October 3, 2018

I am avoiding talking about all the real things. If I talk about the thing that makes me paralyzingly sad, I will be too sad to function. Duh. But really. It’s true. If I talk about my favorite TV shows and ice cream and the dumb thing I did today, then I can keep moving and breathing and getting out of bed.

I write this to be cathartic, but I don’t often use it that way. I talk about my relationship. I bitch about work. I drool over a cookie I ate today. I write about politics and then delete it because it just makes me angry and instead talk about my dog.

How the actual fuck do people survive devastating things without annoying everyone around them or collapsing into an immovable ball of tears or both?

Day 115 – I…Sad.

October 2, 2018

Relationships are hard. We pee with the door open now. We’re there.

We still date each other, which is nice. But now it’s like: go to work, text about work while at work, come home and talk about work, sleep so we can go to work.

He’s not working right now, which is amazing, because that means he has more energy than I do to clean or cook or walk our dog or workout. I appreciate all these things. But it’s unsettling, too.

Are we just going to end up as roommates? Will we still like each other? Will we still love each other? Are we going to have chore wheels and arguments about splitting the bills and sit around in our sweats burping up our takeout? Is that what happens? I feel like that’s what happens.

Day 114 – Roommates or Romance?

July 28, 2018

I literally shushed someone at a bar like it was a library. It was someone I knew, too. And I knew why they were being loud. It was just TOO DAMN LOUD, you know? Like, people are trying to have conversations over here!

So tonight I apparently turned 95. I do not tolerate the young’uns. Though the people I shushed ranged from 30-45, it was still an unacceptable amount of noise to be making when some people were trying to drink their water in peace. I do not know these people, of course, and they definitely weren’t myself and my friend, because that would be weird, but SOME PEOPLE were drinking water and didn’t need the noise to drown out their important discussion of careers, family problems, good desserts, and how expensive it is to join the gym. THESE ARE IMPORTANT TOPICS, DANG IT!

It is nights like these that remind me that I am getting old(er) and that I should probably have my shit together, know what I’m doing with my life, be gainfully employed, and in general live up to my potential and get a life. None of these things have happened. I’m just old without any of the personal growth. Awesome.

Day 48 – Old and Boring and Terrible Company

July 18, 2018

Late at night, when I’m lying in bed, I like to replay all the mistakes I’ve ever made in my entire life on loop, and feel embarrassed about them all over again. Do you ever do that? I still cringe about something I did when I was 4, and then more things when I was a teenager, and still more things that I do every single day.

It’s like this endless cycle of things I wish I’d said as an angry retort at some point during the day – like when that lady cut me in line at the store I wanted to say “Fuck off, you entitled piece of shit. You are not better than me, so stand in line like I’ve been doing before I make you,” or someone in a skirt yelled out to me that I look like a man, I wish I’d said, “I still look better as a man in a skirt than you do as a woman in one”…Or something much better and wittier – so a series of things I wish I’d said to idiots throughout the day, and then a reminder of one very embarrassing thing I did at some point in my life, followed by a flashback of one VERY embarrassing thing I did at some point in my life, pursued closely by one VERY EMBARRASSING thing I did fairly recently until I’ve convinced myself that all I do is embarrassing things and I’m never leaving my bed or my house again. And once that thought is complete, I remember the LADY at the STORE…

I cringe at myself for the things I’ve written before, the angsty teenager that I was, the dumb things I’ve said or done over the years (usually with the best of intentions) until all I can do is hope that everyone else hates themselves as much as I do or that there’s a magical pill out there in the world that can stop this loop but not actually kill me. Are there people out there who live without anxiety? Who don’t hate themselves and everything they’ve ever said or done? Come at me, bro.

That is not me. I am cringing about 10 different things as I write this. I’m very capable of cringe-typing multitasking.

Day 38 – Embarrassment runs amok.

July 16, 2018

It’s time.

I have spent so much of my life ignoring what I’m really good at. I’ve danced around it. I’ve hung out in its vicinity. I’ve let everything and everyone derail me from it. I’ve ignored my best interests. I’ve gotten in my own way at every single turn. Even when it was obvious that I should stick with it, that I should dig in and try harder, I scared myself off.

It’s not easy to follow your path. It’s not easy to take the difficult path because it’s not like the hardest thing was deciding to do it. Fuck, that was hard. But it’s the every day. It’s continuing down that path that some days seems downright impossible and convincing yourself that it’s not impossible. That you can do it. That it’s somewhere inside you and you have to keep pushing through all the bullshit.

And there is A LOT of bullshit. Like, more bullshit than not bullshit. First, there’s the men in my field. Then, there are the expectations – or lack thereof – depending on the day, because we can’t just PICK ONE OF THOSE, we have to have both of them so I never know what I’m going to get. But worst of all is the way that any little thing is a setback and I have to claw my way back to equilibrium. We’re mostly talking EMOTIONAL equilibrium here, people. A small incident for some registers as nothing, for me it’s Hurricane Katrina and I’m standing alone in the 9^th Ward when the levies break.

I get WRECKED when anything sets me back. Family stuff, mostly. But also friend stuff and career stuff and men and a high electricity bill and stubbing my toe and a cashier looking at me weird and making me feel like I must be an ugly, horrible person. Live in this head for a day, people. ONE DAY and you will never laugh at me again. I want you to laugh, actually, so never mind.

It’s goddamn time. I don’t know where to start, don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to jog out into the street Rocky style and defeat the steps of some building downtown. I’m not about to play a motivational song while I take on my enemies and win. I’m not about to get off this couch, even. But I know it’s time to stop with all the excuses or I’ll be old(er) and (more) useless before I know it, still making excuses.

Day 36 – Time.