fishgirl5

I've started another blog on blogspot. I won't go into the details now; I'm very tired. I'll continue to write in this one as a mind dump, but retakingcate.blogspot.com will be the structured one.

Man, do I have a headache.

I promise from here on out that every day, I'm going to at least focus on one good thing about the world, life, others, and myself.

I promise that I will find time and the nerve to do random acts of kindness. I don't know how I will yet, I don't know when, but someday, I will do something for someone.

I promise that I won't be so mired in negativity I can't see the beauty of things in front of my face.

I promise that I'm going to try to be happy, whatever that takes.

I promise that I WILL overcome my anxiety and depression. I know I won't rid myself of them completely, but I will not allow them to control me any longer.

I promise that I will make myself the best friend, girlfriend, wife, mother, and God willing, grandmother that I can be.

I promise that I will treat my parents with more respect. They have done so much for me, and I really appreciate it.

I promise that I will take better care of myself.

I promise that I will drive more carefully.

I promise that I will take responsibility.

Life is now.

I've been having a hard time as of late with faith. I don't know why. Maybe I do and I'm not admitting it. But my blasted scientific inquiry is annoying the sleep out of me. It's 2:00 AM. I know that in the morning, I may very well sleep until 11. But even though I get a good amount of sleep, it's not good sleep. I don't have fun during the day. I'm depressed.

As I have been for years, I am afraid of death. I'm spelling it out here and now for myself. A really, really skeptical part of me thinks that this is it; that we're nothing but molecules and when we're done, we're done. Another part of me believes that can't at all be true. And they fight. All night long.

I know I'm obsessive compulsive. I know I will probably deal with this until I do die, and if I don't, it'll be because of dementia (and no, that's not meant to be sarcastic or funny). I know it's futile to continue harping on this day in and day out. Therapists have told me so, my friends have told me, my family. It doesn't stop the cycle of self-indulgence, because that's up to me.

I know not all of you believe in religion. Honestly, I wasn't raised with one, but came to appreciate it and embrace it over my time. I know everybody has doubts about something, but some days? I feel downright schizoid. One minute I believe in God. The next, I doubt. One minute I'm sure that I will lose every attribute of my personality and my consciousness when I die, the next, I think that's the stupidest thing I've ever said. My faith was very important to me in enabling me to live my life and not spend it worrying about death. I'm not trying to convert anyone. In fact, I don't often do that unless someone has specifically asked me make-or-break questions, and really, that doesn't happen frequently. I can't stand it when people hate on religion. I can't stand it when religion takes a person over. I can't find a balance. And that troubles me.

A year and a half ago, I didn't have this problem. I was confident in my beliefs. I'm not sure why that's dropped off and the cynicism has returned, because honestly, I was borderline miserable then and I still liked myself better than I do now. I know the fault lies somewhere within me, but I can't find it. It would be all too easy to blame the guy who dumped me because God told him to, the other guy who has done his damndest this year to convince everyone that those who believe in God are stupid. Why have I started listening to him? Besides being a total narcissistic d-bag, the man sleeps with anything he comes across. Something in me is off.

I really, really want to believe. I do. But I can't seem to find my faith, my groove. I think Jesus was awesome. Somewhere in my heart, I still think I believe. But the doubt and the nagging and the inability to reconcile scientific thought with religion is bothering me. I used to be able to do it just fine. Common sense isn't always right. Back in the day, common sense said the world was flat and that the workings of the human body boiled down to two kinds of bile, blood, and phlegm. Seriously? I know there's more to the world than meets the eye. So why can't I get my head out of grim 'realism' and back to a comfortable balance of both realism and faith?

I've always taken the Bible with a grain of salt. I believe in God, Jesus, and Heaven (or do 1/2 the time, apparently), but not necessarily in the human error that can go into religion. That being said, I found this segment of the Bible tonight, and I find it rather fitting.

Psalm 13

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

 ¹ How long, O LORD ? Will you forget me forever?
       How long will you hide your face from me?

 ² How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
       and every day have sorrow in my heart?
       How long will my enemy triumph over me?

 ³ Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.
       Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

 ⁴ my enemy will say, "I have overcome him,"
       and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

 ⁵ But I trust in your unfailing love;
       my heart rejoices in your salvation.

 ⁶ I will sing to the LORD,
       for he has been good to me. (Source: biblegateway.com)

Uncanny. Or not. The cynic is back at work, telling me I'm not the only person to ever have this problem. The part of me that wants to believe tells me that I came across this for a reason in a search for answers. And I really don't want the cynic to be right. The cynic is not the kind of person I want to be. So what on earth (or not) can I do?

I really wish somebody could tell me the answer, but nobody knows any more than I do. They have emotion to go on, and I would love to trust emotion, but mine screw with me. If I ask cynics, they often tell me I'm wasting my time even considering the faith option, and a lot of the faith people just don't tell me anything other than what they read or have been taught. I know there are plenty of intelligent religious folk, but I can't seem to find them at the moment.

It's probably not as bad as I'm making it. I am, after all, sleep deprived and hungry and all sorts of recipes for depression and anxiety attacks. But I need to get this stuff out of my head and onto a screen. Where someone will probably tell me I'm an idiot one way or the other.

That's really at this point what I've resigned myself to. God may grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, but I only hope He can give me the strength to try to change the constant idiocy part- or at least stop asking myself the same questions over and over. I can pray that I learn what I'm too apparently stubborn or weak to do- to just shut out the questions until I'm sane enough, strong enough, or old/mature enough to handle them. At this point, I feel like none of those things.

You can't begin to know the disappointment of one who talks without being heard.

Even worse than the crushing realization that you aren't important enough to warrant notice or have any shred of credit assigned to you is that you continually hope that the next time will be different. The next time, you argue with yourself, they'll have to listen. They were just being foolish or overly influenced by emotion or hormonal or tired or distraught...and the list goes on. No, the worst part is that they say the exact same things about you in your attempts to persuade them.

You are made to feel small, invisible, blustery, over the top, too strong, needy, compulsive, and a worrywart. They may pretend to listen but disregard you when you're not there to bash them about the head with words.They may bluster right back. They will take bits and pieces of your thoughts and use them for their own ends. And you're let down.

Human nature then dictates that you treat them exactly as they've treated you. You ignore them right back, yell, hear selectively. Fights break out, things cool, and you get your hopes up again. And inevitably, are disappointed.

Am I mute? You wonder. Are they just watching me flail in amusement? "She's so funny. Look at her trying to convey sentiment. Oh, well." Maybe the worst part of all is the fact that you wonder if the fault lies with you rather than those who can't understand. You try to change the delivery, try to convey it differently- and all the while, the event repeats over and over again.

I'm done. The ball's in your court, my friends. I sincerely hope you do well, but if (and let's be honest- do you expect not to?) you don't, please don't come to me upset and seeking validation. I've given you justification for far too long, and do you really give a flying fuck about me? You say you do, but when it comes down to it, am I really what's important, or just the illusion of me? I'm done feeling hurt over you. I'm done trying to bolster you at my own expense. You want independence? You got it. I won't say another word. And before you celebrate too much, think about it- will you miss my words? 

If the answer is no, then some evaluation is in order. On all sides.

Some things I could do without for this week:

-constant barrage of news about Michael Jackson's death. Let the poor man rest in peace.
-the "words" random, 'piccie', lol, commish, snark, glomp.
-liars. Or people willing to give lip service.
-Yaoi/hentai. I like going on deviantart to see what actual artists are doing. Not see glorified porn.
-all my friends getting to see Harry Potter before me and then telling me what they think. :-(
-my competitive sister.
-dentistry.
-crummy phone service.
-busy schedules.
-barrages of phone calls from that special person who just doesn't get it.
-late night mental ramblings/fears.
-writer's block.

Things I could do with:

-a few more episodes of Merlin.
-some time to relax.
-better attention span.
-editors actually getting back to me (gasp).
-hot men.

That's all.

"Why is it when Iranians protest its (sic) patriotic, but when conservatives do it its (sic) extremism?"

Let's see, conservatives. Do you live under an oppressive regime? Hardly. What are you protesting about? Material objects, specifically money- you don't want to be taxed. What are Iranians protesting about? The fact that their election was rigged, unfair, and the constant human rights violations they undergo. Did you even get tear gassed? No.

Maybe you should go to Iran and live there for a while. You can protest and be patriotic all you want.

Quit whining.

(And learn the difference between it's and its.)

OKAY.  I know you're doing schoolwork. I know it's important. And I know I'm probably being self-centered. But for the love of God, can't you keep your word?!

First, there was the promise of a phone call at nine. No. Second, there was the promise of the text at 8:30 if nine wasn't going to happen. I had to do that. Then there was the promise of a call at 9:30. It's now two hours past that point. Couldn't you have texted to tell me it wasn't going to happen?!

I'm so fucking sick of phone tag!!

You KNOW I'm bad on the phone. You KNOW I get anxious. You KNOW I get into that bad place where all I can think of is how I will come off. I get really selfish, because I can only focus on how I feel and how I act. I only focus on what I have control over, because other than that, it's all moot to worry about. I trusted you with that. Do you know how terrible it is to think your best friend is full of it? 

I'm really sick of going to bed mad, waking up mad, and being mad periodically throughout the day. Maybe I'm being inflexible, but I've tried. I'm tired of the fact that you can't honor anything except what suits your fancy.

So I made the mistake of Facebook-stalking my ex-boyfriend a little bit to see what he's been up to, besides what we talk about. A particular girl messaged him a lot with cutesy little things...and I'm kinda pissed. I mean, I know he did break up with me. I have no claim over him whatsoever. So why am I so jealous?

He broke my heart- and I mean really stomped on it. Twice. Why do I still have this weird nagging feeling that I want him back? Why do I have this weird emo feeling? I haven't any right to it. I'm supposed to be his friend. Instead, I've got this weird feeling that I should just block him and have done with it. Is it holding me back?

I don't know. Those of you who do read this probably don't give two rats in a basket. But I feel like I have to scream. A LOT.

To those who keep bugging me about it:

The California court today that decided to uphold Proposition Eight's efficacy was not voting on the proposition. It was voting about the legality of changing the state constitution via the referendum system without approval of state legislature. It is perfectly legal to do so. As such, the court has NO CHOICE regardless of what they think on the issue to uphold what the voters said. Doesn't make it right or wrong. Stop hassling the judges and for the love of God, stop hassling me. Vote on it next election cycle. There's nothing that can be done in the courts. This legislature thing was a loophole to begin with. I can't help you.

Sincerely,
The really, really annoyed college student with a preliminary knowledge of civil law that everyone keeps bugging to see whether the Prop 8 judges are homophobic or doing their jobs

PS. I'm not an attorney!!! (or a doctor) Stop asking me!

Fucking delusional North Korea! You are the twin that didn't get enough attention and as such sought it in the wrong places. Quit pulling the UN's pigtails, Kim Jong Il. By the way, the money it took to get that radioactive material and build that 'satellite' could've fed your people for months. We pay you more to make peace than we do when you threaten to blow shit up.

I'm uncomfortable with you. I doubt your own people love you, considering their economic circumstances. I question your ability to govern. And further than that, I question your God complex. What right have you to take the lives of your own countrymen and those in the provinces you wish to blow up and barter them like poker chips? I'm not denying that the US has done that and will continue to do that. The difference is our leader would hesitate to kill you where you might press that button at any moment. The world is watching, President Kim. Tread wisely.

I feel crappy half the time nowadays, which is an improvement from all the time. I heard once somewhere that depression is great, because once you hit rock bottom, you have nowhere to go but up. I'm not sure whether I've hit rock bottom or not, but I hit something.

I can't explain the neediness, the anxiety, the weird wonderings. It bugs me no end, given the fact that my whole chosen profession has to do with explaining the intangible through the concrete. I can talk about truth and love and unbearable sadness all I want, but the reader is left with nothing but their impressions on the subjects. I'm supposed to be able to communicate mine.

I still dislike poetry. Can be a handy medium, but I'm really dreading the classwork next quarter. Sorry, L-T, but it doesn't do it for me.

I'm tired of self-doubt and miss the days of self-determination. I was who I thought I was, not thought I was who I might be if X, Y, and Z are true, but are X, Y, and Z really true? They're not universal, so therefore they might not apply to me. In high school, I was me. In college, I try to be me but am forced to wonder if I'm really other people combined with me. But then again, how can someone be someone else?  I guess there's a reason they call it a disorder- my mind's never been quite so disorganized.

Kind of thinking about pursuing a music minor- only half seriously. I love choral music and know that I want it to be a part of my life, but I don't know if I can bring myself to really study it. The music department contains some less-than-affable characters, and I want it to stay fun and joyful rather than burdensome.

Arson is bad. Keeping children from medical care is bad. Larceny is bad, but not as bad as the first two, I think. It's just money. The first two can take lives, livelihoods, et cetera.

Really kind of want to get rid of the LOGO channel on my TV. It kinda doesn't help the anxiety problems. Programming is all cut-rate, anyway.

Should be writing, but I don't know where to go with it. Bugger.

Running out of steam. Shorter sentences and paragraphs.

Good night.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God, oh, my God. Adam Lambert lost American Idol. Whatever will we do? Will the computer networks stop working? Will nuclear bombs annihilate major cities? Will swine flu become the 1917 pandemic and wipe out half the world? Will the sun go out?

Oh, yeah. That's right. No.

In fact, this means even less than the usual fark we come across in our time of mass media garbage. It's a TV show. A TV show with overdramatic conventions, irritating judges, and Ryan Seacrest. It's a TV show in which mediocrity is slingshot to the forefront of the American consciousness. People with the same vices, same desires, and same ability as the average American are suddenly canonized. Some might call this heartening for the morale of Joe Bloggs, the working stiff. In the long run, let's face it: it's not. It's eye candy for hormonal teenage girls and middle-aged housewives who long for a shot at fifteen minutes of fame- but being too timid or otherwise prone to excuses, are content to watch others'.

A few reminders:

1. Adam Lambert is already a professional performer. So he's not American Idol. Boo hoo. His chances at survival are...not shot. In fact, they're bettered. The 'also-rans' on this show sometimes do better than the winners.

2. The entire show is a sham- a popularity contest worthy of the ASB elections in high school. The results depend on 'democracy by text message'. Meaning only those who give a crap vote, and generally, people who are actually decent judges of singing don't give a crap about this show. Every voice teacher I ever knew, every fellow chorister who is aware of musicality and the difficulties of trying to make a living as a vocalist spurns the show, not wanting to hear any more Whitney Houston-Tim McGraw-Celine Dion-Michael Bolton wannabes. Put somebody up there with a modicum of actual presence, talent, and respect for the profession and not just a desire for attention, and maybe we'd pay attention.

3. WE ARE SICK OF COVERS. Now it would be an interesting turn of events if American Idol became a contest for singers trying to sing original songs. Instead, we get "Beat It" thirty thousand times and people who attempt to take already famous songs and remake them- and generally slaughter them. NO ONE can sing Queen but Freddie Mercury (sorry, Paul Rodgers). Michael Jackson, creepy as he is, is the only one who can pull off Thriller. And don't you even think about touching Aretha Franklin, Etta James, the Beatles, Prince, or U2. Even if Ricky Martin is a sad sack, even "She Bang" didn't deserve to be slaughtered in the way it was. This whole show is a beauty pageant-popularity contest-karaoke night.

4. The judges are crap. Simon Cowell has made a living off being mean to people. Paula Abdul is a weepy, botoxed bag of emotion, the new female is abrasive, and Randy Johnson has to be the most ineffectual man on TV. What are their opinions worth? Why can't they have actual people behind that desk? What's to say the people who judge the hometown talent shows can't go on TV?

Oh, that's right. Because they don't fight nearly enough. Or cry. Or otherwise denegrate themselves.

By the way, anybody following the verdicts in the Irish Catholic rape cases? What about that little boy whose own mother suffocated him? What about the fact that Obama has declared that newly manufactured cars must (finally) conform to fuel efficiency standards? Iran just test-launched a nuclear missle. Japan has made an android teacher that could help with affective-emotive teaching for autistic children. My own school district is eliminating special education. My college is cutting back programs and classes and teachers and hiking fees. The United States' first nearly full face transplant patient is recovering steadily. Why the hell doesn't anybody care about the stuff that actually matters? Sure, it's not as fun and fluffy as watching people wheedle into microphones to backdrops of laser lights and Ryan Seacrest, but these are the things that are going to shape our world in the near future. Not whether an androgynous musical star or an equally (supposedly) talented 'nobody' won some bizarre show.

PS. Screaming fan girls? Adam Lambert is not going to marry you. In fact, you have less of a shot with him than you do with Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner. Sorry. Welcome to reality. It's not like TV.

New list of social pet peeves:

People who eat noisily with their mouths open
People who assume you want to hear their music in public places
Tailgaters, especially BMWs
Smokers
NOISY people
That guy upstairs who only knows five chords and plays them over and over
Pitchy singers who think they're all that and a bag of chips
Bikers/skateboarders/scooter riders who ride on the sidewalk and run you over
People who laugh excessively and loudly at EVERYTHING their friends say
People who refuse to care about spelling on the internet
The excess of human skulls on clothing
Slow walkers who won't let you pass
Slow drivers who won't let you pass
Bees. They suck.

A thought occurred to me while driving that hideously long stretch between home and school this morning at an ungodly hour. It's a thought that has occurred to me many times over the last few years, and it's proving more and more effective as I get older.

Practicality can suck it.

That's right. Perhaps it's a childish thought, but I spent so much time being practical as a kid, it's high time I start being fanciful. If I want to be a published author and make a living off of it, I will be. If I want a handsome prince to sweep me off my feet, he will. Maybe I can't grow a fish tail or fairy wings or a horn in the middle of my forehead, but is there anything wrong with imagining? So my parents aren't royalty, but in my head, I'm a princess. I'm a damsel in distress and I slay dragons. I run myself into clouds because I can't fly right, I tick off sharks on a regular basis, and I'm friends with cartoon characters and centaurs and anthropomorphic animals. In my head I can turn you into all manner of things, and your words bounce right off me. That's right. I'm rubber. You're glue. Deal with it.

This princess wears glasses and gym shoes sometimes. I deal diplomatically with questions of roommates and negotiates disputes between friends. I am lonely at times and writes strange sighing pieces about what it's like to be up in a tower and watch everyone else move past. I sing songs about circus bands and the end of the world and America and God and the Queen of England and Greek heroes and love and fish- for some reason lots of fish. I wear dresses that puff out around her with tulle practically bursting from the hem, but am unafraid to run in heels. I am self-centered and giving, I am proud and self-hating- I am a paradoxical ruler unto myself. A few princes have tried, but found they needed a simpler woman. I don't blame them. I get tired of me, too. But at some point- I'll be fighting off one of those monsters I seem to come across on a regular basis, and he'll kill it for me and pull me onto his horse and promise I won't have to fight alone anymore. And mean it.

So what if it's all fantasy? John Lennon pointed out, "Time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted at all." 

Take that, practicality. Your move.

I hate menstruation. Seriously. Every month it comes around, and every month I'm surprised. And every month I'm even more surprised when my panic disorder starts acting up. I'm an idiot.

The only reason I'm not asleep at the moment is the fact that I am once again subconsciously refusing to live my life by letting unmitigated, irrational (or overly rational, as the case may be) fear set in.

This might be the part where I ask what the hell is wrong with me, but that would be a waste of time. I know what the hell is wrong with me. I can't live with an ounce of ambiguity, let alone something as big as this. I keep telling myself that I have a lot to go through till I have to grapple with this ambiguity. There's so much I haven't done yet, and I haven't found a man yet, and there's no way I'm going out without having been in love- and I mean really in love- gut crushingly, heart thrashingly in love. I haven't had kids yet- a huge goal. And I haven't gotten a book published. And I will not go gentle into that good night without that. No way. But yet, here I am, tight-chested with veins on fire because I can't CALM THE FUCK DOWN.

I've never really tried to describe the phenomenon of the panic attack to a normal-brained person. Most of my friends are either not normal or excruciatingly (on their parts) empathetic. I guess the best way to put it would be simultaneously drowning and being lit on fire. You struggle for breath and control as you drift in your own fear while your skin burns, your flesh burns, and you practically give yourself a fever. And note the word 'yourself'. Because contrary to popular belief amongst the mentally effed-up pool, you can control a panic attack. Of course, you have a window of about a few seconds to do this, but you have to jump on it. Nothing else will take care of it- you have to do it. You have to both be in total control and rescind it at the same time. Because nothing about a panic attack makes sense. 

I could just pop a tranquilizer. But I then have the exact same problem that I do while panicking. It's not living. I'm calm, but I'm drugged. Neither is a way to live, which at this point, is all I want. I can't bear the thought of wasting any time.

So I continue to run off at the mouth while I try to get some perspective, try to calm down enough to turn out the light and actually get some rest, which come to think of it would probably help the whole panic thing. Like an immune system, mental systems respond to proper food, drink, and sleep habits and retaliate against deprivation. Both of mine are deficient, but it just means I have to take care of it all the more. Unfortunately, it means I take care of it all the less.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, behold: the idiot in her natural habitat, unaware of her body and unwilling to change bad habits. No wonder these things keep happening. She asks for it.

Tonight I watched the series finale of Scrubs. It seems a shoddy reason for needing hugs at the moment, but it got me to thinking- generally either a good or a dangerous thing, and rarely both.

An acquaintance of mine and I recently had an argument about the usefulness of fiction. As a novelist (non-published, but all the same), I pulled out the usual stops- escapism, real-life character flaw introspection, even the economy. Well, Mr. Brann rejected the validity of the economic argument, but I would advise he learn a thing or two about economic function before he considers eliminating an industry. Anyway, what I really neglected to mention- and probably should have put in- was the connection a writer can manipulate the artificial to build with real life.

After watching eight years' worth of episodes- watching real life medical drama juxtaposed with certainly absurd situations- I cried as the main character walked down the hallway for the last time. Why? My nonfiction-obsessed acquaintance might demand. John Dorian is a construct of someone's imagination, or even a nation of viewers' collective imagination. He isn't, in a word, real. I am.

I lingered in the quad of my high school, recalling four years of events that I could never relive, the people I would likely lose over the years, and the mindset I can never get back to. I remember stalling for a few more minutes as my parents urgently called me to the car, lest I miss my flight to college. I can still feel the lingering hug I gave my mom in the parking lot at Higginson Hall as I foolishly, childishly begged her to stay behind or to take her back with me, something. I don't know if I've ever cried so hard writing as when I finished my first trilogy of books- something I'd poured my entire consciousness into for a year. Even the end of something that...it's hard to refer to it without melodrama, but considerably hurt my mental condition made me take pause. In the elevator moving out of my room last year, I was hauling the last of my stuff out. A student I'd never seen before was doing same, and we took a moment to say where we were going back to. I was leaving Western Washington University- permanently.

I had been pretty sure that I would experience nothing but overwhelming relief that it was over. After all, I'd never been so homesick, paranoid, depressed, unstable, unreliable, conversely apathetic and overemotional, uncomfortable, and overall, pressured. I, with the help of several others, had called my entire psyche into question, and because of it, I felt nearly constantly in a state of disrepair. For an obsessive compulsive person, disrepair is not okay. And yet, on my last day, I felt sad. I was leaving behind one of my best friends in the world, who still remains one of my best friends despite the distance. That was a bright spot I hadn't counted on but remain grateful for to this day. I left behind at least a dozen other friends who genuinely did care about whether I fell in a ditch this week or what disease I'd managed to contract. And I was to leave behind the chance to go to college with my high school best friend. Why was it not until the final moments that I'd thought about this?

And then, of course, I began to worry that I was making the wrong decision, or the right decision for the wrong reason, or the wrong decision for the right reasons. I sat nervously in Bellingham's airport (by the way, the size of a garage, I think) and immediately drafted my daily list of pros and cons and fumbled and fretted for a sense of security. I couldn't honestly say the bad outweighed the good there. But the good of home certainly outweighed the bad. It would be less expensive, I would be closer to home in case of emergency (always a bit more prominent than it should be), and I could worry less about certain of other factors. It still felt like rationale to me.

In the end, it was the right decision. Perhaps hastily arrived at, perhaps not as pain-free as I had initially hoped. I still miss the trees and my best friends and those damn faulty bricks. And I hate the Inland Empire; I've determined that much. But the end of my time there was an ending, and I am traditionally very bad with endings.

I am real. Zach Braff is real. JD is real enough in my head that I felt that ending for all three of us this evening. Lots of people have tried to give me advice: don't be sad it's over, be glad it happened...an ending is just a beginning of something else...it's all a crock. Those are the real rationales. That's the fiction. An ending is just like anything else- you grieve, you get better, you move on, and later, you come to look back on it fondly. Just because some of us are less ready to say goodbye doesn't mean we're stuck in the past or are poorly adjusted. Maybe we're more sentimental.

It's kind of funny, given the fact that my SAT students just had to write an essay on whether or not you know what you have till it's gone. I can definitively tell them that at least I don't. It's why I mourned the loss of high school, cried my way through my freshman year, and turned over and over in my head whether I could live with giving up the good things about WWU that had taken me so long to discover. But I also did appreciate new things as they came- probably not as fully as I should have. I'm still learning balance. And I'm still writing long, emotastic LJ posts because if I don't get it down, it'll just rattle around my head and confuse me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if one doesn't properly grieve at the end, they either appreciated everything they were given fully while they had it, or are short-sighted. Also, if they dread the prospect of something new, they run the risk of repeating the cycle.

Now to just get this through my head in time for the next goodbye and the next cycle. Doubt it'll happen.  It's about midnight; the end of a day. Fortunately, I can sleep through this ending. I think it's probably best. I'm getting deep and depressed again.

As I scramble about for random fluff to make this less of an emo dump, all I can think of is this. Nathan Fillion is handsome.

The End.

My high school is cutting its art program.

Anyone who knows me is probably jumping to the conclusion that that's why I'm upset. After all, they know I'm a singer, an actor, a half-assed painter and a one-time musician. I probably owe whatever social life I have to that program. 

But let's be honest. Mount Carmel threatened to cut its arts program every year since I was a freshman in high school. My choir director and drama teacher received an equal number of pink slips for each year the program was 'endangered.' And what's still on the registrar's list for next year? The Wind Ensembles, all the choirs, the orchestra, the drama classes, the marching band, the drawing and painting classes.  What's not? Mount Carmel's acclaimed special education program.

Poway Unified School District has always boasted a progressive program for kids with "special needs", ever since it became PC to send the mentally challenged to public school. But faced with budget cuts, the curriculum in place at MC has been cut.  What happens next is that the kids will be channeled into Abraxas High School. Abraxas is known as the bad kid school, the place where less-motivated individuals get a second chance and the trouble-makers are taken for educational rehabilitation.

Further, programs that allow teachers to tailor curriculae to the needs of students are being cut, saying that they are not in line with standards set for graduation. So students who so far have been good to go are being denied graduation. That's unfair.

I think I would probably be a little less angry about it at the moment if it weren't for the fact that three- count 'em- THREE people have told me today how good it is that Adam Lambert is coming back to our mutual alma mater tomorrow. They think it'll be good for the arts program. First of all, if people don't stop drooling over him I may vomit. He's a singer. On American Idol. He is a passing fancy with the potential for staying power, but nothing more. Secondly, I do care about the arts. As I said. I owe that program probably the whole direction of my life at present. Granted, he was in it as well. But can we really stand to pitch and moan about the magical reappearing arts classes? Couldn't Lambert use his apparent fundraising powers to do some good where it really needs to happen? 

Yes. Clarinets and tenors and acryllics and Shakespeare are integral to burgeoning minds. But is it fair to deny mentally challenged kids a place in public schools? Why isn't that anyone's pet project? 

I'm sitting on my couch in my barren apartment's living room, staring at the blank wall ahead of me. It's dark out- so dark that I can't see the field back behind my complex, dark enough that if I look through the lighted windows of the next apartment complex over, I can see that couple from the third floor of B building making out. (They really need to close their blinds.) The only noise is the refrigerator humming and clucking periodically, and the air conditioning whirring to life and clicking off again. Sometimes somebody- most likely drunk- passes outside, or the guy upstairs drops something. The crappy school-issued lighting makes me think of doctor's offices and principal's offices and courtrooms- pleasant places all.

My roommates are missing in action- one most likely home for the weekend, the other off with her friends and my former ones, and the last...well, God knows where she gets to sometimes. It's sad when the latter is my favorite. Jess isn't bad; she just has a propensity to disappear and reappear these days. She's busy. Lyn- somebody peed in her orange juice. Don't know what it is half the time, and the rest I don't care to wonder. Ailynn is usually around-ish. It's comforting to hear the IM noises coming from next door to just know that somebody's there. Right now, it's me and the fridge. And boy, is that fridge tempting.

I've been intermittently getting up to take a swig out of the carton of juice I bought yesterday. I'm the only one who drinks out of it and it'll be gone by tonight. So what? So what if it's got too much sugar in it for me at the moment? At least it's something I enjoy. I just finished watching a kids' movie about Anastasia of the Romanovs. I'd hoped it would make me feel better; instead it just made me more depressed. Anastasia's remains were purported to have been found not too long ago, proving that she died with Nicolas and the rest. John Cusack was in it, which made the main character hotter. But still. Didn't do the trick.

Today I got my novel up to forty six pages. I guess it means I'm out of my slump and I should be happier, but what's the point when it's just me and the fridge? I guess I'm forgetting the posters. One behind the couch of an empty field with a tree in the middle- everything is blanketed with snow, completely undisturbed. Nobody but the photographer around for miles. The second hangs above the sink- William Hopper's Nighthawks. This is my favorite painting, and I still can't explain why. Maybe it's because there are times- like this one- where I think I'm in this diner.

The street is completely darkened, except this one cafe. If you look closely, the sign reads Philly & Co. Inside, there are only four people- one the diner's attendant; an older man by the looks of it. Directly across from him sits a man with a cigarette and a girlfriend. Their hands touch, but they don't connect. Her hair is red, and she looks like she's taken crap for it all her life, by the expression on her face. Her lips are smeared with bright red lipstick- not the mark of a modest woman. Indeed, her boyfriend seems to be staring more at what's underneath that coral colored dress of hers than the remarkable construction and intuition of the design. He himself is about as pleasant as she is- square jaw highlighted underneath a fedora. All he needs is a press badge and you've got yourself the classic hard-hitting reporter who thinks nothing of crossing a few police lines to get a story. A blindingly white cup of coffee sits in front of him, apparently untouched.

None of these three people are looking at each other, and I mean really looking. Even the attendant, whose face is tilted upwards as though to address his patrons, stares off to the left of the reporter guy's left arm- almost blindly. Redhead is upset about something...something Reporter Guy is aware of. Maybe the rabbit's dead. Maybe her husband found out. Maybe they're actually the co-founders of a massive charity project to give disabled kids a chance to see Coney Island or the top of Mount Everest. Who knows. But it doesn't seem like legitimate charity folk would be out this late at night, and it doesn't seem like they'd be so hard, so- concentrated on what it is that's perturbing them.

Meanwhile, the most telling character of all hasn't yet been addressed. The man who sits with his back to the window, back to the painter. He too wears a fedora, but he wears it differently- tilted downward a little so that shadows encompass the details of his head. He alone stares off into the darkness just past the unhappy couple. He perches on the bar stool as though he's ready to get up at any minute, yet leans on the bar in world-weariness- or maybe it's straight-up exhaustion. I don't know. He slouches, but his back is still straight. This man is an active man, a powerful man...it's what he does with it that makes all the difference. He could be a mobster, a serial killer, a robber. Or he could be a cop, an agent, or even a politician (though maybe that goes in that last sentence). Whatever it is, he's thinking about something, and he's thinking hard, and he's thinking alone. All of these people have come to this diner essentially to be alone.

In about five minutes, the attendant's going to look up and spout the eternally popular phrase 'you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here'. Reporter Guy and the Redhead will probably, depending on the severity of their perponderance, either slump off to a bar, his car, or her apartment- all of which are intended to make them forget about whatever they were thinking about. The attendant will shift the sign on the door to 'closed', sweep up the already spotless place, mop his counter one more time, turn out the lights, and go home to an empty bed in an empty apartment above some sort of skeezy pawn shop. And the last guy- the one staring at the darkness, will retreat into it.

Staring at this painting, I can't help but wonder where I fit in. Maybe I'm the painter, the only one miserable enough to be up that late looking at these people for that long. I'm not the Redhead; she has a man, however nominally. I'm not the attendant, the only person I'm serving now is myself. Nor am I the Reporter. He's out for more than I am in the world. So am I the guy with his back turned perpetually, the guy facing into the unknown?

Nah. I'm not that poetic. More like, I'm the girl who was in the bathroom staring at her pasty face in the mirror while her slutty older sister silently chats up her reporter boyfriend. The attendant is recording them all secretly, and the powerful guy is a cop, who's actually watching the couple's reflection in the dark part of the window. In about five minutes, the bust will go down and the whole diner will be cleared out, leaving me without a ride home and locked in a fucking bathroom.

Time for that juice. It's dark out, and I'm alone. Along with the four other people in the diner, and the photographer with his snow in the field. Makeout couple has finally closed their blinds, and the refrigerator has stopped humming. It's really time for bed. When it gets late, I have a terrible tendency to write in a film noire patois and make myself even lonelier. Because there's just something about that narration style that just wants to make you pop open a bottle of something bad for you (in my case, juice) and lament the fact that there's no love, no companions, no one but you and the fridge.

A thought occurred to me this afternoon after seeing little but my hair for the entirety of my day- the wind was brutal today. I've dyed it red since I was a freshman in high school (sadly enough, because I'd always liked Annaliese Van der Pol's hair color). It's stuck, to the point where a few of my friends refer to me as Ginger Snap, which I think is very funny. (It sounds like a stripper name.) One of them is sincerely in denial- he believes that my hair has always been red. Not so. When I was little it was white blonde, then progressed to an oily stick color with the same straightness. I was confused for a relative of two of my naturally redheaded friends forever throughout high school. And I've been called a poser, had my roots pointed out, and teased. All in good fun, of course, but it's rather thought-provoking.

I admittedly watched America's Next Top Model during the season where there was a transgender contestant, who said that she had been born "physically male, but mentally female". That was...an interesting thought. I'm not sure where I stand on that, but if that becomes a valid rationalization, then I was born physically blonde, but mentally a redhead. Of course, there isn't much of a correllation, but I can point to the time I dyed my hair as the moment I became a little more social. I felt better, got more confident, and avoided those nasty blonde jokes. It's to the point where the red hair has become part of my social identity, and I love it. It makes me feel, for once, sexy(ish). I am, in my head, a redhead. So what if it comes out of a box? 

I also get people who tell me that it's a shame that I feel I have to alter myself to feel good about myself. Um...don't you wear clothes? Some of you wear makeup. And all of you take showers. If we all went au natural, we'd be nudists with unwashed hair. Forgive me, but I like to cover up, and I like my hair.

Identity, it seems, is a personal and social construct, not what you're cast as a genetic lot. If that guy on America's Next Top Model can be just as pretty as the female contestants, then I certainly can be just as fiery, passionate, and pretty as genetically endowed redheads. I'm also much happier than the overly happy woman on the box of dye. Maybe it's cause I don't have a camera in my face. Shrug.

Today, I watched my father, who has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, try to figure out how to replace the sponge on the end of our mop. He wound up calling my mother and asking- after thirty minutes of messing with it- if we could buy a new one. For some reason, this resonated with me. I've never thought of my father as a scientist. Sure, I knew he was good with math and numbers and chemistry- all the stuff I don't get. But to me, he's always been my dad- a little cranky sometimes, very goofy, and really flipping tall. Turns out, if you google my dad, you get all these research papers he's published and projects he's worked on. My father has worked on breast and ovarian cancers for the last seventeen years. He's really, really, really smart. But I see him as a guy fumbling with a mop. Instead of going 'pathetic' as I used to, it made me think. Police officers mop their floors. Doctors. Construction workers. Unemployed people. Stay at home parents. Even politicians, I think, have mopped at some point. Those who have floors mop. Or should every so often. Unless it's all carpeting.

But it just drove home the "it's a small world" concept to me. Americans have much more in common than we think, because few people think on that basal level. Conservatives mop. Liberals mop. Independents mop. Christians mop, atheists mop, Jews mop, Muslims mop, Buddhists mop, agnostics mop, Hindus mop, and yes- I know- Scientologists mop. Well, maybe not Tom Cruise. He's rich. But he's probably mopped at some time in his life. 

Despite the fact that the word mop now looks completely weird to me, it made me think of something else. Last night very late at night, an acquaintance tagged me and two others in a note entitled, 'you will die'. Weirded out, I looked into it. It delineated the lyrics from a song that apparently she found amusing that talks about how everybody dies. It used shock value to try to force engineers to relate to bus drivers. It reminded us that puppies and bunnies will die. This too in time shall pass? No. It's evidence, I think, of the sheer morbidity that people have driven themselves to. As I stated earlier today in disbelief, I had to quote Coldplay- one of my least favorite bands ever. Life is for living. It's something I've often had to remind myself.

I've struggled with panic attacks about death since I was eight years old. In fact, it's hard for me to even write this. I struggled with the concept that there may not be a heaven or an afterlife. The fear of the unknown gripped me, and for an entire summer of my childhood, I lay incapacitated by thought on the couch. It's a summer I won't get back, regardless of whether or not it matters. I've come to terms with it, for the most part- found solace in the thought of a benevolent God. However, I still have doubts in the form of arrested breathing and massive adrenaline attacks. And I, just before receiving that tag, had been wondering, pleased, why I'd gone so long without one. And then...that. I've had people (heartless people unable to see outside themselves) tell me that I should simply get over it- that I'm going to die and it's a fact of life so I should embrace it and not panic anymore and...it all runs together. But I think my being oversensitive to discussions of death has brought to light something. Society is OBSESSED with death- more than I am, and I'm the one with the obsessive mental tendencies. It's just downright morbid. People use it to make points. It happens without cause because gang members initiate new blood, because we get into baseless wars, because alcohol impairs judgement...and yet this group is trying to use it to build unity? 

We shouldn't go through life staring at the endgame. Several sources up to and including the Bible instruct that we should live life one day at a time, and I doubt that atheists would disagree. If we waste our time thinking about death, we won't have lived. Points about living should be made with life, not death. Unity is a concept best illustrated, I believe, with mops. And optimism. And mops.

Please go live.