Office Space: An IRL Update

I just want to lay on the floor. Here, in my office. Just lay on the floor. It happens every afternoon. It's starting to be funny.

Everyone tells me they want Ed to make "afternoon" coffee. He made "afternoon" coffee for me once, in the morning. That means coffee that has alcohol in it. When he made me "afternoon" coffee he put Hennessey in it. Maybe they're telling me because I am Ed's new keeper so I have pull. I just want a pop. Soda, I mean.

This is the beginning (middle, now) of week 4 at my new assignment. It's one of the better ones. Ed doesn't want me to ever leave. That's very sweet of him. I'm just looking forward to being able to order office supplies.

I'm going to go see if they fixed the soda machines downstairs. They weren't taking dollar dollar bills last week. BRB.

They're fixed. Pepsi Throwback. If it was really a throwback it would be in a glass bottle with a metal cap and a Styrofoam label that you can peel off in strips. It's really hard to find a picture of...all I could find is this dirty Diet Pepsi bottle. That would be my personal version of a Pepsi throwback.

Once again I'm not going to have a Hallowe'en costume ready by Hallowe'en. The pieces I need are harder to come by than I expected. Plus I tend to put things off. That's the real problem. I did buy a mustache, tho.

In other news: I remain infinitely depressed by life and its circumstances. I seem to have given up on running (again), dieting, intuitively eating, and predict that I shall never again have health insurance. I presume I will be found one day, dead of unnatural causes and covered in stink bugs, still in Pittsburgh and still in the same shitty apartment in Squirrel Hill. But by then all of my neighbors will be Chinese. Just thought I'd throw that China bit in there. China is here.

In other (positive TMI) news: My household has gone from drinking 2-6 beers per night per person to 2-4 beers per week per person. Plus 1 to Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, etc. Congrats to us!  

Taken from Fuck This Depression Blog

I want to share all these amazing things this girl has on her blog because they're also about me and maybe you.

Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I'm always missing someone or someplace or something, I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing.   -Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

                                

This was your life.

This weekend: Jeremy's bd party at MoFo, hiking at McConnells Mill (which I cannot find a standard spelling for) followed by dinner at North Country Brewing.  Sunday, as usual, was a bummer.  I HATE Sunday's, they make me feel all icky inside and grumpy outside.  Went to Target and Giant Eagle for groceries.  Found a cute skirt at Target, though.

I find that I am simultaneously getting used to the heat and getting fed up with it.   

Yesterday was Day 1 of not drinking.  Again.  My record, recently, has been 7 days.  This has got to stop.  Looks like, at age 33, I'm about to become straight edge for the first time in my life.  I think I'm going to start telling people that that's what I am just to be a smart ass.  I just really don't want to be "belligerent" any more.  I don't really want to quit drinking either, I'm just not good at it.  Or maybe it's that I'm too good.  I'm turning in to such a quitter.  First smoking, then meat, now drinking, I try not to eat things with high fructose corn syrup.  Things get weird as you get older. And I'd like to see if not drinking will make me less... zaftig.  If I may consider myself as such.


I'm reading about Tumblr right now and trying to... oh, there, I've signed up.  Hmm.  I don't know if I can be so specific that it would warrant a Tumblr, maybe I could fit in under the category "Personalities?"  Hmm.  I just found someone's blog that's right up my alley: http://fuckthisdepression.tumblr.com/.  It's where I just stole this from (but she took it from someone else first): 

So I guess I'm already thinking about abandoning blogger.  I'd like to see if Tumblr's more user-friendly, I think it might be.  At least for photos.  And I wonder if the font and size will stay uniform throughout an entire post...  And if it will add extra spacing between paragraphs that i don't request or want... I'm also wondering if Tumblr's just a bunch of teenagers.  I think it might be that as well.  Maybe not.  Holy crap, there's a bunch of cool stuff over here!  And lots of cursing!  Heart heart heart!!!

I'll let you know what I decide about this.  Still have a playlist/mixtape for you, mixtape is easier for you to download, playlist allows you to take/keep what you want.

Thinking about sea creatures.  Real ones. 

   

One for the Ladies

Je suis un monstre.  

Bien sûr.

Why didn't I realise?  Oh, please, I did realise.    

I'm posting to the wrong crowd.  Which is my own damn fault.  I am neither punk nor metal.  ("Save your breath, I never was one." Of either.)  Nor am I especially feminist.  *GASP*  I'm not terribly fond of women or what they've done to me over the years.  Fuck 'em.  Men are more relatable, at least on my end.  Not on theirs.  They only see me as a girl.  Fuck them as well. 

I just never bothered to make friends as I grew older.  Not really.  Not since my first best friend, who was a boy, started to like other boys more than me when we were seven.  (Fuck you, Garon Sizemore, for stealing my bff.) 

And not since every one of my girl friends turned out to be pathological liars.  

There was Rhonda Sanders, who claimed she could breast feed at age 8 and who, it turned out, was being raised by her grandparents masquerading as her parents while the person whom she thought was her sister was her actual mother.  

Then there was Julie something-or-other.  I don't remember exactly what happened there but it involved her not talking to me any more for some reason in the 3rd or 4th grade.  Whatever, she looked like a poodle.  

Then there was Sam Leaf.  OMG, I don't even want to get started on her and her multiple pairs of Z. Cavaricci's. Her and her jealous bff Pam.  Yes, Sam & Pam are the main reason I hate women.  Oops. I mean, don't trust women.  Sam also stopped talking to me but at the same time convinced the rest of the 8th grade girls to stop talking to me as well.  Overnight.  Because of a quiz in a magazine. Because of my answer.  That I gave her over the phone.  WHILE PAM WAS ON THE OTHER LINE.  WHICH SOMEHOW RESULTED IN ME BECOMING A SOCIAL PARIAH. 

A part I've played ever since.  

Brandi did a good job between about 15 and 19.  I mean, she tried, even though she was initially one of those 8th grade girls who made me an outcast.  Unfortunately, by that point, I was already too damaged to benefit from her friendship.  And I guess I never really trusted her or forgave her completely.

I remember some in-between-friends.  There was Sarah, who I met in French class in 9th grade.  She was at our school for AP Drama.  She was also a lesbian and she took me to Baltimore with her to see this movie, Go Fish, in 1994 (I guess).  I remember she used to call me and send me things when I was at Sheppard Pratt for a few months, and once, when I moved back home to my sister's, she came over and sat with me on my bedroom floor and held my hands while I cried.  She was really sweet.         

Niki was ok.  She didn't wash her hair enough and forever borrowed my Peter Gabriel record, "So," along with some Blondie record I bought at Goodwill or something.  It was at her house that I first became familiar with the "Internet" and "Vampire: The Masquerade."  I thought both were jokes.  It was 1994-95.

There was also Melissa, my first Sheppard Pratt roommate.  She had some eating disorder or something but we quickly became bffs.  Then staff caught on that we were too bff and decided we needed to be separated because we were "bad influences" on each other.  So instead I ended up with Sandra, a 12-year-old with serious delusions, followed by some mentally handicapped girl whom I threatened to kill because she was going through my drawers.  I had to spend a night in the "quiet room" for that.
   
I've been called a "bad influence" more than once in my lifetime.  It's not an easy label to accept.  It feels nice, in a "bad" kind of way.  Like, I'm so bad-ass that parents think I'm a "bad influence!"  But I didn't want to be a bad influence.  I wanted to be some one's best friend.  I think I was smarter than most of my friends' parents and it bothered them.  Maybe in a precocious way but more importantly in an intellectual way.  I guess as a teenager being intellectual = precocious.  Writing this has been infinitely sad for me.  Will you notice?  Probably not.  But maybe that's just me being precocious.  

Snap Snap Bubble Wrap.

I mentioned in a previous post that June is the worst month of the year for me.  This past week has been the worst week of an already shit month.  Sometimes everything just seems so hard and quitting is so easy.  What makes things harder is that I can't stand it when people act like victims when they're usually just being victims of circumstances they perpetuated.  I guess what I'm saying is that I'm often guilty of this and I guess I'm feeling guilty right now.  But it's so hard to see your own life objectively.  


Speaking of seeing things objectively: I recently realized that I have a friend(s) who is(are) perpetually "playing the victim" and it's one of the most irritating things I've ever witnessed.  This person seems to purposely put their self in situations that clearly have no outcome other than a bad (or at least unprofitable) one.  It's mind-boggling. But it's also almost a certainty that this person would not listen to reason or any advice that would result in changing this pattern because I think they enjoy it.  I hope this isn't the case and it's more a matter of being conditioned to it.  Who knows.  I just know that I've learned to stay fairly detached from the drama because it's too ridiculous and as much as I hate it when people say this to me, I just wish they could "get over it."  Terrible things happen to people every day.  What matters is how you deal with it.

I can give advice like nobody's bidness but I can't take it.              


Allen said I was "fixated" last night.  Because of years of therapy, a handful of hospital stays and 3 years working in mental health, alarm bells started going off in my head.  I do get ideas in my head that just go round and round and round until everything else is blocked out and I can barely function and find it impossible to take in anything else.  And then I'm very slow-witted when my dream in life is to be charming and quick-witted.  {Insert Sarcastic Smiley Face} This week my fixations have been drinking and moving.  


So we decided to move and I got myself a drink.  


Allen and I went for a walk.  I had been on the verge of a tearful outburst all day.  We were at the soccer field/track in Schenley Park (which I didn't even know existed until a couple weeks ago) when he officially agreed to move back to Philly and I just unleashed.  I said "I feel like I've just been given permission to go home."  And then we started fighting about drinking and I turned around and we walked home in silence.  And so it goes.

"Beautiful Suicide"

It's strange how a Kanye West song can remind me of this:

Truthfully, it's not strange at all, he pretty much mentions it in the song.  I'm sorry the dl link there doesn't work any more, it's a good song.  If you like that kinda thing.  That photo, by Robert Wiles, is truly gorgeous.  It's from 1947 and I only first saw it in 2009.  Disappointing since it looks like something that was made for me.

Entries are going to be a little sporadic over the next few weeks while I jock out about the WORLD CUP.  Maybe you've heard of it.  It's one of my most favorite things in the WORLD.  I'm such a jock about it that one of the faculty members I've been working with gave me a copy of the New Yorker because it has an article about the England/US rivalry and Tim Howard which she wanted me to read and, inexplicably, a recent issue of France Football, which is all in French but has an article about the French national team.  I spent some time reading it this morning.  No, I don't generally claim to know French, I took a few years of it in high school but that's it.  It's day five and I haven't missed a match yet.

As for what's really going on, and to get back to that photo up there, let me just say that June is a bad month for me.  It's always been the month of the year that I think most about death, dying, and wanting to die.  It's the month when I "tried" to die when I was 16 (or was I 15? I don't recall, it was that profound...).  But a lot of people I know have "tried" to die at some point in their lives so it doesn't make me special.   

Another reason I may be sporadic is that when I start a depression cycle it comes on hard and it comes on fast, faster if I'm drinking too much, and I'm entering one of those cycles now.  Monday was a night of nothing is easy, nothing works right, everything's wrong.  At 9:25 I was in bed after I finally found a working, decent quality upload of True Blood around 8.  Then I took a shower and climbed into bed, hoping to retreat into the Henry Darger-esque saga I've been writing for the past 10 years.  Wiki that.

Another reason I may become sporadic is that, as with most things in my life, this will (has already begun to) become like a chore to me, this blog.  Anything that initially excites me, soon, very soon, begins to bore me.  I remember being so angry at my sister when she called me "fickle" when I was 17 years old.  But she was right.  I was then and I am now.  And I get bored so easily or lose interest in things or people (maybe you), jobs, eating right, exercise...  Then I found $5 and  I had a dream and you were in it...

And did you ever notice that summer is never idyllic anymore?  It definitely isn't here, where I live.  It's like summer isn't even an event here as far as I can tell.  I remember having fun summers, I swear.  But I could be making that up.  BTW, Lily Dale opens for the season on 25 June.  Mike, Jeanne, I'm looking at you...   

I'd like to thank the people who have told me in person that they read this blog.  I appreciate it mightily.  You may also feel free to comment here once in a while if the spirit moves you.

C'mon England!  But if not England then Germany... or Brazil!  WORLD CUP 2010!!!

"You're not passive aggressive, you're just aggressive."

Two things up front:
One: We STILL have not gotten our computer back.  I am unsurprised.
Two: (Teaser) Before I put my essay on my father's death together, I am trying to get copies of some photos from the "wake" where we stood in front of a church altar while waving thousands of dollars in the air.    

So I was doing some dishes last night around 10:15pm after watching the Biggest Loser finale. Which was obviously very anti-climactic, Michael won, losing like 50% of his weight. I thought he looked gay now, Allen said no, that's just Italian.  We're offensive to humans.  But I was doing dishes and I was real tired and so I started slamming things a bit as I will tend to do when I'm irritable.  When I do this I sometimes feel like it's passive aggressive, but maybe I'm wrong.  The title of this post is something Allen once said to me when I told him I feel that way.  Not because of a slamming things situation, more in relation to other people.  Anyway, doing this always causes Allen to come in and try to force me out and take over when that's not exactly what I'm looking for.  Usually, I just want to slam things.  Sometimes I do it without even realizing it.  So he tried to take over and I said, no, you can't, these dishes are too dirty for you to handle (he can be a half-assed dishwasher).  I think that's where it crosses into aggressive.

I tend to offend people.  A lot.  Without even realizing it or meaning to.  Well, sometimes I mean to, sometimes I just like being mean-spirited.  I find the reactions amusing.  I suppose it springs from something I was once diagnosed with, that goes hand in hand with my major psych diagnosis of MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) which is dissociative disorder (this site had a pretty good basic explanation, I think I have all four of those, especially Dissociative amnesia.  Regardless, I've definitely experienced all of them).  But I'm not one to try and fall back on my illness just because it's convenient.  Am I?  I could be delusional about that.  I can be delusional about things, too.  And paranoid.

Like last night, Allen and I went out for a 3-4 mile walk.  I finally made myself go back out, getting too lazy.  It's taken me like, 4 months to lose 10lbs., I don't want to gain it back now. *Sigh*  There's this house not far from us, we call it the Dragon House and it's a really awesome looking house.  It's approximately 5403-5405 Hobart St., Pittsburgh, PA 15217, if you want to Google Maps it, Street View.  I get angry when we walk by it because I'm so jealous and say things like"it's a shame about your house.  That it's so awesome."  So last night Allen goes, "you know, they don't live there to spite you."  And I go, "yes, they do."  "Why can't you just be happy for them that they have an awesome house?"  "Because I don't [have one]."

It's getting hard to write these posts at work.  I can't concentrate on it for long enough, there are too many interruptions.

Where I was actually planning to go with this was that I was thinking while I was doing dishes last night about what I do wrong in relationships.  Okay, I'm about to get real... I've been talking to someone on the FB, a lady and fellow "blogger," (how obvious am I?) and it seems like we have a lot in common and could be actual friends and so, realizing this, what am I doing?  Freaking the fuck out!!!  Trying to pull away from it already.  I said to Allen, "what if she wants to meet me?"  I mean we've kinda met before but...  Like, what if she wants to hang out and I can't do it?  I can't be alone with strangers.  Especially women strangers.  I have PTSD about being with women, not "being with" but being friends with and being alone with them because of some bullshit that happened in middle school. I'm seriously almost hyper-ventilating right now just thinking about it.  Tears welling up.  Hate hate hate this. 

Wow.  Okay.  I'm going to stop there.  Blog does not equal therapist.  Okay.  Sorry.  I shall leave the record as is stands despite feeling slightly uncomfortable with this.  I definitely welcome feedback on this post though. Maybe that will help.  Though nothing has really helped what I just told you and it's been 20 years.  Jesus, this didn't go where I had planned.