There is Reason

There is no reason for me to have cried myself to sleep.
There is no reason for me to have nightmares every night.
There is no reason for me to be restless and lonely.
There is every reason for me to be excited.

With Christmas three days away and my departure another ten days after that, I should be happy and lively and full of good cheer. I shouldn't be lonely and frightened and sad.

I told my boyfriend last night that I felt small and scared and sad - the big question is, why?

Not sick, not starving, not alone. Not deprived of food and heat and amusement.
I guess it isn't unusual to be struggling to keep a good mood on when the ones you love are far away. For me, I miss my boyfriend and my best friends a lot right now. I am also missing distractions, like school and stress and sleep.

When you're sick, going to the doctor is soothing (at least for me). When you're well, going to the doctor is irritating and stressful (at least in this house). I have been to the doctor too many times in the last two weeks. I canceled my last appointment out of aggravation. Being calm for them, pleasant for them, cheerful and willing and easy-going is a drain. I didn't realize how much of a drain it was until I hit my low mood yesterday...for no good reason.

Maybe I don't need a 'good' reason to be sad. Maybe I just need to let myself feel the sad, acknowledge it, but not let it take over me. I struggle not to judge myself, even when I can't find another way to cope with the things I feel, say or do. It was very difficult for me to ask my boyfriend to call me because I was lonely. I had a need - a valid need, my therapist would say - and I had to fight myself at every turn just to send him a text. I had to swallow several apologies for being 'demanding.'

Does anyone else feel this way before the holidays? I remember being a child, maybe seven or eight, and deciding that I wasn't going to allow myself to get excited about the holidays because of the disappointment afterwards.

I only just rescinded that order two years ago.
I'm in a bit of a funky mood today, Reader, and I can't offer a reason for it except the rambling thoughts above. Maybe you'll see something in them that strikes a chord with you. Maybe you'll look at one of you relatives and go "Oh, I see now."

Or maybe you'll think I'm whining. I wouldn't want to give that impression, but it could be true. Words are words, after all. They don't come with tone pre-packaged.

Have a safe, happy, cozy holiday - whatever you celebrate.
WolfGrrl

Have a Go, Please

A room isn't a room until it has shoes in awkward places and dust in the corners. It hasn't been lived in until there are marks on the walls and tear-stains on the bed linens.

This room has been lived in. It is lived in. So why do I feel this frustrating, gnawing, consuming need to break free of it? Why do I want to both retreat into the protection of my home and cast it away? Maybe I should blame it on sickness, on being weeks away from the biggest decision in my life so far. On missing my boyfriend. On stress. On anxiety. On loneliness.

I can't tell anymore right now what I feel. Except restless; I'm definitely feeling restless. I feel like chewing my blankets into gooey pulp and then smashing my face against the wall a time or ten. However, as my mother in her wisdom reminds me time after time, this too shall pass.

Until then, watch me try to cheer myself up:

 

WolfGrrl

The Bed Fiasco

Yes, I really did do this. By accident, if that makes me less of an idiot. But I did dye my bed a very bright blue. Sigh.

Anyway, here's how.

1. Bake a birthday cake.
2. Decorate the cake with blue food dye when you run out of colored frosting.
3. Place the decorated cake on your bed.
4. Open the cake keeper.
5. Do not clean off the bed before cutting the cake.
6. Try to keep slices of cake, plates, and junk from falling off the bed.
7. Drop slice of cake frosting-side down on the bed.
8. Swear loudly in three languages.
9. Panic.
10. Attack the bed with Clorox wipes and make the stain bigger.
11. Panic.
12. Give up and change the sheets.

You have now dyed your bed blue.

My sympathies.
WolfGrrl

A Long Way Gone

One day I will become the person others see in me.

I ascribe such negative views to others, but really, these are my views of myself. It is a habit that hurts me and only me. Or so I believe. Perhaps I hurt others by not seeing what they see.

I seek solace in things that make me feel worse, less so than in the past, but I still do. I am ever envious and ashamed. I am ever feeling weaker, more fragile, less competent than others.

My high school English teacher forwarded me a recommendation he wrote when I was applying to university. It had the same impact on me as my mother's synopsis of my life for the same applications. I am humbled, I am stunned, and I am shamed. Am I really so wonderful to others? Am I so unique?

I feel like the raindrops I kick off my umbrella before tossing it in the corner. I feel like the bread crumbs I brush into the trashcan. Perhaps it's the rain; gray skies demoralize me. Too much sleep depresses me. Falling behind on work makes me guilty and ashamed. Guilt and Shame. How tired I am of those two old, old acquaintances.

My roommate is studying Psychology. This week they are learning about Eating Disorders and Depression. I feel like the freaking Venn Diagram in her textbook: one part depression, one part anxiety, and one part disorder. Why is it that those who are the most organized on the outside are often the most dysfunctional on the inside? Why is my lens so warped?

And why is my first thought always "It's my fault."

Fault? It's not a fault. I know that, at least. There are things I can control - my grades, my sleep schedule, what foods I eat - and there are things far, far beyond my control: what others think of me. The weather. My biochemistry.

For me, writing is cathartic. It lets me exorcise the shadows and mud inside. But it cannot do everything. It cannot be everything. There is a quote I feel is particularly relevent to my mood right now. It goes like this:

"the number one reason why people give up so fast

is because they tend to look at how far they still have to go

rather than how far they have come." 

Yes. Yes. I always look behind me rather than ahead of me. I always see the weakness, rather than the strengths. I want to see the sunshine instead of the rain; my progress is in how much sunshine I see before the rain comes back. 

I can list the skills I recognize from long repetition: kindness, laughter, wit, intelligence, silence, sympathy, righteous rage, tolerance. They all seem so...good. 

I give away public pieces of myself without trusting that others will care for them. Perhaps this is what makes it such a task to get me to talk truly, and mean what I say? Maybe the rest of you know me better than I know myself. I think, therefore I am...or if I had my way sometimes, therefore I would not be. 

I cannot seek the comfort of blame, for I have no one to blame for my guilt, my shame, my constant need to compare and compare and compare. I should not blame myself, but in the end, it seems fairest. I am what forms me, shapes me, holds me back or sets me free. I control me. I build me. I want to assign blame, for therein I dervice order and thus comfort. But I also want to assign blame justly. No. Not justly. I have been told too often that blaming oneself is not justice. I want to assign blame without hurting someone else. No. It hurts me. Do you see how tangled this is? 

This is a very long post. My thanks to those who read it through to the end. I want to apologize, but I have been trying to push past that inclination. I don't want to be a doormat, and I know that the key to not being a doormat is not forming the habits of a doormat. (Muh.) Before I was diverted, I was thanking you, Reader, for patience. And perhaps a little understanding. 

Sorry. No. I will not apologize for being blue. Maybe somewhere, in all my musings, I have stumbled over something that resonates with one of you out there.

There. That's something I can be proud of. Mr. Moore, I'm doing my best. I'll keep trying. 

WolfGrrl

Head Against the Wall

Banging my head against the wall today.
I don't know why things seem to be difficult; maybe it's my mood.
Maybe it's because I'm resisting the urge to scarf down sugary things.
Maybe it's the atmosphere on campus.
Maybe it's just a Down Mood.

Go away, go away. I don't want to be afflicted with bad moods today.

WolfGrrl

The Color Wheel

I've always liked colors.

I don't consider myself much of an artist, but the concept of the color wheel and its emotional connotations has always interested me. I said once in group therapy that I see people in terms of colors; based on what I know of their personalities, I look at my friends and match them to a color (or a range of colors) on the Wheel. It's fun and surprisingly insightful. It also kills time on the treadmill (always a bennie).

Therefore, I guess  it doesn't seem odd that instead of thinking of myself as blue, I try to find other colors that more closely match my emotional grid. I've been down for a couple of weeks now; it comes and goes in various intensities, but I've been consistently sad and/or fragile and/or angry for a while now. Part of what makes me sad, I suspect, is the fact that this isn't new. I was this way for a long, long time before, and it was only about two years ago that I changed into the person I now want desperately to be again: someone who was fun, and game, and who felt everything so intensely.

It sounds incredibly cheesy and Rom-Com-ish, but it's true. There were a lot of things wrong with the place I was in these last two years, but I can remember being happy. Happy to the point of incandescence. Happy to the point of spinning in circles until I fell down (I'll be twenty this year, but most people tell me I was born forty and have gotten more middle-aged since then). I cannot have what I had at seventeen. There are a lot of really terrible things I did and felt that I never want to repeat; yet at the same time, I'd give anything to go back and do it all over again. Self-flagellation and fear at it's finest, ladies and gentlemen.

There's a post on here called The Definition of Happiness. Occasionally, I have these moments of epiphany where the world reveals one small mystery to me and I feel blessed. But the deeper my fog, the louder those revelations need to be and the harder it is for me to see the woods, let alone the trees.

Happiness feeds itself; unhappiness is the same. I am a blue person anyway (in terms of my personality's coloring). I like the softer, more melancholy shades of twilight and evening: violet, cobalt, lavender, mauve, midnight blue and rose. I prefer dark-colored clothes too; in high school, most of my wardrobe was black, because it was the most forgiving shade. That's one of the signs I've noticed (among others) that I'm backsliding.

When I was happy, I bought bright, pretty things. Delicate dresses, pretty shoes; shorts and skirts and flirty little tops. I did things to my hair, played with my face to make my eyes bigger or my mouth redder. No more. I haven't yet descended into sweatpants every day, but I do wear running shorts and sweatshirts. I am in hiding, and whereas before I'd never known any different, now I have the pain and guilt and regret of what I lost - or unknowingly gave up.

Confidence, like happiness, comes from within. Confident people are content within themselves; happy people radiate happiness. I feel small and tired and dark: a pebble, a piece of driftwood; a lost cloud. I don't go shopping anymore. I don't go out with friends that often. I don't write as much either, and I've slipped into the realm of nonresponses - I go away from people. I drift.

This is the cobalt world I inhabit. Not exclusively, and not forever, but I don't want to be in this place again. I want what I had, and I can't have it, so I have to move on and find it in another form. My colors are soothing and mild, but they can also rage with black despair. Don't underestimate despair; it's a powerful force.

People (my therapist) try to tell me that a lot of my 'suffering' is unnecessary. But at the same time, I see things, or hear things, and know that whatever I feel is so small and insignificant it seems criminal to complain or ask for help. I must be strong; I must stand up and carry my burdens. I don't believe that we are given burdens beyond our ability to bear. So how can I ask for help when my burdens are, as another post joked, First World Problems? I haven't been abused, or displaced, or wounded. I'm not starving, I'm not poor. I have water and heat and clothes and food and the chance to expand my mind. I am intelligent (I think) and capable (I hope) and strong (I don't know).

All my life, I've tried to swallow everything unpleasant or petty, mean or selfish or arrogant or cruel. Maybe it's a lifetime of these emotions that's weighing me down now. I'd hoped my Lost Year had dealt with all this; maybe it did, and this is new. That's discouraging; like garbage, it builds up so quickly.

I don't know.
I don't know.
I just don't know.

A term I recently learned is 'Flattening of Affect' or it's milder form 'Blunting of Affect.' I think it's called depression, and that I have it. I just don't...respond. I'm indifferent. I haven't seen my boyfriend (for a lot of reasons, but this is one) in almost two weeks. He lives twenty minutes away from me.

I have this suspicion that I lack the ability to self soothe. I don't really want to list all my problems here (who wants to read that?), but they all dovetail together the same way my colors on the Wheel do. Depression. Anxiety. Insomnia. Disordered eating. Blunting of Affect. Alone, any of these is scary. Together, the picture they paint is my private Scream. My mother tells me that when I was a baby and I cried at night, she gave up leaving me to cry because I never stopped. I'm stubborn to a degree that borders on self-destructive; Anorexia requires discipline, but to the exclusion of reason. Even as an infant, a few months old, I lacked the ability to self-soothe. I push people away in relationships; I sever all acquiantance rather than attempt salvaging them. Solitude calms me down, but too long alone and bad things happen in my head.

Blue colors are pretty, but they are the colors of the evening, the end of day, of nighttime. They are the colors of winter, and sleeping things. Dying things. I am a sleeping thing, and if I don't do something, I won't wake up.

I am colors (wedges) 23 - 18.

WolfGrrl