That last post turned out a lot longer than I thought it would. It'd been a long time since I wrote anything really coherent though. Or long. It was time for something like that to go up.

I am tired. Maybe tired enough that my body will actually sleep tonight, since the last two nights have consisted of me sleeping for about four hours, then dozing for the last two or three, but not falling fully asleep again.

Cheers.

I think sometimes that I will never outgrow this problem.

When I was in grade school and even in high school, I thought the idea of "knowing who you are" or "finding yourself" was stupid because, I reasoned, you are who you are, and that was so absurdly obvious to me that for a long time, I left it at that.

Later, when I was in college and people were still going on about how I was going to be able to "discover myself" and "find my path" and all sorts of stupid phrases they use on you at that stage, it occurred to me that maybe it was a semantics problem. Knowing who you are is relatively easy, being defined by relationships and professions and groups you associate yourself with, but knowing what you are like--that is far harder, as none of us is able to observe ourselves objectively. Classifying yourself by relationships or group associations reveals precious little about your character...like stating that an object is a ball. Is it a Ping-Pong or a bowling ball?

I think that the courses I took in classical literature stuck with me in a way other than what our professor intended (since, you know...I somehow took all of these classes from the same person), but at least I can have the satisfaction of knowing that going to college changed my way of thinking.

There were two ideas we kept going back to and that entrenched themselves in my imagination, and which I blame for the majority of this post's contents.
First, there was the idea that I will never truly know any person. As much as I may love them and be accustomed to them and interact with them, I will never know them. The ineffable thing that gives them all their attitudes and habits and thoughts and a thousand other details will always hover just beyond my own soul's reaching fingertips. There will always be this so-small gap that keeps me seperate from all other souls. (How's that for a shove right into the cosmic well of loneliness?)

And if that was not awful enough to contemplate, then we have also the idea that in order to understand anything, I should first understand myself and my own nature. Not who I am, but what I am like.

What a terrible idea.

Despite said terribleness, I was fascinated by it and have ever since been attempting to understand myself and determine just wtf I am really doing at any given moment...and I have found myself to be full of so many layers of denial, and a certain relentless subterfuge that, at times, I still cannot say with certainty what I am doing. (Which I view as important because the question of what I am like is better answered by my actions and the intention behind them than by anything else.)

I find more and more that when things want to direct my attention to these issues of my self (often without my knowledge...or at least without my conscience acknowledgement), they have very particular ways of getting me to look. Ridiculous ways. Ways that, I understand, were designed specifically because I would take notice. I believe such a thing is happening to me again, although this time I cannot understand what its purpose might be.

...pause...

One of the ways I attempted to understand myself was by paying closer attention to associations that others made with regard to me. Despite what I do think or have thought about myself, there will always be another me that is seen by people who know me, and because of the problem of the gap between our souls, the me that everyone else sees is, in a sense, more me than the me I think I am. It made sense to try and get a picture of the small parts of my soul that are exposed or that are being projected by my actions, since it is the only me anyone else can claim to know. (Understand, with most of the people I know, I need not take into account anything I've ever written here, as they have not read it. To have read my writing would definitely augment an individual's perception of me, but because reading is a solitary activity and not like a conversation, any resonance or soul-contact that might ever happen through reading will be known only to the reader, and not to me.)

But...I have not always (or often, even) enjoyed the way people have depicted me, or the things that they have associated with me. More often than not, I am disturbed by others' depictions of me because they inevitably seem to consist of exaggerations about my bad qualities. This one that is bothering me right now is unsettling because I thought that over the past four and a half years I had moved past this specific problem regarding my nature and the way I convey myself. Apparently I was wrong.

Going back again to the subject of speech patterns--which I mentioned in a few recent posts--it is mostly due to my fascination with words that I even stumbled back onto this problem, and that makes me a little sad...that my playing word games would come back at me in a negative way, but what can one do?
I've never been able to help myself in that respect...often I latch onto characters in books specifically because of the words they use. The action of a story is important to me, but it is always the words of a particular character that determine how deeply I am able to care about the overall story.

I have never experienced this attachment to words when I watch television or movies, but on occasion I have had this happen with the sounds of certain voices (my best explanation for why I have such a fabulous false British accent). My current annoyance is, I think, the only time I have ever been interested in the actual words used by a non-book character. I cannot even lay the blame on the actor, since I have seen this character played by more than one person...but what happened is that I got interested in this character's tendency to use formal grammar in conversation. I have been interested before in that sort of thing, since I had also done things like that in projects for my radio classes...we were always urged to speak conversationally, but one of my main problems in speaking is going too quickly (S sounds get hard for me if I go too fast) and not breathing enough...so, as an experiment, I had done things like removing contractions and changing up my sentence structures to break up words and slow myself down. I never got to the point where talking like Yoda I was, but as a result of associating with Star Trek fans, I have been a little taken with the way the Spock character's lines are written. (To be fair, other characters in the series have something similar going on, but when other people are pointing it out to me--and the associations others make is what I was originally talking about--they always refer to Spock.)

It's fascinating (and the bane of my existence), the way words and delivery can be completely opposite each other. I used to mess about and read our radio station announcements in different voices, or read segments of my term papers out loud, just to hear how jarring it could be if I used the wrong voice...but in this case, I think that the punctuation is dictating the delivery in a way I had not noticed before even though I had done it in my classes.
If you try and remove the contractions when you speak, you'll see what I'm talking about. I mean, read that line to yourself with and without them:

You'll see what I'm talking about.
You will see what I am talking about.

Saying the words separately gives your own, unaltered voice a different tone. And if you do it consistently, it changes your speech patterns in a way I have not thought about since I was in high school and read the play Pygmalion: speaking English formally makes one sound foreign, in a sense, because we are so unused to speaking that way.

So, while I'm not a huge fan of the show (even though my Jester is...and apparently a much greater percentage of my coworkers than I would have suspected), I am interested in the way the Spock character speaks. But, because of this character, all the things I have written in this post so far have come together for me in a way I am not okay with.

See, in watching some of the movies and old shows with Jester, Spock's speech habits reminded me of those experiments I had done for my audio recording and radio classes, and I got to thinking that maybe I should try something like that again, because any time I have done a speech experiment where I have to focus so much on my words, I feel different. Take my British accent, for instance. I feel more theatrical when I talk that way, probably because I do it for the sake of entertaining, even if we are talking about something very dull. (I feel snobbier, too, although I'm not sure of a reason unless I have an underlying belief that British people are snobby. :P)

After some consideration, I decided that since I am determined to avoid being medicated in order to remain at my current job, maybe I should figure out some little things I could do at work to help myself feel more calm. I decided I would try and dispense with word contractions for a while again, and be a little more formal in conversations at work since I am pretty sure the majority of my stress comes from the sense of being rushed. So, if I could do some little things that, while not actually slowing me down, give me the illusion of going a touch slower, maybe I would not feel as rushed and therefore, not as stressed.

At any rate, it was worth trying.
So I started on it, and assumed I would be the only one who really noticed--but you know what they say about assuming.

I think that as of now, nine or ten people at work have told me (or had conversations about me that I later heard about) that I am like a female Spock. I assumed it was because of the alteration to my speech pattern, but when I said this to our one server who has actually been referring to me as Spock now and then, he thought about it, and told me that he hoped I would not be offended, "but it's actually kind of because you strike me as emotionless. Not all the time, because you get angry and I can tell then, but other than that you seem pretty unemotional".

...oh.

I ventured to ask one or two of the other supervisors because they know me a little better than most of the staff, and they confirmed having similar views of me...but I don't understand how this can even be possible. I work so hard to act like I am excited and act cheerful at work in hopes that it will catch on and other employees will do likewise...and I thought it was working. How could I be doing that in the exaggerated way I have adopted just because it makes employees smile a little, and still fail almost entirely to convey emotions aside from anger or irritation? How?

But...this is not a new thing for me. Unfortunately. Not at work, and definitely not in the rest of my life. Some examples:
- Brandi confessed recently that when she and I first started working together, I was so unresponsive to her attempts to make conversation about anything other than the actual work we were doing, that she texted other managers and asked them if I always acted that way.
- At my last review, one of the top things John commended me for was for being so calm and "not wearing my heart on my sleeve like the rest of the management team"
- True story: my ex fiancé and I had a conversation a few months before he dumped me where he also used the character Spock to segue into telling me he wished I had actual emotions like a normal girl so that he would be able to understand what was wrong with me...I don't recall how exactly I responded, but that was when my Wolf persona was beginning to form. I like to think this picture depicts how I felt:

And so I feel a certain animosity towards a certain character in an unnamed sci-fi show who I am frequently and unfairly getting compared with.

On the other hand...it is slightly amusing to know that people have apparently always been thinking of me in this way, and to know that half the time, I have a fanged monster pacing around my insides. But mostly I want to bang my head on something and know how it can be that these people that I thought perhaps I had gotten to know a little bit after working with them for at least a year still fail so completely at knowing anything at all about me. (But hey, my ex had FIVE years to understand me and was not able to.)

Is that impulse to reach out and strive to touch other souls simply not present in other people? My Wolf would utterly reject that notion. As often as he hates and despises other human beings, we are very attached to the idea that everyone is a lost soul, striving to reach out and touch something.

Maybe they succeed more than I do because they are not holding back for fear that nobody wants this soul-to-soul contact, and maybe that is the fundamental difference between them and myself.

Maybe that is my real problem. I always hold something back.

I want so much to believe that other people can care about me, but I do not believe it. So I try and connect...but ultimately, I hesitate or I stop myself at a certain point and hope that something will happen and I will know that they also want to connect...and then nothing happens. And for the most part, I stop there because I do not want to hope for something that I cannot make happen. And the sad part is that it isn't just with people that I get that way...it's everything.

When I was in junior high, I started a game with myself to try and keep from getting lonely when I had no friends, or upset or angry when other kids would pick on me. I would draw or think about a song or stare at an object in the room so that my focus was somewhere else, and my goal when I did this was to focus on whatever the thing was until I did not feel. Not an emotional numbness, since that implies stupor...nor apathy, because I was not attempting to disinterest myself...my goal was just to not feel any particular way about whatever was upsetting me.

Did I win at this game? Absolutely not! Very often I still felt everything just as strongly as if I were not daring myself not to. But I did get very good at not giving away a lot about how I felt, and because I was still playing this game up through the end of my high school years, I think I unwittingly ruined my ability to express myself normally. I lost some of my natural spontaneity by continually forcing myself to conceal what I was feeling.
I can be expressive. It's just that I have to make it a conscious effort more often than most people seem to. (I allow I don't know for sure: maybe lots of people have done this to themselves, and I only think their expressiveness is natural.) And then when I was in college, I realised I could no longer keep up with doing that because--as much as I loathed having to admit it because it seemed so cliché--I was spending so much energy on attempting to conceal an ever-more-steadily-burning anger at my father, and an equally intense feeling regarding a friend of mine that I felt like it was killing me.

It still strikes me as ludicrous, how I used to get annoyed about people asking me all the time how I was or if I was okay because I was so inexpressive, and then, when it really was so bad that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep it together nobody ever asked me. Not once. Not anyone.
I can only assume that either everyone stopped caring, or that I just got so good at being inexpressive that I never gave myself away even when I wanted to. Either thought is terrifying, but at that point was when I started trying to force myself to be normal again. And all that anger evolved into my Wolf persona. And all the rest of that intense feeling regarding my friend (which I am still unsure how to categorise) got displaced into forging a better friendship with someone we knew mutually and with whom I could talk about what was going on.

...sigh...

I guess I am unhappy about having this brought up again because it is the worst thing I have ever done to myself, and I did not even know that it was something I would regret later on--it was just a way I found to handle what was happening to me. Like changing my speech to try and calm myself.

I probably wouldn't be bothered by it that much, but in the past fortnight I have had conversations with Jester and with John where my reservations are damaging me in very real ways. I have a lot of work left to do so that I can function in a way others can connect with. And I need to stop having enemies who are fictional characters, because you cannot punch fiction in the face.

In the mean time though...I'll make the best of it and use this as another way to amuse people at the theatre.
Some conversations:

I arrive at work.
Tyler: Fuuuuucccck! Why'd you have to come in? Now everything about my day is ruined.
Me: Hello, Tyler. If I felt sorry, I assure you I would apologise for ruining your day.
Abbie walks in and sees me.
Abbie: Oh my gosh! I'm so glad you're here!
Tyler: Wow. That was the polar opposite of what I just said.
Abbie: Um, that's because I love her.
Me: I believe Abbie has made the logical choice in this situation, as I am wonderful.
Tyler: Wow. You said that just like Spock. Fuckin' creepy. That's why I hate you.
Abbie: Don't hate her for that. There's nothing wrong with Spock.
Tyler gives us a weird look and leaves.
Abbie: I don't get him though.
Me: Tyler? His animosity toward me is unwarranted.
Abbie: Not Tyler, Spock. I mean I'm a Kirk fan--
Me: --you would be.
Abbie: Right. But I still like Spock. I just don't get him.
Me: That seems fitting, since you like me and still don't get me.
Abbie laughs.

Conversation over the radio.
John: Justin, did you just send him on break? No breaks. We're too busy right now.
Justin: No breaks, heard.
John: They can check back later on breaks. That goes for everyone. *pause* Unless we get slammed. We can just take breaks when we're all dead.
*pause*
Me: John, that is unfair. Being immortal, I would be unable to take a break.
John: Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that.
Jeremiah: No, you'll still get a break. You'll just have to wait like, twice as long as everyone else. Being Vulcan, you get to wait a long time to die.
Me: An unenviable position. Unless everyone else truly is dead, in which case I will have my break and enjoy it.
Jeremiah: Touché.

...considers...

I did do something today that I hope will help me in all of this.
I almost didn't. But...halfway to the main theatre office, I turned myself around and had the good fortune to catch Toni away from the herd of bussers and ask if she wanted to do anything Tuesday.

I am pleased she said she would, and I have a few days to invent something for us to do...but even after all the stressful things that happened today, that thirty second conversation was the one that I walked out of with my heart hammering.

...fascinating.
For reals.

Work never seems to go the way I expect it to.

Busy, of course, what with it being Father's Day, but then on top of that, being severely annoyed by people giving me impossible tasks to complete with that level of business going on, and then that all-consuming loneliness that sometimes strikes me for no discernable reason and makes me simultaneously want to shut down and not speak to anyone because I am convinced nobody gives a damn about me anyway, and to be extraordinarily friendly because I am also convinced that maybe, a miracle will happen and I will be able to connect with someone and not feel that way anymore.

I am glad I did not try to leave as soon as possible. I would have missed out on one of those rare moments when we are all gathered around after everything is done, and just talk about stupid things for a half hour and forget that we care about keeping payroll down because we just need a minute to do some team-building and laugh at each other. I still feel a hair's bredth away from that lonely void, but I will take whatever distance I can gain between myself and that feeling because once it gets you...it does not like to let go.

I had another thing, but I am horribly embarrassed about it, so I think I shall keep it to myself tonight...

Until next time.

I will have my revenge on whoever is responsible for the disturbing situations I continue to face in the dream world.

I have grown accustomed to the monsters and the never knowing who I am going to be. In time, I could possibly get used to the newer experiences of shifting POV, having all five senses engaged, or even having dream-creatures acknowledge me as an outsider to the world the action of my dreams is taking place in. Even the increasing cinematic awesomeness of the dreams is tolerable.

But last night, a character in the dream world killed my Jester. That is patently not permitted to happen in my dreams. Thank you very much.

..I was dreaming a ridiculous dream wherein I was at first on a plane. But I did not see the inside of the plane or look out of a window or anything that would normally indicate "you are on a plane". No. I only knew this because I was holding a sepia-toned map in my hands, and a small, dotted line was moving from one side of the Atlantic ocean to the other. (So assuming I was on a plane is only logical, right?)

And then France was there. Or I was. The plane was gone though, and I was in the country. France, specifically. We were at a quaint, old-timey B&B sort of place. Jester was talking to me about something, but I was not really listening because, in this dream, I am a spy, and I was glancing furtively around the door to make sure the hallway was empty, because the Russian mafia was after me and I was only half-sure they did not know my whereabouts.

Then I shut the door and went to take my shoes off and suddenly--BAM!--door bangs open and this blonde woman wearing ballet shoes twirls into the room and--BANG! FLASH!--shoots Jester and takes a Polaroid photo. I whip out a gun and--BOOM!--shoot at her and miss, but in dodging my shot, she drops the picture of the face Jester was wearing at the exact moment of being shot. I pick up this picture and, as I am looking at it and avoiding looking at the body sprawled on the bed, the same reddish mist that sometimes blurs my waking vision rolls over the dream world. I can feel myself bang into the door frame, and feel my feet hit the ground as I set off after the Russian woman, and I know I'll see her again soon because the head of the mafia was collecting the photos of his targets and she knew she had to bring it back or be executed...

I very nearly jumped awake because I was so angry and upset. As many times as people and monsters have tried to kill me in the dream world, I think this is the first time any of them has attempted to harm someone I love. At least...not that I can remember.

I feel compelled to give him extra hugs next time I see him.  :(

*sigh*
In other news...K called me and we had a very interesting conversation. About work. And our failures at mixing drinks. :P

And speech patterns. I've been doing an experiment for nigh on three weeks now, and I'm astonished that I feel calmer just based on an attempt to use more formal grammar and eliminate contractions in conversation. Mostly I've been doing it at work, where I am most stressed...it's like by focusing on the words, I slow myself down just enough that I can't get as worked up about things. I has the likes. And I may continue to do it since it fits in with my goal of figure-out-how-to-calm-yourself-at-work-so-you-don't-get-a-rage-induced-ulcer-or-punch-someone-in-their-face.

My only dislike is passive structure and weak verbs. I'll get better at it though, I hope.

Time to check on laundry and sleep.

Currently waiting for Jester to let me know he is off work and on his way home so I can go see him...

In other news, my new car has tattoos now. I have been getting annoyed because everywhere I go (work, mostly), gold Buick Centuries keep parking next to or very close to me. But now I have an eight-legged carousel horse to remind me which one of the cars is actually mine.

If Jester keeps insisting I name my car, I may just have to call it Sleipnir.

I feel like I have less and less to say here because everyone seems to be jumping ship. I may explore WordPress later just to see what's up with it. *makes a face*

And now that I've run out of steam: a conversation.

Me: What's that smell?
Mum: Katelyn's perfume. I think it's cotton candy.
Me: Oh. Mine claimed to be vanilla-lemon. I think I smell like lemon PEZ.
Mum: *smells me* You do. *sigh* My sophistocated adult children...

Today I am feeling much better. My speech capability has been restored, and I slept until 2:15, a fact which I regretted when I looked at the time then, and which I will also regret when I wake up tomorrow morning for work. Despite the cough syrup I took, I am 100% not tired. But then I am accustomed to sleeping for just two or three hours on days when I open.

Ultimately, I would count today as having been a success. Except for my being too late to get Deady a new bag of food. It did not occur to me that the pet store closed at 9, which was the time I was leaving the house. I realised it about halfway there, and I drove the rest of the way just to be sure, then decided to make the best of having gone out without thinking ahead.
The pet store is right near my theatre. So I decided to go see The Purge. It was an interesting movie--not what I had anticipated, but I was somewhat distracted from my movie experience because, before the previews started, there was an exclamation of "oh my gosh!" down at the front of the theatre, and the girl who is 99% me came running up the steps to sit next to me and ask me if I'd seen her run up the steps because she was so excited. (If I had been thinking, I would have enquired which particular thing she was excited about, but I did not.)

In all honestly, I have hoped something like that would happen.

I feel like we all know how improbable it is to actually have the person that you want to befriend but lack the social grace to initiate a friendship with come running up to you like that. It was a little surreal.

So. Movie.
Very violent. Very, very much so. I am not going to spoil it for anyone, but I did wonder the whole time why the man that the boy let in the house during the purge (I can tell you that because it was in the preview, right?) was wearing dog tags. To identify himself if he was killed in the purge? Because he was military? There were a lot of unanswered questions regarding that character.

And then it was over. I was hesitant to walk with Toni and the other bussers who sat with us because I am never certain I am meant to be included in something unless I am explicitly told so, and I walked near them through the lobby and down the escalator, but I parked in a different garage from the other two. Toni drifted along with me, but ultimately went to the other garage to wait for her ride. I was a little disappointed. And I went to my car. And I exited the garage. And then the me whose eyes are yellow decided that we were not going to throw away this opportunity, and he took the wheel and drove us to the other garage where he found them and announced that I was stalking them.

That announcement was surprisingly well received, and we spent about a half hour talking about nothing and getting creeped on by someone else in the garage (Tabitha got out her tazer, just to be on the safe side, but he was just waiting for his ride, too). I always have trouble talking to people, socially, but at least they were people I already knew...although I was disconcerted to think that the reason they would stop talking when I talked was because they are used to having to listen to me. Awkward.
At least Tabitha and Dontario make eye contact. Toni and I seem to have an arrangement where we do not look at each other when we are speaking. It is an odd thing to notice, but back when she was new, the manager who hired her told me that A) she was me, and B) she was shy. Being painfully anxious myself (I hesitate to call my problem shyness anymore), I feel seriously compelled to put at ease any new people who seem "shy"...observe their habits so I will know how to react in a way that shows them they should not feel nervous about me. (I swear, for all my bad points, I really do try to be kind to our new people.)

But...I realised that she seemed to always look away when she was talking to me, and because that is my natural reaction when I feel anxious talking to somebody, I felt maybe it would make her more comfortable if I did not look at her. And this is how we operate now. I glance at her sometimes and she is almost never looking at me when she talks to me, even if we are not trying to get work done at the same time. It was funny to observe it in a non-work setting though. Especially after she was so excited. (To see me, I assumed, since I have been off the floor at work for almost two weeks now. But you know what they say about assuming.)

Never has anyone made little squealing, excited sounds upon getting to ride in my car, either.
The person picking her up went to the wrong garage, so I offered to drive her over there, and we discussed whether the company would consider my doing so "hanging out". Maybe. But given what I know about the rest of management, and who each of them hangs out with, I am not that concerned about it right now. So when she asked me if I minded being a backup ride home for her if she was unable to wake her brother up at 3am, I assured her I would do this. It would be a lie if I said I felt okay about leaving someone stranded at the mall because they were the last employee to leave and their ride never showed up.

We may have exchanged some remarks about needing to hang out sometime. So maybe, maybe, I have the possibility of making a friend, but we'll see what happens.

I have never been so pleased to fail at getting what I originally went out for.

More stuff from bygone Mays.

These excerpts are longer. Lots of angst. Two dreams--one of which is awesome, the other...creepy. Also includes a rant about misuse of a certain word that takes your saddest blog posts and makes them ludicrous.

Tomorrow I might write something new, since I've been stewing for 6 days without a voice. It's fine though. Not like I needed it or anything. *eye roll*

-----

5.16.10
Now and then, I will read a post where you write about something emotional that happened—deaths of pets or loved ones, or personal breakdowns and tragedies that happen either to you or to others that you know, and I’ll be feeling very sympathetic and wonder if there’s anything nice I could say to you that you might find meaningful or acceptable (or if it didn’t happen to you, I’ll just be feeling sorry), and then I’ll get to a sentence like this and all sensible and sympathetic notions fly out of my head:

“I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there, practically balling my eyes out…”

Do you see the problem? Balling. That’s what you said you were doing in your moment of emotional anguish. I have very serious doubts about this, however, and am convinced that you who are usually so intelligent and have a fairly decent vocabulary just don’t know that what you say is wrong. Very wrong indeed…

This word you use—have you never seen it written down? You must have. I don’t think anyone says that sort of thing in movies or shows, or in conversation…so you must’ve seen it in a book and the word caught on in your mind, but the spelling did not.

If you’re crying out loudly and unrestrainedly, or wailing in grief (which incidentally is something you cannot do to or with your eyes, making your emotional statements even more incorrect), then the word you should have used was BAWLING.

That’s right. Bawling, not balling.

I hope very much that my online acquaintances and correspondents will take heed of this post and cease to be “balling their eyes out” when they are beset with misfortune…and, you know, it’s not that I cease to sympathize with the post content when you write that way…it’s just that I know the word is wrong, and since I am a being that (unfortunately) delights in puns and word games, your writings on your emotionally vulnerable moments become temporarily hilarious to me because I automatically take you at your word…and…therefore…in the midst of feeling sad about what’s happened to you, I have this flash of contemplation about what on earth it would mean to ball one’s eyes out.

I don’t want to pursue that line of thought any further, so all I can do is hope that you will stop writing that incorrectly so that I can take you seriously in your serious moments, and also so that I will not have sudden horrifying thoughts on what must be happening to your poor eyes.

(I still can't stand it when I see people make this mistake.)

5.28.10
How horrible to realize how many things you have become on someone’s behalf or as a result of someone’s influence (if you are the sort of person who does these things) and then realize that they don’t know that you’ve done these things. Not that I am just now realizing this. I have known…but instead of shocking me now I feel a surge of anger that I allowed it and that these things that I am and that I value (to value is not to take pleasure in, but to acknowledge that they have significance) about myself are not things that I might have chosen (if I indeed chose them to begin with) to become if things had happened differently.

I am angry that I even bring it up with myself, because I’m…what? I feel…what is it that I think I feel? Embarrassed? Ashamed? I don’t know, but I think it’s something related to those feelings, if not the feelings themselves. But why do I feel that way? I think there’s only one person that I’ve told in so many words about these stupid things that I’ve done and felt, and I don’t feel embarrassed to have said these things to said person after the letter I was charged with writing for them…

So then why would I feel so strongly negative when I remember these things?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m ashamed of myself and can be ashamed even when nobody else really knows of what I am ashamed. Maybe, after all this attempting to come to grips with the things I feel deep down, I still haven’t done it. I haven’t done as good a job as I thought I had. I need to do better.

But how? What more can I do? (Good God, no…I wish I hadn’t asked myself that, since the first thing that popped into my head is a terrible idea.)

I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I know that life consists of concrete things like eating and drinking and sleeping and playing with puppies and paying bills…but there is this titanic problem of my internal life that is always looming over me, and even though I can forget about it while I am doing concrete things, it does not go away. When I go for long enough without remembering it, I turn around and suddenly find it consuming me all over again…

“Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed
In one self place, for where we
are is hell, And where hell is must we ever be.”

Thanks, Mephistopheles, I’ll keep that in mind, I will…
That’s how I feel about this. I can forget it, but it never goes away. I can think of two ways to possibly rid myself of it, but I have no assurance that I would be rid of it. I’d be rid of it’s external source, but what good would that do me if it turns out that I am not keeping that source just to reminisce, but that my attachment indeed runs as deeply as I’d worried it did? That would be horrible, and then I would find out that what Marlowe wrote is true.

(Look at that. All that perfectly good angst, wasted. *shakes head*)

5.2.11
I was doing pretty well until I was on the way home, and for some reason, instead of hissing a word or two through my teeth, or repeating the same line over and again in my head, my Wolf decided to get very interested in comparing verb forms.

is:     singular simple present indicative form of the verb be. unfortunately, it’s indicative of some certainty over a state of being, so, reluctantly, he had to abandon it

might be:     decided this form of be, combined with an auxiliary that indicates seeking permission, or acknowledging that something is possible or has potential, is a pansy form that didn’t suit his sense of determination

should be:     decided this was kind of accurate, since the auxiliary indicates the subject is likely to do something, or under obligation to do it…but the words seemed too angsty…all dejected or indignant or idealistic at the same time, depending on how it’s said

will be:     realized we should’ve skipped the other ones altogether and just gone for this one. presumptuous as it is, it indicates not only the attitude that my Wolf seems to have taken, but because when the be is removed, it also indicates intent and choice and desire, which are all things that Wolf is apparently trying to express…

Bloody verb forms.
I don’t understand why I resort to using things like that to reinforce my obsessing…   And, as it would happen, we took a different way home and passed that World Tree as I was thinking on these things.

I can’t wait for it to stop raining. Once everything dries out a bit, I have to find out a way to bribe someone to take me to see it. I have to touch it. The part of me that is a Wolf has been on about it since some time in fall, but every time it’s something else about that blasted tree…I could’ve done with just going and looking at it first, or even just visiting the park it was in, but now I have to touch it. And then maybe this bit of me that is obsessed with symbols and our personal mythology will be satisfied. (But I doubt it, somehow, as I'll have to prevent him from really taking that blood oath.)

(Well. He wasn't wrong.)

5.3.11
I feel like…with all this other stuff now out of the way for the moment, there are other things now that this part of me is working on. It’s like…my mind seems to work in two adjacent rooms, or rather…a room divided by a nearly-opaque curtain. I function primarily in one part, but there seems to be another me operating in the other half of the room, and whom I can only see dimly and only half guess what I’m doing…

It would almost be like being me and not-me, but that’s not the case. When I’m being really, really honest with myself, I can see it all, just for a moment. And I know what I’m doing and what the obscured portion of me is doing…but I can’t seem to focus on it long enough to really keep that curtain drawn aside…it falls back down and I can only see the outline of myself standing on the other side.

Of course, this way of describing how I feel is super creepy and now I wish I hadn’t thought of it like that at all. I much prefer when it’s my Wolf and I and we can see each other. Then it feels like whatever self-deception is going on here is less…I don’t know…malevolent?

There’s something about the image of myself through the curtain that gets distorted in ways that can never happen with the wolf. I mean, I know what a wolf is, no matter how distorted and monstrous it becomes, whereas the blurred image against the curtain...? I say it’s me, but how can I really know that? In the moments of understanding, when I feel sure I know what’s going on, I never remember the face I see. Maybe there isn’t one…but if there’s no face, I can hardly believe it’s myself.

I cannot imagine myself without a face.

I’d much rather have the image of the wolf, who is separate enough from me that I can touch it, and me enough that I can feel the fingers curling through my fur.

(You know you're doing it right when you creep yourself out.)

5.7.11
In this giant room were rows and rows of beds, and in the beds were patients with their limbs or their faces disfigured by these horrible, lumpy growths. Some of them had faces where their mouths and noses were swallowed up by the growths, and they had tubes and all sorts of things disappearing into them so that they could get some air…and then there were patients that had normal faces, but their arms or legs or torsos were balloon-like and they couldn’t lie flat, but had to lie on the beds in these really contorted positions.

The patients were mostly quiet and didn’t seem to take notice of anything or anyone around them. Sometimes some of them would twitch or convulse, but that was it. And then there were the nurses and orderlies taking care of them…they mostly went around and checked charts, but some of them would have books and would be sitting by bedsides and reading to patients. I wondered a bit why they were bothering to read to these people when they seemed like they didn’t comprehend anything that was happening…but then I came to an isle where an orderly was marking a man’s chart, and another one came up the isle to him and said, “Spenser’s dead. I need a hand moving him.”

I assume that Spenser was another patient…but when the orderly said he was dead, the man whose chart was being marked seemed to snap out of whatever stupor he was in and started asking if Spenser had had any healthy organs left, because maybe he could use Spenser’s good organs and live a little longer…

The orderlies pretty much ignored the man, and I could kind of see why…his upper torso and shoulder were swollen up like the hunchback x2, and even if they could’ve reused bits of Spenser, it didn’t appear like there’d be any way to cut through all the growths on the still-living patient to transfer any organs over.

But…then the guy started crying and saying that if they wouldn’t do anything to help him, he wanted them to kill him…and they just walked off and left him crying there. And it occurred to me then that whatever was wrong with all these people, they weren’t insensible like I’d thought…they were all aware of their conditions and they were all suffering, and apparently there was nothing at all that could be done about it…

Possibly one of the worst realizations I’ve ever come to in a dream.

(Omg. That dream was awful.)

5.10.11
I was, I confess, seriously fascinated by the thought that, since deer are stupid and run out in front of moving objects (like cars), if you took two stupid deer and they were running at an equal speed and were going to cross the same spot at the same time, would each deer expect the other to give way so that they would crash into each other?

(What? You can't tell me you don't see the sense in this question.)

5.21.11
More and more I have moments where I remember things, and I know that what I remember happened, but the memories don’t feel real. They feel like things that happened to someone else, maybe (the moment I say this, I realise it doesn’t make sense), or the memories get the same quality that my memories of my dreams have; the quiet feeling that although I remember them, those things did not happen—couldn’t have happened, actually.

I’d almost say I’m used to it, but I’ll never get used to feeling uneasily like things I remember didn’t really happen.
I’m not used to it being my Wolf that tells me about it.

I looked at myself and could see him today. I usually never see him. But there he was, looking baffled.
He keeps bringing me a memory, carrying it with his head awkwardly high and to one side, like it is the entire leg of some antlered creature, and dropping it at my feet. But what am I going to do with it?

“Wait,” he keeps saying to me. “I don’t understand—did this happen? I
don’t understand.”
And he starts to get wild-eyed and pants and cries like a frightened dog. But I don’t know what to answer him.

Yes, obviously. I know in my mind that he memory is real…but I can’t explain why it feels like it’s not. I can’t explain that.

It distresses me.

(I don't recall what it was that was so upsetting me at the time. Hopefully that means I got over it.)

5.25.12
In this dream, there was a war going on. People on our side were dying left and right, and we knew we were going to run out of troops if something didn't drastically change. Our commander was very anti-magick, but we had a nurse who was a witch and could heal people. She had been ordered not to use magick, but at that point, our commander was at his wits' end, so he said she could do whatever she liked if it would help us win. So she started healing our people.
I don't know what I was supposed to have been doing, but apparently this was a multi-dimensional war, so while there were people dying on the battlefield in our own dimension, there was also a small portal that had opened inside our commend center, and creatures were coming through there and killing us from that point as well.

Now, I guess a "small" portal is still a big deal when big things can fit through it and kill you, but it was a lesser priority, apparently, because they sent the me that is Wolf to deal with the portal by myself. So...I went to the portal, and there were dead everyones imaginable lying on the metal floor on our side of the portal, and also on the log ramp that had been built up from the desert-looking ground on the other side.

At first it didn't look like anything was going to come up from the desert and attack, but then I saw the minotaur. He was red-faced (but definitely more bovine than Darkness in the Legend movie) with a shaggy black coat and black leather armour, and an axe, and he roared and came charging up the ramp...and I smashed him in the head with a giant sledgehammer, and sent him sprawling back into the sand, dead.

There were a load of malnourished, raggedy people who had apparently been holding back, out of my sight, waiting for the minotaur to lead them in the attack, but when they saw he was dead, the looked like they didn't know what to do anymore...some of them looked like they wanted to murder me, and some of them were looking at me like I was a hero...and my dream told me (in those bursts of ridiculous, psychic knowledge that you get in dreams) that the minotaur had been a sort of tyrant-god to these people. I told them that without him, they had no more cause to attack us, and they were free now...but I felt oddly like I was not doing the right thing.

I wish I did not have a dream-self that feels guilty about killing gods and telling the worshippers they are free. That seems like something you shouldn't worry about in the dream world.

(Look at me, still being awesome...)

I have been negligent in posting my excerpts from the past...

I feel like May had a lot of posts that were better written, so that kind of makes up for my not finding much that was noteworthy from 05-07...I swear I don't remember falling asleep in half my exams during my junior year of college. o.O

-----

5.7.08
I’m not scared of spiders, but I wasn’t happy to find it in my keyboard, of all places. Sooo… I sort of watched it for a while, lugging itself around underneath the keys… hoping it would squeeze its way out and succumb to capture… it was sort of like watching the big ol’ monster in Cloverfield, hauling itself through the buildings in NYC. Kind of like that, only on a much smaller scale.

Then, the spider reached the edge of the keyboard and tried to get out.

It was creepy to watch because it was a yellow spider, and when it put its tiny little legs out to try and pull itself up, it looked like a bunch of tiny, yellowy skeleton fingers reaching up from the keyboardy depths.

(Ugh, I remember that spider. Gross.)

5.9.08
English Language: I got a B+. It’s my lowest grade… but I’m satisfied. I thought it would be worse than that… especially since I fell asleep in the exam.

Humanities: I got an A. I’m brilliant. I fell asleep in the final exam for this class, too, and I even write answers while I was asleep… and woke up with a page essay that I couldn’t remember penning. So… I’m brilliant. What else can I say?

(Mmm. The wording of that second bit does not do justice to my brilliance, I assure you.)

5.3.09
I graduated Summa Cum Laude, which is pretty good, even if my xanga posts don’t typically reflect my vast stores of knowledge.
Be proud of me. I am brilliant. (and, as of now, unemployed)

(That went on for a year and a half, too...that being unemployed.)

5.6.09
...back when he and I had been dating maybe a year (maybe less? I forget), we had come up with this idea for a “comic” about the two of us, based on musical interests. He was “Emo Boy,” and I was, of course, “Goth Girl.” Our enemy was his dad, “80’s Man,” and occasionally, Cap’n Crunch appeared as an extra villain. It was very amusing to us, but we never drew said comics because we don’t draw people well at all...

(Heh. That was fun to talk about.)

5.7.09
Pitchforks. Right. We all know what they look like—long handle, three pointy stabby pieces, often used by farmers, Poseidon, Triton, and Satan.

But why are they called pitchforks? I never thought about it before, but for some reason I’m wondering about it now because it occurred to me that it doesn’t make sense. I mean, forks are used for lifting and stabbing, and so pitchforks are usually used for lifting hay and stabbing unhappy mortals, right?

But…that’s not what the item’s name says it’s for. It is a fork for pitch, is it not? I mean…pitchfork, right? A fork used for pitch. But you can’t use a fork for pitch, can you? It would get all sticky, for one. Plus, a lot of it would run out of the fork before you could move it. So why ever do we call it a pitchfork if it is clearly not used as such?

I am mystified, indeed.

(I think what we concluded was that the "pitch" in this case was in reference to the verb.)

5.8.09
Just one of many things I’ve always hated about stereotypes…some people are quiet, some people are smart, some people are Goth (I didn’t really think I was when I was in high school though), and some people are all three…but not all of us are messed up.

I’m not messed up. I’m wonderful.

If I could go back in time with my slightly improved social skills, I would be back in my various schools, and people would be on their knees, crying, because they would all see how wonderful I am and realize that they will never attain such levels of wonderment…

Just kidding. Kind of. I am still kind of sore about people always thinking there was something wrong about me though. Stupidheads…always talking about what they don’t know anything about…ugh.

(And I am likely to remain wonderful until the end of my days.)

5.15.09
Winter: Snow is good. Driving in snow is not, but I like to walk in it when I’m feeling low about things.
At the university, I would stand outside while it was snowing, and not go inside unless I was thoroughly covered in snowflakes. When I’d go in, I could see my reflection on the doors, and I looked nice with little white dots all over my hair and bag and my black coat and pants. Other times, I would stand outside the wooden doors on the Con, hands in my pockets, and wonder if other people wondered if I was cold or not.
Who? Me? I’m not cold. Just feeling sad and frustrated.

(...)

5.18.09
Back in the day, when my personality used to have cat and dog sides, we used to joke about me not having any emotions when I was the being the cat…and apparently I am now a junior Vulcan. This is a step up from cat, I believe, and I even would get to keep the pointy ears. I just don’t have the twitchy tail anymore.
Bit of a disappointment, that.

(Huh. I remember that me. It was a lie though. I always had emotions. I was just a thousand times better then at reining them in.)

5.19.09
Does anyone love you?
All who meet me love me.

Do you have a reason to smile right now?
No. I was scary happy yesterday after church though. I sent Chris a message and called him Sunshine and everything…and told him that he had to come over and visit me because I wanted to give him a hug…that never happens.
And by the end of the day, I was a Vulcan and getting more comments than usual because of it.

Did you laugh a lot at something today?
Oh yes. My sisters were trying to list the presidents…and I may not know all of them, but at least I know who was definitely NOT a president. I think one of them listed Harrison Ford, the other…Calvin Kline.

(lol! My sisters...)

5.26.09
It was kind of bad off and on last summer, this feeling that I would die, and then again over winter break, but I'd kind of forgotten about it until the other day. It was nice out and I was walking on this nature trail with my little sister, and it just popped into my mind: "You'd better enjoy this while you can, because you're going to die."

This is not earth shattering news though. Everyone dies. I’ll die, you’ll die. Everyone you have ever known, everyone you have ever hated, everyone you have ever admired…they are all going to die.

[...] I hate when the thought pops up while I’m happy…like on this past Christmas, or when I’m outside walking and everything is really pretty. Someday I’m not going to be here to see it anymore. I’ll be rotting somewhere. Have you ever tried to wrap your mind around your own putrefaction? I mean, it’s going to happen…

It also makes me wonder if I really am a bit obsessive compulsive, since in addition to doing things in a repetitive, ritualistic way and being phobic about certain things (like things being “dirty” all the time), repetitive disturbing thoughts are also a part of OCD…

(Something I still think obsessively about sometimes, unfortunately.)

Dreadful.

I am almost accustomed to being told I am Death. Not so used to feeling like it though.

I left early again yesterday, after running through all the nightly reporting stuff again with Erin so he'd remember where to get all the numbers from and what reports to pull, etc. I tried to get through the whole evening. I really did. But when I'd completed everything I could think of to do without having to leave the office, all I really wanted was to lay down. Not sleep. Just lay down and not have to think about anything anymore. Especially lots of tiny little numbers...pocket change and fractions of hours. Bah.

At least my last two days add up to about 10 hours, so that makes it not so bad that I didn't go in at all today. With going on vacation, I'm really only missing 5 days total, and that is fine. I just need to get well enough by tomorrow that I can stay the whole shift. I would love to have my voice back, since I still sound like a ghoul and had to resort to miming things several times yesterday...

Kat advised me to stop angering the gods, and when I left she was calling after me that she hoped the force would be with me and grant me a speedy recovery. Lacking a voice, what else could I do but indicate that this was kind of her and I hoped she would live long and prosper? Even if she is prone to meowing after the entire management team when she can't find us... :P

And Toni made me a cartoon.

I said I felt like a video game character whose health bar was short and red and making alarming noises and that I needed some healthberries to get well again...I think this is her illustration of offering me healthberries. And I would totally take them. All I have to do is press A and give her $10. Except...she has six arms and looks like a devil. And for some reason, I have a knife and a flashlight and...some sort of sidearm.

I am a dubious video game character.
But I'd still like the healthberries.

*spends 40 minutes wandering around the internet before remembering there is a blog post open*

Ugh. There is so much pressure in my ears and on my throat that I feel like either I will strangle, or my ears will explode. Can't wait to see which one happens first.

On that note, I am going to go eat dinner and make myself a cup of tea. Maybe not even in that order.

Well...today I got sent home early because I am sick to the point where my voice is the sort used by dried-up revenants as they try to coax your curious souls into the shadows. My throat actually feels like it's swelling and making it hard to breathe, but I really hope that's my imagination and I will feel better tomorrow.

I did manage to accomplish two things during my four hours of work though--one that should have been taken care of in my absence and wasn't, and another that was taken care of...but apparently something happened and we can't trust my counterpart to do her job anymore...apparently she's been causing trouble and I just didn't know? Bad news for me any way I look at it. Then went home and cleaned some...I now have almost all my posters up and made homes for all my books.

And then I took a nap that was extremely difficult to wake up from.
Been doing laundry and reading since dinner. Finished the Poetic Edda and, as boring as it was, I'm glad I read the Nibelungenlied...the Norse hero myths make a lot more sense now. My last bit of laundry should be ready to dry soon, and then I will be able to read some of this ridiculous book that arrived in the mail today, and which I am duly ashamed to be so excited about...but we'll see how it turns out. I needed something ridiculous to balance out all this mythological translation.

*pause*

You know, I had an enjoyable vacation, and even feel like I can eat and sleep normally again (fingers crossed on sleeping though, since my last night out of town I woke up when it was still dark out and had to really try to even doze off), but I think that's going to be hard to maintain after what all I gleaned during that four hours today.

Must think more on that.
A manager spot is open again.

Must think more on that as well.