Excerpt of Awesome: Chocolate Wasted and Candlelight

     There are a lot of strange people in San Francisco, and if you work there, you soon grow used to occasional peculiarities in your customers; but the girl behind the cash register at Ghirardelli's decided that this took weirdness to new heights. Two executives in tailored business suits were sitting at one of the little white tables in the soda fountain area, glaring hungrily at the fountain worker who was preparing their eighth round of hot chocolate. They had marched in, put down a hundred-dollar bill, and told her to keep the drinks coming. On the floor between their respective briefcases was a souvenir bag stuffed with boxes of chocolate cable cars, and the table was littered with foil wrappers from the chocolate they had already consumed.

     To make matters stranger, they had the appearance of junior delegates from opposing sides of a celestial peace conference: the dark one with his diabolic beard and the fair-haired one with his fragile good looks. As she watched, the devil jumped up the second his order number was called and went swiftly, if unsteadily, to take his tray. He grabbed the cocoa-powder canister on his return. Sitting down across from the angel, he added a generous helping of cocoa to his hot chocolate. Then, apparently seized by an afterthought, he opened the canister and shook out a couple of spoonfuls onto the marble tabletop. Giggling guiltily, he pulled out an American Express card and began scraping the cocoa powder into neat little lines.

     "Danny!" She stopped the busboy as he came through the turnstile. "Look at him! Is he really going to-?" 

     He was. He did. The angel went into gales of high-pitched laughter and fell off his chair. The devil sighed in bliss and leaned down for a pass with the other nostril.

     "I don't know what's wrong with them," said the girl in bewilderment. "I swear to God they were both sober when they came in here, and all they've ordered is hot chocolate."

     "Maybe they just really like hot chocolate?" said the busboy.

-The Graveyard Game
Kage Baker 

~~

This excerpt, from book four in my favorite book series ever, is about 24 pages into a massive clusterfuck of intriguing plot.

Clarification: The immortal cyborgs were made immune and highly resistant to any and all know poisons and narcotics, to the point that they could drink straight vodka all night and never get any more drunk than a mild buzz. However, their creators failed to take into account the mild narcotic effect that theobroma cacao has on the human psyche. You know, all those endorphins, the giddy warm fuzzies . . .

So when you're immune to the effects of drugs and alcohol and need to get really baked, chocolate is the way to go.

Seriously, though, apart from the fantastically shameless display of public intoxication, this scene has always been one of my favorites in the series (right up there with the Elizabethan martyr, Victorian espionage agent, and post-modern Surfer/Sailor boy all sharing a body with a holographic pirate). It makes me think, makes me wonder, . . .

What wouldn't you do to escape from the horrors of life?

The Angel and Devil characters above are actually 2000 and 20,000 years old, respectively. I'm in my early 20's. I have to wonder (other than the fact that Ghirardelli's didn't exist until the 20th century) how much it actually took to get these two to go completely off their rockers in public, when they're supposed to be super sly, super sneaky, covert guys and never leave the region of "below the radar."

How much can a normal human being endure before they get to that point?

I was accosted by a young homeless gentleman yesterday. He's only a few years older than I am, but (claims that) he is two years sober following a five-year addiction to hard drugs. His wife has multiple prostitution charges. He's been homeless since he was 18, and his wife is in the same boat. They don't have their kids anymore (well, duh, on that one). He was an English and Philosophy major in a past life, back before everything went to hell.

Really, it was frightening to listen to his story and see how similar our paths are, how easily I could go the same way.

BUT!

He didn't have the shadowy, skeletal pallor of the addicts I pass on my way to and from the bus stop by my house. He didn't have a cloud of bottomless doom following him around like many of the transients who camp out behind the gas station by my work. He actually had kind of a flame in his eyes.

Not like a bonfire flame, you understand. Not some hellish, hopeless inferno.

More of a candle.

It was a really powerful thing to see, in someone who, by all rights, could have easily given up on himself and have society write him off as some other poor sap the system failed.

But he didn't. He has that look, that power, that motivation to get himself out of where he is, to pull himself up by the bootstraps, and his wife, too, and get them to a better place.

I bought the guy a sandwich.

He's so infinitely more inspiring than two lousy immortals getting drunk on chocolate in San Francisco. Really, as amusing as that little scene is, as hard as I laugh every time I read it, it's such a cold, heartless piece of literature. It's horrifying, to look at someone and see them wasting their life and soul away on drugs and alcohol and lack of direction. What does it really take to get to that point? It took these characters two- and twenty-thousand years, respectively. I now know firsthand that we mere mortals can reach that wasteland in less than twenty.

I think that we all have to hit some sort of bottom, so that we can get that direction. So that the direction we can go in is "Up."

Also, please send some good vibes to this guy. I really think he'll recover himself. I think he can get out of the mess he's in. I like to think that, one day, I'll see him on the street, in work clothes, buying some other lost kid a meal because he made it.

He can pass it on.

Fishy Deliciousness

So, I haven't posted anything in a couple of days. I think it's because I've been, if not happy lately, then at least busy and my relatively-normal level of content with life.

Or, in any case, not miserable.

My bestie and I were on Skype last night talking about it, and he informed me that J.R.R. Tolkien used to keep extensive journals, but he would only write in them when depressed. You can read these journals and use them to paint an image of the author, and end up with this picture of a tormented artist in all sorts of emotional pain and spiritual damage, but you would miss the parts where he didn't write anything, long periods of time when everything was going well enough that he felt the need to just bask in the glory of his life and not have to put pen to paper to get his feelings out.

I just finished the second book in my series, which is called Sky Coyote, and it features the Immortal Facilitator Joseph posing as the Native American trickster figure Sky Coyote, a coyote god who happens to be the only friend humanity has among the pantheon of this particular faith. He has to lift an entire village up and out of the annals of history, to rescue them from the coming invasion of white men and small pox. Of course, the natives really have no idea how to cope with their only friend among the gods coming to them, in the flesh, and telling them to get ready to pack up their lives and leave their homes forever. The struggle, and Joseph's response to it, are poignant and insightful.

"Well, I thought-it's just that before You came, I had my own ideas about the way things worked. All that about Father Sun drinking blood and devouring corpses, like the priests told us-I mean, that couldn't be true. He's no more than a monster if He does things like that. I had Him pictures more like a kind of grandfather, loving but stern. Terrible to the wicked, yes, that I could believe. And . . . I thought some kind of higher order prevailed in the Upper World. But from what You say, things are just as bad up there as they are down here. Even God cheats." He gave a shaken little laugh that caught on a sob.
I sighed and shrugged. "Nephew. What did you think, when the priests and shamans told you about us Sky People? When you hear a story, do you believe only the nice parts? Truth isn't like a baked fish, where you can eat the flesh and leave the bones and skin. You have to eat it all."

I don't disagree with any of this. Yes, it's a fictional struggle of a fictional character's actual worldview needing an immediate shift, but that baked fish analogy, in addition to spiking an immediate craving for seafood, makes an uncomfortable amount of sense.

The Truth of anything is what is is, and it cannot be anything else without ceasing to be the truth. That's what truth means. Truth is all true things in their entirety. All of it. Completely accurate. And in order for it to be Truth and not just true, you need all of it.

Thus, the human struggle with Faith.

Anyway, Tolkien.

Were his personal journals really true, then, if he left out all the good bits?

Do we really know the man from his journals if he left out so much of his life? Can we really say we have any idea who this author really was when we don't know his character at the best of times?

If I only post here when I'm feeling down, do you really know me?

I feel like when things are going pretty decent for me, I have less energy and inclination to write on here. No one likes a story that starts "Once upon a time, there live a happy little elf in a happy little forest and he had a happy little life." (<--incredibly vague reference to A Series of Unfortunate Events, which I have neither read nor seen in quite some time.) Does anyone like to read stories with no arcs?

No. Fuck that shit, that's boring.

But, I'm still not writing this for you guys.

I think the reason I don't write when I'm in a good place mentally is because I treat my life like the baked fish. The goodness is the flesh, and it's delicious, and I want to just savor it in all its fishy deliciousness. The bad stuff, the bones and skin, I just want to leave on the plate (my mind) but it'll rot there, so I have to throw it out.

And by throw it out, I mean vent about it.

On the internet.

To strangers.

It's cool, though. I mean, you don't have to go through my psychological garbage if you don't want to, but if dumpster diving is your thing, who am I to stop you.

And occasionally, you find some useful treasures.

Comforting Things

I just finished reread the first book in my favorite series for about the twenty-seventh time. In the Garden of Iden, by Kage Baker, is the flagship novel of a beautiful series (The Company) about time travel, immortality, politics, religion, corruption, ethics, and, of course, contains more than a healthy smattering of romance.

I'm a total fangirl.

I first read the first book some six, seven years ago, or thereabouts, and it doesn't matter how many times I've read it (about twenty-seven) or how much of it I have memorized (I once recited the whole first chapter for a project in my freshman English class), every time I go back through it is like the first time.

I laugh. I cry. I fall in love. My heart gets broken. I sit on the edge of my seat, begging the love interest, "No! Don't do it! Don't be a dumbass, Nicholas Harpole, you glorious douchebag!" and he does it anyway and I cringe every single time.

The "father" character makes me roll my eyes as only a chronically-sarcastic absentee-father-who-legitimately-cares-but-can't-for-the-eternal-life-of-him-figure-it-out-to-express-it can.

The "older-sister/single-minded-matron" character has me sighing in exasperation every time she goes off on a tangent.

When Mendoza, the protagonist, falls in love for the first time in her life, my heart aches with happiness for her, and breaks in grief as does hers at the end.

I get so drawn into the story, I forget that I need to eat, that I need to sleep until I pass out holding the pages open. I forget that I have a job to go to and a family to talk to and a house to keep and friends to be there for. I forget everything except the words on the page, the immortal characters immortalized further by the ink in which they were printed. I forget everything except that the words are beautiful and the wisdom therein has yet to fail me. "Arrows you may dodge and fever you may antibody for, but mortal grief is a misfortune you cannot escape." (pg 253)

And I will gladly grieve for these characters again as I embark on yet another quest through the pages of this universe.

There are twelve books in this series, and every single one of them can get me this riled up.

Every.

Single.

One.

There's just something so comforting, so natural about rereading a good book. A really good story, in my opinion, is one that can draw you in time and again and still have you riveted like it's your first time reading anything ever.

It's magical.

So I spent yesterday reading my beloved book, and finished it today after work when I should have been washing the dishes or cleaning my room, and I slept a glorious thirteen hours last night and woke up feeling refreshed and alive for the first time in a week and a half, and maybe longer.

I don't know. It's been a while since I read this series last. I go a little crazy without it.

Please Feel Free to Ignore This Post

I don't think I'm pretty. I mean, I've been told I'm good-looking but I don't see it.

My mom is just a few melanin cells this side of "day-glo albino" and my dad looks like basically any one of the guys in this picture.

As stupid as it sounds to anyone with even a cursory background in genetics, though, I didn't know I wasn't white until I was about ten. I was operating under the assumption that, since all baby animals looked like their mothers, I must look like my mother, too.

But, naturally, when you mix just-shy-of-albino-looking and poster-complexion-for-native-american you get something in between.

So, basically, I'm complexion confused.

I spent the first ten years of my life with this image in my head of how I looked and, when I realized I actually don't look like my mom it shattered my worldview. For the record, borderline-albino plus native american gets you passably-asian.

But I though I was white.

Here I am, thinking I'm white, for all of my life, and when I found out I wasn't I really didn't like the way I actually looked.

The way I looked in my head to begin with is so wrong, so innacurate a picture of what I actually look like, and I intellectually know that, but I can't rectify the error in my head. I actually got in trouble at school once when I was in kindergarten or first grade, in art class. We had to draw self-portraits, and the teacher handed out those ethnic-colored crayons and handed me a light brown one, and I wanted the peach, but she wouldn't give it to me because I didn't have peach skin.

I left the skin of my self-portrait uncolored.

When I wake up in the morning, I still think I have this nice, light, creamy complexion and it's beautiful.

Until I look at myself in the mirror, at which point I go, "Ugh. So tan!"

Not that there's anything wrong with tan, mind you. It's just now how I look.

I also used to be anorexically skinny, and I hated it. There was this girl in my freshman PE class who whold "accidentally" bump into me, bumping me into the lockers, and make snide comments about how disgusting I looked. I thought I looked disgusting, too. I don't think it's attractive for a lady's ribcage to show. I don't think you should be able to see someone's spine stretch their shirt when they lean over their desk. It's gross. I always though the ideal body type for a lady was curvy and soft, like the Venus de Milo.

Of course, if a lady has to choose between looking like that or arms, she should go for the arms, but still. I'm a huge fan of hips and breasts and a gentle sloping waist instead of that disgusting hourglass thing they're always trying to push on us. I just hated the body type I had in high school, for the opposite reason most of my classmates hated theirs.

I've been told, you see, that I'm flat-chested, and that when I wear a padded bra, it's false advertisement. A disappointment, when you find out what's under my shirt.

Somehow, in the last two years, I acquired the Venus look and then kept going. My body doesn't look anything like I think it should, now. Beyond the whole complexion thing, the build of my body is different in a way I never pictured my body being. I'm really not sure how to deal with this.

Back in the day, I was young and cute and precocious. I'm not so young anymore. I'm actually pretty proud to be a passable excuse for a grown-up. But I miss being cute. I miss not looking so tired and jaded, so that my eyes had a little more sparkle. I miss being slender enough that I could slip into tight spaces, and cute enough that just looking at someone would stop them in their tracks. I'm not really precocious anymore; I'm just another angsty twenty-something dissatisfied with life.

I feel like every word that has ever been used to describe me no longer applies.

This little girl T, this sweet young thing that Poffle may or may not be after, she's beautiful in ways I am not, and wish I were. She has this glowing, smooth, peach-toned skin with just a teensy bit of tan that sets her eyes off. Her eyes, my god, they're huge and wide open all the time, and even looking at pictures of her makes me shudder because it's like she's looking into my soul. (Sidenote: I don't stalk her; we're facebook friends. So there.) She has this gorgeous light brown hair that's generally wavy like I wish my pin-straight hair was. I've permed my hair twice in my life, trying to achieve that effect, but it just doesn't work on anyone but her. She's maybe 5'1, tops, but probably 5' even. I could reach around her with one arm, but even though she's so slender, she has gorgeous curves in perfect proportion to her frame, and I'm jealous.

I wish I looked like her.

I've been told I'm cute, but I don't see it. I'm not tiny and pocket-sized anymore, if I ever was, and even if I were the majority of my female friends back when I heard these words more frequently came up to my chin, if that. They're smaller and cuter, and usually smarter (but not always) and generally sweeter of temperament. I don't get how I can be cute when that's what I'm surrounded by.

Poffle's sisters (he has three) are all built the same way as T, more or less. They're fair-haired an -skinned. They're curvy exactly like Venus, and they have jaw-dropping eyes. How can I expect to measure up? Hell, his mother looks exactly like her girls.

My sister, she has dark hair like me, and she's a little curvier than the statue, but has alabaster skin like you wouldn't believe, and she wears her body so well on her soul I've never left the house with her and not seen heads turn her way, even when she's in baggy jeans and overlarge t-shirts.

Chickadee, The Chickadee, is so beautiful inside and out. She always moves with such grace and poise. Just being around her for the few hours I was when I went back West a couple weeks ago, it infected me with acceptance of challenges and grace to survive. Every time I'm in her presence, every movement is a dance. Just thinking about her makes me sigh, for all the inner beauty shining through the broken frame, but I'm so jealous of her and her blessings that it makes me all ugly inside.

I have a tendency to trip over flat surfaces. I walk into furniture in my office all the time, a room in which I've spent a minimum of 27 hours a week, every week, for the last seven months.

I'm so jealous of all these women, these beautiful women with their dancer's grace and fair skin and statuesque bodies. I know I'm okay-looking. But compared to them? They're so beautiful, so kind and intelligent and loved in ways that I wish I was, and never will be. (Okay, the love thing fluctuates, but everything else really doesn't.) I can't stand being around them sometimes, because I feel like last choice.

I can count backwards by lovers, and tell you every time I was second-choice for someone and who she was that I was an acceptable-at-best substitute for.

Beautiful. Fair. Curvaceous. Smooth. Graceful. Talented. Kind. Cute women.

I know I shouldn't be comparing myself to others, but shy of bleaching my skin and some serious bone-reconfiguration, I'll never look the way I think I look the first thing in the morning, before I catch my reflection in the mirror, and after all these years the shock of my physical reality has yet to wear off, but I wish, just once, I could wake up and see my reflection looking exactly how I see myself.

I need to stop. I need to stare at myself in the mirror for five minutes every day and look at myself and just say out loud "You are beautiful, inside and out," but what happens when my body changes again? How do I start over from that? How do I deal with this?

How do I accept the kind of beautiful I actually am, instead of pining to be what I see in my head?

Violations of the Feeble Remainders of my Sanity

I spent the night at a friend's house Saturday after I got off work.

Clarification: at the house of my only real friend in this state. She's also the relative of a coworker of whom I'm quite fond, so there's that little tidbit of trivia which kind of comes into play later.

Her parental units (not her parents, the acting adult supervision in her life, the people she lives with, one of whom is the coworker I'm fond of) were throwing a belated wedding reception for some friends of theirs Sunday morning, and I got to go as my friend's date, and since they needed help setting up I volunteered for that, too, and was all prepared to use this past weekend to get my mind off.

So, I hiked to their house Saturday after work. Through the snowy, slushy ghetto and the housing projects near which I live, at three-thirty/four in the afternoon when it's still light outside, and it's only a mile, mile and a half from my house to hers. Forty minute walk in good weather, tops, and it really only took me two hours in the snow. I also went the long way so I skipped most of the projects, was on a semi-major street most of the way, and by the time the street lamps went on I was at the intersection by the entrance to the neighborhood.

So no big deal.

But there's a grocery store by her house, and I stopped to buy her a box of Hershey's kisses and a small balloon (because, hey. Cheap candy day) because making other people smile makes me happy. It's almost entirely selfish, but not quite.

But almost.

And we go into her room and vent about our shitty weeks, and she goes first and she tears up, and then it's my turn and I tell her about my shitty week and how I can't process anything and should anything else happen right now then I'm just going to curl up and die, and how awful Poffle (the asshole formerly known as PofI) is and how life just sucks and if just one more thing happens . . .

And then I realize she's angling for a kiss.

Which is just one more giant, steaming turd on the massive pile of shit that is currently my life.

Seriously, though. Did you not just listen to me explain in graphic and sometimes vulgar detail how fucked up I am by everything right now? Did you not just hear me say how I can't handle anything else? Were you not paying attention, or do you just not care? Because, either way, I need to know. Also, you and I are each others' only friends here (L is in exactly the same position I am, down to the asshole older brother who is loved dearly but impossible to live with) and I really don't want to jeopardize that by feeling anything other than sisterly love for you, especially when I'm a freaking wreck and you are too and shit just fucking sucks.

So yeah. That really sucked to deflect in the middle of a mental breakdown.

As I'm falling asleep later that night after helping make tons of food and punching out lots of flower-shaped confetti. Poffle texts me. The conversation opens with "How's it going pretty lady?" progresses to the eventual plan to play Magic: The gathering, and then afterwards quickly deteriorates to:

Poffle: . . . wish you were here
Fantasticness: O.o yeah, i hear ya. (<- meant to be sarcastic; sarcasm doesn't work in text form)
P: Naked. ;)
F: Hmm. . . You'd have to seduce me, first and foremost. I recommend starting with some cheesy romantic gesture devoid of allergens (<- again being facetious; still doesn't work over texts; also because I know he forgot I'm allergic to romance aka chocolate, roses, and pomegranate so any gesture he would throw together will probably kill me)
P: Haha. ;)
F: Seriously (<- seriously frustrated)
P: "I love seeing you naked.~ does that count? ;)
F: Nope :) (<- jackass)
F: Fun, but not cheesy romantic (<- and you're missing the point)
P: :(
F: Come up with something creative (<- because you're a douchebag and have never put forth effort)
P: Zzzzzzz
F: Okay. Ttyl then (<- done with your shit for the night)

Okay, so I'm definitely not in the right state to be talking to Poffle, what with a long-ass week, my asshole brother being my asshole brother, and the fact that this conversation happened between 2228hrs and 2345, and I generally wake up around five in the morning, so I'm also seriously sleep deprived, but I own up to encouraging the conversation.

Seriously, though. What. The FUCK. Am I supposed to do with this exchange? You dumped me on Monday. It's Saturday night. I get it. You're lonely. Whatever. But so am I, and I do not appreciate being toyed with this way.

Anyway, the party was AWESOME! Bloody Mary's are really gross, by the way, even with Old Bay on the rim (which makes it a Bloody Maryland.) Mimosas are good, though. I had one, it knocked me on my ass, so I drank water, ate food, took ibuprofen, and was back to normal. And then I DID IT AGAIN! And it was great! I feel like I'm on the fast track to becoming an alcoholic, but it was fun.

Also, if anyone asks, I'm over 21.

So while I'm drinking and eating and helping set up the cupcake tower of doom and wonder I'm also talking to some really cool people and, for the first time in forever, having a fantastic time. I meet the girl who is bartending, and she's funny and smart and cool and likes books and vodka (two of my favorite things). I meet the bride who, several years ago, held the position I currently have at my company, and has an awesome sense of humor and a beautiful smile. I meet the children of another attendee of this party (whom I met once before) and hit it off with her two daughters, 12 and 14, which makes me kind of creepy but, you know what? These young ladies are smart, like school, like math and science, like reading, have great senses of humor, beautiful smiles, the older one is learning to solve Rubik's cubes, and I spent four hours having a wonderful conversation with total strangers I hit it off with, creepiness be damned. These girls also happen to be doppelgangers of people I know and love back home, so, added bonus!

Eventually, the party dies down as all parties do, and I call my brother to ask if he can come get me or if I need to bum a ride home. The conversation was more or less as follows:

"Hey. Do I still need to get my own ride home."
"Can you stay there for a while longer?"
"Uh, probably. What's wrong?"
"Just stay there, okay?"
"No. What happened what's wrong?"
"It's none of your concern. The house got broken into but none of your stuff was taken."
"What?! Are you kidding me? Of course it's my concern; I live there!"
"No it's not. Stay there. See if you can stay another night."
"No, it is my concern. What happened?! Are you okay?!!"
"I'll be there in a bit. The police just left. Just stay there for a while, okay?"
"Okay. But it is my concern. Be safe. I'll see you in a bit."

So, there went all the good feelings of the day.

I break the fuck down in the middle of this party, which thank God is down to only ten people from the earlier fifty. I grab my shoes and my coat and go outside to smoke on the porch. The bartender, H, follows me and asks me what's wrong. So I tell her.

I relive in this conversation every single sucky second of the last week, and how awful I feel, and the fact that Poffle seems to be replacing me with some chick I know from school back home, and how he's spending so much time with the guy he bought the sword for, and how I can't deal with my brother and how work is dead-end and school pressure is building and I can't. fucking. DEAL. with ANYTHING. And EVERYTHING is going to shit, and now, on top of everything else, L is being all weird and my house isn't safe and I don't want to go home to my apartment and I don't want to go back West and I can't deal with anything and by this point I've cried twenty-five times since Monday afternoon and I feel sick with all the saline I haven't cried out of my system and how awful everything is, and this is the final straw and I can't handle anything else.

At least, I try to say all this, but she's talking over me and trying to say kind, reassuring things to me like how when she was my age oh-so-many years ago she felt the same way and it gets better and I need to relax and just keep going and it's all going to be okay and that house (my coworker's house, where the party was held) is FULL of people who love me and care about me and will help me anyway they can, and she has a spare room at her house and if I need a place to go she'll vouge for me with her other roommates and it's only seven minutes away and everything will be okay and---

I must be the only person in the world who needs a solid twenty minutes of silence in which to cry before I can make sense of anything. I need a solid twenty minutes to just rant and rave and scream and cry and wail and get everything out before people start telling me nice things, or anything, or I can't move past the greif and the hurt and the suckiness. Otherwise, all the nice things are just noise interrupting me getting the frustration out and the saline and salt and snot and tears build up and I feel like I need to vomit and eventually I have to or I won't be able to get anything out and it just builds and builds and builds until I snap because I just cant fucking process anything unless I get uit out and fucking EVERY time this week I hit that point where I go on a greif binge,s omething or someone interrupted me and I'm still building all this tension and the boyfriend and the breakup and the brother and the job and the school and the fucking apartment and ASKMFGV EGMWOERMOPIJGMCOGJLA,SFGOXQJIWRGMRTXQOP,FUMRC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~

Five cigarettes later, my brother shows up. We don't really talk.

When H left, I gave her a hug and apologized for banishing her from my greif fest. Then I apologize to the bride and groom for making a scene, and to my coworker's and L's family for imposing, but they let me stay the night so I don't have to go back to my apartment until it's light outside.

My brother goes home.

I turn off my phone and go to sleep in L's room on her bed.

When I wake up to hitch a ride with my coworker to work in the morning (our shifts start at the same time) L isn't there and I feel abandoned.

Work sucks. After work, I'm texting another friend back home, who then goes off on a tangent about now that I'm single I should give him a shot.

Again, did you not fucking listen just now when I told you I can't handle anything else? Also, your friend just dumped me. A week ago. You need to stop. And the answer is no. Especially since you're being pushy, and if you don't cut it the fuck out I won't talk to you anymore.

Wish I could pull that line on L, but I'm her only friend here, and she's mine.

So, if you've seen me on le Facebook this week and I seemed really down, that's what happened.

I feel really numb and vulnerable.

If I was sitting aked in the snow outside my house right now, right across the street from the fucking projects, nothing the weather or the gangsters or druggies or neighbors could do to me would shut me down any harder than the last week did.

I feel really guilty that while I was having a great time at the party, no one was at my house to scare away the theives.

I feel confused and sickened that they left the damn tv, computers, phones, xbox, . . . everything just sitting there. They took some folders off my brother's desk, and a lockbox that had some silver coins in it.

But they didn't take anything you'd think they would have taken.

I feel like...

I don't know.

Nothing, I guess.

~~

I talked to a friend of mine last night, trying to get everything in my head sorted out, and I found out that Poffle spent Valentine's day with all my favorite people back home. I found out that my favorite lady cooked people food, and they all sat around being their dorky, lovable selves and had a good time. I heard it was fun, that people got along, that even though Poffle was there with the cutie-pie he may or may not be angling his dick towards at the moment and the guy he bought the sword for and Poffle was trying too hard to be liked, it wasn't a bad evening.

That broke my heart.

Please don't replace me.

Someone Else's Wisdom

This. Just this.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-that-have-to-happen-before-you-fix-your-crappy-life/

~~~

Dammit, I'm working on it. And you know what? Progress, bitches!!!!

Lost

I feel like I should be angry.

Like, really angry.

So angry that steam starts pouring out of my ears and my face turns bright red like I'm some sort of cartoon character.

And I'm not.

I'm actually kind of an emotional void at the moment.

It's like, I've teared up so many times this week, but I always stop myself before the waterworks really start because my brother is home and I don't want to give him any more "you're soft and weak" fodder to use against me, or I'm at work and I have shit to get done, dammit, and I can't afford to lose my job because I'm in a slump (though, in actuality, my boss is really nice about these things and is letting me have more hours so I can be distracted, even though business is painfully slow at the moment).

All these pent-up tears are making me feel queasy, and my eyes really itch all the time now, and my body aches and I'm super lethargic, but I can't make myself throw up to get rid of it and I can't really let loose with the tears.

I quit smoking the third of the year. I bought a pack of menthols this morning.

We got to work before the gate to the parking lot was open, so I stomped around in the untouched snow with my coffee in one hand and a lit Pall Mall in the other, giggling like a madwoman and freezing my hands because I forgot to leave my gloves in my coat pockets when I got home last night so they hurt from the wind but I didn't care.

They're actually not as cracked and bleeding as I thought they'd be, almost four hours later, but I'm worried that this kind of disappoints me.

I was on the phone last night with a friend I've only actually hung out with four times in all the time I've known him, and got to get a semi-decent cry out. It was a little bit cathartic, but after the phone call was over I was disgusted with how dirty crying makes my face feel so I washed my face and fell asleep watching The Tigger Movie instead of continuing to deal.

I also realized that I'm really pissed off at everyone who keeps telling me "It's good that it's over; you need to get out of that scenario; you can do better; this is unhealthy; I'm proud of you; etc." Blah, blah, blah. I don't care.

You know that expression "Give a man a fish. . ." right?

Stop telling me it's a good thing that this week's horrible events happened. I'm heartbroken, and I don't want to feel guilty for being heartbroken because I shouldn't be heartbroken because PofI is an ass. I know he's an ass. I've learned this first hand, several times now, and apparently it has yet to sink in because I'm still heartbroken but let me be heartbroken, dammit, before the snow finishes melting and I can't pretend it's his face while I crunch the shit out of it, okay?

It's really frustrating. I know y'all, all my loved ones, mean well, but the reason I'm blogging this shit is because keeping all these thoughts just in my head gives me limited space to stretch them all out and make sense of everything, so if something I said at the beginning of one sentence directly contradicted something I said at the end of the next, it's because I'm still unjumbling everything in my brain and I'm not done yet and I'm going to finish getting everything out and be done with it so I can breathe a while and not worry about editing it and proofreading it because this is for me, not you. I know you're trying to help. That's really cool of you, and admirable because even I'm fed up with my shit at this point, but I need time to cry so I can get angry so I can play some Miranda Lambert and then calm down and be a real person.

But I'm not there, yet. And when I do get there, please feel free to crap talk PofI as much as you want to me, and I'll laugh right along with you because I make stupid decisions when under the influence of sexy man pheromones and emotions and other similar drugs, but right now I'm not there yet, okay?

Right now I'm kind of lost.

Please respect that.