As most of you are probably aware by now, I manage apartments. Probably the single thing I hate most about it is the company cell phone that I have to carry at all times. I am also supposed to answer it any time it rings, day or night. The primary reason is because it's the number residents can call 24/7 for maintenance emergencies. I don't mind that so much... those are few and far between, and I can see that as a necessary evil.
What I mind, however, is the fact that the same phone number is the number that people who view our Craigslist ad are directed to call for more information. So when the phone rings, it could be a resident calling with a maintenance emergency, but more often it's someone wanting to know how much it is for a two bedroom apartment. One of these groups of people I can safely ignore for the hour I'm in church, the other I can't. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing which it is unless I answer the phone. I don't know whose idea this setup was, but I don't like it, and occasions like this morning are why.
This morning I decided to dye my hair, which I've been trying to find a chunk of time to do since I bought the dye a couple of weeks ago. This says something about my life... I can't find an uninterrupted hour in which to put goo on my head and wash it out. But I digress... my point is that I decided I was going to do it this morning, come hell or high water. So I was busily pouring black goo on my head when I hear the company cell phone ringing in on my bed where I left it.
ME: (inside my head) Crap... it's probably a sales call. I'll just ignore it and call them back if they leave a message.
And I go about my business, and I hear the missed call beep. Less than a minute later, it rings again. This usually means one of two things: 1) it's a resident with a maintenance emergency and they're mad that I didn't answer the phone, or 2) it's a sales caller who refuses to accept that the property might not be open for business at 8 AM. It was also possible that it could have been two separate callers. So I sighed, took off the gloves, and started racing down the hall to get the phone, splattering blue-black hair dye on the bathroom wall in the process. I missed the call, and when I looked at the missed calls it was the same number twice. And it wasn't one I recognized, but that doesn't mean it's not a resident... just means it's not a resident who calls often.
So I started carrying the phone back toward the bathroom and dialed the call I missed. Here's the entire course of the conversation:
ME: Hi, this is Meagan from ___________ Apartments. I just missed a call from this number.
HIM: Oh, yeah. I was looking at your ad on Craigslist for 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartments and I had a question. What school district are you in?
ME: Centennial.
HIM: Okay, thanks ma'am. (hangs up)
Well, crap. Now to deal with the hair dye on the bathroom wall. At my old apartment in Molalla I had dealt with this before. Spray with Awesome, wipe, done. This is when I discovered that my employer apparently uses cheap paint... it took the paint right off the wall.
I guess it's fortunate that I'm the manager and have keys to the paint room. Is it Friday yet?
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label depression. Show all posts
March 13, 2013
March 4, 2012
Random facts and figures...
WARNING: I'm in a bad mood right now. Don't read this if you don't want to hear (read) me complaining. If you read it anyway, don't say you weren't warned....
10 1/2 (approximately): The number of years that have elapsed since, as an 18 year old, I thought it would be a pretty smart idea to get married on June 23, 2001.
9 (approximately): The number of years it has been since my ex-husband and I separated for the third and final time. (After he left, came back, left, came back, then told me he was leaving again. I told him not to bother coming back if he left. So of course, now our divorce is my fault because I told him not to come back.)
4 years, 2 months (almost exactly): The number of years we've been officially divorced. (Someone wouldn't help pay for it (because it was my fault), so it had to wait until I could afford to do it myself.)
Once a year or less: The approximate frequency with which either of the above two facts bothers me in the slightest. (In truth, I'm much more likely to celebrate those same facts on any given day.)
And if I'm gonna be totally fair, it's not him specifically I miss. Okay, actually I don't miss him at all... like I said, in retrospect I'm glad he's gone. I mostly just miss the bed not being empty. Odd if you consider that for the greater part of our marriage we worked opposing shifts and were never in the bed at the same time anyway, but I digress.
In general I've adapted pretty darn well to the single-parenting lifestyle. Since we separated I've managed to get myself a college degree, get myself a job, get myself an apartment, and somehow raise a kid who isn't screwed up in the head (yet). I can kill my own spiders, perform my own basic automobile maintenance, move my own heavy stuff and open my own jars. I have managed to keep us fed, clothed and housed for the most part without even the aid of monthly child support payments (someone doesn't pay them). Some of the above successes are partly attributable to supportive family members, both blood relatives and church family. And a lot of it just attributable to the fact that I do not need a man to survive... I learned that about 9 years ago when he walked.
Of course, that same fact is also the source of my current dilemma. Or at least part of it. That's just the problem... I don't need a man. Most of the time I don't even want one. Sometimes I entertain the notion that the ideal arrangement for me would be one of those marriages where you maintain separate houses and have sleepovers. (Actually, were it not against my religion, the ideal arrangement would probably be more what is termed a "friend with benefits"... no legal entanglements whatsoever.) Some would say that I've never even been in a healthy, functional romantic relationship and just don't know what I'm missing. They're probably right about that, but what am I supposed to do about it? It ain't exactly raining men around here... in fact, it's been more of a nine-year drought. And yes, there have been a couple of close calls in those nine years, but they mostly served to make me realize even more what I don't want to put up with.
Yeah, maybe that's the problem. Having nine years to think it over has made me really picky. I have a long list of deal-breakers. Like these:
NO SMOKING: If you want to poison yourself slowly, go for it. Just do it far away from me. I already tried being married to a smoker. It didn't work for me and I won't do it again, which is why I won't even bother dating a smoker. I don't date people who have zero marriage potential, and smoking is an automatic disqualifier. Sorry!
NO DRUGS: Again, already tried this one in a marriage. It doesn't work. I am not and will never be "420 friendly", and yes, pot is a drug. Go stare at the walls in your own house and stay outta mine.
NO FIXER-UPPERS: This is a more recently adopted rule. Women in general are guilty of this and I think probably Christian women doubly so... we meet someone with a sad and tragic past and we get this romantic notion in our heads that we can somehow make it all better with the power of love or some trite BS like that. Yeah, well, guess what... it doesn't work that way. If a guy has more issues than TV Guide and/or more baggage than the average United Airlines flight, don't get involved.
And before I start sounding too negative, the deal-breaker list isn't my only list. I also have a "must-have" list. Because I work for Head Start and have been thoroughly PBIS indoctrinated, I'm going to call them the "be" rules.
BE a Real Grown-up: I already have a kid. Not looking for another one at this point. I do not want to feel like your mother or your babysitter. Any potential man should be like me in that he is completely capable of functioning solo without anyone to clean up his messes (both literal and metaphorical). Any potential cleaning up of each other's messes would be purely by mutual agreement to do so, not necessity or obligation.
BE Funny: Sense of humor. It is a must for anyone who is going to put up with me for more than, say, five minutes. It is also a must for anyone that I am going to have to put up with for more than, say, five minutes. Witty banter skill is an absolute requirement.
And as if that didn't reduce the field of potential candidates enough, I threw this one on:
BE a Christian: And just like that, I've narrowed my potential field of choices down to two! (Either of which could potentially be reading this... hi guys!) And I'm not saying that there are no other single, Christian men in the universe, I'm just saying that I don't know any personally and I have failed to stumble across any in the last nine years or so. That's all I'm saying. If I insist on church-going, faithful Christian men, the number of proverbial fish in the proverbial sea decreases exponentially.
But I guess really this was just a very roundabout way for me to say this: I'm lonely tonight and want someone to cuddle with. Just tonight, though. I'll probably be fine again tomorrow.
Song o' the Day: While not strictly related to the topic at hand, I'm gonna go with "Just Tonight" by The Pretty Reckless, because I have it in my head right now. See/hear it here.
10 1/2 (approximately): The number of years that have elapsed since, as an 18 year old, I thought it would be a pretty smart idea to get married on June 23, 2001.
9 (approximately): The number of years it has been since my ex-husband and I separated for the third and final time. (After he left, came back, left, came back, then told me he was leaving again. I told him not to bother coming back if he left. So of course, now our divorce is my fault because I told him not to come back.)
4 years, 2 months (almost exactly): The number of years we've been officially divorced. (Someone wouldn't help pay for it (because it was my fault), so it had to wait until I could afford to do it myself.)
Once a year or less: The approximate frequency with which either of the above two facts bothers me in the slightest. (In truth, I'm much more likely to celebrate those same facts on any given day.)
And if I'm gonna be totally fair, it's not him specifically I miss. Okay, actually I don't miss him at all... like I said, in retrospect I'm glad he's gone. I mostly just miss the bed not being empty. Odd if you consider that for the greater part of our marriage we worked opposing shifts and were never in the bed at the same time anyway, but I digress.
In general I've adapted pretty darn well to the single-parenting lifestyle. Since we separated I've managed to get myself a college degree, get myself a job, get myself an apartment, and somehow raise a kid who isn't screwed up in the head (yet). I can kill my own spiders, perform my own basic automobile maintenance, move my own heavy stuff and open my own jars. I have managed to keep us fed, clothed and housed for the most part without even the aid of monthly child support payments (someone doesn't pay them). Some of the above successes are partly attributable to supportive family members, both blood relatives and church family. And a lot of it just attributable to the fact that I do not need a man to survive... I learned that about 9 years ago when he walked.
Of course, that same fact is also the source of my current dilemma. Or at least part of it. That's just the problem... I don't need a man. Most of the time I don't even want one. Sometimes I entertain the notion that the ideal arrangement for me would be one of those marriages where you maintain separate houses and have sleepovers. (Actually, were it not against my religion, the ideal arrangement would probably be more what is termed a "friend with benefits"... no legal entanglements whatsoever.) Some would say that I've never even been in a healthy, functional romantic relationship and just don't know what I'm missing. They're probably right about that, but what am I supposed to do about it? It ain't exactly raining men around here... in fact, it's been more of a nine-year drought. And yes, there have been a couple of close calls in those nine years, but they mostly served to make me realize even more what I don't want to put up with.
Yeah, maybe that's the problem. Having nine years to think it over has made me really picky. I have a long list of deal-breakers. Like these:
NO SMOKING: If you want to poison yourself slowly, go for it. Just do it far away from me. I already tried being married to a smoker. It didn't work for me and I won't do it again, which is why I won't even bother dating a smoker. I don't date people who have zero marriage potential, and smoking is an automatic disqualifier. Sorry!
NO DRUGS: Again, already tried this one in a marriage. It doesn't work. I am not and will never be "420 friendly", and yes, pot is a drug. Go stare at the walls in your own house and stay outta mine.
NO FIXER-UPPERS: This is a more recently adopted rule. Women in general are guilty of this and I think probably Christian women doubly so... we meet someone with a sad and tragic past and we get this romantic notion in our heads that we can somehow make it all better with the power of love or some trite BS like that. Yeah, well, guess what... it doesn't work that way. If a guy has more issues than TV Guide and/or more baggage than the average United Airlines flight, don't get involved.
And before I start sounding too negative, the deal-breaker list isn't my only list. I also have a "must-have" list. Because I work for Head Start and have been thoroughly PBIS indoctrinated, I'm going to call them the "be" rules.
BE a Real Grown-up: I already have a kid. Not looking for another one at this point. I do not want to feel like your mother or your babysitter. Any potential man should be like me in that he is completely capable of functioning solo without anyone to clean up his messes (both literal and metaphorical). Any potential cleaning up of each other's messes would be purely by mutual agreement to do so, not necessity or obligation.
BE Funny: Sense of humor. It is a must for anyone who is going to put up with me for more than, say, five minutes. It is also a must for anyone that I am going to have to put up with for more than, say, five minutes. Witty banter skill is an absolute requirement.
And as if that didn't reduce the field of potential candidates enough, I threw this one on:
BE a Christian: And just like that, I've narrowed my potential field of choices down to two! (Either of which could potentially be reading this... hi guys!) And I'm not saying that there are no other single, Christian men in the universe, I'm just saying that I don't know any personally and I have failed to stumble across any in the last nine years or so. That's all I'm saying. If I insist on church-going, faithful Christian men, the number of proverbial fish in the proverbial sea decreases exponentially.
But I guess really this was just a very roundabout way for me to say this: I'm lonely tonight and want someone to cuddle with. Just tonight, though. I'll probably be fine again tomorrow.
Song o' the Day: While not strictly related to the topic at hand, I'm gonna go with "Just Tonight" by The Pretty Reckless, because I have it in my head right now. See/hear it here.
December 14, 2010
COOKIES?!?!
Other possible titles I considered for this entry:
"Seriously God? Cookies?! "
"Come to Christ... we have cookies!!!"
"I asked God for a sign... and I got cookies."
I had probably better start explaining pretty quickly here what I'm on about... sorry if this comes out a little discombobulated, but I'm just almost giddy right now... a stark contrast to last night (see previous entry).
So, tonight I was supposed to lead the discussion in my "depression class". I had already decided a week ago that my topic was going to be crying and not keeping things bottled up. After last night, I was really dreading it, because I'd already been crying all day long, and everything was making me cry, and I knew that I was going to cry if I tried to talk about crying. I thought about ditching at the last moment... it's not like I didn't have other things to do. I had translation work waiting, and somewhere I was supposed to find time to make some cookies for the ladies' ornament/cookie exchange party tomorrow night. And I don't even know how to make freaking cookies.
After much deliberation and wavering back and forth on the subject, I decided to plunge boldly ahead with the class and my intended topic, whether I cried or not, and screw the cookies... I would just go without cookies and not bring any cookies home. Simple, right? It's also important to note that after last night's deeply searching discussion with good-friend-who-needs-an-alias-desperately, I had resolved that I needed to experience God, just as he said. So starting last night and continuing on every time I got a chance all day today, I was praying to God to give me an experience... a sign... something that I would recognize as being indisputably a sign/experience from God, just so I would feel his presence and know I was heading in the right direction.
I did my class. And I cried almost the entire time. And I received more love and grace from that group of people than I knew was possible. But that wasn't the weird bit.
During the entire class there were two big platters of cookies sitting on the table. Apparently Kaye, who had not baked in years she said, had gotten the urge to bake cookies this afternoon and had brought some in the hopes that the class would eat them and get them out of her house. Nobody touched them. At the end of the class, she pretty much forced me to load up a plate with cookies and take them home with me.
It didn't hit me until I got halfway to my mom's (where I was headed to pick up the Chamaco).... not only did I do my class, I had cookies. I laughed out loud and said, "Seriously, God? Cookies?! " And I won't say I heard a voice because I didn't exactly, but I more felt him say, "See? I even care about the trivial stuff like cookies... I can handle the details. You can trust me." And I was laughing at the absurdity of God giving me cookies, of all things, even as at the same time I burst into tears for the zillionth time today. I have never laughed so hard and cried so hard simultaneously. I almost had to pull over. It was a ridiculous, trivial little thing that probably has no significance to anyone else but me (though the good-friend-who-needs-an-alias-desperately said this was an 'awesome story') and totally appealed to my sense of absurdity, but there was no doubt in my mind... God gave me cookies.
And even though I am both emotionally and physically exhausted (all the crying plus lack of sleep, no doubt... I didn't get to bed until almost 4 last night), I inexplicably feel really good. I mentioned that to the good-friend-who-needs-an-alias-desperately, and his response was "Ahhh... the peace of God."
Yeah, that sounds about right.
So, fellow ladies attending the ornament/cookie exchange tomorrow night... I'm bringing cookies. They're homemade, but I didn't make them. God did. So if you think they're nasty, take it up with him... I'm going to bed and resting up for tomorrow, because I don't doubt that God will spend another day or two making me laugh and cry. Maybe longer, even. But I will leave you with this....
Songs o' the Day: "Fully Alive" by Flyleaf, plus "Again", also by Flyleaf. I've been doing a lot of Flyleaf today. In fact, I'll even throw in a third one just because I love the video (and the song is pretty darn good too)... "All Around Me" (All 3 of these songs made me cry today.)
"Seriously God? Cookies?! "
"Come to Christ... we have cookies!!!"
"I asked God for a sign... and I got cookies."
I had probably better start explaining pretty quickly here what I'm on about... sorry if this comes out a little discombobulated, but I'm just almost giddy right now... a stark contrast to last night (see previous entry).
So, tonight I was supposed to lead the discussion in my "depression class". I had already decided a week ago that my topic was going to be crying and not keeping things bottled up. After last night, I was really dreading it, because I'd already been crying all day long, and everything was making me cry, and I knew that I was going to cry if I tried to talk about crying. I thought about ditching at the last moment... it's not like I didn't have other things to do. I had translation work waiting, and somewhere I was supposed to find time to make some cookies for the ladies' ornament/cookie exchange party tomorrow night. And I don't even know how to make freaking cookies.
After much deliberation and wavering back and forth on the subject, I decided to plunge boldly ahead with the class and my intended topic, whether I cried or not, and screw the cookies... I would just go without cookies and not bring any cookies home. Simple, right? It's also important to note that after last night's deeply searching discussion with good-friend-who-needs-an-alias-desperately, I had resolved that I needed to experience God, just as he said. So starting last night and continuing on every time I got a chance all day today, I was praying to God to give me an experience... a sign... something that I would recognize as being indisputably a sign/experience from God, just so I would feel his presence and know I was heading in the right direction.
I did my class. And I cried almost the entire time. And I received more love and grace from that group of people than I knew was possible. But that wasn't the weird bit.
During the entire class there were two big platters of cookies sitting on the table. Apparently Kaye, who had not baked in years she said, had gotten the urge to bake cookies this afternoon and had brought some in the hopes that the class would eat them and get them out of her house. Nobody touched them. At the end of the class, she pretty much forced me to load up a plate with cookies and take them home with me.
It didn't hit me until I got halfway to my mom's (where I was headed to pick up the Chamaco).... not only did I do my class, I had cookies. I laughed out loud and said, "Seriously, God? Cookies?! " And I won't say I heard a voice because I didn't exactly, but I more felt him say, "See? I even care about the trivial stuff like cookies... I can handle the details. You can trust me." And I was laughing at the absurdity of God giving me cookies, of all things, even as at the same time I burst into tears for the zillionth time today. I have never laughed so hard and cried so hard simultaneously. I almost had to pull over. It was a ridiculous, trivial little thing that probably has no significance to anyone else but me (though the good-friend-who-needs-an-alias-desperately said this was an 'awesome story') and totally appealed to my sense of absurdity, but there was no doubt in my mind... God gave me cookies.
And even though I am both emotionally and physically exhausted (all the crying plus lack of sleep, no doubt... I didn't get to bed until almost 4 last night), I inexplicably feel really good. I mentioned that to the good-friend-who-needs-an-alias-desperately, and his response was "Ahhh... the peace of God."
Yeah, that sounds about right.
So, fellow ladies attending the ornament/cookie exchange tomorrow night... I'm bringing cookies. They're homemade, but I didn't make them. God did. So if you think they're nasty, take it up with him... I'm going to bed and resting up for tomorrow, because I don't doubt that God will spend another day or two making me laugh and cry. Maybe longer, even. But I will leave you with this....
Songs o' the Day: "Fully Alive" by Flyleaf, plus "Again", also by Flyleaf. I've been doing a lot of Flyleaf today. In fact, I'll even throw in a third one just because I love the video (and the song is pretty darn good too)... "All Around Me" (All 3 of these songs made me cry today.)
December 13, 2010
My thoughts on paper (screen. Whatever.)...
I don't even really know where to start right now... so many things are swirling around in my head. And probably most of what I'm gonna say here isn't anything I haven't said out loud in the last hour, but knowing me... who knows? I think by writing things down... taking it out of my head and putting it there where I can look at it and go "Oh, okay... so that's what that looks like, then." (Oddly enough, I didn't even realize I did that until I wrote that just now.)
This brings me to the topic du jour... introspection. Generally something I avoid like the plague. Whatever's going on in there, I don't wanna know about it. Keep the voices quiet and I'll do my thing and they can do theirs. This only works for so long, though, because voices multiply... try it for yourself. Enter a quiet space, like say an office where people are working, and if you start talking to one person, someone will chime in with their opinion and before you know it nobody's getting any work done because of all the chatter. (This is especially true where I work.)
But I may as well say it and get it out of the way... in many areas of my life I have stagnated. I don't know for how long now I've been sitting here waiting for something to change, and it doesn't. And I rave and rant and rail about how I want something - anything - to be different than it is now, but I never do anything because I haven't got the foggiest idea what to do or what I want to accomplish.
Profesionally speaking, I'm 28 years old and I still don't even know what I want to be when (if) I grow up. Here's what I know by process of elimination - teaching isn't it. Neither is fast food or residential care. I could go either way on funeral transport or living history interpreting... both of those things were still fun when I stopped doing them, but I don't know if they always would have been because I didn't do it long enough for it not to be fun, if that makes any sense. I'm still just "all grown up and still waiting to be a rockstar"... just like the button on my backpack says. (Seriously, in all my daydreams and many of my night dreams, I'm a rockstar... perhaps lame, but true.) (Side note: I just remembered the only time I've ever in my life had any sort of "ah-ha" moment... somehow we wound up at an Acappella concert - the band Acappella, not just people singing without music - and they were doing one of their talky bits between songs and the guy who was talking described them as "musicianaries" (musician + missionary in case anyone didn't get that). I was probably 15 at the time. I remember turning to Audra, who has been around for most of the dramatic moments in my life and saying, "That's what I want to do.") (See, this thinking in parenthetical discursions thing really works for me!)
Spiritually... I've barely advanced from where I was almost 14 years ago when I was baptized. That's a horrible and painful thing to admit (even worse to note that most of that tiny bit of advancement has happened within the last two years). I know I'm not where I should be, and I have absolutely no idea how to get there, which is heartbreakingly sad considering I've been attending church quite literally my entire life with the exception of about two months in 2008. Intellectually I have a lot of knowledge... you don't sit through 28 years of Bible classes and sermons without picking up something. Emotionally, however, it has never clicked... I have a pretty long history of being emotionally retarded, so this doesn't surprise me. I can't cope with my own emotions (in fact, I like to ignore them or bottle them up) and I hate everyone else's. Someone recently told me (like about an hour ago) that I needed to "experience God". That's totally correct, and I've had a few close calls... the mission trip to Toluca was one of them. And this is where the spiritual crosses over into the emotional.
My biggest struggle, the issue that pervades every other aspect of my life, is loneliness, isolation, disconnect... whatever face it's wearing today, I'm talking about the overwhelming sense of being by myself. Even in a room packed with so many people that I can't breathe. I want desperately to not be alone... yet I'm far too scared to let anyone very close because every time I've tried I've gotten hurt. Badly. Part of my growth in the last two years has been letting a select few people get way closer than I've ever let anyone get... still not too close, but progress, I guess. In the last two years I have met four - count 'em, four! - people not related to me who I did not know prior to two years ago who have managed to scale my defenses and peek over. The first three are women, which seemed safe enough even though it was odd at the time because I didn't (and don't) actually like women in general. The fourth one is a man... a surprise latecomer who just hopped over the walls ("Walls? What walls?") and made himself at home. Come to find out, that's just how he operates. (Nobody read too much into that, okay? It's not that sort of a relationship.)
Getting back to my original point (introspection, if you'd forgotten while I was babbling) it is something I have historically avoided because it depresses me to no end. And when you are like me, someone who tends toward depression anyway and even more so during the nine months of Oregon winter, anything that is just going to depress you more is a good thing to avoid. The drawback, though, is that I have not introspected (I don't know if it was a verb before but it is now!) in YEARS and I no longer have the foggiest idea who I am because I haven't bothered to check in. So I am one of two things... I'm either the most authentic person you'll ever meet because I'm deliberately not affecting any change of any kind on myself, or I'm the most fake person you'll ever meet because even I don't know who I really am. It could even be both, because recent events have shown that I'm totally at home with that sort of dichotomy.
So I'll start with what I know: I don't like where I'm at. I don't know where I am, exactly, but I hate it here. I want to get out. I don't know what I'm in, what it is I want out of exactly, or where I would go if I got out, but I want OUT.
What I know from the last few hours, though, is that if I want to get out of the mire I'm currently mired in, there are some things I'm gonna have to let go of... things I've been holding onto tightly because they give me reasons and excuses for how I got this way. But I've also realized that if I don't let go, I'm gonna end up like my dad. (Not trying to be harsh, Dad, if you're reading this, but we both know it's true.) And I'm going to have to be introspective and it's probably going to depress me. A lot. But (there's a big but in every crowd, and it's usually mine!) I currently find myself in the previously unknown situation of having closeish friends. Closeish Christian friends, even. Aside from the one who just jumps walls, I'm going to have to let the walls down and let them in so when I fall (and I'm going to fall... hard) they can catch me. And I have to trust that they will catch me and not let me repeat 2002 (the year of somnambulent suicide attempts). There are a lot of things hindering me, and I have a lot of work to do, and I don't want to do any of it. So why blog about it, then? Well, here's why:
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us..." (Hebrews 12:1)
You, o blogosphere, are my cloud of witnesses... and it's very likely that some of those people I was talking about who scale walls are going to read this. And then you'll know I need a lot of help... more than I'll ever be able to express out loud in words... spoken word is not my thing. (Though I did probably one of the better jobs of it I've ever done a couple of hours ago, and it was still pitiful.) So witness this, people... I am hereby attempting to throw off everything that hinders (my past, certain people) and the sin that so easily entangles (4 of you know exactly what I'm talking about) and run the race marked out for me... as soon as I can figure out where the heck the racetrack is.
Song(s) o' the Day: This one started playing on my randomly shuffled iPod at an oddly significant moment earlier... "What I've Done" by Linkin Park. See it here (and I promise never ever to put up a Linkin Park song again... this is the only one I like). Follow that up with a chaser of "Broken Pieces" by Apocalyptica (yes, we've had this one before, but you can see it again here if you like). And for the grand finale, my parting shot to my ex-husband before I completely put him out of my mind except on Sundays when I have to take the Chamaco to him... "Anything But Love" by Apocalyptica... 99% of this song applies directly to my marriage, which was fabulous in its dysfunctionality and was truly based on anything but love. Never before have I heard a song that so completely said what I was thinking and feeling, and I'm kind of scared to ever have it happen again.
This brings me to the topic du jour... introspection. Generally something I avoid like the plague. Whatever's going on in there, I don't wanna know about it. Keep the voices quiet and I'll do my thing and they can do theirs. This only works for so long, though, because voices multiply... try it for yourself. Enter a quiet space, like say an office where people are working, and if you start talking to one person, someone will chime in with their opinion and before you know it nobody's getting any work done because of all the chatter. (This is especially true where I work.)
But I may as well say it and get it out of the way... in many areas of my life I have stagnated. I don't know for how long now I've been sitting here waiting for something to change, and it doesn't. And I rave and rant and rail about how I want something - anything - to be different than it is now, but I never do anything because I haven't got the foggiest idea what to do or what I want to accomplish.
Profesionally speaking, I'm 28 years old and I still don't even know what I want to be when (if) I grow up. Here's what I know by process of elimination - teaching isn't it. Neither is fast food or residential care. I could go either way on funeral transport or living history interpreting... both of those things were still fun when I stopped doing them, but I don't know if they always would have been because I didn't do it long enough for it not to be fun, if that makes any sense. I'm still just "all grown up and still waiting to be a rockstar"... just like the button on my backpack says. (Seriously, in all my daydreams and many of my night dreams, I'm a rockstar... perhaps lame, but true.) (Side note: I just remembered the only time I've ever in my life had any sort of "ah-ha" moment... somehow we wound up at an Acappella concert - the band Acappella, not just people singing without music - and they were doing one of their talky bits between songs and the guy who was talking described them as "musicianaries" (musician + missionary in case anyone didn't get that). I was probably 15 at the time. I remember turning to Audra, who has been around for most of the dramatic moments in my life and saying, "That's what I want to do.") (See, this thinking in parenthetical discursions thing really works for me!)
Spiritually... I've barely advanced from where I was almost 14 years ago when I was baptized. That's a horrible and painful thing to admit (even worse to note that most of that tiny bit of advancement has happened within the last two years). I know I'm not where I should be, and I have absolutely no idea how to get there, which is heartbreakingly sad considering I've been attending church quite literally my entire life with the exception of about two months in 2008. Intellectually I have a lot of knowledge... you don't sit through 28 years of Bible classes and sermons without picking up something. Emotionally, however, it has never clicked... I have a pretty long history of being emotionally retarded, so this doesn't surprise me. I can't cope with my own emotions (in fact, I like to ignore them or bottle them up) and I hate everyone else's. Someone recently told me (like about an hour ago) that I needed to "experience God". That's totally correct, and I've had a few close calls... the mission trip to Toluca was one of them. And this is where the spiritual crosses over into the emotional.
My biggest struggle, the issue that pervades every other aspect of my life, is loneliness, isolation, disconnect... whatever face it's wearing today, I'm talking about the overwhelming sense of being by myself. Even in a room packed with so many people that I can't breathe. I want desperately to not be alone... yet I'm far too scared to let anyone very close because every time I've tried I've gotten hurt. Badly. Part of my growth in the last two years has been letting a select few people get way closer than I've ever let anyone get... still not too close, but progress, I guess. In the last two years I have met four - count 'em, four! - people not related to me who I did not know prior to two years ago who have managed to scale my defenses and peek over. The first three are women, which seemed safe enough even though it was odd at the time because I didn't (and don't) actually like women in general. The fourth one is a man... a surprise latecomer who just hopped over the walls ("Walls? What walls?") and made himself at home. Come to find out, that's just how he operates. (Nobody read too much into that, okay? It's not that sort of a relationship.)
Getting back to my original point (introspection, if you'd forgotten while I was babbling) it is something I have historically avoided because it depresses me to no end. And when you are like me, someone who tends toward depression anyway and even more so during the nine months of Oregon winter, anything that is just going to depress you more is a good thing to avoid. The drawback, though, is that I have not introspected (I don't know if it was a verb before but it is now!) in YEARS and I no longer have the foggiest idea who I am because I haven't bothered to check in. So I am one of two things... I'm either the most authentic person you'll ever meet because I'm deliberately not affecting any change of any kind on myself, or I'm the most fake person you'll ever meet because even I don't know who I really am. It could even be both, because recent events have shown that I'm totally at home with that sort of dichotomy.
So I'll start with what I know: I don't like where I'm at. I don't know where I am, exactly, but I hate it here. I want to get out. I don't know what I'm in, what it is I want out of exactly, or where I would go if I got out, but I want OUT.
What I know from the last few hours, though, is that if I want to get out of the mire I'm currently mired in, there are some things I'm gonna have to let go of... things I've been holding onto tightly because they give me reasons and excuses for how I got this way. But I've also realized that if I don't let go, I'm gonna end up like my dad. (Not trying to be harsh, Dad, if you're reading this, but we both know it's true.) And I'm going to have to be introspective and it's probably going to depress me. A lot. But (there's a big but in every crowd, and it's usually mine!) I currently find myself in the previously unknown situation of having closeish friends. Closeish Christian friends, even. Aside from the one who just jumps walls, I'm going to have to let the walls down and let them in so when I fall (and I'm going to fall... hard) they can catch me. And I have to trust that they will catch me and not let me repeat 2002 (the year of somnambulent suicide attempts). There are a lot of things hindering me, and I have a lot of work to do, and I don't want to do any of it. So why blog about it, then? Well, here's why:
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us..." (Hebrews 12:1)
You, o blogosphere, are my cloud of witnesses... and it's very likely that some of those people I was talking about who scale walls are going to read this. And then you'll know I need a lot of help... more than I'll ever be able to express out loud in words... spoken word is not my thing. (Though I did probably one of the better jobs of it I've ever done a couple of hours ago, and it was still pitiful.) So witness this, people... I am hereby attempting to throw off everything that hinders (my past, certain people) and the sin that so easily entangles (4 of you know exactly what I'm talking about) and run the race marked out for me... as soon as I can figure out where the heck the racetrack is.
Song(s) o' the Day: This one started playing on my randomly shuffled iPod at an oddly significant moment earlier... "What I've Done" by Linkin Park. See it here (and I promise never ever to put up a Linkin Park song again... this is the only one I like). Follow that up with a chaser of "Broken Pieces" by Apocalyptica (yes, we've had this one before, but you can see it again here if you like). And for the grand finale, my parting shot to my ex-husband before I completely put him out of my mind except on Sundays when I have to take the Chamaco to him... "Anything But Love" by Apocalyptica... 99% of this song applies directly to my marriage, which was fabulous in its dysfunctionality and was truly based on anything but love. Never before have I heard a song that so completely said what I was thinking and feeling, and I'm kind of scared to ever have it happen again.
November 1, 2010
Some thoughts on prayer, and other random stuff...
Most of you are probably aware that depression is a thing I've struggled with off and on (mostly on) since high school. Most of you probably aren't aware, however, that I've been going to a Bible-based class on Monday nights at the church in Molalla. We also read from a book called "Happiness is a Choice", which was written by a couple of Christian psychologists whose names escape me at the moment. Don't worry, the prayer stuff I mentioned in the title will happen along in a minute here...
Tonight we were discussing how prayer can aid with alleviating depression. Well, we started out there, anyway... we do tend to wander a bit. A question was raised about praying wrongly, or praying for something you don't actually want... praying insincerely, I guess you might call it. This spiraled into another discussion... why are people so often dishonest in prayer? Do they really think that God doesn't know what's actually in their head and in their heart? Somebody mentioned certain things that they felt they shouldn't tell God about, and my reaction was, "What, you think He doesn't know about that already??"
I was remembering back to something that made a pretty big impression on me as a teenager. I went to a youth rally - I think it was actually in Gold Beach - and the speaker there (I forget who it was, but it may have been Kevin Woods) said something to the effect of, "God is supposed to be like your father, right? So how many of you go up to your dad and say, 'Oh Father who art in the garage, if it be your will please may I have ten dollars?' None of you do that! You walk up to him and say, 'Hey Dad, can I have ten bucks?'" That made a lasting impression on my view of prayer, and perhaps also contributed to my "suburban dad" theory of God (see a previous blog entry for more on this).
Those that know me know that I'm not big on formality. Okay, actually I despise formality. And I REALLY hate it when church people, while in the church, put on a façade of being even more churchy than they actually are. This also applies to prayer. If you're going to speak to God on my behalf in front of the congregation, you'd better be speaking to God, not reciting some prayer you memorized, not using your standard form prayer where the only thing that changes from week to week is the names of the people on the sick list in the bulletin. There are certain people whose prayers I can recite almost word for word along with them, and certain people who I know will use the word 'father' at least 7 times in a 45 second prayer... unnecessarily, at that. Who, in their normal course of speaking to their dad, begins and ends nearly every sentence with the word 'father'? Nobody, that's who.
And don't misinterpret... I'm all for giving God the respect that is due to him, but I'm also all for continuing to speak regular English. And as a language nerd, it absolutely cracks me up that people who get up to do public prayers start inserting "thee" and "thy" and the like, as if it makes them sound all formal and holy. In actual fact, "thee", "thy", "thou", etc. are the informal pronouns (direct object, possessive and personal, respectively) from old English. Back in the 1500s, you would have used those pronouns with your children or your spouse. The pronoun "you" (which was the formal pronoun) was used only with adults who were not your family members or close friends, and other people who somehow merited a great deal of respect. Most Latin-based and even Germanic languages still have the formal/informal second-person pronouns (usted/tú in Spanish, Lei/tu in Italian, Sie/du in German, and many more no doubt). English, somewhere along the line, lost our informal pronoun (thou) and decided to just use the formal one (you) all the time for everyone. So in actuality, people who think they're sounding all formal and respectful when they say "thou" or "thee" to God are actually talking to him as though he is a child or close family member/friend. And if they go into it with that attitude in mind, I'm marginally okay with it (though not completely okay, since that has fallen out of use in modern English), but most of them are not thinking of it in that light I guarantee you.
And what's with people who think they can't be honest with God, anyway!?!? It's not like he doesn't already know what you're thinking. Me personally, I'm very honest with God in my prayers. "Hey God... I'm pretty ticked off right now, and I need you to help me refrain from saying something unfortunate to _______" is a fairly common opener for me. I can be open with God on a wide range of emotions, from ticked off to depressed to horny (particularly heavy on the horny lately too, I must admit) and everything in between, because I operate on the theory that I'm not telling him anything he doesn't already know. So why pray at all, you ask? Well, I don't know about you, but with most of my close friends I already know when they're upset or whatever without them telling me about it. But of course we talk it over anyway, because that's the sort of relationship we have, and this is how relationships grow and stay strong. See where I'm going with this?
And actually, I think complete honesty is healthy in any relationship, not just your relationship with God. Thinking it over in class earlier, I realized that all of my best friendships are with the people I feel I can say anything to... the ones who know the good and the bad of me and still like me. Just recently I met someone who seems to have a similar approach to communication, and we have gone in just under 3 weeks from complete strangers to what I would term very good friends, and I think it works because neither of us feels the need to hold back anything. I really do feel I could say anything I thought or felt to this person (and this individual will probably receive a cool blog alias sooner or later) and we could discuss it like rational adults and it'd be cool. I like that.
Anyway, we need a Song o' the Day.
Song o' the Day: "Fully Alive" by Flyleaf. See/hear it here. I've chosen this one because it sort of sums up how I feel lately.
Tonight we were discussing how prayer can aid with alleviating depression. Well, we started out there, anyway... we do tend to wander a bit. A question was raised about praying wrongly, or praying for something you don't actually want... praying insincerely, I guess you might call it. This spiraled into another discussion... why are people so often dishonest in prayer? Do they really think that God doesn't know what's actually in their head and in their heart? Somebody mentioned certain things that they felt they shouldn't tell God about, and my reaction was, "What, you think He doesn't know about that already??"
I was remembering back to something that made a pretty big impression on me as a teenager. I went to a youth rally - I think it was actually in Gold Beach - and the speaker there (I forget who it was, but it may have been Kevin Woods) said something to the effect of, "God is supposed to be like your father, right? So how many of you go up to your dad and say, 'Oh Father who art in the garage, if it be your will please may I have ten dollars?' None of you do that! You walk up to him and say, 'Hey Dad, can I have ten bucks?'" That made a lasting impression on my view of prayer, and perhaps also contributed to my "suburban dad" theory of God (see a previous blog entry for more on this).
Those that know me know that I'm not big on formality. Okay, actually I despise formality. And I REALLY hate it when church people, while in the church, put on a façade of being even more churchy than they actually are. This also applies to prayer. If you're going to speak to God on my behalf in front of the congregation, you'd better be speaking to God, not reciting some prayer you memorized, not using your standard form prayer where the only thing that changes from week to week is the names of the people on the sick list in the bulletin. There are certain people whose prayers I can recite almost word for word along with them, and certain people who I know will use the word 'father' at least 7 times in a 45 second prayer... unnecessarily, at that. Who, in their normal course of speaking to their dad, begins and ends nearly every sentence with the word 'father'? Nobody, that's who.
And don't misinterpret... I'm all for giving God the respect that is due to him, but I'm also all for continuing to speak regular English. And as a language nerd, it absolutely cracks me up that people who get up to do public prayers start inserting "thee" and "thy" and the like, as if it makes them sound all formal and holy. In actual fact, "thee", "thy", "thou", etc. are the informal pronouns (direct object, possessive and personal, respectively) from old English. Back in the 1500s, you would have used those pronouns with your children or your spouse. The pronoun "you" (which was the formal pronoun) was used only with adults who were not your family members or close friends, and other people who somehow merited a great deal of respect. Most Latin-based and even Germanic languages still have the formal/informal second-person pronouns (usted/tú in Spanish, Lei/tu in Italian, Sie/du in German, and many more no doubt). English, somewhere along the line, lost our informal pronoun (thou) and decided to just use the formal one (you) all the time for everyone. So in actuality, people who think they're sounding all formal and respectful when they say "thou" or "thee" to God are actually talking to him as though he is a child or close family member/friend. And if they go into it with that attitude in mind, I'm marginally okay with it (though not completely okay, since that has fallen out of use in modern English), but most of them are not thinking of it in that light I guarantee you.
And what's with people who think they can't be honest with God, anyway!?!? It's not like he doesn't already know what you're thinking. Me personally, I'm very honest with God in my prayers. "Hey God... I'm pretty ticked off right now, and I need you to help me refrain from saying something unfortunate to _______" is a fairly common opener for me. I can be open with God on a wide range of emotions, from ticked off to depressed to horny (particularly heavy on the horny lately too, I must admit) and everything in between, because I operate on the theory that I'm not telling him anything he doesn't already know. So why pray at all, you ask? Well, I don't know about you, but with most of my close friends I already know when they're upset or whatever without them telling me about it. But of course we talk it over anyway, because that's the sort of relationship we have, and this is how relationships grow and stay strong. See where I'm going with this?
And actually, I think complete honesty is healthy in any relationship, not just your relationship with God. Thinking it over in class earlier, I realized that all of my best friendships are with the people I feel I can say anything to... the ones who know the good and the bad of me and still like me. Just recently I met someone who seems to have a similar approach to communication, and we have gone in just under 3 weeks from complete strangers to what I would term very good friends, and I think it works because neither of us feels the need to hold back anything. I really do feel I could say anything I thought or felt to this person (and this individual will probably receive a cool blog alias sooner or later) and we could discuss it like rational adults and it'd be cool. I like that.
Anyway, we need a Song o' the Day.
Song o' the Day: "Fully Alive" by Flyleaf. See/hear it here. I've chosen this one because it sort of sums up how I feel lately.
February 25, 2010
Surely we didn't get off THAT easily....
Those of you who know me well (all 5 of you) know that every winter I struggle with seasonal depression and the urge to crawl into a hole and not emerge from about November 1st through the beginning of July sometime.
This year hasn't been as bad as I've come to expect, and I'm not sure whether to credit living in a house with heat for the first winter of the last 8 or so years, or the fact that this winter has so far been extremely mild aside from a cold snap shortly before Christmas. Maybe it was a combination of the two. Either way, my recurring thought is, "Surely we didn't get off THAT easily..."
Because this is Oregon, and we've had deceptively mild winters before... you know, the ones where it is rainy and only moderately cold December through February, then it turns around and snows most of March and into early April. And if there's one thing I hate, it's snow. Take one thing I hate extremely (cold) and combine it with another thing I hate extremely (wet rainyness) and you get snow, a.k.a. "the ultimate evil".
And in other hellish events, we had an inservice today. Meetings are probably #1 on my list of things I hate, though snow is a very close #2. And the first speaker of the day was, I hate to say it, rather useless. He had some very good ideas, yes, provided that you're working with wealthy, upper-middle class children from stable, two-parent families (in the case of his center, most of the children were the children of university faculty). Unfortunately, catering to low-income, high-risk families is kind of what we do and a lot of what he was talking about just really isn't workable in our program, so why was this guy speaking anyway? Much less going on about it for 3 hours. On the plus side, he had some lovely books in Italian that I was reading during the 15 minute break in his 3 hours of drivel. I might look up some of the books later... or I might not. But really, a guy who got his master's degree in French Literature but speaks Italian better than French and still needs an interpreter for Italian is not to be trusted. With that admission when I asked him, he lost all credibility as far as I was concerned.
Also, who gets a master's degree in French Literature?! (Also, who gets a master's degree in French Literature, then goes on to get a doctorate in Early Childhood Ed.? Kind of a stretch, don't you think?) Also he was wearing four rings, none of which were wedding rings, and Wendy thought his shirt was tucked in weird. Nancy and I agreed.
No, I despise meetings (especially meetings disguised as "trainings" - call a spade a spade, people!) and I'm afraid I got up at 6:30 a.m. today only to be bored into a stupor for the better part of the day. TGI(my)F.
Song o' the Day: "Get Out Alive" by Three Days Grace. Because I thought I wasn't going to.
This year hasn't been as bad as I've come to expect, and I'm not sure whether to credit living in a house with heat for the first winter of the last 8 or so years, or the fact that this winter has so far been extremely mild aside from a cold snap shortly before Christmas. Maybe it was a combination of the two. Either way, my recurring thought is, "Surely we didn't get off THAT easily..."
Because this is Oregon, and we've had deceptively mild winters before... you know, the ones where it is rainy and only moderately cold December through February, then it turns around and snows most of March and into early April. And if there's one thing I hate, it's snow. Take one thing I hate extremely (cold) and combine it with another thing I hate extremely (wet rainyness) and you get snow, a.k.a. "the ultimate evil".
And in other hellish events, we had an inservice today. Meetings are probably #1 on my list of things I hate, though snow is a very close #2. And the first speaker of the day was, I hate to say it, rather useless. He had some very good ideas, yes, provided that you're working with wealthy, upper-middle class children from stable, two-parent families (in the case of his center, most of the children were the children of university faculty). Unfortunately, catering to low-income, high-risk families is kind of what we do and a lot of what he was talking about just really isn't workable in our program, so why was this guy speaking anyway? Much less going on about it for 3 hours. On the plus side, he had some lovely books in Italian that I was reading during the 15 minute break in his 3 hours of drivel. I might look up some of the books later... or I might not. But really, a guy who got his master's degree in French Literature but speaks Italian better than French and still needs an interpreter for Italian is not to be trusted. With that admission when I asked him, he lost all credibility as far as I was concerned.
Also, who gets a master's degree in French Literature?! (Also, who gets a master's degree in French Literature, then goes on to get a doctorate in Early Childhood Ed.? Kind of a stretch, don't you think?) Also he was wearing four rings, none of which were wedding rings, and Wendy thought his shirt was tucked in weird. Nancy and I agreed.
No, I despise meetings (especially meetings disguised as "trainings" - call a spade a spade, people!) and I'm afraid I got up at 6:30 a.m. today only to be bored into a stupor for the better part of the day. TGI(my)F.
Song o' the Day: "Get Out Alive" by Three Days Grace. Because I thought I wasn't going to.
February 14, 2010
Y'know what's depressing?
Valentine's Day is depressing.
Reading Craigslist personal ads is depressing. A whole, polluted sea teeming with retarded sealife. Some of them seem like decent enough guys, aside from the fact that they're dumber than a box of radishes (this is, for me, a deal-breaker). The majority, however, are arrogant jerks going on about what a "hot commodity" they are and how they're a "limited time offer". If that's really the case, why do you need to post on CL? Surely if you're that fantastic of a catch, you could just stand out on a busy street corner and the girls would be all over you. (Though I suppose that's only legal in certain parts of Nevada.) Normally I wouldn't bother depressing myself by reading ads on Craigslist, but I figure on Valentine's Day I'm depressed enough already and it can't very well get much worse.
I think next year maybe I'll just try drinking. I've never been properly drunk before, and Valentine's Day seems like the perfect time...
Next year I may have to swear off social networking entirely for the month of February. So it's the 4 zillionth V-Day you've spent with *insert name here*... fabulous. Why don't you go spend time with that person rather than posting about it on Facebook? Because let me tell you, if I could only get Wong over on this continent, I wouldn't be sitting around posting on Facebook about it.
Come to think of it, if I could get Wong over on this continent, I wouldn't have to get depressed enough to browse Craigslist.
Why is the rum gone?
Song o' the Day: "Dear Agony" by Breaking Benjamin. (lyrics below)
I have nothing left to give
I have found the perfect end
You remain to make it hurt
Disappear into the dirt
Carry me to heaven's arms
Light the way and let me go
Take the time to take my breath
I will end where I began
And I'll find the enemy within
' Cause I can feel it crawl beneath my skin
Dear agony, just let go of me
Suffer slowly, is this the way it's gotta be?
Dear agony...
Suddenly the lights go out
Let forever drag me down
I will fight for one last breath
I will fight until the end
And I'll find the enemy within
'Cause I can feel it crawl beneath my skin
Dear agony, just let go of me
Suffer slowly, is this the way it's gotta be?
Don't bury me, faceless enemy
I'm so sorry... is this the way it's gotta be?
Dear agony
Leave me alone
God let me go
I'm blue and cold
Black sky will burn
Love tore me down
Hate lift me up
Just turn around
There's nothing left
Somewhere far beyond this world...
I feel nothing anymore
Dear agony, just let go of me
Suffer slowly, is this the way it's gotta be?
Don't bury me, faceless enemy
I'm so sorry... is this the way it's gotta be?
Dear agony
I feel nothing anymore
Reading Craigslist personal ads is depressing. A whole, polluted sea teeming with retarded sealife. Some of them seem like decent enough guys, aside from the fact that they're dumber than a box of radishes (this is, for me, a deal-breaker). The majority, however, are arrogant jerks going on about what a "hot commodity" they are and how they're a "limited time offer". If that's really the case, why do you need to post on CL? Surely if you're that fantastic of a catch, you could just stand out on a busy street corner and the girls would be all over you. (Though I suppose that's only legal in certain parts of Nevada.) Normally I wouldn't bother depressing myself by reading ads on Craigslist, but I figure on Valentine's Day I'm depressed enough already and it can't very well get much worse.
I think next year maybe I'll just try drinking. I've never been properly drunk before, and Valentine's Day seems like the perfect time...
Next year I may have to swear off social networking entirely for the month of February. So it's the 4 zillionth V-Day you've spent with *insert name here*... fabulous. Why don't you go spend time with that person rather than posting about it on Facebook? Because let me tell you, if I could only get Wong over on this continent, I wouldn't be sitting around posting on Facebook about it.
Come to think of it, if I could get Wong over on this continent, I wouldn't have to get depressed enough to browse Craigslist.
Why is the rum gone?
Song o' the Day: "Dear Agony" by Breaking Benjamin. (lyrics below)
I have nothing left to give
I have found the perfect end
You remain to make it hurt
Disappear into the dirt
Carry me to heaven's arms
Light the way and let me go
Take the time to take my breath
I will end where I began
And I'll find the enemy within
' Cause I can feel it crawl beneath my skin
Dear agony, just let go of me
Suffer slowly, is this the way it's gotta be?
Dear agony...
Suddenly the lights go out
Let forever drag me down
I will fight for one last breath
I will fight until the end
And I'll find the enemy within
'Cause I can feel it crawl beneath my skin
Dear agony, just let go of me
Suffer slowly, is this the way it's gotta be?
Don't bury me, faceless enemy
I'm so sorry... is this the way it's gotta be?
Dear agony
Leave me alone
God let me go
I'm blue and cold
Black sky will burn
Love tore me down
Hate lift me up
Just turn around
There's nothing left
Somewhere far beyond this world...
I feel nothing anymore
Dear agony, just let go of me
Suffer slowly, is this the way it's gotta be?
Don't bury me, faceless enemy
I'm so sorry... is this the way it's gotta be?
Dear agony
I feel nothing anymore
November 1, 2009
Cade la pioggia (blog in English - Hakuna matata)...
Interesting thing... depression seems so widespread recently. And yes, I understand, the economy sucks, nobody has any money except for a few elite scumbags, the politicians are corrupt, yadda yadda... it's a bad, ugly world out there. Or is it?
Ron (who I don't think needs an alias, but if he would like one he should let me know and I'll come up with something cute and edit this post) asked me today how things were going for me lately. I had to admit they've been going pretty good. I mean, lets face it... I've got a job (or three), I've got an apartment, we have food, I am keeping up with my bills... despite the fact that I'm still living below the federal poverty line, I'm actually doing better for myself than I have since my ex-husband left me about six years ago. The budget is tight but doable, we're not going without anything we actually need and we've got some of the stuff we just want. That's doing pretty darn good for the here and now! And as the air gets a bit of bite to it, I'm looking forward to spending my first winter of about the last 8 in a home with both a heating system and insulation. I do not anticipate going into the bathroom this January to find my shampoo has frozen, and I'm looking forward to that not happening. So aside from the fact that I still sleep by myself, pretty much everything is the happiest it has been in Meagan-land in recent memory.
Not so everywhere, however. I know a lot of people are suffering, and the case to hit closest to where I live is a friend of mine... for the purposes of this blog, we shall call him "Emo Steve" (which, incidentally, was also the name we gave to a dinosaur at Prehistoric Gardens this summer... I think it was the ankylosaurus). Despite the fact that I have dubbed him "Emo Steve", I actually do like the guy most of the time... he's one of the few people I know that can hold up his end of a language-based conversation. He does, however, tend to be angsty and agonize a bit more than is strictly necessary and lately he's been more morose than ever... enough to make my defunct emotional antennae start sending out feeble squawks of warning. So I sent him a text asking if he was okay, he sent back what I thought was a rather curt reply (though it's hard to tell over text) thanking me for caring and ending with "Have a good night!" which, besides being rather faux-cheerful, is EmoSteve-ese for "quit talking to me"... I think. "Have a good night!" is his usual text-conversation-ender phrase. (But I usually have to send one more text back just because I am that sort of person.) So I quit talking to him. Some days I curse my social ineptitude. And some days I am just very grateful for Wong, who is less emo and easier to read since I've known him about three years longer. And some days I'm just really glad that I still sleep alone, even though I find that troublesome on some nights. :-) Sleeping alone sucks, but sometimes I think not sleeping alone and then having an extra whiny person around during the day would suck more.
Earlier on I was thinking about el Día de los Muertos, which is a rant/brain dump I visited once many many moons ago on my MySpace blog. For those of you who might be monolingual English speakers or otherwise not in the know, Día de los Muertos means "Day of the Dead", and it's a pretty common celebration in several Latino/Hispanic cultures, though mostly in Mexico. It dates back to an Aztec festival a few thousand years ago dedicated to their goddess Mictecacihuatl (Say that three times fast... or even once!), who was known as "the Lady of the Dead". "Day of the Dead" is a bit of a misnomer, though, because the festival actually lasts two days. November 1st is called Día de los Inocentes or Día de los Ángelitos, and November 2nd is the actual Día de los Muertos (or in some places, Día de los Difuntos, which pretty much means the same thing).
Really I think that the Latin-American cultures in general have a much healthier view of death than we Americans do. Death is seen as the natural endpoint of the life cycle... you're born, you live a while, then you die. No getting around it, no tiptoeing around the subject, no cute euphemisms... death is just part of life. You know... the last part. But they also believe that one night a year, the souls of their departed loved ones come back to visit. On November 1st, the souls of children and babies who have died return, and the souls of deceased adults return on November 2nd. And they celebrate this. I think it's a cool idea, really. (For a cool Día de los Muertos tie in, hop on YouTube and look up Seether's music video for "The Gift". It's set in Oaxaca, Mexico and has a Día de los Muertos theme, complete with a little ghost girl. It also has Shaun Morgan, who is the hotness.) In America, on the other hand, death is scary and we don't like to talk about it. When someone dies, we invent cute little euphemisms like "passed away", "departed this life", "kicked the bucket", "bought the farm", "shuffled off this mortal coil", etc. Really when people do that I'd like to shuffle them off this mortal coil. Making up cute phrases does not change the reality... dead is dead, and if we'd collectively come to grips with that it might make our lives a bit easier. But then, many Americans don't believe in any sort of afterlife either, so I guess death is scary when this is all you've got. I say if this is all we've got, just kill me now, TYVM.
Ron (who I don't think needs an alias, but if he would like one he should let me know and I'll come up with something cute and edit this post) asked me today how things were going for me lately. I had to admit they've been going pretty good. I mean, lets face it... I've got a job (or three), I've got an apartment, we have food, I am keeping up with my bills... despite the fact that I'm still living below the federal poverty line, I'm actually doing better for myself than I have since my ex-husband left me about six years ago. The budget is tight but doable, we're not going without anything we actually need and we've got some of the stuff we just want. That's doing pretty darn good for the here and now! And as the air gets a bit of bite to it, I'm looking forward to spending my first winter of about the last 8 in a home with both a heating system and insulation. I do not anticipate going into the bathroom this January to find my shampoo has frozen, and I'm looking forward to that not happening. So aside from the fact that I still sleep by myself, pretty much everything is the happiest it has been in Meagan-land in recent memory.
Not so everywhere, however. I know a lot of people are suffering, and the case to hit closest to where I live is a friend of mine... for the purposes of this blog, we shall call him "Emo Steve" (which, incidentally, was also the name we gave to a dinosaur at Prehistoric Gardens this summer... I think it was the ankylosaurus). Despite the fact that I have dubbed him "Emo Steve", I actually do like the guy most of the time... he's one of the few people I know that can hold up his end of a language-based conversation. He does, however, tend to be angsty and agonize a bit more than is strictly necessary and lately he's been more morose than ever... enough to make my defunct emotional antennae start sending out feeble squawks of warning. So I sent him a text asking if he was okay, he sent back what I thought was a rather curt reply (though it's hard to tell over text) thanking me for caring and ending with "Have a good night!" which, besides being rather faux-cheerful, is EmoSteve-ese for "quit talking to me"... I think. "Have a good night!" is his usual text-conversation-ender phrase. (But I usually have to send one more text back just because I am that sort of person.) So I quit talking to him. Some days I curse my social ineptitude. And some days I am just very grateful for Wong, who is less emo and easier to read since I've known him about three years longer. And some days I'm just really glad that I still sleep alone, even though I find that troublesome on some nights. :-) Sleeping alone sucks, but sometimes I think not sleeping alone and then having an extra whiny person around during the day would suck more.
Earlier on I was thinking about el Día de los Muertos, which is a rant/brain dump I visited once many many moons ago on my MySpace blog. For those of you who might be monolingual English speakers or otherwise not in the know, Día de los Muertos means "Day of the Dead", and it's a pretty common celebration in several Latino/Hispanic cultures, though mostly in Mexico. It dates back to an Aztec festival a few thousand years ago dedicated to their goddess Mictecacihuatl (Say that three times fast... or even once!), who was known as "the Lady of the Dead". "Day of the Dead" is a bit of a misnomer, though, because the festival actually lasts two days. November 1st is called Día de los Inocentes or Día de los Ángelitos, and November 2nd is the actual Día de los Muertos (or in some places, Día de los Difuntos, which pretty much means the same thing).
Really I think that the Latin-American cultures in general have a much healthier view of death than we Americans do. Death is seen as the natural endpoint of the life cycle... you're born, you live a while, then you die. No getting around it, no tiptoeing around the subject, no cute euphemisms... death is just part of life. You know... the last part. But they also believe that one night a year, the souls of their departed loved ones come back to visit. On November 1st, the souls of children and babies who have died return, and the souls of deceased adults return on November 2nd. And they celebrate this. I think it's a cool idea, really. (For a cool Día de los Muertos tie in, hop on YouTube and look up Seether's music video for "The Gift". It's set in Oaxaca, Mexico and has a Día de los Muertos theme, complete with a little ghost girl. It also has Shaun Morgan, who is the hotness.) In America, on the other hand, death is scary and we don't like to talk about it. When someone dies, we invent cute little euphemisms like "passed away", "departed this life", "kicked the bucket", "bought the farm", "shuffled off this mortal coil", etc. Really when people do that I'd like to shuffle them off this mortal coil. Making up cute phrases does not change the reality... dead is dead, and if we'd collectively come to grips with that it might make our lives a bit easier. But then, many Americans don't believe in any sort of afterlife either, so I guess death is scary when this is all you've got. I say if this is all we've got, just kill me now, TYVM.
And mindful of the fact that tomorrow I won't have a Facebook, I started the weaning process today and did other stuff. For my 26th birthday (which was the one that happened in 2008, for those of you who don't know), I was given one of those big picture frames with lots of little holes for you to put snapshots in. My grandma has one of those that she's had for YEARS and she's never put her own pictures in and it still has the pictures of the pretend families that are in there when you buy it. We won't let her change it now... those guys are part of the family. We've named a few of them. Lest I should arrive at that point, though, I decided I'd better put pictures in mine. So this afternoon in my Facebook-free time, I got down my box of snapshots, sorted through and found the ones that I would most like to put in the frame. I was about 9 pictures short of filling it, so I found one of my old abstract pastel drawings and stuck it back there to fill space until I have more pictures that I like. Because really... I'm only 27. My life story is still being written, and no doubt many fascinating photos will be taken sometime between now and my death (which I will happily embrace when it comes, by the way... no tiptoeing for me!). So I'll fill that space when I come to it, and until then there is cheerful abstract art and a piece of blue construction paper. But here's a picture of the frame:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
