really love to camp. BUT in my brain has got all these gross dribbles.

• I can't go camping that's what people do as couples and I have no significant other, therefore no camping *sadface* [I also use this argument for things like hugging people and touching ever and all sorts of stupid shit]
• I have only ever been camping with girl scouts (I learned the word carcass "bug carcass" and that's probably the only + to girl scouts) and with my friend that I no longer talk to who super hates camping but goes because everyone else including her husband loves it.
• Friend^tm also bought their tent impulsively when they were in college. I am not even in my 20s anymore, and so I'm terrible and impulsive. Bad person, no. Be more structured! You're an adult!
• I'm suddenly going to need to bring my (currently functioning) car back from the dead and be lacking this exact amount of money to complete the process.
• I am a terrible person and money is ultimately finite and now I've just spent it on this thing I might/want to use instead of bettering myself and "building" something. This is kind of bullshit though because even if I had enough money to be all normal with an apartment and stable whatevers normal people do, I would still want to camp and live out of my car. so... I call bullshit.
• I can't get over what I'm suppose to be doing with my life (???) and that I have no real plan and no real goals.
• I'm afraid I bought this tent so that I could make another friend's adventures come true and we'd be able to camp and hang out for the apocalypse eclipse. When there is also the possibility that her son(4) will somehow rain down fire and we won't be able to go at all. (not using tent ever is biggest logical worry).
• oh god am I getting all codependent with this friend TOO!?

I came to the realization recently that I have been "helping" people for 30 years. I'm only 32, but my middle sister was born and walked and talked later than me because I did as much as I could for her (this is pretty normal for second, etc, siblings). My entire family hears things and automatically starts spouting solutions. YET we don't ever ask for help! Sitting by while someone doesn't have like...coffee in the morning because they just won't go to the store and get any and they're telling me about it makes me feel insane. I force myself to do stuff I really would rather not ALL THE TIME. In fact MOST of the time. As much as I sit on my ass I am apparently a DO-er. DO SOMETHING. Interestingly this also leads to me not knowing what I want. I have no idea what I want to do, or where I want to go. I don't have a future, not a solid goal style one. It all sort of moves around and if someone said well I'll tell you know you never do get a dog, I wouldn't be heart broken. Maybe no more pets ever again that would be sad to know, but otherwise. *shrug* BUT so NOW WHAT!!!!????

I've caught myself just trying to listen, though it's more like being aware of my impulse standing up in my mind to spout some shit and I gently put a hand on them. Is this asked for? No. If I operate like this truly though, few things ever are. It might not be bad though to stop just saying things to say stuff though. I don't really have to pretend I'm sociable if I don't have anything to contribute, or I don't care.

Similarly, and in 'other reasons I am messed up', I really don't think people listen to me. I see possibilities, and I see best of all where things could go slightly off from the basic ideal. There is some combo of not communicating well verbally, people not really grasping what I'm saying, or not listening at all, that leads to me feeling invisible. I said the thing and no one listened and now everyone is surprised and sad that they walked into a wall. I thought I said "there is a wall there" but I don't know what people hear.
This idea though makes me feel like Friend^tm and her anger at people not doing what she said to. I feel like the difference is I don't believe that I know better or best, I just feel unimportant. Like my views and ideas are not needed. I am not of value, the things I say, my actions, they don't really aid anyone.

This torrent of words is probably because my middle sister moved back in to the house after having tried to live with her ex-boyfriend for a month. When she is upset it often sounds like everyone is doing all these things on purpose against her, leaving things places, or taking a shower when she was going to. I don't know if that's what she really believes we're thinking, but it's hard not to assume so. We're not vindictive mind readers.

I also probably had to get out all of the things that are blocking me from enjoying this impulse. I'm not a goals sort of person, I'm a messy middle and somehow I've gotten somewhere and can't explain how. Something that probably makes certain kinds of other people annoyed. I wonder what happened to the guy in high school who managed to get me to explain how I did math, like he actually wanted to know. I was surprised and really quite touched. Most people don't even care to press past my flippant answers to the social obligation of asking about stuff.

I get to pick up my tent from the store this upcoming weekend, and I will probably be a gigantic nerd and set it up in the yard to sleep in. It could only be better if there had been an option to get it in yellow or some other obnoxious color. Look at my tent! LOOK AT IIIIIIIT!

John Campbell is dead and now there is Merry Graves.
I don't understand what is going on here/there, but only because it appears to have many layers. Which reminds me of seeing the future. All of probability, and wading into the river. It makes me wish I were more organized so that I could pull out an actual scrap book like a movie scene. Why yes I did foresee this, page 348. I guess it's good I'm not more obsessed with this stuff, or I would probably get stuck in it. But I am experiencing it now. Also I feel like John Campbell was a good name to have for a while because I never knew if it was the same person, or connected to the same stuff. Often it wasn't.

I listen to the Big Magic book in the car every now and then. It makes me feel less crappy somehow, but lately the part where she describes being adult/mature(?) enough to hold two contradictory ideas in our head at the same time, keeps coming back to me. Art being sacred and also being unimportant. Not one or the other, both, yes, always. I also think about how even that is still a little black pebble and a little white pebble at the bottom of a cup. It's also all the other stuff on the spectrum, and the stuff outside what you thought the ends were. Then you back up and your eye blends for you, gray.

Sometimes I feel like I'm magic and I can see systems (they are REALY big and I can't see all of them at one time). But this also leads to me feeling a whole lot like only an observer, which is cutting me off from other people.

which is why we're here today!
There is a guy at work and to keep myself from freaking out I am just assuming that he wants to be friends. Which is really kind of confusing also, but easier to work with. Then my tumblr dash throws out.

I see your “romantic relationships shouldn’t be more important than platonic relationships” and raise you “romantic relationships shouldn’t be rooted in anything but strong, healthy, and mutually rewarding friendships anyways”

and

i haven’t stopped seeing notes for this since I posted it and I just wanna reiterate: it’s really important that you don’t get romantically involved with people you can’t be friends with. Separating a romantic relationship from a platonic context is unhealthy. Your romantic partner/s should always be your friend/s.

...and now I'm trying to explain my dilemma and really it's just that I'm not that into it. It is like someone said OK totally ticked all your boxes, here you go. And I'm very ready to admit I don't know what the hell it is I look for in friends or anything else. Only I wish I was a confident enough person to be all, 'whoo hey this thing we're not suppose to talk about and just kind of dance around forever, yeah that's a bunch of crap so I'm just going to talk about it'. Or maybe wish that one of us could become a kitten and then the other person could carry them around at work and just kind of be together and cuddle. I think about this as a solution to a lot more problems than I should, but it would probably work as well as most things.

This is the part of the story IRL where someone says I say some wiiild stuff and then I feel self conscious, but also kind of disappointed that they don't have their imagination engaged. Because I lay it all out, I did not jump around in explaining the one-person-turns-into-a-cat solution. But they don't come with me, for whatever reason.

I tried explaining this disconnectedness during a different situation, I had never connected with another potential friend and was disappointed at the lost opportunity. Frankly neither of us tried very much, so whatever. But the person I was explaining it to said "you just have to put it out there, we've said way weirder things in public" And yes, I have asked people about solving problems with kittens and I have also explained non-real numbers to a room of startled looking co-workers who probably didn't make it past high school math. I have and still do ask people to imagine all the grocery carts at stores, as ponies*. There's a lot more fear though in the non-imaginary stuff. In feelings. I guess I have control over my imagination, and I have no control over how someone feels about what I say.

---

I've been spending a lot of time chasing around the idea that I don't exist. Not death, more like a good house elf. If you don't see me, then I'm doing a good job. In that specific definition I am the shittiest house elf. Which...is probably the answer. I am not a house elf. Practicing being unseen, or retreating into my head helped me cope as a kid. It gave me worlds and ways to not be so hurt, or feel so lonely. But now I don't understand how to be in my own body, or be in my own life. Theoretically I can operate just fine, magic school bus that crap and you're good. Ask questions, wade through things, come out the other side. It's putting things into practice that are difficult. Like the helper dog bringing people potatoes, this is not right but I'm trying. And the scary parts are hard, I just have no practice to fall back on.

---

Loooong and weird. I'm gonna go to sleep now.




*Like what if...they were just little donkeys or ponys, and you picked up your medium sized pack animal at the front of the store and then used the little side baskets to hold your groceries as you went around. It would explain how carts end up congregated places. Of course they're all huddled just inside the door, it's cold out! Also rounding up carts would have a more calming effect.I keep mentioning this, and no one finds is as amusing as I do. People need to spend more time imagining things >:|

I always feel like I need to write down when I'm happy. Like I can capture it in a mason jar, to look at when ever I feel sad. As with all kinds of hokey things, that's not where the happiness lives.

I just finished with the comic Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. I missed a lot, I can tell. I have never read Virginia Woolf, and I haven't studied psychology hardly at all. The idea came across though, especially near the end when her mother mentions the book being a meta book. Now though I can't help but compare it with one of my now painfully awkward friendships. Thankfully my brain is not letting me get too far, gently telling me "She is not your mother". It sounds so absurd to have to tell yourself that, but when you were so enmeshed with someone and then suddenly aren't. It does mirror many people's relationships with their mothers.

I feel a little guilty that I'm not torrentially emotional about this fight-thing. Apparently my friend was. It's hard to meet someone's anguish with composure, and then additionally say the things they've been asking for.

I remember playing with a friend when I was little. Before Junior High for sure. I was kind of cheesily connecting with things like the wind and whatever else. He essentially told me I was being a weirdo. It's hard not to see it as foreshadowing when I look back. Eventually his dad told him he couldn't play with girls anymore some time after that. So is this time of seeing things, and connecting and feeling happy mean that there is change happening? There's no real way to say. I'm sure whatever does happen could be bent as I saw fit to fulfill what I want. Thankfully I won't likely remember this later, or I'll assemble things differently.

I am a little sad that I didn't have the words at the time to call bullshit on the can't play with girls thing. I may have in some way, I remember being angry about it and fighting with him.

This exchange might be faster if we didn't live many states away from one another. My current friend and I fighting, or not fighting but not yet making up. No one is sure how to proceed. I need more time, I will be taking more time, and that will be new and different than in the last few years. I didn't use to have to take the time, I use to just endure life until it deposited me in the empty pockets where I could be myself again. Now though, it's like youth, something you have to actively cultivate because the pockets of empty time don't pass by so frequently anymore.

I have no idea what I'm doing. That's kind of the good part.

My mom asked me "were you having a good day before all of this"
Yes.

I was/am fighting with one of my friends* (it's probably not you, I promise).
( this is really just about me than an actual account of the fight. )

I'm going to start the summer artslam tomorrow. It always reminds me of livejournal and how I miss whatever that was. I've tried to get into forums, but I just don't care as much. They're always very specific. Where is the forum for people who could use a hug but don't really do that often, or the forum for people who work a ton and commute a long distance and are introverted and it's slowly killing them.

Then I spew out the above and realize why I don't really write here anymore. I miss it, but with everything being majorly public it's hard not to have a brain tick about curating your own output. Livejournal was my high school therapy. It really is a strange form of modifying my own behavior though, this second guess at what publishing on the internet will get you. How will I be viewed. No don't. Don't make animal characters, people will think you're a furry. Draw people, that's normal. Don't write out every bit of drama llama that's happening in your life. No one is even reading it anyhow. Only post things that look good.
But I'm not a brand, and I'm not marketing myself. I think about my characters all the time, but drawing them has been stunted because...what will people think? I want to be all aggressively uncaring about what others thing, but everything will happen more quietly. It always has. No matter how much I wish I was cool or amazing. I am just walking here. Or trudging, depending on the day. I suppose at least I am still moving. I haven't yet turned into a rock.

well now that I've spent an hour having wandered away, it's likely that part of the issue is thanks to my lack of personal time. Personal time is not the same as, commuting time, being at work alone time or hanging out with anyone else time. I wasn't even doing stupid things, I was cleaning. And now I'm hungry again. I need the ability to just pause everything. I would use it a lot.

Unless I am missing a massive loan somewhere... I've paid off almost half my student loans. I still really haven't internalized this. It makes sense because I've been out of school for almost 8 years...but wow.

Madison is losing his birdy shit because I won't give him any delicious granola. Also...it appears that I can't type letters in the correct order. My mind powers must be shifting.
I have been drinking coffee all day...
( you have been warned )

It seems like my posting streak came to an end there. I was trying to write in a journal before going to bed and so all of my words got used up there, but it was working...and I should continue.

The winter to spring transition really messed with me this year and I had a point where my chest hurt, but everyone seems to think it was more stress related. Which makes sense because I've started swinging into panics the last few years or so. They don't really seem to have a trigger, but a friend suggested that it could be 'trapped' feelings related to my job. If I hadn't spent years in high school coming home, crying and learning how to "talk myself down", I could see it turning into full blown panic attacks. Mostly I just have to learn how to work on my mental health again, instead of waiting for things to get bad first and training under fire. Sometimes my natural tendency to just continue with life even when everything is shitty, is nice. Other times is masks too well how sad I am and then no one knows.

My dad recently pointed out to me that I was managing my debt in a stupid manner. So yesterday I finally got some of that figured out. I had to take out a loan. "Yes, I am an adult!" It was kind of scary. Mostly because my brain holds on to all my bills and just kept thinking I was adding another I couldn't afford, when really it was consolidating things. But now I get a month grace period to pay off other minor debts with the money I normally use for those bills. Thankfully there is no prepayment penalties. Interest rates kill.

I've been getting books from the library like a crazy person. I finally read Dee Williams' The Big Tiny and it was awesome. I can't believe how often I forget I can get mostly any book I want from the library through their loan program with other libraries. I just have to wait, and my amazon list was just that anyhow. Waiting until I could afford buying things. I keep picking out non-fiction books though, and my brain really needs fiction. But I am so...gun shy of fiction? I don't know what I really like, and if the story bothers me I will put it down and not finish. I had to do that with memoirs of a geisha. Like 1/3 of the way in I just couldn't read anymore. It wasn't even bad, just...no? Like I could see the story too plainly or something, and it was going to get much more painful and I couldn't handle it. I also tried reading Wicked, and with that one I simply wasn't personally invested in any of the characters, so I put it down too. I'm like a picky eater, and it's not fun.

I also got a big deadpool anthology from the library. I don't really care for superheros, I don't get it. But deadpool seemed like a sassy enough jackass that I could like it. Now that I've read through it, I think he needs to be written better. The best dialog was deadpool with himself, because there was actual dialog. I've watched through most of dragon ball z...this was on par with that. I was expecting more sass, more actual wit. If I had to pick a superhero I still pick deadpool, though I am underwhelmed by 'old school' comics in general.

Now I just have to make a mother's day card to go with my gift and wait another few hours before taking more cold meds, so I can sleep tonight. I don't know if I should be happy it's not allergies or what.

I think I am at a point where I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know how to get out. I haven't done anything, and it's not like I'm in trouble with the law, but I feel stagnant. Yet I can't really do a whole lot about it due to my work and the time it takes to get there. All of the normal things that I could want to do, like getting exercise or taking better care of myself, come as a direct hit to the amount of sleep I get. I am out of time to give to anything. I want to do things but I constantly feel like I have no time. It is creating panic for me mentally.

I feel like I need life guidance, but I don't have many places to turn to for that. I'm 10 years beyond when my parents moved out (together, and they're aware especially now that it's nearly impossible to do on your own) and so everything is really spearheaded by me. I was the first one to go to college and now everything just feels stuck. My parents only know how to do what they've been doing. But everything changes and right now it feels like a subtle shift is starting to be felt.

People tell me that everything is going to be okay, and that they're here for those times when everything sucks. It's okay to vent to your "people", but I constantly feel like a burden. I feel unworthy of everyone's awesomeness. Which hinders a lot of things, and puts me into patterns I don't know that I believe. Like, I think things would be better if I were in a relationship, but that isn't necessarily true. As though everything would be more simple and happy, but it could just as easily be more chaotic and stress inducing.

Everything lately feels like defeat. As though someone said we're going on vacation, and I grab all my things but they're pulling out of the driveway without me. And I'm just standing there with balls of yarn and books slowly plupping to the ground because they didn't fit in my bag. Is it too much to ask for someone who is willing to be irrational with me and say 'It's okay no one is going on vacation without you. I'm right here.'

Should I try to get an office job closer to where I live, but that would likely pay less. Just to have more free time? Is that even going to fix anything?

I'm trying to train I guess, for a 5k. Because in a fit of madness I signed up for one with a friend. This specific one looks like it's made of bouncy houses for adults, and it isn't timed. But I walked the timed mile run in high school, and I don't think that I've ever run for more than a minute in my life. I got a gym membership, and then I got the flu (not from the gym). I want to be able to do fun things with my friends without being the fat slow one. Yet it seems like trying to wedge more things into my life is causing me to feel stressed. Saying no and going to bed isn't really going to make it better either.

and to top it off my room is covered in crap from me trying to clean and get rid of things. Every weekend lately has been throwing me for a loop on that one, and nothing has been getting done. So my environment is a bad one to feel positive or hopeful in. All I know how to do is keep going, keep trying.

I just spent a week living at my friend's house. She has a typical chicago frame house, where it's long and has the hallway running down the whole thing. Nice wood detail inside, that of course was not kept up by any of the vandals who seemed to live in it before they did. It's really long, and just on the first floor there are two bedrooms, living room with a front room*, a bathroom, dinning room, kitchen and back eating area*. I am lazy, and that is a damn long house. It's a giant house because there is a half furnished basement (it's not great and no one uses it other than for laundry and a treadmill they were given) and an upstairs which has two more bedrooms and some closets, but more space for another bathroom if they add that. Giant house.

Me, gianthouse and Mimi: the little black field spaniel. Having a disappointed dog on your hands is confusing. I don't normally play with our dogs much, and I began to fear that my want of my own dog some day was just because well you have one right? But I realized it's like kids. Mimi is not my dog and we took some time to get use to one another, just the same way it would take me a lot of interactions to meet up with someone else's kid before I actually liked them (provided they are not little shits in general, which why am I friends with parents who are raising a little shit of a kid?). So by the last two days Mimi decided she wanted to sleep in the same bed as me and why wasn't I playing ball with her and ZOMG YOU'RE HOME YAY!!!! So won over le doggie eventually.

Crazy start to the first week, then I go to living at a friend's house in the second half AND now I'm able to take the bus to another store to help them open. Then weekend where I sat in her back eating area and soaked in reflected snow sunlight. Slightly crazy start to this week.

Then I'm home yesterday after work and my dad who is bored and pacing around takes on the task of getting my windshield fixed. So he finally finds someone 20 minutes away, that if I can be there when they open at 8am they can do it for 175. Okay cool. Dad got to help someone and calm the shit down, and I now have a new windshield. Like damn, no wonder winter sucks, everything is coated in salt and sadness and in this case giant cracks from a tree branch. New windshield is amazing.

I also got my fitbit in the mail. I feel so old. New technology makes me feel untrustworthy and amazed. I know how bluetooth works but damn. This is some fancy shits. It was on my wishlist as nifty thing that would give me data feedback about how shitty I sleep at night, and how I sit around a lot at a computer. But then I got second place at a work contest and they gave us amazon giftcards. Then I had a friend pay me for work for her business in an amazon giftcard....and I was just so close. Got my tax refund and damn, new windshield, new tech. Now I have to squirrel the rest of it away in an effort to periodically throw larger chunks of money at my debts.

Then while all of this is happening. There is a new store opening posted much closer to my house. Everyone says yes go for it, and I keep hesitating. I don't know why and I can't explain it. Maybe I'm a little bitter that the only place that wanted me is considered the crazy store of doom by many people. I need to spend the time and take some reddit lifehacker advice and write down everything I've done at the job I have now. Because I don't really remember any of it. I just keep diligently working away. I'm not even sad about that, but it does make me worry.

I have had to keep asking myself why I'm not doing hard things. Why am I not putting my artwork out there? Why am I not making my time be the powerhouse that people who actually know me believe that I am? It's way easier to hope to find a job that I don't hate and just...give up. It feels like losing. It feels like I never even tried, but I'm most afraid of trying and finding that the drive to keep going isn't really there to back me up. It feels sometimes like what other people see for me. That what I see for myself is too open ended for other people to understand, or know how to want. I want everything. I have always wanted everything. Someone always says I can't have it, or that I need to learn to specialize to make it in the world. Always on the surface I submit and say yeah you're right, I'll just get really good at this thing. But then my actions are all over the place, always gleening more information and more skills, asking more questions. It doesn't feel like a drive, or a passion. It feels like existing, and it's so easy and simple to keep learning and knowing and applying what I have learned and know. But that isn't a job, that basic simple thing is so amazing to so many people.

I'm fizzling out when I talk down that line of thinking, because I haven't come to a conclusion yet. Though it's possible that really is the answer. Throw the doors open and just keep wandering around. There is no answer and just face down all the bullshit with being myself, whoever that is now. woowoo stuff that is just welp, here's where we are.



*I can probably find a diagram if people are really interested, but in chicago the houses were built with porches and since the 1900s these front and back porches have been screened in and then fully enclosed to be rooms of the house. Complete with interior areas where the old windows and front door use to reside. It's a pretty cool architectural thing. But 'front room' which seems to be the agreed upon term, isn't the best for basic descriptions, because it is not the livingroom/familyroom combo that was popular in the 70s in the suburbs. ...omg why do I know all of this. someone take me to trivia night and feed me fried foods.