Doom, Gloom, and the Problem of Pain

Man, Ive been pretty busy lately. Maybe I will get a chance to have a little time to myself this week. My brother plays football for Alabama so Ive been going to the games, thats been fun. Only 3 more weeks left, Im kinda sad about it....but then there will be the bowl game.

Anyway, to the Doom & Gloom...I've been alittle down...not too bad just seemingly in a constant PMS mood or something. Im a bit emotional. My sisters birthday is tomorrow and thats always hard for me. I get kinda crappy around this time every year. I dont do well in the winter for some reason. So far, so good though...Im not too crazy yet, thank heavens (I sound like my grandmother).

Being in the yucky mood I have been in, Ive tried to do some stuff to keep my mind on other things. Ive been reading The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis. If youve never read it, its like 5 bucks at books a million, its very interesting. It attempts to explain how a loving God could let us feel the pain we feel. I am still digesting it as I go, but Im sure I will have an opinion to share soon. If anyone has read it, I'd like to know what you think....and if you havent read it, its not a long book and its a pretty interesting read.

I hope everyone has a safe Halloween, stear clear of goblins and things of that nature.

Kinda Mixed Feelings About Everything

I haven’t written in a while….mainly because D has been at my house a lot lately….which can be a good and a bad thing. Its good because most of the time I really do like hanging out with him. We go eat, and go to starbucks, and watch movies & fun stuff like that. He keeps me pretty entertained. BUT I don’t want to get too attached. We are still seeing other people. He wants it like that. I’m fine with that…I just don’t want to get too attached and want something that he’s not ready for. Oh well, each day as it comes.

My Effexor was cut in half…mainly because of the sexual side effects thing….and it has helped alittle, I think. I actually kind of feel better on 150mg than I did on 300. I don’t know what the function is with that, kinda weird I guess….but whatever, as long as I am feeling decent and functioning, everything is cool. I’m taking vitamins too….so maybe that has something to do with it. Does anyone else find that vitamins help? I’m taking a multivitamin with no herbs and some extra vitamin E, which is also supposed to help with the sexual thing.

I have moments of depression…over really dumb stuff. For instance, there is a really big dead bird outside. Instead of just thinking “Oh theres a dead bird”….I think “Oh poor bird, its big, it could be a mama bird and her babies could be starving and die.” That is how I think…I get depressed over stupid things like that. I also have been, on occasion, over-thinking peoples reactions to the smallest things…comments I make, things I say or do….I over analyze everything. I feel small sometimes. I have a lot of fear. At least these things are coming in small spurts and not totally taking over me right now…but theres the fear that they may take over once again. I try to put it out of my mind, but you know, theres that over-analyzing part of me.

I’m doing good today though, and that’s all that matters at the present. I am tired….not sleeping very well, but good enough most nights. I think that getting out and doing stuff nearly every evening with D really does help my moods. He kind of gets me “out of myself”….which is a major accomplishment for us both.

I just feel incomplete or something...I use the word fragmented alot, I just feel disconnected from things alittle. I am in a pretty good mood most of the time. I just feel like Im missing something and that Im not the person that I really am. I'm not sure why I feel like that. I dont think its a medicine thing, I just think its a me thing. Guess I should be used to it by now.

7 Things

I got this off blondzila's blog. I thought it was pretty cool....a way for people to learn weird things about you & stuff. I just thought it was fun.

7 Things to Do Before I Die:
1) Visit Australia
2) Get published
3) Visit every state in the US
4) Get my Master’s Degree
5) Bungee jump in New Zealand (don’t ask why)
6) Skydive
7) learn to tattoo


7 Things I Can Do
1) fix computers
2) draw
3) play the guitar
4) make video games
5) eat matches and blow smoke out of my nose
6) put a cigarette up my nose and blow smoke out of my mouth
7) throw a football, baseball, basketball, etc. very far

7 Things I Can Not Do:
1) wear makeup
2) wear high heals
3) math (not worth a crap anyway)
4) play the piano (I attempt, but it doesn’t work out)
5) wear a dress
6) smoke weed (damn it, drug tests at work)
7) swallow a sword

7 Things that Attract Me to the Opposite Sex:
1) lips
2) eyes
3) sense of humor
4) muscles (but not too much)
5) tall
6) bald heads or long hair
7) hands


7 Things I Say Most Often:
1) that sucks
2) alrighty then
3) cool
4) damn it
5) fucked up
6) whatever
7) sounds good to me

7 Celebrity Crushes:
1) Johnny Depp
2) Mariska Hargitay
3) Matt Damon
4) Neve Campbell
5) Donnie Wahlberg
6) Jennifer Aniston
7) Conor Oberst (bright eyes singer)

5 Years Old

Soap didn’t do a thing
Shes just as dirty, just as to blame
Scrubbing didn’t make her clean
Behind sad eyes remains to be seen
She cried but no one came
Laid out on the tile floor
Voices and footsteps behind the door
She cried and no one came
The door cracked,
and the Son of God
came in and carried her off
To the place she wanted to go towards
She came to and realized it was an illusion
She cried and no one came
And your love was just a reason to hurt
Do you like to hurt? I know I do.
Hurt Me Hurt Me
Hurt Me Hurt Me
Tears came down her tiny face
Shes trapped inside this dirty place
She cried and no one came

Home

I was watching a movie the other night. I think it was Garden State…but Im not totally sure. Anyway, the guy in the movie said something like “do you remember the precise moment in time when your parent’s house became your parent’s house and not your home.” It really made me think of when that moment should have arrived for me.

I was never at home in my parents house ever. When I was a small kid my mom took me to my aunt and uncles house a lot and I would kick and scream when I had to go “home”. I hated “home”. After my parents divorce, I lived with my grandmother for a while and her house became home to me…but we moved to 2 different houses before we finally moved 9 million miles away (in my mind) to a frickin junk yard house in the crappiest place on earth. Thankfully, we didn’t live there long. I think I would have died if we had lived there any longer. I made it through the year and a half or so that we were there. We moved back closer to my home town….lived in a couple of places near Jackson, then I moved in with my aunt and uncle.

I wanted my aunt and uncle’s house to be my home, but it wasn’t. I slept on a couch in an enclosed porch on the side of their house. I was treated like a visitor by my cousins…one that they didn’t like so much a lot of the time. So, instead of staying there much, I would come in at 2 or 3 in the morning, get up at 5 and ride around until time to go to school. Basically, no one had to see me. That irritated my aunt and uncle a bit (which I suppose it should have), but I didn’t want to feel like I was intruding….and I was made to feel like I was. I lived there all through high school. But, during that time we were close to my grandparents house and I felt like that was my home. I would take the clothes that I liked over there so my cousin’s friends wouldn’t steal them….I would take anything I didn’t want stolen over there, in fact.

I roamed after high school….I lived in the dorm at my college, an apartment with a friend, an apartment with another friend, Conroe, TX, and finally I moved to CA to be with Linda. We moved back to Biloxi, MS, then back to my college town, then to a duplex on the outside of town and then we bought a house. That house was the first place that has ever really been home to me. I was there alittle over a year until I decided that I needed to “figure things out on my own” and I moved out.

My house now is my home. My grandparent’s house is my second home….my “home home”. Really, I think that because I hated my home so much when I was little, I have stayed away from where I’ve lived most of the time…I guess because I was used to doing that. I’m just now able to just chill out at my house without a major need to get out and do something else. I mean, I like to go do stuff, but its not a need.

Do you guys remember an exact time when your parents house wasn’t your home anymore?

Another I hate meds day

I've been seriously considering dumping the meds. Maybe there is a bipolar part of me that thinks Im better and I dont need them (No, Im not bipolar!) Have you ever thought that before! ;) I dont like having such vivid dreams...I'd like a good restful nights sleep...and the drugs dont work, they just make it worse (as Ben Harper says). I feel fine....and the side effects suck....poor D (yep still seeing him) probably thinks hes doing something really wrong...and he's not, I just cant ummmm...you know....and it sucks to be 26 years old and need some sort of female viagra or something. What a bitch! Its just not right. Shit, I just want to be a normal person...thats all Im asking for. I feel like the drugs control me...like being put in handcuffs or something. I feel like the person I am while on meds is not the person I really am. Sure, I hate depression...sure I hate mixed episodes...sure I hate weird hallucinations...but thats who I am apparently. If I die because I am bipolar and I shoot myself in the head, maybe thats how its supposed to end. Instead of being me, I am who the meds make me. They help me, I know...but they hinder...and control...uuugggghhh

More Dreams

Well, I took 2 Vistarils last night, thinking that they would certainly make me sleep. It didn’t happen. I slept for a short time – long enough for screwed up dreams, of course.

I dreamed about my sister again. I don’t know whats up with that. I dreamed that she was back, that she had been living on the coast with her girlfriend (shes not gay) and my step-brother had run into her in our home town. She had left the coast because of the hurricane. She was really skinny, I didn’t recognize her at first…then we acted like she had never gone anywhere. My dad was re-marrying their mom and we all sat in chairs at the wedding. My brother was really young…like 10 or so (he’s 21). It was weird.

The night before last I had a dream that there was this huge alligator that was eating people at my grandmother’s house…but the alligator ended up being a dog. It was caught and sent to the pound. Then we remembered that it was our dog, so we went to get it. It was a bulldog. They gave the dog back to us but he had to wear this thing that looked like a space suit so he wouldn’t eat people anymore.

Last week I dreamed that a 5 year old Mexican girl robbed my house and took all of my stuff out on a restaurant waiter’s serving tray. I almost hit her with my car as she was leaving. I went looking for her and found her with her family. The iris’ in her eyes were really really blue and they had crumbled and were floating around in her eyeball (it was really weird). Her family told me that she stole all of my stuff because she was possessed by the devil.

??? Weird stuff, huh. I guess its better than blood and guts dreams. Where is the Anonymous Dream Analyst. He could have some fun with those!

listening right now

I came upon a doctor
who appeared in quite poor health
I said there is nothing I can do for you
you cant do by yourself...

He said, Oh yes you can
Just hold my hand
I think that that would help.
And so I sat with him a while
and then I asked him how he felt.

He said I think Im cured
no, in fact, i'm sure.
Thank you stranger for your therapeutic smile.

So that is how I learned the lesson that everyones alone
and your eyes must do some raining if your ever going to grow
but when crying dont help
and you cant compose yourself
it is best to compose a poem,
an honest verse of longing
or a simple song of hope.
That is why I am singing...

--Conor Oberst
Bright Eyes (a band I love)

An I hate meds day

These dreams & the sexual side effects of my medication are making me want to quit taking them. I realize this is a bad idea...I am usually a medicine advocate, but sometimes its really frustrating. I feel ok other than those side effects...it seems like I cant have good without the bad. where do you draw the line when side effects are unbearable? My meds work....but theres just some shitty side effects & that sucks.

Dreams

I haven’t really written anything personal in a while. I don’t know why, I guess the spirit hasn’t moved me…
My meds seem to be doing pretty good. I haven’t been wanting to hang myself in my closet on a regular basis, so that’s an improvement. I have been wanting to sleep during the day and Im awake at night. I take the Vistaril and it still takes me a while to go to sleep and when I do, its not quality sleep in my opinion. Ive been having the weirdest dreams.
Really, that brings me to what I want to talk about....dreams. I know you are supposed to be having your best sleep when you are dreaming, but recently my dreams have been so vivid...weird...almost scary...so much so that I feel tired when I wake up from fighting with them. Anyone know that feeling, or am I just weird?
When I was in junior high I moved away to the crappiest place on earth. I hated it. We lived in a shack in the middle of town. Everyone hated me at school. I was drunk all the time, slept (or passed out) outside a lot…wasn’t allowed in the house a lot of the time because my mom had just remarried and she wanted to be with him more than she wanted to take care of us. Anyway, it sucked royally.
Last night I dreamed that I had to move back there by myself….there wasn’t really a reason why, I guess…all I remember is that I had to take a plane, which was kind of funny since the place is about 2 hours away from where I live. I got lost at the airport. (I was at this huge airport, which doesn’t exist in MS). I had this cool cell phone thing that gave me directions though…but it didn’t work right. I could take a picture with the phone to show it where I was and it gave me directions from there (I need to invent this)…ANYWAY, I finally got there and I lived in this one room place and I cried and cried and felt sick that I had to be there.
A couple of other times this week, I have dreamed about my sister. As Ive said before, she ran away a long time ago. Ive dreamed that she came back and I didn’t know who she was. Once I figured it out, I thought it was awesome. One time I dreamed she was on meth, hung around a couple of days and then robbed me blind and disappeared again.
When I was in high school, I couldn’t sleep because of my dreams. I know that sounds stupid. I was scared to sleep because my dreams where so real and I dreamed a lot about blood….blood everywhere, guts, nasty stuff.
Does this make any sense? I’ve had really vivid dreams most of my life. I can remember dreams that I had years ago because they scared me so bad…or I woke up thinking they were real all day long. Do we have any dream analyst out there?

The Hardest Part

My heart is suffocating
God, how you burn through my veins
And hold my dreams & thoughts captive
But I’m mystified by love.
And I escaped a house full of walls.
Youre always mine
Even when youre gone
I haven’t slept
Without you by my side
Oh my god, how I miss those things
But that aint the hardest part.
The hardest part is loving someone.
But It’s a million times better than the pain
Take out the gun
Fill it with loss
It’s a million times quicker than being sad.
I cant live with you
I cant stand myself without you
I want to break these chains
And the hardest part is knowing
It’s a million times quicker than being sad.
My hearts too heavy to go any longer
All my life Ive longed for forgiveness
But I cant seem to get enough
Trying to find the peace
All my life Ive been lost in the darkness
But I cant seem to get enough,
Ive been locked in your eyes
And that’s the hardest part.