I think ninemsn’s news site may have a bit of a rogue editor on board right now. The ninemsn.com.au site has an article about police brutality, and about how rom coms give women bad views on relationships.
Another drug gone. Even on the lowest dose it was shit. So, That’s Lexapro, Fluvox, Lovan, Avanza, Cymbalta out, and now the epilim is making me start to lose my hair. My doctor has gone on holiday and the doctor I’m seeing to replace him because she has my file can’t take me until Thursday, and that’s the soonest out of all of the five doctors in that building.
I have nothing to distract myself with, we’re in two grand of debt because of another car accident and all I want to do is crawl into a hole for a long, long time. It’s still another two months until my specialist appointment and even then its just another doctor that knows slightly more about what’s wrong with me than my normal doctor.
so, day in, day out, day in, day out.
So, currently I’m depressed and in pain. Sometimes you beat the beast, sometimes it beats you. There’s a big, black dog that’s come to stay at our house. Sometimes he hangs around the door, casting shadows, and sometimes he sleeps on the foot of my bed. I’ve had another failed experiment with new medication that lost me the best part of a week, I can’t concentrate or articulate anything properly, and I’m currently running on mild stimulants. Let this be another lesson for anyone who doesn’t know what’s going on.
I currently feel like I am the revolting, ugly shadow of the person I was five years ago, and I pity the people who know me now and associate this pathetic shell with who I am. It’s an inaccurate assumption.
I have things to do that are piling up, and all at a time where this down swing is the longest lasting by far, and one of the more difficult ones. However, there’s nothing to be done except to continue seeing doctors, remain on waiting lists and try to look after myself, which I admit, I’m not that great at. I also admit that I’m crap at asking for help, and I’m lucky that I get most of what I need without asking. That’s something I need to work on, but in reality there’s a giant list of things I need to work on.
Also, I have a wisdom tooth coming through. I feel like shit complaining about it, because everyone gets them, but it’s just come at a bit of a crap time. So, if we’re going to complain about inconcequential bullshit, it’s also cold, my tits hurt and it’s my mother’s birthday. The girl at Euro also sees my mother so often that she knows Laurie and I by site, and the woman at Lotus thinks we’re in an incestuous relationship because she referred to us as “her kids”. She’s also batshit fucking insane, but let’s leave the downfalls of Australia’s treatment of mental illness for another day, shall we?
I finished another little project, and my list of things to do is smaller. If I can get this work done by the end of tomorrow, maybe I can wrap my head around doing some work that involves moving forward, but only after doing one or many of the following things:
I’ve been in the house for most of the last two weeks because of various ups and downs, so I may as well do something to look after myself rather than running in circles.
I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don’t look like any girl I’ve ever seen before.
I couldn’t say: “Well, she looks just like Jane Fonda except she’s got red hair and her mouth is different and of course she’s not a movie star.”
I couldn’t say that because you don’t look like Jane Fonda at all.
I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma, Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or ‘42: somewhere in there. I think I was seven or eight or six. It was a movie about rural electrification and a perfect 1930s New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids.
The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by at night, for sewing and reading, and they didn’t have any appliances, like toasters or washing machines, and they couldn’t listen to the radio.
Then they build a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures.
There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along. They looked both ancient and modern at the same time.
Then the movie showed Electricity like a young Greek god coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life.
Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings.
The farmer’s family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read the newspaper by.
It was really a fantastic movie and excited me like listening to The Star-Spangled Banner or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt or hearing him on the radio.
“…The President of the United States…”
I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio.
That’s how you look to me.
-”I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone” from Richard Brautigan’s Revenge of the Lawn.
Down we go again. Hooray for inevitability.
I miss having friends I can be physically close to. Many (in fact all but one) of my friends have this impenetrable wall of personal space around them that only gets breached for obligatory hugs. I like kisses on cheeks, holding hands and heads in laps, but it seems to all go to shit when it comes to anything possibly being construed as sexual. I’m heavily reliant on my senses, I like to be able to engage someone visually rather than avoiding eye contact, to be able to recognise the smell of someone, to be able to touch and push and hold rather than being a completely passive participant in what passes for a conversation. I like to run my friendships like relationships, just with the absence of sexual intimacy. I enjoy the feeling of loving people completely, even though it makes the situation worse when a friendship goes awry. Now, because of my lack of understanding of normal people, you’re free to call me a whore who leads people on.
What I feel is more painful than this, however, if having a hum drum friendship with no love at all, like a miserable married couple constantly talking about things and people instead of letting someone else nest inside your head. I don’t see what’s wrong at all with letting yourself just be. There’s no point in having people around if you can’t just be honest rather than buying into social contracts. Life is just too short for that kind of bollocks.
I never really got the concept of this giant line between dating and friendship where you’re not allowed to be at all close emotionally or physically to your friends, but cross the magical line, and you’re expected to be physically intimate and hide your real feelings while guessing what the other party wants. I suspect this is because I never played the dating game. Laurie and I were close friends who were safely nestled inside each others heads, stayed up until all hours talking, and I understood his thought process and how he worked long before we ever started dating. In fact, we never really started. There was no “will you go out with me”, or string of dates ending in kissing, sex or pregnancy. We went out on one of our normal outings, ended up making out, kept talking the same as we had, and it slowly became more sexualised, but it was always the addition of sex to the friendship and not a “relationship” in the place of our friendship.
Maybe this is because I’m not terribly female-minded, but I just don’t get the friendship/relationship ladder theory, where someone who is a friend will always be a friend and someone that a female is attracted to is in a separate league from that. That being said, I also don’t feel sexually about every person who shows me any attention at all. Not that I’m saying males act like that, though maybe they do- I’m not a penis owner.
So, if it were my choice, the rest of my friendships would sit just at that point before sex comes into the equation. Intense, understanding, honest, relaxed and you generally don’t get any nasty surprises unless one party isn’t being honest. It’s how people feed off of each other creatively in general (or at least I do) and we all know its a terrible idea to have sexual relationships with your muses (didn’t work out too well for Wilde, anyway).
Wow, wanky angst much? Sometimes, I feel like I’m a stupid sixteen year old again while talking to some of the clever darlings I know. Where I’d usually talk (mostly crap) I end up just being silent.
Have I mentioned that I have great friends before? They’re endlessly loyal despite my shit, always able to make me laugh, they respect me, my husnad, my possessions and my pet, they’re accepting of who I am, they’re creatively inspiring, intelligent and able to hold conversations, and always, always giving. In the last few weeks, I have never felt more loved, more respected, more liberated or more relaxed.
I feel like I can talk about most of the things that have gone on with freedom, if the time came that it was appropriate. I think this is a big step forward, considering that I hadn’t even told Laurie about the worst of it until last year. That being said, I hate being the person who talks about themselves, or the one who causes trouble by drawing attention for no good reason. This problem has kicked me in the ass many, many times.
So, my current group of friends is growing. I’ve been more social than I’ve been in a long time and it is very welcome. I do love new, amazing people who feed my creativity like someone feeds a little bird.
fuck, I’m sick to death of this. I miss keeping real journals, filling pages and pages and pages and Imiss the freedom I used to have in type, but it’s just not there anymore.
So, Photoshop crashed a few hours ago, and I lost four hours of work. I need to change my shirt, but I did manage to finish the CMS for the Avalon site (after months of patient waiting on John’s behalf) and organise some of my files.
Some days, I feel like I’m shit at what I do, but it’s just my laziness kicking me in the ass. I revised a proof for a client today and I realised the alignment and typography was terrible. It made me feel bad that I was willing to senf off that work, and I’m glad I had the energy today to fix up all of that while I was fixing the bleeds. I generally design with bleeds, but this time I was lazy and applied them now that the project is almost ready to print. I’ve never had to add bleeds like that before.
So, I need to work on remembering to work with my grids. I also need to learn more about web typography, because my body text on websites consistently looks out of place.
So, it’s 7am. I need a coffee I think, after I clean the kitchen. I’m not manic, I just lost the last three days to a cold so I’m trying to make up for lost time, and sleeping always makes my sore throat come back.
So, today I dinged 21. I had a party last night as to avoid the problems that arise with having a party on Easter Sunday, like the shops being clothes when you inevitably forget something. It was by far the best party I’ve ever had. I currently have an amazing group of friends, and I didn’t fuck up the cupcakes. Also, Laurie is the best. salad. maker. ever. We had close to twenty guests, the only person who got shitfaced and passed out was Laurie (hilarious).
We even had a crazy gypsy band consisting of a piano accordion (the lovely and amazing Neil), violin (the wonderful Patrick), guitar (Laurie), clarinet (Mr. Campbell), ukelele (Blandrew) and bass (me, tinkering, sometimes). I do love having a good jam.
Today, I have a throat infection. woooo.
New!Andrew is in Armadale this week, but when he gets back, we’re having a red dwarf night, facebook event and everything, complimented by beer and vindaloo. I am so pleased and greatful with my ever expanding group of amazing friends. I like that we can meet a guy once and then have him around just to hang every few days, talk about anything, and then at the end of knowing him for a fortnight, he leaves his most prized posession for laurie to tinker with while he’s out of town. I have a group of friends who give more than take, who are smart and kind and always willing to pitch in and help. It eels like for the first time in my life I’m not even trying to have friends and I’ve fallen into an amazing situation where I’m not getting fucked over by some jerk.