It's absolutely horrifying to me how atrociously backwards and upside down our world has become over the last 20 years. It sucked before, for sure, and honestly the last thirty have been bad, and the last 40 have been driving many to drink over our most recent history.
Humans are up shit's creek as we use our paddles to clobber each other over the head with our personal dogma. A certain Dr. Seuss story comes to mind, something about paddle battles in a puddle, involving a poodle and a noodle. Has a computer algorithm ever concocted anything reaching that level of intentional absurdity? Maybe the Internet qualifies.
My 31st birthday is just around the corner and I feel compelled to spill my thoughts in public forum. I'm astonished by how different our collective virtual life looks in 2020 than it did in 2005, when I started this blog. The social consciousness has expanded to include anyone with a birthday and the ability to distinguish blurry bicycles in a broken cube of boxes. Memes abound in perpetuity. Gif/Jif or gold/blue, the binaries populate every screen and stipulate simplistic thinking.
Our techie Big Brother has temporarily and conspicuously propped up Bid Daddy and now we are all going to pay the price for their mendacity, as we have been since we got off the boat and were shipped South to serve our sentence for the misfortune of being poor and unaffiliated.
This time last year I was literally limping around on one foot. Not in school. Not working full time. No significant other to speak of. Not pursuing any art in particular. I was severely depressed, which probably wasn't helped by my investigation of French philosophy. My best friends had been abroad for three months, and I missed them.
By February not a lot had changed. Still in weekly counseling. I signed up for a six session drawing class. Each class was three hours long, and I learned the basics. It was a completely absorbing experience to be immersed in thought concerning how to draw a straight line, how to see in three dimensions, how to sharpen a pencil. I learned as well as I could, but when I wasn't in class I wanted to die. And I was taking an anti-depressant. My dreams were tortured with emotional turmoil. By the end of the month, I began educating myself about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and childhood emotional neglect. Pieces started falling into place in my mind explaining why I felt so horrible. The whole month I worked with my dad to fix up the room downstairs in our house. That action catalyzed my motivation to organize and rearrange the rest of the house as well.
March began with a date in Knoxville and a guy I met online. I thought we had hit it off, but I was busy doing the Knoxville Fashion Week. I began seeing a second counselor in addition to the first one I had been seeing for over a year. Every day was a struggle to get out of bed. March has been tough for five years because it is both the anniversary of Micah's birth and his death. He would have been 21 years old last year.
I also adopted a puppy of off Craig's List. I named him Earl Grey. He is a Chihuahua/Miniature Schnauzer/ Italian Greyhound mix. An odd little firecracker who is simultaneously a stringy ball of cuddly love. His presence got me out of the bed on many occasions when I would have otherwise just laid there indefinitely.
I initiated acupuncture and Adderall into my treatment regimen.
April was more of the same. More sadness. More mourning. More processing grief and trauma. Many afternoons spent at the dog park with Earl Grey trying to pass myself off as a contributing member of society rather than a homeless bum, with marginal success.
May commenced with Mother's Day at the flower shop, my cousins wedding in Kentucky, and concluded with a haircut that inspired me to sign up for cosmetology school. Also, more counseling, more acupuncture, more vitamins, and an increase in my anti-depressant medication dosage.
In June I hit the ground running with a job offer within a week of signing up for night classes at school. I began working five days a week and going to school three to four nights a week, in addition to juggling Earl Grey in between. Random strangers are surprisingly super sensitive to seeing a dog locked in a car when the temperature is over 70 degrees. (Earl Grey is fine.) My job as the senior secretary at the acupuncture clinic where I had been receiving treatment was fun. I looked forward to folding sheets and dust mopping the wood floors throughout the small house. I got to dress up regularly and do my makeup. I was never late. Plus I was able to afford my tuition, my health insurance, and putting Earl Grey in a doggy daycare once a week.
July was hot and dry. I had to stop seeing one of my counselors due to a conflict in scheduling, but I was still getting regular acupuncture treatments and seeing my other counselor consistently. My employers fed me lunch at the clinic, so I only had to think about two meals a day. Nevertheless, as the month wore on, I began to feel increasingly fatigued. The pace I was keeping was feeling less and less realistically sustainable. I cut all my hair off, attended a dear friend's wedding with a date I had not previously met, and helped do the makeup for a fashion show held at the Chattanooga Convention Center downtown. My life felt like it was falling through cracks between work and school. I missed my job working as Liz Lindstrom's personal assistant. I missed seeing the counselor I gave up sessions with to keep up my jam-packed schedule. I missed seeing my brother who had returned from South Africa after being gone for about nine months but who worked opposite hours of me so we were never home at the same time.
August was even hotter and drier than July. I was even more tired. The acupuncturist I worked for was becoming increasingly antagonistic toward me. He did would nitpick my work and give me a hard time for no particular reason. As the month dragged on I felt increasingly depressed. I was slipping into a habit of eating fast food after school and day dreaming about when I could fall asleep again.
With September came higher temperatures and tension between my boss and myself. It was confusing, but I focused on doing my job as well as I possibly could. But he was becoming intolerable. Stephen and Courtney were about to return to the States. My birthday was coming up in a couple of weeks. But I was exhausted - physically, emotionally, and mentally. And with that my job ended as quickly as it began. In a flourish of fucked up drama and passive aggressive communication, I was no longer the receptionist, and I felt a great weight was lifted off my whole self. I felt liberated and free to breathe again.
October opened with me returning to work for Liz. We are a dynamic team, and we have a lot of fun together. I had fall break from school, and began reluctantly checking out the dating scene in Chattanooga again. I felt more confident and approached the whole idea of dating with more hope and a healthier sense of personal boundaries. I even agreed to be a guy's girlfriend toward the end of of the month. We attended a few parties together and had a lot of fun.
November was much of the same. It passed rather quickly. I worked, went to school, and saw my then boyfriend on the weekends. He lived out of town about two hours away though. After spending Thanksgiving with him over a span of a few days, I realized we weren't a good match. I can honestly say it was the happiest I had been in a while, even still I was able to let the relationship go because I knew it wasn't headed where I wanted to go. I was relieved again after ending that relationship. I could breathe again, and I got busy searching out gifts for all my family members.
December wasn't that cold, not like one might expect. We all wondered if we would even need to wear coats on Christmas. My dad and I put up the minimum number of decorations. I was working and in school right up to the week of Christmas. Time was flying by at a rapid rate. Somewhere around mid-December I started talking with another guy from the Internet. I messaged him on a whim, not especially expecting him to reply. It came out through our conversation that he had not seen Napoleon Dynamite. In a moment I decided that should be remedied, and I could help. That was our first date. I ended the year in his arms, and we are really happy together.
I still experience depression. Still see an acupuncturist. Still take an anti-depressant. Still see a counselor. But I'm in school. I work. I sing. I have a dog. I'm even doing a bit of exercise. I live in a blue room, but that doesn't make me a fish. I'm excited to see what changes take place in 2017.
Let me start with cliches
Because those are all I have to say
That you mean everything to me
How can I put into words
How I feel, when how I feel
Leaves me speechless?
I try not to think too hard
about it
For fear it will blow away
like a cloud in the breeze
Should I use rhymes?
Would they convey
the way I feel more
accurately?
"Love is a rose
but you better not pick it.
It only grows
when it's on the vine.
Handful of thorns
and you know you've missed it.
Lose your love
when you say the word 'mine.'"
I debated whether this topic was blog worthy or not, but I decided it was. I considered writing about it on Facebook, but I figured it probably wouldn't interest my following there as much because I doubt they would spend time reading a post longer than 50-60 words. I'm nearly at that number now.
Anyway, I was thinking about how I write a lot about death on here. I suppose it is just on my mind, so I write about it, but that's not all I think about. This morning I was wondering about the meaning of the word "porn" or "pornography," so, as is my practice, I looked it up in the dictionary. According to Dictionary.com the definition of "pornography" (a noun) is "obscene writings, drawings, or photographs or the like, especially those having little or no artistic meaning." If you're like me, this doesn't describe the way you experience the idea of "pornographic."
In the culture I grew up in, pornographic really only referred to anything explicitly sexual for the purpose of masturbation. Usually it's associated with graphic nudity and highly suggestive situations. While the definition may include that example, I feel like the way it is used today is not consistent with its literal definition. I've seen terms such as "#foodporn," and "#skyporn," which is ironic because those images have artistic meaning. They are examples of gorgeous skyscapes (which is not actually a word, but you know what it means) or delicious meals. The literal meaning of "pornography" doesn't apply at all.
The thing is, I don't think my Internet friends are being ironic when they use the term "porn" to describe an outstanding experience they are witnessing, but the fact they are using that term is. This is what I find fascinating about language. Language depends on how it is used. I know there is an argument in favor of preserving the literal meaning of words. I [ironically?] don't remember what that term is, but I am aware of the concept. That's just it, right? Words are supposed to represent concepts. The word didn't change and the concept didn't change, but the way we related the two did.
Warning: speculation by a lay witness ahead -
I think this happens all the time. I think it's due to a lack of education or underexposure to the concepts that the words represent, a lack of experience.
I spent a fair amount of time in my Composition II class going over vocabulary words. In class, I was dubbed "the Vocabulary Queen" by the professor, whose personality annoyed me. Nevertheless, I learned the definitions of words I was not familiar with and in that way, I feel more educated in spite of the annoying process. I was impressed by the frequency of differentiation between what I thought the word meant as opposed to what it actually meant, which was probably at least a third of the time.
Consequently, I think the issue is ignorance, a prevalent malnutrition of the mind.
If that's the problem, what's the solution?
I have a few ideas, and if you've read any of my previous posts, you're already aware of some of them. I won't repeat myself at this time, but I dare you to ponder what actions you can take and are taking to improve the situation.
Today is May 21st, 2015. The 21st of the month has been a sensitive date for a three years now. In 2012 on March 21st my life changed forever. Ever since then I've wondered about the dates and times and whens and wheres events take place. Nothing seems that innocuous anymore. Those are broad sweeping statements that probably are exaggerated to an extent, but at their heart, they are true. I wonder about the simple moments now. The casual farewell, the careless comment, the nonchalant suggestion. I've opened myself up to say "yes" more often than not, but I've also been more careful with my no's.
I considered myself a conscientious person before my brother died, but after that event, I felt the weight of my own decisions more seriously. I've been more aware of how final each consecutive moment can be to the next.
In September of last year one of my dear friends was killed by a drunk driver. He was just 20 years old, as if there is any age that is more comfortable when a life is stolen by irresponsibility. I was called to the same hospitable my brother was taken. My friend was still breathing when I arrived, but the whole situation sent me into shock again. Seeing my closest friends from the previous two year show up to support each other, crying, feeling the conclusion that was more than likely inevitable. I didn't cry. Not that time. I felt numb. I couldn't believe it was all happening again, and I knew there was nothing I could do to make it better.
One death sent me to a broken place and the second reminded me of the incredible fragility of life that I usually don't pay any attention. Now I get in my car and I think, I could die today. I question where I'm going, who will be there, how I feel, what I did that day, and so many other things. Did I complete anything worthwhile today? Does my existence matter?
At the same time, I feel a urge to throw caution out the window. Fuck it. I can't control it, right? So why worry?
These are the extremes I've swung between pretty consistently for the last three years or so, sometimes more intensely than others. Honestly, it's probably been seven years, since my parents separated and divorced. I've been talking to a counselor since last May. She helps me gain perspective when I get stuck in an extreme, but sometimes her moderation makes me angry. I know she means well, but I am torn apart by the injustice of it all. When I hear in the news of individuals making wretched choices that hurt many people and how they live to tell the tale, I wonder how our whole universe is held together. I feel compelled to do something, anything that might express the powerlessness I feel to effect change. Moderation doesn't play much of a part in that compulsion.
Grief. That's what they call it. There are five stages, apparently.
1. Denial and Isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The experience I have had is that this is not a short and easy process. It's not like getting your Wisdom teeth removed. The emotional impact of these events ricochet for minutes and days, sometimes relentlessly so without recognition. There are times to press on and there are times to fall back and reflect and review. It takes awareness and willpower to know when and how to do both at appropriate times.
This TED talk was particularly insightful on the subject.
And now is one of those times to move forward, so I'll leave you with this song. It was one I danced to a couple summers ago when I attended a dance intensive in Minneapolis.
Goodness, it's been over a month since I've written. Please pardon my neglect. I've been caught up in a flurry of overwhelming activity.
Since last I wrote I've:
Performed in three shows of Our Town
Watched my younger brother graduate from
college with a bachelor's degree
Made a 24-hour trip to Greenville, North Carolina for an art show
Performed for my voice jury at college
Drove to and from Universal Studios and saw both parks in three days
Attended a dance showcase
Auditioned for Peter Pan the Musical
Watched the first three Harry Potter movies (for the first time ever)
Worked in the flower garden
Been sick twice
and gotten some allergy shots
Maybe that's why I feel a little tired. I don't slow down much. I'm either moving at full-tilt speed or I'm completely immobile.
The summer won't be much different. I have work in the garden to do, part-time office work, and I'll be nannying for a family of three girls under six years old. I was cast in Peter Pan as Liza and a featured Indian dancer, which means I'll be out in front. The cast is huge. I bet there are a hundred cast members in this show.
I guess I'll catch you on the flip-side, or maybe I'll check-in along the way... at some point.
Cheers.
