sliced n diced and everything niced...

Joy to the world....!


Well the year is almost spent, and where am I ? Still lost in a haze, somewhere. It doesn't help that my contacts keep blurring up every two seconds. And they've only been used one day! Ridiculous. Wah, wah, wah...

I don't even feel like writing this right now. Don't even feel like it. Guh, I feel so utterly half-heartededly about everything right now. Its terrible. I hate it...kinda....ehhh...blehh.....

really don't even care that its a new year, nothings gonna change. I'm still gonna be stuck in this rut in 2014. Shouldn't say that... I have so much to be happy about ...but I find myself restless and weary and just really so deeply stuck in this rut...

Just gonna freakin sit here like an idiotic lump, nestled up in my little spot on the couch, listening to the infrequent booming of fireworks and buzzing from the electrical system in this house...

Why can't I enjoy myself right now? Is this depression? What a stupid label that does absolutely nothing but hinder any treatment of what it is...if that makes sense...eh...

I feel so paralyzed by this haze I'm in. There are things I want to do that I simply cannot do. I can't even face them... its not good. Not at all.

Another day wasted, like so many. Why does this matter? I don't even know... how could i fool myself into thinking I could be what one might deem successful in a world like the one we live in.... I can't do it.... I can't I just can't keep it up its too much... bu.h........h....

everything just seems so pointless...for me...anyway....

flung far...low, near, high...

 So often it simply does not cross my mind, but there are moments here and there where I suddenly realize my life is totally out of my control. Everything I've experienced has been the product of chance (or at least, NOT me); as though I've simply wandered into a basket at the end of a catapult and been flung from one destination to another, over and over again, without even noticing it!

Sometimes it feels as though I'm simply a pair of eyes connected to a heartbeat, with a throbbing scab of a brain floating through the midst of more solid people and places. And I long to be more like those solid looking things, who are at the very least a little less fragile than I...

You drift away...........

Something is wrong with me. My generation. Something has been lost, something somewhat crucial, for survival in this world. Is it within us or without us that has been lost? I don't know, because I'm unable to access either vantage point to investigate it myself...

Blah BLAH BLAH! BLAH.

blah.

I'm so confused right now, such a manic depressive fugue-y wugue-y whimsy has overtaken my life I feel even less in control than usual... my defenses have been shot, so I'm down, recovering, reconfiguring...who knows... or just sinking deeper and deeper into the mud....

What have a I done? The stress is over with the job, but what have I done? It is a bold move, a rather large financial risk, no doubt about it. But it had to be done, right?

So many things I couldn't handle. I was almost dying, thats how it felt... but there is still a part of me who feels like a failure...survivors guilt? Eh. I dont know. I must remember that I was the 4th one to quit this year (6th since last year) and realize it is not a sign of weakness necessarily....

This world is a terrible, unforgiving place sometimes. Much of the time. It is cold until something warm comes along that it can temporarily glean some heat from....pressing its icy body close, trying to melt itself perhaps but instead destroying the heat until its source is completely decimated....

We are not meant to understand it, really. We are simply meant to experience it, and love it, for what it is and more importantly, what it isn't meant to be. Thank Lord for that.

My fingernails smell like raw potatoes.

Ruger

Have I become hardened? 

I'm fumbling with my purse as the weight of the cat carrier drags my right side toward the floor. I slowly and carefully make my way out the door, trying and failing to keep the carrier from hitting the screen. It is evening and the wind slips in at the bottom of my jacket, leaving a thin ring of cold at my midsection that bothers me to no end. But there are more important things to do right now.

I make it to the car, gently and clumsily lay him down in his carrier in the passenger seat. I'm in the drivers side, pulling away from the curb and off towards the freeway.

The sun sets behind me and the world falls into the familiar eerie silence so peculiar to Monday nights.

I miss my exit. Stupid googlemaps!

I'm thinking about his tearing eyes, his quivering voice; his pain is too much to hide, too much to bear...and the gurgling wheeze coming from the passenger next to me.

I take the next exit, loop around back onto the other side of the freeway. Zoom off the correct exit and proceed to take another wrong turn.

I'm in a quiet, dirty backstreet that reeks of illicit activity. Little bunches of people littered across the sidewalks, creeping in the most ostentatious, vulgar manner.

I'm sure this next road will get me back on track.

I've never been in this area at night before. How strange to know I will be coming back here again tomorrow for work...

I see the rust-yellow sign for the animal hospital pull up suddenly on my right. Parking is around the corner on a street only slightly less occupied by the creeping, vulgar bodies. I zip up my purse and pull out the carrier as gracefully as I can, hurrying towards the dingy light of the hospital.

Its nicer inside than out, but there is a smell of surgical gloves and cleaner combined with a constant shrill barking from the back rooms. It brings back hundreds of memories that I immediately feel myself pull away from.

Oh dissociation, you wonderful tool.

Filling out the forms I can't help but feel a little ridiculous. I've only known you for two and a half hours, little fellow. But here I am claiming ownership, taking your whole life into my hands.

And you're ever so sweet about it. Purring and gurgling as your tiny, perfect nose leaks pus.

Waiting is to be expected, and its not too long. The lady at the front desk sprays some cleaner in a room with a glass window looking into the waiting area and ushers me in with my carrier. I fumble with my belongings again, trying to push my mental haziness away so I can coordinate my actions properly.  Beams of emotion and sensation hitting me from every angle...

Where is the balance? Too much or too little input; its dysfunctional either way.

 I stand next to him, petting him, soothing him, as the tech probes him. I take him in and out of the carrier, letting him roam around the room and look for exits. He stays calm. Happy to be warm and cared for, even on a cold metal table. The vet examines him. He notes a tag on his ear that indicates he was a stray brought in to be fixed before being released again. The vet's face displays a detached sort of pessimism. He is in very bad shape. Probably a virus. Maybe he could get better with enough care, maybe not.

We should test him for feline leukemia and aids. Its more money then I planned to spend. I feel the sharp tug on my heart in various directions as I try to make the decision. The haziness presses in around the edges of my thoughts...

I think we better do it. An impulse more than a decision. Regret, anxiety, uncertainty as the tech takes him to the back room. Ten minutes and we will know. I stand next to the carrier and wait. I take out my phone and do a few extra things for work, all my feelings humming in the background behind a thin layer of fog...content, expecting nothing to come of the test.

Bad news, he says. He has tested positive for feline aids.

So.

What is the next move?

Poor, poor Ruger!

Are the shelters open? No.

I've already named you, already added you into my life. But only sort of.

How long have I known you now?  Three and a half hours? What was your life like before you interrupted our late afternoon walk, thin and shivering and desperate for help?

Content,  eagerly eating a can of tuna and curling up in my lap. Warm and purring as you wheeze.

The vet seems just a little too enthusiastic about killing you now...

I'll take him to the shelter in the morning. Back in the carrier, sweet fellow. I will take you home and love you for a little while before you die. Oh you precious creature.

I pay.

My phone flashes with a text. The place you're at can't take him?

Desperation. Pain.

They could euthanize him for $85. Should I do that?

Please, I can't take it.

Ok.

The tech lifts the carrier out of my arms and silently moves into the back room. I'll bring your carrier back out in a minute.

Thanks.

He is back in a minute. Hands over the carrier.

Goodbye then.

Goodbye.

not by awe

I'm not sure where to begin. Some kind of softened soliloquy, saying nothing and going nowhere (story of my life?). Its one of those somber rainy days in the city, the ones they show at the beginning of movies, the cameras close to the ground to watch the water droplets splash up against shoes, delicate little white sprays flaring up around their pant legs as they hustle off to their sundry destinations.

I suspect its supposed to evoke some sort of emotion. But what emotion? Certainly nothing beyond an increased anticipation for the real story to begin, right?

But its that moment right there, with the splashy white water and the damp, shivering pant legs hustling down the sidewalk, that I relate to the most right now. I feel struck, but not by awe.

This blog is so interesting. A tiny time capsule of written emotion against a purple backdrop; nothing more than letters pressed in sequence across my keyboard as I sit here silently, alone, stoic. Nothing new there. What is this buzzing in my forehead? What? Sentience? Who knows, really. These words import some of the mystery, perhaps, but not really. Oh, geez, why must I always go there...

I wish so much to just to let go right now, just let the words flow out without stopping without thinking of what I'm going to say next because that is how one actually creates that is how one opens up and unfolds a story out of their mind, out of the secret recesses inside that they don't normally know about. Is this dangerous is this wrong? I don't know I can't say I'm torn in two directions.

Yes, there is evil inside me that I don't want to touch, but I cannot believe that is all. I hope that is not all.

There is some energy though that I want to unleash, something I cannot comprehend, and yes something that I am a little afraid of. What is that blackness I can see from above the rim of my glasses, so far out of my field of vision?

When will I ever stop skittering around my own particular brand of madness and see it for what it is?

Yes, what is this impending secret that I wish to unleash upon the world? Theres something sly, something sneering and prideful linked to it. This makes me pull away in shame.

I must stop now before I really lose it.

zzzzz pop.

I dont even know how to type right now. I have to push my brain to send a signal down to my fingers. Cold fingers. Cold brain. I can't stop shaking. My gut feels worse than just twisted into knots. Those knots have been sucked into some kind of miniature black hole clenching vigorously inside my chest. Not hungry but weak from malnourishment I keep trying to eat...ugh, what an awful activity digestion is...

I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it...

I feel like I need to breakdown, just cry and cry and cry, but the tears don't make it out of my ducts.

Ahhh!! Why do I feel this horrible? Why?!

I've lost all my senses. I just can't focus, I can't do it, I can't do it...

How did I even make it through this week? When can I just collapse? How can I not already collapse? Really, its too late...its already happened...

I can't do anything.

I don't know how to beat this one. I guess I just have to accept defeat... is that bad? Should I be trying to stick this one out?? Why right now does it seem like everyone keeps saying persistence is how you succeed in life? At any cost? Emotionally, physically, spiritually? Wheres the line?

Shiver while youre breathing...

 

whererrrwhirrrawherraawerraaaaaa

I can't even begin to describe how horrible I've been feeling for probably the last two weeks, almost completely continuously.

I am trying and trying to understand what exactly triggered it. I feel like something snapped and I woke up from a supremely fabricated delusion of ability. And so now I'm like a puppet hanging on broken strings, arms feebly wobbling towards my workload, my head twitching at an awkward, downtrodden angle... I can't keep doing this! Almost 9 months I've lasted, faking my way through this position, taking on case after case after case with almost no guidance given to me beyond the spontaneous, desperate phone calls I've made to people also struggling to keep up with their work. And the sad thing is its the clients ultimately that are suffering from my incompetence. The new employees I have to "train" end up with inferior training because I have only half an idea of what I'm doing at any given time... and it trickles, it trickles...

Whats the point? Am I supposed to keep struggling over the next few years, slowly figuring out everything I need to know to do this job effectively? Meanwhile, all of my clients become upset, realizing I'm not doing all of the things previous qualified people in my position did for them simply because THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING AND HAD THE CONFIDENCE TO TRY!?

Because now not only is it that I'm half-capable. The bubble of confidence I had managed to create has burst; I have lost whatever faith in myself to perform that I once had, the faith that carried me through countless meetings with parents and other professionals in the field that actually know a thing or two about appropriate treatments and so forth... And without that I perform even worse than before.

I'm just barely hanging on here, every moment feels like another opportunity to fall apart. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't even find the energy to move most of the time. I've never felt as low as I do right now, how sad. How sad that my world hinges so delicately upon something like my own delusions of confidence. Who is really to blame here? My company or myself? I go back and forth, hovering longer upon the latter in all probability, but thats nothing new.

Ugh, I just want to run away, or die. Preferably the first one, at least for others' sakes.

head achey tacky

Hunger is a strange sensation. Seriously, stop and think about it for a moment. There is no other feeling like a body's physical response to needing food shoved in through its orifices.

ranch style

Twip twip twip...

Oh man oh man oh man oh man....just...

WHYYYYYY!?!!! 

This job is so ridiculous. Pretty sure most jobs aren't supposed to be THIS stressful... at least thats what it feels like...who am I to judge? I dont know really my experience is limited. Its basically set up for me to fail at... in so many ways. From the top down I'm the one left to pick up the pieces and take the fall if a client or funding source is unhappy with our services. Stupid people I supervise gossiping and trying to sabotage my relationship with their client as soon as I don't meet their every little need which is IMPOSSIBLE with the amount of work being shoved on me from the administrators. Bleh... it gets to a point where I either collapse and die or collapse and just shut down stop caring and let things snowball into an even bigger mess because there is absolutely no way anyone with ANY amount of life outside the job could take care of independently. No training given, not even vague instructions just heres this DO IT and this and this and this while you're at it - oh don't forget about this! I'm just floating over here 40 miles away from all the other staff in my position to ask for help unable to reach anyone when I need them just kind of flying by the seat of my pants trying to act like I know anything about this field of psychology and use that false knowledge to implement entire treatment plans for often severely disabled children and hope that their parents don't know more about ABA than I do otherwise I'm screwed!!!! Oh and while I'm at it I need to write all these fancy scientific reports that also prove I know what the heck I'm doing...just copy and paste from other reports and turn in and get criticized when I forget things... ridiculous...

All I know is all the other jobs I've had up to this point did not feel nearly as overwhelming as this one. And thats saying something because I am pretty easily overwhelmed with new things.

Oh well, I guess I just needed a place to vent. Gotta go run off and sub for a new client that just had two bts quit hours before the program was supposed to start....oh and then class later? Two quizzes to do? 7 different reports to write? 2 new treatment programs to sort out? Meetings and consult hours with clients? Yeah, I can do all that  by friday. No problem. PFFT

Strange and.... Darkness

I think my brain is ruffling again. Click click click like a bicycle chain rolling around and around and around. La, am I ...I... what? 

There is such a baffling contrast between a person's external and internal effects on the world and on themselves. I'm not explaining it right. The chain fell off; no, it got stuck on something. No, it snapped into a thousand little pieces! 

Boogalecki!! Swissssh....

Why do any of us do anything that we do? Is it because we want to or because we think we have to because of who we think we are? I'm a singer so I must sing.

 I'm smart so I must tell the world what I know.

 I like to help others so I must help them. 

I know what to say so I must say it.

Where does this leave our free will? If we are all just an endless series of self upon self fulfilling prophecies where is truth about ourselves actually to be found? In others also battling their own self imposed identity delusions? Their knowledge of our identity would be based off our very own projections of what we think we should be, plus perhaps whatever unconscious elements squeak out of us here and there. 

Again the only solution is an alien one...

What importance is an identity anyway? Long term, it's not important. Long term, a tiny ant is just as meaningful as a fiery gas giant billions of light years away... 

And why is it all important? Because God made it all. Ultimately  the only thing that can ever distinguish itself above any matter or non matter is the one who made it. 

Two tiny words to convey what is, to me, an enormous emotion:

How splendid!! 

deadlines twist

I'm stepping off the edge now.

I take one last look around; squinting at the ciphers written on silvery pots and pans, scattered around the room, half hidden in long, leaning shadows. Who would discover them next? I wonder. Its not for me to know, not to care, to think upon at all. It is so obviously a cliff hanger; a semi-colon in the middle of an unfinished sentence. How ironic; how tedious.

I'm snorting now. Inside, anyways. I feel those long, leaning shadows stretch, inserting themselves into the recesses of my mind as I move forward, over the end, away from that darkened room and into somewhere...new.

Where am I going? These thoughts play out in my head like muzac, steadily humming in the background, as my steps carry me forward. On and on and on.

I can feel the edges of my eyes expanding as I look ahead and the light penetrates. What is this aching? This melancholy intensity wrapping itself around me with a feather-soft touch? What a swirling, beautiful emotion, not felt but seen, not expressed but impressed, like smelling a far off flower shining with the purest light.

I'm jarred from this fantasy by a cascade of laughter, childish and obscene. Purity in its own right but not right for me. Go away, away, away! My brain screams at me. I turn back and I'm lost, all in an instant.

What dream is this? Sitting on the couch, headphones on and my face itching and red. Let me go back, where it is real. Really real. My eyes expanding...

Damn.

a silky laugh leaping

How long how long how long..........

Badayabodalaboddidiya

Guah wauh wuh...

I'm feel kind of introspectively dissatisfied at the moment. Yeesh, how obtuse and self-centered can I be, right? It's driving me mad. I suppose ill be spending all of my life watching out against my terrible secret pride, my incredible narcissism hidden so subtly beneath a get-jolly-free facade... If that makes any sense....even my writing style conveys such arrogance it really is maddening... Or is it my constant interpretation of my every thought style or whim that is the cause of my madness? Oh well it's probably both, as usual. Blah blah blah, vanity vanity vanity.

Feelin fairly well balanced much of the time now, in terms of stress handling abilities. Rhodiola is still working happy to say! But something feels a little empty still. I think it is perhaps because I spend too much time focused on work and not work...and by not work I mean the things I do to recover from work... Which are not very fulfilling... 

Thus the emptiness, yes.... A bit of a funk... Must get out.... So hard though as I feel I do need most of that not work time in order to keep working...slowly but steadily I must figure out other more meaningful ways to recharge....or rather, simply do them.... 

Poopz. 

Run. You better run. You better run for your life.

Heard a shout of someone calling....strange and darkness.

What an absolute desensitizing few weeks it has been. Everything is different, except for the really important things.

I'm not in a very reflective mood because of this, but I feel as though I should be recording something in here for some reason.

Perhaps since my recent entry about the lack of proof for reflection-efficacy I've stopped doing it without realizing it (but of course I wouldn't realize it, without reflection...).

Or perhaps I've just been too busy to stop and think.

My brain is being rewired.

Is it?

Yes. Of course. Not. Too much. To say. I think. Possibly. I'm out.

Things seem more intense and less complicated all at once. Or more complicated and less intense, I can't tell, my brain seems to be receiving these constant pulses of energy out of nowhere. I stare straight ahead and my vision ebbs and flows around my peripherals.

All of this new terminology, a new set of rules to live by, to practice, to perceive, and to pass on to those around me. Is this what I want? Where will the current me go when future me takes over?

Past me is so close to her final rattle of death, just a few fingers grasp the plastic strings hanging down from above, flaxen and straw like, a mask of gaunt and shadow stretching in the dark...

No, please, no. What comes after death?

Green; new life.

goldfrappin'

Go o,o,o,o,o,o,o,o,o,o

EQ

At times....too many times...I get caught up in this strange idea that I am some kind of crazy special positive force upon the world. I am assuming that I am not the only one who does this, even though I also often get caught up in this sort of idea too, at times.

It does seem a lot as though I am the only one alive. Or not so much alive in and of itself, but the kind of alive I am. Me me me!

But the real depth, the real aliveness, is still so far out of my grasp. I know that now, because my aliveness, my uniqueness or whatever is really none of those things. It is just another superficial sort of facade that feels real because its the only thing I've ever known.

The truth is outside of our understanding of reality. It is outside of our personal, emotional experiences and perceptions. 

But for anyone seeking real truth, real depth, real meaning, it is the only thing that will cut it.How hard it is to extend oneself outside their own personal bubble of reality to feel the shocking, alien truth outside all human experience. How often are we like frightened children hiding under the covers to escape our fearful perception of the unknown?

And how often do we let our fearfulness lead to the silly misconception that we alone are what is real, living, and special....under our covers...

Rhodi odi oh LAAAAAA

This stuff is amazing. I really hope it's not a placebo effect. Immediate release of about 80% of my stress, better sleep, increased energy, elevated mood, higher focus, and a decrease in belly bloat and other stress-triggered stomach problems to boot!! 

And this is in 3 days. I can't believe it. Oh you delicious Siberian herb, you. Don't ever stop your magic!

jello-flies?

I can feel the raw chia seeds I just consumed stuck in my throat and in my gums, jellifying. I surely hope they are really chia seeds and not insect eggs. At this point it is impossible to tell the difference.

Whenever you run away
Whenever you lose your faith
It's just another stroke of the pen on the page
A lonely ray of hope is all that you'll need to see a beautiful history

the velvet folds of a petal

I can see it a little bit. Little glimpses of a gleaming, satiny life full of love and peace and joy so far removed from the world there can be no pain. There is darkness there, but no fear.

What an absolutely shocking thought.

I think... I dream...I hope... to feel those deep, dark, delicate, velvet folds envelope me.

Someday, someday to be out of this madness, this duality, this fixation on chaos. That is what I have a hold on. I have a fire inside me that will never go out. My own little pilot light that so far has been nurtured by the most short-lived and inefficient fuel source invented. And yet it is so powerful to me.

Oh Sandi... I miss you so much. You gave me a vision of a new future for myself that I had never thought possible. Another role model so different from my mother, so different from any other role model in my silly life (where I hardly spent time looking for role models in the first place).I cannot finish my thought. I have been drawn away... away..

Why love, why? Why why why?

Why am I always so damn sad here?

Please stop.

You have no idea how hard it is to lie down next to you at night after you've spent the whole day silently ignoring me...whilst trudging around the house, no words given to define your sudden change in attitude. How can I not offend you? Would it help if I stopped existing? Sometimes I wish I didn't anyway so perhaps it'd be a win win. 

As everyone within earshot would tell me if they knew, i knew what I was getting into so I have no right to complain. I've brought this upon myself. Good, I guess. I deserve it after how terribly I've treated others myself...A taste of my own medicine so to speak...To fill this page with as many cliches as I can before I put down my iPhone and try to sleep next to a man that I simply cannot make happy no matter how hard I try or how desperately I want to. 

I want to get angry sometimes but my anger always quickly diffuses into agony beyond words. Trapped. Can't do anything to help can't do anything that won't hurt. Can't leave can't stay can't be together can't be alone can't have friends over cant cook meals can't read a book can't watch a show can't fucking breathe can't even fucking let myself cry out or let the tears show and now I lay here next to you shaking in the dark hearing you breathe seeing the pale shadow of your shoulders moving ever so slightly above the pillow and I'm dying oh, oh.... If only it were just a very sad dream. Because how sad, how devastatingly unknown and unimportant it all is...because it doesn't matter it can't matter, it just can't because then why do I keep living? My life is that kind of bad dream that stays with you long after you've  woken, casting a dimness over an otherwise cheery scene and stealing away any mirth or optimism left inside.

Pluots!

Oh, Iced earl grey tea... Where have you been all my life?

a smoker's paradise

It stinks. I can feel the smell seeping into every cell in my body, slowly creeping in from without to poison me...poison me down to my very core.

Perhaps I'm being a little melodramatic.

I cannot stand the constant smell of smoke now. It feels so toxic. Maybe I'll get to have cancer in time for my birthday! Cancer for a cancer....right....har har....

Every day is a struggle. Every freaking day. I either struggle doing NOTHING, or struggle trying to do EVERYTHING. The only in between is confusion and illness. Those also overlap of course with nothing and everything....such a headache.

I'm such an arrogant little others-pleasing twat sometimes. That seems a little contradictory but my attempts to please others so obviously stem from a need to boost my own ego it really isn't at all.

But part of me can't help but feel a little indignant. A little selfish. I can't figure out how to not feel selfish all the time...or whether I'm incorrect about the whole concept of selfishness....or if I'm just too selfish to permit myself to understand it..or do something about it....ugh...its such a strong smell.

When will I ever learn how to behave? Probably never. I fail so miserably at actual meaningful relationships with others. I always let them down, don't I? Even if they don't realize I'm letting them down, I am. What could I do to stop this problem? I don't know. I'm at a loss.

Or maybe it just isn't possible to be 100% all the time. There has to be a little room for me, somewhere. Whether or want there to be or not. I think I do....I think so....I think...it would help. To say the least. Smokey tears...

FUCKING A PLEASE STOP IT. PLEASE STOP THIS TORTURE. I feel as though there are screws twisting down through my lungs toward my heart, clinching me from all sides. That is what it is like when you do this. STOP IT..........................................................................................please..................................................................................

D.I.D. I ?

Ah, finally finished the report. Shutdown computer. Plug in. Turn off lights. Trudge to bathroom. Remove contacts, wash face, brush teeth, head to bed. Lay down. 

A hundred faces flash though my head. Words spoken in other voices than my own. Actions I witnessed or performed from earlier in the day repeat, seemingly at random. Laying down, wishing I could sleep, I dwell on the feelings laid out in front of me, mostly inadvertently, by friends, coworkers...or even the briefest encounters with near strangers.

I lay here unable to let go of any of these other than my own emotions, actions, or ideas. I internalize them. I digest them slowly, randomly, and anxiously, wishing for the endless stream of information to end.

 I wonder what my own emotions are. Or rather, where they are. Oh where oh where has my little self gone? Come back, come back...

Or stay away...let me be empty of self or other. Let me be full of Grace. 

Check-in

Still troping along at warp speed, I suppose. Waxy fingers across my forehead; sweat collects between the joints. Aching flashes of tropical sunsets and mile high clubs pass through me like a heartbeat. All I want to do is live! Live, live, live...

How silly. I am more alive than ever; however, yet to feel it.

Poo nuggets

Post-content.

Gosh, geez, gee willackers... Where am I right now? Some kind of endless spiraling staircase of stress and uncertainty, maybe. Perhaps. But probably not really at all. This is what life is really like. Outside of your little fantasy life you've lived, this is it.

Am I really so sensitive that it seems wrong? Is real life too much for me to bear by my very nature? Sometimes I wonder. But at the same time, here I am, living this life, making it work. It is working, I think, even as I feel caught in a kind of clamorous calamity. I wonder if this endless waxing and waning on and on about my life is even worth anything. Does it have an effect on it? Is reflection a truly useful tool? I have met some very interesting people. They live and breathe and die just like i do, but they don't seem to have ever really reflected on any of it.

And they seem...happy. Blessed, even. Very particularly blessed to be able to fin joy and peace even in hard times without having to sit and and speculate about them.

Perhaps my blessing is different. Perhaps all the years I've yearned for simplicity are simply impossible for me because I've been blessed with the ability to complicate everything. Maybe that's good somehow even if I don't want to admit it. Some would call it depth I guess, or wisdom or something, but really it's just complicatedness, which is usually unnecessary! Oh I could go on and on forever but I'm boring myself now.

What an odd day. Now that I can create my own schedule sort of, I find I sometimes have these precarious bouts of time where I simply cannot work as I should be. A client cancels. A behavioral therapist has an issue. Something across town needs to get faxed immediately, but oh wait it's in the car of someone who won't pick up their phone. My schedule is like a moving target, constantly veering out of my crosshairs just as I'm about to pull the trigger. It is just the nature of this work, sadly, so it is something I must learn to roll with. Too bad I can't just ring a bell and match my internal stress frequency to the sound. That'd be swell. It would help, kind of a lot.

Erudite. Cool word.

Post title

Vanity met with more vanity. This is all we have.

Everything I say or do feels compelled by arrogance. Me, me, me. When will I stop throwing all these pity parties and just get over everything, right? How the heck am I supposed to do that?

Still such arrogance. I can't trust anyone. It's been squashed down inside me by my pride. Or self pity, whatever it is exactly. And it leaves me hopeless and lost and stuck in a daze. Fear and anger and anxiety beyond what I can handle, stupidly enough. I'm such a coward. Why do I seek sympathy from anyone at all? Why do I crave a comforting word or two from another human being? I don't deserve it and it wouldn't do any good would it? Just affirm my prideful self pity...

Oh just get over yourself girl. Your problems are nothing. Obviously everyone else can handle such trivial issues as your own, no problem. And if they can't well they can trust in The Lord so why can't you do that? Why not? ANSWER. ME. No, don't even bother I know you can't forget it I'm leaving you, I can't take it anymore. You're too full of yourself to take the leap, you coward.

Wah wah wah why don't you cry some more because your mom was so nasty to you? You infant. Wake up and pray like you ought to. Read the Word. What the heck is your problem feeling overwhelmed when you have The Lord !? Who provides all the love and compassion and care any little human could ever need and more. Well you must not really have Him then you fool. Pull the wool from your eyes and realize how much you've let yourself believe you had gained, no inherited, wisdom. You useless unfortunate little girl...thing.

You will always be alone. Trapped in your own prideful cowardice and pity, the terror ripping across your brain like a writhing electric wire. A nice excuse for paralysis, to stay stuck. Can't you free yourself? Can't you simply call out to the one who can save you?

No. I can't. Maybe someday with enough of this torturous life when I'm old and worn out from the constant stress pounding me into mush. Maybe then. But who knows. It will take a lot,to break this. To break myself. It feels as though I should have suffered enough by now to have had it happen but apparently not. My defenses are well fortified. Is it really only me here? Still feels like it. If I'm real. If anythings real. He is real. But he has given up on me.... And of course He is real. My dreams know it better than I do. But am I? Or am I just the frayed remnant of a girl who was born and cast immediately into the shadows? Oh cry cry cry you little wasp. Maybe someone will read this and their heart will break for just a moment before it goes on beating, healthy and alive. Where is my vitality? Surrendered to pride...pity...who knows... Lost...la la la....

Maybe I should just try and help him find salvation and be satisfied with that. Maybe that's the Lords plan all along.

I'm sorry. For all of this senseless self imposed tribulation. I wish I could tear it off like an old carapace and be done with for good.

All of it vanity and a striving after the wind.

And you can't stop thinking about her....

Worn me down like a road.

Me me me. I can't help but make it about me. I'm going to love him still if I can muster up the energy at the end of a crazy psycho long day.... But I can't stop thinking about how he said I was uglier...

Maybe someday I will I hope...

sweet potato bake

I really wish I could find a way to have a very subtle tattoo somewhere on my hands or wrists that would keep reminding me of God. It is so hard to keep him in focus as I go about my daily activities. I think if I were to keep track of everything I think about throughout the day, most of it would be either self-aggrandizing fantasies or paranoid thoughts of all the potential relational or situational outcomes of the future. What a waste of time!

I know that if I could keep my thoughts on Christ this would help immensely in dealing with these significantly large time wasters. Alas, it is not my (human) nature to do that... and really, that is precisely why being a true, passionate Christian is so difficult. Our sin-marred nature works against us at every turn. But what is there in life that could possibly be more joyful than getting to know the source of all joy and goodness? Nothing.

I just got a new computer for work. It is small and sleek and adorable, just the way I have always liked them. Before I would spend hours and hours after getting a new toy just totally absorbed in it. Now....I am grateful for it and I do admire it to an extent, but it has lost its ability to tantalize me to the point of oblivion. I find myself wanting something more meaningful, something richer and fuller than anything like a new toy could provide. No experience here on earth can fully provide what I am after. I am glad too, otherwise I would be stuck craving new toys or new experiences...longing to travel, to taste new things, to try on new things, all the time. I know that I used to feel that way all of the time. But no longer. It is certainly there, sort of in the back of my mind, at times. But ultimately I don't think I could ever really turn back to it now, its so shallow in comparison to what has been presented to me in even the smallest of doses over the last few months.

I am thirsty but all I crave for is living water. LIVING water. Yes, the kind that brings eternal life. Oh, that mysterious term again. I hope to someday be able to grasp its full meaning. Yes, that is part of the longing.... a desire for true meaning, true experience! True love, true joy, peace, and spirit! God, in other words.

How far fetched and otherworldly that sounds when heard from the position of anyone who doesn't desire God.

I don't need this life

dead to me. To ME.

"For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil (2 Corinthians 5:1-6, 8-10 ESV). "

Oh, Sandi...I most spontaneously (of course not by my own doing) read this passage perhaps an hour before your passing. How beautiful.

I don't fully know how to explain what is happening to me. I feel as though for the last 26 years I've lost what little realness of being I ever had, like I was an empty shell playing at life; not much besides a puppet jerked  on a string. Simply put I was dead. Numb and grossly uncoordinated in spirit, which is the only thing that can really animate our bodies. I don't know that there was any way I would come to understand this if it wasn't for what I just saw. Oh, thank you Lord of All Creation! I can only continue to pray that you increase that which you have kindled inside this delicate vessel, through your servant Sandi. What a beautiful woman you made in her.

I have been tired of being of this world and of this flesh for some time, but had by those very forces upon my soul been unable to escape it. I don't think I'm fully away yet, and of course won't be until death, truly, but by God's gracious will I will get there and be able to find Real, True, Beautiful Life. A life where the body is filled with the Holy Spirit, connected to and contented by The Lord through our Savior. An existence that does not end at death but is instead freed by it to be fully alive! Alive and reunited with God! It's not heaven that matters of itself it's that that is where God is...beautiful, perfect God that is beyond human description and judgment.

This is something I think a lot of people considering Christians don't understand. When we talk about eternal life, it isn't about "avoiding death" and "living forever." It isn't that at all! It is about living with the most wonderful, perfect being one could ever imagine except that NO ONE can ever really imagine just how wonderful and perfect this being we long for is. It is about living away from all the corruption we see and abhor in the world, living with someONE so wonderful that HE is nothing but peace and love and glorious perfection so far away from the world we live in in these tainted bodies. I honestly don't know if we can understand what is meant in the bible by "eternal life" simply because it is so vastly different from anything we could possibly experience in the physical world.

I could go on and on now. I have so many thoughts and feelings that are both new and newly solid within my mind and being. Just when you think you've grasped something a new light is shined on it and you realize what you've actually been grasping is only straw and mud piled hurriedly into the shape of something solid.

Looking back at my life I see how much I was constantly being shaped by my physical bodily experiences. The chemical reactions in my brain that became my emotions were the only things that ruled my thoughts and responses to life. It's only now that I'm really starting to understand why the bible says we are not to trust our hearts in this way. Everything physical is limited by itself. To deny this is to deny anything beyond the physical. One cannot say spirituality is both a physical and non physical thing, no matter how much we want there to be a connection between the two it is simply not the way God made it...or well, perhaps the way sin has made it. I don't know what it was like before sin was born into the world. I do believe that even our bodies long for a connection that because of sin they cannot have, but it is perhaps felt far more often in our souls, which are at least not made up of such delicate, decaying material.

Oh how complicated this is to explain! Even now my squishy human brain twitches and shakes as I try and leave it out of the equation.

I understand the disconnect I have felt between my body and my soul a little better now. I don't know if I can ever fully process it, being still limited by the physical, which still tries to impose its own ideas about its essentiality in any form of thought or aliveness. But I know in my soul that that is a lie the body itself believes as truth because it has been cut off from the spiritual. The body longs for the spiritual without knowing what it is! Hence all these problems we have....

It makes me so sad (and I will admit, sadly frustrated, although I'm working on my patience) that so many of your creation do not seek you and remain like ostriches with their heads in the sand, wrapped up in their own fantastical, ego-driven pursuits, thinking the world and its potential pleasures are where real meaning is to be found when there is nothing there but a shadow of truth and meaning and pleasure. I wish I could just walk up to people and tell them exactly what they are missing and have them instantly understand and be consumed with the same passion and love Sandi had. But even Sandi couldn't do that, nor did she want to, because she submitted to you in every way. I still have so much arrogance, it sickens me whenever I become aware of just how self-consumed I am. Is it any wonder though, in a world such as the one we humans have created, where arrogance is so blithely excused as self esteem? There is of course a place for self esteem but it is not where our world places it. We find self esteem through our connection with the true SELF, the only SELF that is not merely dust....

But oh Lord, I know I am not even there myself. As much as I talk, they are only words. It is so hard to wake up from my sleep, my hard, cold and empty little bubble that contained my entire world prior to it being burst open through your Grace. I don't know how long it is going to take, I still feel so numb and so resistant to you. I don't know why...well, I do, sort of. I think it will take a while for all of my deadness to seep away. And it will take effort, an active seeking, and prayer, and simply remembering. How difficult that is, and how easy it is to find comfort in my old plastic womb of a life...it is so much more familiar to me, and the only natural way for my body and brain and heart.

"Search me, O God, and
know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous
way in me, and lead me in
the way everlasting!"
~Psalm 139:23-24

Sigh, its all there. Truly this book contains the closest we have to total TRUTH, away from the blemishes and biases of corrupt human minds.

Jesus' high priestly prayer....glorious Savior

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. "I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." (John 17:1-15, 17-26 ESV)

Whistle

I fool myself...to sleep and dream...nobody's here...no one, but me....

Beautiful day!

Thesis draft is finished! Ah, relief. Now I wait for my editor to look it over and the fun process of constant critique and revisions begins!

Oh I forgot what it feels like to not feel so cursed.

nummy gums

I've officially reached deadline for thesis rough draft. I've done just enough to be quite optimistically stagnant in my desire to keep writing. Lets see how long I can procrastinate today before I begin scrambling to get it all done by tomorrow!!

The inside of my mouth is like a bloody, torn up warzone! I guess my teeth would be the soldiers. Or vultures.

Nothing

Brutal starry eyes

Stuck inside your head

Fallen from the sky

Risen from the dead

Views from all the past

Taken to new heights

Melancholy sky

You made me blue

Still hanging on

There's nothing I can do

Not this time

Bizarro, I love you.

The days since Christmas have been a depressing, sluggish sort of blur. New Years was uneventful, but far better than last year when we were stuck in a hospital overnight with Nick being pumped full of drugs that were supposed to lower his heart rate but made it worse.... Thank God we haven't had to go back to one of those since and, by the grace of the Spirit Nick seems to have started to find a way out of his cycle of pain, nausea and mental duress.

The trip down to visit my family was his first trip back since we moved out of There in 2011. It went extremely well, considering my moms desperate attempts to lure me back in to our old parasitic relationship. It did leave us sick and tired upon our return though, something which lead to us becoming even more sick and tired.

Things have been so out of sorts. Excited to spend time again with probably one of two women my stupid judgmental self deems respectable though. I am once again thankful in a weird way that she also will want breaks occasionally because I very well may need some myself, especially exposing myself again to my mother if that happens.

Fortunately we are joinin a gym soon! I have moved past the gelatinous blob stage of inactivity and entered into a sort of self imploding black hole phase (is that redundant?) and though I fear this bodes not well for my attempts to begin exercising again,, hopefully I haven't actually reached the event horizon (etc etc black holes are cool!)....

I suppose I've also neared the horizon with my thesis, which lo and behold I have still yet to begin! I've set a tentative deadline with an editor for sometime in February, so my plan is after next week to get an entire rough draft done by then. According to my shoddy, self aggrandizing calculations, this should be a cakewalk. HA....ha....ha....

It feels like one of my alternate persons in another dimension got punched in both eye sockets so hard the feeling is just so subtly reverberating back to me here in my dimension. Bizarro black eyes.