Mood

Days where I go to bed feeling the hours were wasted. Days where I feel useless, stuck in a script I didn't write, and lacking the initiative to redesign the parts I can change. I feel scorn for myself, on these days.

Just down, tonight. Unhappy, dark. Yes, dark--that's a good way to describe it. After days without people, nights without sleep, mornings without excitement, and sleep without dreams, I'm darkness and restlessness. I'm a nightmare waiting to saunter through the fractured fragments of the next few hours. I'm dissatistifaction and anger simmering over the last chapter of a book I've been looking forward to reading, and raging with the feelings it evoked. I'm a deep hunger to connect and see, be seen, be heard beyond the superficial. And I'm solitary, matching my surroundings to myself.

I am all of these emotions, and more beyond naming. And at the end of it, I am simply tired, and unwilling to fall asleep alone in an empty room.

Purple

Roses are red, violets are blue

(except they’re not—they’re purple)

I've started to write a poem for you

But nothing rhymes with purple

Unless you go with slurple,

Or chortle, turtle, warble, girdle

Or a slew of other rhyming words

(But this is getting quite absurd)

I would have rather much preferred

To not begin with purple.

Six months with the same blue-eyed guy that still laughs at me, loves me, and makes life better in his own unique way. These are the first few lines of something I tried to write for our anniversary (how strange, to be saying that!), and let me tell you, it goes downhill from there. But I enjoyed myself. ;)

Sunrise

It's difficult to give yourself permission to feel grief.

My grandfather died this morning...well. A lifetime ends in a few shallow breaths in a dark room, sleep fading into night as the sun rises. He was so unhappy these past few years...but every time he said goodbye to me, he always told the story about the first time he held me on. "You were only this big, Lissy, just this big, right on my chest."

Grief is so conflicted, and complicated. How much of it there should be. What it should look like.

Anyway. I was struggling so hard with it, and how to express it, and even what it was. I didn't realize what I was lacking until Ryan found me and wrapped his arms around me--almost, gave me permission to feel that loss, let it go. What an odd and beautiful feeling that is.

Ah, grandpa.

Up

How to start.

I'm so out of practice with writing, it seems, that it takes a good five minutes of contemplation to figure out how to put my thoughts in order. I think I'll start from the middle, if you don't mind. The end will come along soon enough, and if we find a beginning, so much the better--but I'm not going to worry about it.

Being up at 11 pm is pretty terrible, for me. Especially during test week. Today wasn't bad at all, really--I actually finished a 117 question test in about an hour and a half, so my first of the triad was over pretty quickly. However, the headache it left me with is sort of like herpes in that it is the gift that keeps on giving. (Actually, that was a terrible example, especially since I have a housemate whose worst fear in life, after contracting AIDs, is picking up The Herp by accident. I share her disinclination towards it, but the phrase popped into my head and...my fingers kept moving).

Back to the headache, which is why I'm typing in my bed instead of sleeping in it. I don't know why these things happen--one minute I'm answering question after question, starting to relax because I'm guessing well (and no matter what they may say, med school success is based on your ability to guess), and the next...well. Next, I suddenly realize that I feel like I've got my head trapped in a vise.

A two hour nap didn't help. Dinner didn't help, and opting for two (not one, but two) caffeine packed Excedrin, four hours ago, has left me with a raging headache and a lack of ability to go to sleep.

Incidentally, I overhead someone the other day philosophizing on the reasons why people claim to have headaches. I suppose it might be hard to empathize, if you've never had one in your life, but it was an eye-rolling moment to hear him claim that migraines are fallacies created by weak-minded people with low pain tolerance. I dunno, buddy--let's take a drill to your teeth and a hammer to your temples and see how you react, eh?

I suppose the end of this is that I don't know what to do. It's past miserable, by this point. I've tried distractions, like talking to Ryan--I've tried reading, but I can't see straight--watching TV, but it hurts worse--and sleep eludes me. And studying is impossible.

Perhaps I'm building empathy for people with chronic pain, because I can't imagine if this were an everyday thing. They try and teach us how to do that, here--how to understand people by putting yourself in their shoes. I don't think you can, really, unless you've experienced something similar. It's not something you can fake or simulate, and I don't think you should. But with pain, at least, I shouldn't have a problem.

The distraction isn't working. I'm going to try sleeping again...I'm so tired. I don't understand why these happen, but nothing is helping...-sighs-

Goodnight, all.

It's sort of fun being back, circumstances aside.

Stay tonight

I cry myself back into sleep
Where dark crows circle, and snow falls deep
And even lonely gray clouds weep
Along--and I am theirs to keep,
In restless, silent, icy sleep.

Words fail. I don't want to be this person.

Words

She stared down at the pen in her hand.

Why this morbid delight in destroying myself? Why the sick, twisted pleasure in pushing my body past driven and into hurting? Why? Why am I doing this? It's almost demonic. 


I think I do it on purpose, somewhere deep inside. Punishment, though for what I don't know. Maybe rebellion against my own limitations; maybe a perverse enjoyment of cruelty.


I stare bleary-eyed at the girl in the mirror, swaying with lack of sleep, lack of food, and dare her to stay awake just one more minute. You can do it, you have no limits, no boundaries. You are stronger than everything, even yourself. One more minute.


Just one more.


She dropped the pen beside the crumpled sheet of paper and walked away.

Bitter

Allow me to indulge in a bit of whining, with a touch of bitterness and self-loathing thrown in to make it well-rounded.

I don't want to be here right now.

I am, quite simply, tired of it. I am tired of studying. I am bored with days that are filled with words on pages, and learning isn't fun anymore. I walked out of class today because I'd had enough. I've been in that seat, in that room, every single weekday morning since August, and I'm done. Just done.

It feels like I'm missing something. The more I think about it, the more I realize that the something is just, life. The things that make my life worthwhile, and exciting, and interesting, where I wake up eager to figure out what the day is going to bring. And I don't roll out of bed anticipating what our next genetics lecture is going to cover. I crave interaction with people, and doing things with my hands, and going and seeing. Instead, I see the same four walls every single day.

It's harder when the things I'm missing are concrete, and not just ideas. I talked about Andrew and Tara's wedding, and my disappointment that I can't go--it just gets harder when I realize that friends are going to be there who I haven't seen in years. Every single one of mine will be at that wedding, except for me. They're going to be the first of us to get married. And almost closure for me, in a way. A final validation that, yes, things were hard, but it was worth it, worth fighting to keep those friendships, because the end result is beautiful. Perhaps I'm being dramatic, but it would have meant a great deal.

I want to leave for an entire weekend. I want three days in a row where I don't worry about studying, or my lack of productivity--where I wallow in doing absolutely nothing, or everything, whichever feels better.

I suppose what I really want is to remember the point. Why any of this matters at all. Why I ever wanted to do this, to be here, to sacrifice pieces of life for this. I don't know. Perhaps I don't have the drive everyone keeps saying I need--but what really kills me is that it doesn't matter if I do or not, if I'd rather be a thousand miles away or right here, or if I want to wash my hands of everything for a little while. I got myself into this, and it doesn't matter what I feel like. Still have to keep doing it.

3000 miles

Disappointed...heartsick. What I wouldn't give to be in Tennessee, with all of you, on May 13th. I thought I'd gotten over it, but I had a sudden urge to go check flight prices, just in case. Amazing things happen sometimes, right?

It's funny, really--I've never gotten upset over what I can't afford. After all, "stuff" doesn't matter, and I can do without most things. But this...this is different. It can't be replaced, or substituted, or experienced in any way except to simply be there. And I cannot.

last night

screaming until the world fractures
and comes apart
(every seam breaks)
the dark leaks drips forces through the cracks
filling in
the low places, and rising
(the dark is rising)
higher
and colder than the ring of
shrieks on ice
(muffled like snowfall)
the breaking of this lost world
ends trembling
rimmed in dawn.

I'm out of practice at this writing thing. Severely. Also, it is a terrible, terrible idea to drink Coke just before bedtime. No trouble getting to sleep, but I dreamed all night and woke up drenched in sweat from a particularly nasty little nightmare. I blame the Coke.

Soccer

I'm studying by the window. A girl from my class is on her lawn, just down the street, and she's kicking a soccer ball around. Bouncing it on her knees, practicing shots. She's probably on a study break. I wish I could go and join her, but I can't.

The problem isn't that I have too much to study, although that's certainly true. The real problem is me.

I loved being homeschooled. I never discovered it was a  handicap until I went to academy during my junior year. You see, all the way thought eighth grade I had never played any games that involved a football, baseball, racquetball. I grew past the age where most people begin to learn how to kick a soccer ball, and then suddenly everybody knew what they were doing, and I didn't have the first clue. And then I was old enough that the gap between what I didn't know how to do, and what everyone else did, was huge. I could have fixed it, but I was afraid. Everybody else that played soccer at the academy had been going to a summer camps to prep for intramurals, and I had never so much as kicked a ball in my life. And the last thing a shy, insecure teenager in a strange school wants to do is to draw attention to a flaw. I couldn't do it.

I had the chance again to play intramurals in college, but I passed because I didn't know how. I refused to learn on a team with girls I didn't know, and so I missed my chance, simply because I fear ridicule. I am incredibly afraid of looking foolish, and it drives a great many of my actions.

So I watched the girl down the street, and remembered all those moments I'd felt inferior and worthless, not only because I can't play, but because I couldn't overcome my fear and learn. And I cried, because I'm tired of living that way. I don't know how to stop, but somehow it's suddenly very important that I do.

I'll figure it out. Somehow.

Adrenaline

People like me probably shouldn't be allowed to control anything with wheels.

My boyfriend, however, thinks it's a good idea for me to learn this.

I agree.

Usually, I'm cautious--irritatingly so. I run off the board at anything more than a 1 % grade--I complain that there are too many people (one, that is half a mile away), too many obstacles (a sign about 10 feet off to the side), or that the bumps in the sidewalk will make me fall (snails wouldn't notice these cracks). I even scream sometimes, an obvious sign that I probably shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. 

But, it's fun. Incredibly so. And today, bookbag slung over my shoulder, I decided to follow Ryan down a way I shouldn't have. In retrospect, his "I'm going down this way, but you probably shouldn't" was most likely a dissuasion towards me following. But I was on a roll (literally), I was even carving (which I have issues with occasionally), and I didn't want to stop (I never do). So I used up my five-second bailout window with rationalizing and a transient bravado. After all, I'm invincible, right?

Well...no. I shot down into a parking lot, and there were ridges in the concrete and I nearly fell, so the valuable time I should have taken to carve and slow down, or stop altogether, was taken up by me trying to catch my balance. And then I was going too fast to stop, and I actually got scared. Really scared. I could see it ending very, very badly. 

But I didn't count on Ryan. He caught me, and the longboard shot on and hit the wall, and I ended up in a little bit of a heap. No scratches, though, no cuts, no bruises. Just a lot of adrenaline. And a deeper appreciation for boys who move really, really fast. 

I'm not sorry I did it. I'm tired of being too cautious to take risks, and if only for that reason, today was good for me. Keeps the heart rate going strong, you know. My hands are still shaking. 

Grey

Religion class today was about personalities.

The professor chose seven of us to line up at the front (I never fidget when I'm nervous--too much attention towards breathing and watching the dozens of faces staring at me. It's fun, but nerve-wracking). She then told the class, "All right. I want you to arrange these people in this order--if you asked one of them to do something, and they said no, which would you quickly take at their word, and which would you ask again and again, eventually changing their answer?"

"Oh, Alyssa goes on the "No" end for sure!" I might have actually taken a step backwards--that's how shocked I was to hear my name. At any rate, half-dozen people voted to move me to the beginning. One girl, when pressed, said that I seemed firm and steady, just in the few conversations we've had, and that she couldn't see me changing my mind unless it was very, very important. Another said I have a backbone of steel, and the third just stated that I was stubborn.

Enough people agreed that, when the game was over, I was either the strongest or the most impossible, depending on your point of view. I don't think I disagree.

I've been tentatively skirting the edges of depression these past few weeks. I know what it feels like--I know it well enough to be wary and uneasy and worried. I can also see it affecting the way I relate to people, how I handle conflict and stress. Some days are better than others. Today isn't one of them.

I don't understand how this dichotomy works. How can I be both things, strong and weak, all at once? Intellectually I can see it, how it can be so, but when it's me it feels...wrong. Something is off. I am off. And yet I have every reason to be happy. I am happy--but right now, it feels fragile.

I hate this.

So, I'm going to counseling. Just left my name and number, which is a step, at least. And while today has been grey in a multiplicity of ways, at the moment, I feel...hopeful.