"funny thing about this life"

posting a lot more than usual here. commenting a lot more as well. maybe
to make up for the things i'm not saying, maybe to take up the slack on the
word-output. my uncle had a strange cancer that made him produce too many
red blood cells (and medically, i might be getting this wrong, because my
family's ability to tell the truth about medical conditions is hindered to a
degree that some might call pathological, witness the infamous story where
my mother revealed to me that she'd been kicked out of college for manic
depression TWO YEARS after i'd tried to kill myself and had to withdraw from
college) and he had to undergo a treatment where some of the excess would be
drawn off. and as inane as a comparison between a cancer and a mental
tic is, i wonder if sometimes, i use livejournal to drain off the words that
have nowhere to go.

twelve years ago, a boy ranted and raved at me about how he thought he was
crazy or going crazy because he never stopped thinking. i don't remember
the sensation of kissing him, but later, when he collapsed (for real? i'll
never know) i remember his eyelashes fluttering against my skin. for
whatever reason, he found the place in me that latches on to the that sort
of vampiric need that unhappy boys and girls have. and while i listened, i
didn't understand, because, well, didn't everyone spend a lot of their time
trying not to listen to what they were thinking about? isn't that was
reading was for? why was it such a big deal to him. and i didn't then,
and i don't now, mean voices. but i'm coming to see what the big deal is,
that not everyone has the same bizarrely adversarial relationship with what
they think, not everyone spends time calculate fault and fallout.

some times it's the endless whatif scenarios, where i try and see how many
moves forward i can see in my life. i'm better at this now, having been
corralled into learning to see some of the more positive branches.
sometimes i try and understand the motivations of others, or more precisely,
what i've done to be treated in the manner i'm being treated and how can i
behave in order to change it. more holdover from my folks, i imagine, the
hypervigilance of the uncomfortable child translated into the awkwardness of
an almost-thirty woman. and a lot of what i think now is a sort of
riding the fences of my mind. and i'm sure i've used the metaphor to
death, but it remains appropriate. i'm not giving up, or in. i'm not
smoking, i'm not drinking, i'm not selfmutilating, i'm not picking at my
scabs, i'm not manipulating anyone, i'm not forgetting to take my pills, i'm
not obsessing about my weight or my appearance, i'm not listing all the
things that make me not good enough for the life i'm living, i'm not waiting
for retribution or payback for things i don't remember doing, but know i've
done, i'm not fucking things up to make the game more familiar or
comfortable.

and all these endless nots take a lot of energy, but for whatever reason,
i've decided to try and make it look effortless, striving for a word that
i'll always fall short of. grace. and maybe other people's battles look
like tai chi or katas, but my battles look more like the way terriers kill
badgers. (and before you say it, i'm sure that anyone can see grace
anywhere, depending on how the word is defined, and maybe i've just got some
strange classist obsession but i'm talking a particular kind of grace.)

i feel this endless need to communicate, to explain myself, or what i'm
thinking or what goes on inside my head. but just the act of writing it
down doesn't work anymore, it has to be where someone can read it, whether
or not they do. and all the possibility and performativity of this medium
cause me endless intellectual circles of i post versus why someone else
posts, and i weigh my words for passive-aggressiveness, or pleading tones,
or other ploys for attention before i put them out here, because no matter
how much i want the comments, they don't count if i have to 'trick' people
into giving them. and it's like when light gets up to do the dishes as i
head into the kitchen, if something happens as a result of my actions, it
matters less than if it happens spontaneously, of someone's own free will.
which very might well stem from some weird puppetmaster arrogance combined
with lowselfesteem to form a Voltron of Neuroses, and i'm afraid that if
it's not of free will, that i'm manipulating people again, that people can
always dislike me in truth, but people only like me if i've tricked them.


i find myself oddly tempted by a hot-cocoa scented
shampoo/conditioner/bodywash combo and i feel a strong need for lilo and
host to come over again so i can feed them better food and redeem myself
(even if i've only shamed myself in my own eyes, like some weird kitchen
samurai code). i'm anxious to start the house painting, and anxious for
the food bank farm's growing season to start. i've made myself an
eyedoctor appointment, since i can't read the words on the tivo anymore
without serious squinting, and this year i'm going to avoid familial
bickering by actually remembering to send my father a birthday card. i
want to find the man who wrote the book i'm reading and roll around on the
ground at his feet, declaiming my love for him and then follow him at a
discrete distance for most of a year. it's kind of neat to feel things
vividly and to remember things and to want things and to assume that one bad
dinner won't destroy someone's fondness for me, and i remember how much of a
gift all these things are most clearly when i can see psych appointments
coming closer on the calendar.

"funny thing about this life"

posting a lot more than usual here. commenting a lot more as well. maybe
to make up for the things i'm not saying, maybe to take up the slack on the
word-output. my uncle had a strange cancer that made him produce too many
red blood cells (and medically, i might be getting this wrong, because my
family's ability to tell the truth about medical conditions is hindered to a
degree that some might call pathological, witness the infamous story where
my mother revealed to me that she'd been kicked out of college for manic
depression TWO YEARS after i'd tried to kill myself and had to withdraw from
college) and he had to undergo a treatment where some of the excess would be
drawn off. and as inane as a comparison between a cancer and a mental
tic is, i wonder if sometimes, i use livejournal to drain off the words that
have nowhere to go.

twelve years ago, a boy ranted and raved at me about how he thought he was
crazy or going crazy because he never stopped thinking. i don't remember
the sensation of kissing him, but later, when he collapsed (for real? i'll
never know) i remember his eyelashes fluttering against my skin. for
whatever reason, he found the place in me that latches on to the that sort
of vampiric need that unhappy boys and girls have. and while i listened, i
didn't understand, because, well, didn't everyone spend a lot of their time
trying not to listen to what they were thinking about? isn't that was
reading was for? why was it such a big deal to him. and i didn't then,
and i don't now, mean voices. but i'm coming to see what the big deal is,
that not everyone has the same bizarrely adversarial relationship with what
they think, not everyone spends time calculate fault and fallout.

some times it's the endless whatif scenarios, where i try and see how many
moves forward i can see in my life. i'm better at this now, having been
corralled into learning to see some of the more positive branches.
sometimes i try and understand the motivations of others, or more precisely,
what i've done to be treated in the manner i'm being treated and how can i
behave in order to change it. more holdover from my folks, i imagine, the
hypervigilance of the uncomfortable child translated into the awkwardness of
an almost-thirty woman. and a lot of what i think now is a sort of
riding the fences of my mind. and i'm sure i've used the metaphor to
death, but it remains appropriate. i'm not giving up, or in. i'm not
smoking, i'm not drinking, i'm not selfmutilating, i'm not picking at my
scabs, i'm not manipulating anyone, i'm not forgetting to take my pills, i'm
not obsessing about my weight or my appearance, i'm not listing all the
things that make me not good enough for the life i'm living, i'm not waiting
for retribution or payback for things i don't remember doing, but know i've
done, i'm not fucking things up to make the game more familiar or
comfortable.

and all these endless nots take a lot of energy, but for whatever reason,
i've decided to try and make it look effortless, striving for a word that
i'll always fall short of. grace. and maybe other people's battles look
like tai chi or katas, but my battles look more like the way terriers kill
badgers. (and before you say it, i'm sure that anyone can see grace
anywhere, depending on how the word is defined, and maybe i've just got some
strange classist obsession but i'm talking a particular kind of grace.)

i feel this endless need to communicate, to explain myself, or what i'm
thinking or what goes on inside my head. but just the act of writing it
down doesn't work anymore, it has to be where someone can read it, whether
or not they do. and all the possibility and performativity of this medium
cause me endless intellectual circles of i post versus why someone else
posts, and i weigh my words for passive-aggressiveness, or pleading tones,
or other ploys for attention before i put them out here, because no matter
how much i want the comments, they don't count if i have to 'trick' people
into giving them. and it's like when light gets up to do the dishes as i
head into the kitchen, if something happens as a result of my actions, it
matters less than if it happens spontaneously, of someone's own free will.
which very might well stem from some weird puppetmaster arrogance combined
with lowselfesteem to form a Voltron of Neuroses, and i'm afraid that if
it's not of free will, that i'm manipulating people again, that people can
always dislike me in truth, but people only like me if i've tricked them.


i find myself oddly tempted by a hot-cocoa scented
shampoo/conditioner/bodywash combo and i feel a strong need for lilo and
host to come over again so i can feed them better food and redeem myself
(even if i've only shamed myself in my own eyes, like some weird kitchen
samurai code). i'm anxious to start the house painting, and anxious for
the food bank farm's growing season to start. i've made myself an
eyedoctor appointment, since i can't read the words on the tivo anymore
without serious squinting, and this year i'm going to avoid familial
bickering by actually remembering to send my father a birthday card. i
want to find the man who wrote the book i'm reading and roll around on the
ground at his feet, declaiming my love for him and then follow him at a
discrete distance for most of a year. it's kind of neat to feel things
vividly and to remember things and to want things and to assume that one bad
dinner won't destroy someone's fondness for me, and i remember how much of a
gift all these things are most clearly when i can see psych appointments
coming closer on the calendar.