Problematic

 I went to therapy recently. Friday, specifically. I also bleached and dyed my hair. That happened earlier. I feel like that was more impactful on my declining mental health. It did take a few tries though. I went through a couple of cycles of bad dye before landing on Manic Panic, which I had never tried before. It bleeds out every time I shower, but the color still seems pretty bright and closer to what I was envisioning. Anyway, my girl group has broken up. I think? Kind of. For all practical purposes at least, at the moment. I don't think it can be narrowed down to any one moment. It doesn't seem to be anyone's fault. It seems over the course of the pandemic we found ourselves in very different places in life. A few friends lost really important people lately. It was hard enough to get everyone together before, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for scheduling around grief and tragedy. We all have very different habits now. It felt very rare we were all up t

I both am and in a nightmare. I both am and am in a nightmare. I am in, and am, a nightmare. I'm in a nightmare. I am a nightmare of a person. I am not sure how best to capture the sentiment. I'll be brief about it. The last few months have been a slow spiral in the wake of my best friends experiencing personal misfortunes on a larger scale. I probably haven't been accurately expressing how volatile I feel because I don't think there's space for it in anyone's life. There's no space for it in my life. It feels like there's a higher unspoken level of strain everyone has been under that's causing us all to snap, but quietly repair ourselves mostly off-screen, then reenter the scene because there doesn't seem to be anything else to do. No one's been allowed a break. I feel like a lot of my feelings are secondhand anyway. I probably need respite the least. Luckily, there doesn't seem to be any to snatch up, so I'm not being greedy about i

 It's been a week. But when was the last time it wasn't a week? Obviously by that I mean when was the last time I didn't spend the work day grinding my teeth and wondering what is the point if there's always a life-changing disaster looming? Years are days and days are years of frantic dread. And anger. Blood boiling anger. I want to boil my enemies in pools of their own blood. Starting small: how are companies still asking for 3-5+ years of experience for every fucking position? Can we not all get over ourselves, please? Everyone knows their office is 50% people who are completely incompetent, and if you don't think so it's probably because you're one of those 50% No shade. People who are not good at things deserve to survive. And a lot of them are. A lot of really stupid unqualified white men are thriving. So let's just chill out with our fucking skills and experience required sections, can we? It's also already way too fucking hot and I'm alre

 Thoughts from yesterday: I guess these are always thoughts. I inherited the worst traits of both my parents. My mother told me this often. I think I probably inherited more of her bad traits, but that's probably because I know very little about my father as a person. I don't know a lot of people that know a lot about their fathers as people, and the people that do seem to regret knowing them. The breakdown was this: my mother's bad skin, she was prone to breakouts, my father's thick black hair, that included body hair, and their general incompatibility with joy. I've probably mentioned a lot of this before. I think I definitely mentioned that I assume, if I am bipolar, that I got that from my mom who I most certainly believe is bipolar. It is also possible that I inherited her skepticism toward accepting I am mentally ill. I think I eventually inherited their fear and tendency to cut themselves off from the world. But there are things that I acquired that were less

 We live in the soft glow of a failed experiment. A little spiral tree of lights that was meant for the lawn. A lot of life in a house you care about seems to be not knowing what to do. There are half painted walls from the moments shortly after we moved in while I had motivational anxiety. Humming with ideas. Hoping to escape and make a place feel like it was a place for me. We have succeeded in making it a place for The Kitten. She has soft places to sit and watch us, to catch sunbeams for a lightly toasted Kitten, look out at a world that it seems impossible to be a part of. Same. I also feel I've picked up her habit of rotating interests. There's only so many things that are comfortable, soft, and safe I seek with regularity. It's not quite a routine. It's slipping into a modest interest. In the window as things go by I have the impulse to bark. I stare with curiosity and hope the intensity of my envy is concealed by my computer monitor. The idea of expanding my wor

 I keep bumping into things around the house to disastrous effect. That's an exaggeration of course, but I have ended up with a lot of bruises and deeper cuts than I would have expected. My cute office chair betrayed me and I have had some pretty serious back pain for a bit over a month or so? I had to quickly purchase a new chair because my aesthetic choice was unworkable. I also acquired way too many seat cushions in order to try to keep it because it was one of the first things I bought for the house and my office. I think my first purchase was the elliptical that very quickly became a towel rack. I was very proud of myself for being able to make these purchases, and it was really nice to be able to replace my chair so quickly as well. I had forgotten after 3 years of being a full-time student and working part-time what it was like to have money. It is very good. It occurred to me, finally, the other day that maybe I should stop trying to focus my attention and motivation for se

Continuing back through the archives of incomplete and unposted musings: December 2018 - ft some add-ons from 2022 So, Ryan informed me when this song dropped, and initially I was very skeptical. We have very different relationships with our exes. I am on the Cardi B-Beyonce-Rihanna end of the spectrum where I'm taking money, tossing out clothes, and thinking "let me catch you unaware, I will burn your shit down." She's a better person than I am. There's like 4 places you can go with a break-up song: " Irreplaceable "- in which you're pushing someone out of your life and cataloging how they got you twisted. I feel like "Take a Bow" kind of fits with it, and " Be Careful " takes it to the Kill-Bill-vengeance level of rage. I've done Irreplaceable, but have since sunk into the thinly veiled threats of someone who has been getting gas-lit for years. " IDGAF / Sorry Not Sorry "- is the level that I want to get to.

February 2020: Sometimes we fall asleep holding hands. Like otters. It's disgusting. Like otters. I hear they smell kind of gross. There's no worry that we would drift away from each other. There's no worry of that at all now that my medications have kicked in properly. This is the playlist I have made because I am a sad sad person living in the past: 1. Glasgow   2. Between the Bars    3. Sea of Love    4. Mystery of Love    5. Maps    6. Let's Dance to Joy Division    7. I Won't Let You Down    8. With My Whole Heart  9. Garden Grays   10. Everything Reminds Me of Her The order feels important. I have been listening to Garden Grays on repeat for a week or so. I found it on my second run through of, and Collin's first encounter with, You're The Worst. I couldn't recommend the show enough. I couldn't recommend this relationship enough. The order matters. But the individual parts are lovely and fun.

I have a lot. I have none. I have traded in Hannibal for Housewives. I don't know how I should feel about this. The tone of my mindless comfort has taken a drastic change. Instead of simmering drama and darkly lit scenes, my vision is overwhelmed with tacky prints, glasses thrown and broken, and near constant screaming. I don't think I've heard so many women called prostitutes since I stopped watching Law and Order SVU. I can't say I don't appreciate what would normally be an intolerable and socially unacceptable amount of sequins that are worn at all the parties. And there are SO. MANY. PARTIES. I read this article once about the appeal of Housewives being that Americans worship wealth and excess as signals that someone is successful and, obviously, superior to those with less. Housewives shows us that those people are often as terrible and annoying as the people we know, hopefully more annoying than most people you know, and money just means the weaves getting pul

I'm making myself do this. I make myself do a lot of things now. It feels like more than before, but maybe it's not. It feels like a lot of people are making themselves do more these days while other people adamantly avoid doing the bare minimum. I do way too much laundry for someone that no longer regularly leaves the house. ****************************** The road to Houston from Austin is a bumpy one. It has texture. It winds. It's more familiar to me than my own face. It has that familiarity of something you encounter frequently, but not enough to intensely scrutinize (as I have begun to with my unfamiliar face). As with much of my life, it's a path I take less recklessly now. There was a time I had less control over it. The bus days. Those were periods when my heart ached to be going on a trip that is now often one of resignation and dread. When I gained agency I weaved through cars as fast and effortlessly as I could, so somewhere around 85-90, sure I would be awar