Unrelated to Anything
Pain floats. Aches travel streams of nerves, through muscle, and bone with no known origin. It will disappear just as mysteriously. Maybe it's because I haven't had much to eat. It's probably stress. It could be boredom. I would not put it past the tissue and marrow to revolt for no better reason than a lack of appreciation and entertainment. They never get any exercise. They're frequently torn and held in poor positions. I can't fault them. I smell peanut butter. I'm pretty sure that's the first sign of a stroke. Maybe I should have taken the stronger anxiety pills.
*****************************
Every day I say that the next day I will do better. I make a little promise that I know I will break. The next day is never different. The next day I do not do better. The next day is very similar to the day before and I am inevitably in my underwear eating spoonfuls of Nutella like an Onion article.
I play Tinder roulette with no intention of talking to anyone. I am sure I have mentioned this. I just use it like a small injection of self-esteem. I think to actually meet anyone might suck out that booster and a small amount of blood.
There's a transactional sense to everything online, I think. Everything is convenient. Impersonal. There's set expectations and a way to openly display displeasure if those expectations are not met. And I don't mind any of this. I really appreciate convenience with an impersonal touch. I mourn the days that I had enough disposable income to avoid going into a grocery store myself. I. MOURN. Them. I, with my headphones in, will think wistfully of a time when I did not have to go out of my way to get a lightbulb in the dead of night to avoid as many people as possible. I could just buy with some other things and pick up a small bag with all the treats I need at the end of the day from a person I just had to give a signature. Maybe I haven't really reduced any direct interactions there, but I have reduced exposure, and prevention is like, key, right? Like 80 percent of a solution, or something? So I have absolutely no problem with the way the internet operates and how it is changing my day. However, with my earlier assessment of my own esteem- I think it is clear to say that I don't feel I have the most marketable product. And I would not take bad reviews well.
There's no ambiance, poor customer service and it looks like this place hasn't been maintained in over a decade. Even with a complete overhaul I don't know that I could ever open the doors to more customers. The last few trashed the place. It wasn't great to begin with, but the wiring hadn't been pulled so far out. It had it's original coat of paint. Is that something that should matter? It's hard to imagine what we even sell here...poorly mixed metaphors? Are there any guys looking to buy that? Anyone cute and non-pretentious?
Asking for a friend who has a shop opening.
****************************
I remember when string cheese was a treasure. What an exciting treat! The best part was the deftness with which I was able to pull it apart. The thinnest stringiest strings were always more satisfying. Is this where my body issues were born? My prejudices all grew out of food preferences. I don't like white cakes, fatty things, thick strings of cheese or bananas. Is that last one a penis thing?
*******************************
I end up doing more work in projects than makes sense.
At the end of the day, and through most of it, I am a pretty big slacker. It's amazing I get anything done. I wonder if there was ever a time where depression was diagnosed as chronic inertia.
It's not like I'm really terrible at the things I can contribute to a team. But I operate with a certain degree of procrastination that typically extends as far as possible. If it can be put off, it will be. If it can't be put off, it also probably will be.
So it's always to my horror and discomfort that I find myself in a position of leadership. That I might do any wrangling. Or a good deal of planning. Or the majority of the writing.
It occurs mostly because I know that I am afflicted with chronic inertia and hysteria, so to trick the others into perceiving me otherwise I pretend to be a rather high functioning gal. I initiate some contact about the pacing of the project. Voice concerns in a diplomatic, feminine and non-critical way. I'm the proof, that I will never accept, that fake it til you make it kind of works. At a certain point you're too far in the hole. The lie is all there is now. You'll just have to take over as a project leader...and hope you don't get seen as a bitchy dictator instead of the leech that you truly are.
*****************************
There's a certain degree of defeat that one incurs after conversations about keeping up appearances. Or appearance. It settles into the stomach like a sickness. It induces physical illness. A conversation that starts about break-outs ends in a resignation to a fasting diet. Whether the tears are real or for effect they do the job. I can only plea that my mental health be my primary focus so many times. I can only be attacked without being attacked so many times. The guilt of a mother's tears is just a stronger argument.
So I smile uncomfortably at the details of this bone broth cleanse. A few soft laughs escape. This reaction is incorrect. It's hard to find the point that should measure these things. Until I'm out in the night, on the way to the car, and free to cry by myself. I don't know if these tears are genuine either, but at least I'm the only audience member.
*****************************
My obsession with love has lead to the overwhelming desire to read and write love stories. There's a part of me that hopes all the good love stories are written by the lonely. A philosophical part of me imagines that being a god is pretty lonely, being the universe must feel lonely, and so every story written within must be in service of creating something other than loneliness. Being a human is pretty lonely, of course. There's never seemed to be much difference in the order of things. Everything creates and destroys, And is lonely in the interim.
The real romance, I feel, as someone who may never see real romance, is in finding someone to be lonely with. The folly of the love we're conditioned to search for is that there's an expectation that the inner sadness and loneliness of living will fade in the presence of some other life. The beauty isn't in trying to intoxicate oneself in someone else, but in finding a place to be lonely that feels a little better than the loneliness on your own. It's not gone, but the shape is different. Maybe it's no more bearable if you think about it, but less an intoxication than a pleasant distraction. Every depiction of an honest love I've seen has been sober this way.
The hardest part is knowing whether the things I write could ever be realistic. Is it realistic to assume, somewhere, there is someone living things in exactly the opposite way I have seen life lived? That there could be a truth for someone closer to the not-quite-picturesque happiness of couples like Amy and Jonah? or Ben and Leslie?
**************************
Broken glass. A bright red line blooms into a deep red pool and she watches as the liquid rolls over the soft sand slope. She read in a psychology book once that pain and itching are communicated in the same areas of the brain, so you can't feel both at the same time. Pain will overtake an itch. The subtle throbbing overtakes itchy thoughts.
*************************
I think I most enjoy the most unrealistic of love stories. The ones where kids grew up together, or two people meet as young adults, or colleagues very early into their careers. They become friends. Maybe there is some animosity at first as they size each other up, perhaps things are a little competitive, but they grow to deeply respect and understand each other. A deep friendship creates affection and affection becomes something lustier but there's an outside source of complication. Maybe they're always in other relationships. Or too invested in their careers? They might be separated by distance? But circumstances always align as they meant to and they finally realize that they'd been in love the whole time.
I think this can happen in a shorter period of time, but this is definitely not a high school sweethearts situation. Statistically those do not work out.
I think what I like most about it is that it seems foundationally sound. There was probably a physical attraction in the beginning, but the basis of the relationship and the reason for getting into a romantic relationship doesn't hinge entirely on that.
I don't think I've ever been in a relationship with someone I liked or admired as a person. I think that would be a very pleasant place to start. Being liked as a person.
*****************************
Every day I say that the next day I will do better. I make a little promise that I know I will break. The next day is never different. The next day I do not do better. The next day is very similar to the day before and I am inevitably in my underwear eating spoonfuls of Nutella like an Onion article.
I play Tinder roulette with no intention of talking to anyone. I am sure I have mentioned this. I just use it like a small injection of self-esteem. I think to actually meet anyone might suck out that booster and a small amount of blood.
There's a transactional sense to everything online, I think. Everything is convenient. Impersonal. There's set expectations and a way to openly display displeasure if those expectations are not met. And I don't mind any of this. I really appreciate convenience with an impersonal touch. I mourn the days that I had enough disposable income to avoid going into a grocery store myself. I. MOURN. Them. I, with my headphones in, will think wistfully of a time when I did not have to go out of my way to get a lightbulb in the dead of night to avoid as many people as possible. I could just buy with some other things and pick up a small bag with all the treats I need at the end of the day from a person I just had to give a signature. Maybe I haven't really reduced any direct interactions there, but I have reduced exposure, and prevention is like, key, right? Like 80 percent of a solution, or something? So I have absolutely no problem with the way the internet operates and how it is changing my day. However, with my earlier assessment of my own esteem- I think it is clear to say that I don't feel I have the most marketable product. And I would not take bad reviews well.
There's no ambiance, poor customer service and it looks like this place hasn't been maintained in over a decade. Even with a complete overhaul I don't know that I could ever open the doors to more customers. The last few trashed the place. It wasn't great to begin with, but the wiring hadn't been pulled so far out. It had it's original coat of paint. Is that something that should matter? It's hard to imagine what we even sell here...poorly mixed metaphors? Are there any guys looking to buy that? Anyone cute and non-pretentious?
Asking for a friend who has a shop opening.
****************************
I remember when string cheese was a treasure. What an exciting treat! The best part was the deftness with which I was able to pull it apart. The thinnest stringiest strings were always more satisfying. Is this where my body issues were born? My prejudices all grew out of food preferences. I don't like white cakes, fatty things, thick strings of cheese or bananas. Is that last one a penis thing?
*******************************
I end up doing more work in projects than makes sense.
At the end of the day, and through most of it, I am a pretty big slacker. It's amazing I get anything done. I wonder if there was ever a time where depression was diagnosed as chronic inertia.
It's not like I'm really terrible at the things I can contribute to a team. But I operate with a certain degree of procrastination that typically extends as far as possible. If it can be put off, it will be. If it can't be put off, it also probably will be.
So it's always to my horror and discomfort that I find myself in a position of leadership. That I might do any wrangling. Or a good deal of planning. Or the majority of the writing.
It occurs mostly because I know that I am afflicted with chronic inertia and hysteria, so to trick the others into perceiving me otherwise I pretend to be a rather high functioning gal. I initiate some contact about the pacing of the project. Voice concerns in a diplomatic, feminine and non-critical way. I'm the proof, that I will never accept, that fake it til you make it kind of works. At a certain point you're too far in the hole. The lie is all there is now. You'll just have to take over as a project leader...and hope you don't get seen as a bitchy dictator instead of the leech that you truly are.
*****************************
There's a certain degree of defeat that one incurs after conversations about keeping up appearances. Or appearance. It settles into the stomach like a sickness. It induces physical illness. A conversation that starts about break-outs ends in a resignation to a fasting diet. Whether the tears are real or for effect they do the job. I can only plea that my mental health be my primary focus so many times. I can only be attacked without being attacked so many times. The guilt of a mother's tears is just a stronger argument.
So I smile uncomfortably at the details of this bone broth cleanse. A few soft laughs escape. This reaction is incorrect. It's hard to find the point that should measure these things. Until I'm out in the night, on the way to the car, and free to cry by myself. I don't know if these tears are genuine either, but at least I'm the only audience member.
*****************************
My obsession with love has lead to the overwhelming desire to read and write love stories. There's a part of me that hopes all the good love stories are written by the lonely. A philosophical part of me imagines that being a god is pretty lonely, being the universe must feel lonely, and so every story written within must be in service of creating something other than loneliness. Being a human is pretty lonely, of course. There's never seemed to be much difference in the order of things. Everything creates and destroys, And is lonely in the interim.
The real romance, I feel, as someone who may never see real romance, is in finding someone to be lonely with. The folly of the love we're conditioned to search for is that there's an expectation that the inner sadness and loneliness of living will fade in the presence of some other life. The beauty isn't in trying to intoxicate oneself in someone else, but in finding a place to be lonely that feels a little better than the loneliness on your own. It's not gone, but the shape is different. Maybe it's no more bearable if you think about it, but less an intoxication than a pleasant distraction. Every depiction of an honest love I've seen has been sober this way.
The hardest part is knowing whether the things I write could ever be realistic. Is it realistic to assume, somewhere, there is someone living things in exactly the opposite way I have seen life lived? That there could be a truth for someone closer to the not-quite-picturesque happiness of couples like Amy and Jonah? or Ben and Leslie?
**************************
Broken glass. A bright red line blooms into a deep red pool and she watches as the liquid rolls over the soft sand slope. She read in a psychology book once that pain and itching are communicated in the same areas of the brain, so you can't feel both at the same time. Pain will overtake an itch. The subtle throbbing overtakes itchy thoughts.
*************************
I think I most enjoy the most unrealistic of love stories. The ones where kids grew up together, or two people meet as young adults, or colleagues very early into their careers. They become friends. Maybe there is some animosity at first as they size each other up, perhaps things are a little competitive, but they grow to deeply respect and understand each other. A deep friendship creates affection and affection becomes something lustier but there's an outside source of complication. Maybe they're always in other relationships. Or too invested in their careers? They might be separated by distance? But circumstances always align as they meant to and they finally realize that they'd been in love the whole time.
I think this can happen in a shorter period of time, but this is definitely not a high school sweethearts situation. Statistically those do not work out.
I think what I like most about it is that it seems foundationally sound. There was probably a physical attraction in the beginning, but the basis of the relationship and the reason for getting into a romantic relationship doesn't hinge entirely on that.
I don't think I've ever been in a relationship with someone I liked or admired as a person. I think that would be a very pleasant place to start. Being liked as a person.
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