resistance is futile

First off, movies. Saw two great ones this week:

The Man From Earth is a heady piece, the final work of noted sci-fi writer Jerome Bixby, who wrote some of the most beloved installments of Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. It all takes place in one room, making me think it would be perfect for a stage adaptation.

Mary and Max is a claymation loosely based on a true story of a pen-friendship between a young Australian girl and an old guy in New York with Aspberger's Syndrome. It was silly, funny, emotional, and altogether awesome. I can only watch movies with compartmentalized sadness these days, and my crying in this movie was limited to two brief moments.

With the rain, I am in full-on hibernation mode. I leave the house for about an hour each day, to exercise or run errands. When I'm hibernating, I like to cook and eat. And eat. And cook. And cook and eat some more. But being inside doesn't mean things can't be exciting! I keep things fresh by eating expired food. I think of it as an in-house consumer challenge. I really broke some personal records this week, eating yogurt that expired in November and canned beans that were, by Marido's estimate, "at least five years old." I cooked them first. I also pickled vegetables.

I've been sleeping deeply, with vivid dreams, averaging nine hours a night. I never thought I could sleep so much. And despite the nothingness-quality to my days lately, the sleep is not a depressing, escape-style sleep, where you wake up groggy and confused. I wake up feeling refreshed. This is a new thing for me.

Earlier in the week, I felt depressed. I weathered another lukewarm job interview wearing my newly purchased adult clothes. Following last week's interview, I went to Macy's to use the bathroom and, catching a sideways glimpse of myself in a mirror, mistook myself for a salesgirl. Further proving to the world that I am not cut out for corporate (or in this case, nonprofit--) America, I was able to bring up both drugs and incest at my interview this week.

Sometimes the days seem so thoroughly bland that I get extremely disoriented, as though I am in an all-white space with no walls, no ceiling, just your feet touching the white floor. The fact that it is white is important: it doesn't feel oppressive or claustrophobic--in fact, it is infinite, endless. The routine sometimes gives me a somewhat euphoric feeling. In the evening, when Marido comes home, I like to put my head on his lap and just experience his warmth and life. After a long day of me rolling around in these three rooms with only the ants for company, his presence can feel overwhelming--but in a good way. Things feel meditative lately: peaceful, happy.

Related: A Life Less Ordinary with Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz

the voices in my head say to chill the fuck out. oh, and i love you.

The 90-degree weather keeps on coming, and I am just cruising with it. Okay, so I allowed myself to suffer a bit, and then decided it was not getting me anywhere.

I thought about Detox Doc the other day, and how he would have coaxed me out of that bitter mood I was in. Sometimes you just resign yourself to a fate, you know? I had resigned myself to being lost and hot and miserable. I don't know why. But another take-away message from my State of New York-sponsored detox program is that guilt/suffering/certainties are gifts from Satan that you do not have to accept. So, no thanks, darling of the darkness: return to sender.

I slid into this world here with some totally random rules for myself that have been making my life unnecessarily difficult. Like I told myself I wouldn't socialize with English-speakers (so I could accelerate my Spanish learning), I wouldn't go out with boys (distractions!), and that I would really live within my means...a steady diet of cheese, salami, and sliced bread. I don't know why I thought I should come to Buenos Aires and live like a fucking nun. I guess that is just how I am. And every time I faltered on these rules, I would feel really bad about it. But then Detox Doc came to me in my insomniatic haze last night and spoke magical things to me, mainly calling me silly for placing these unrealistic--and sort of pointless--expectations on myself.

I sent him a Christmas postcard. But I don't think he got it. Out of the dozen postcards I sent, I have only heard that two made it through. One was to San Francisco and one was to Chicago. I think the NYC post office just dumped them in the East River, which sucks. They were damn good postcards, and rather expensive to send.

Anyhow. I'm relaxing my rules, relaxing myself, and all is so much better when I'm not constantly berating myself for being a failure. Okay, so I'm not exactly a huge success story. Living off your savings in a country with a favorable exchange rate is not go-getter material, particularly if you're not even 30 years old. But the phantom Detox Doc said to me last night, "Who are you comparing yourself with?" And I was like...um...you know, my friend Playboy who is like an international telecommunications consultant and just bought a fucking Ducati. In New York City. And then there's Girlfriend, who is moving in with her girlfriend, and finishing up her fifth year in her secure and satisfying teaching career. Or, Christ, my little brother, who owns his own place in Chicago and regularly makes payments to his 401K. I guess I'm just jealous of people who don't go through life feeling like they're constantly walking on the wrong side of the street.

But I have other heroes too. Like you and you and you. Let me digress for a second.

For a hot minute I was sure I was going to marry this Straightedge Vegan I met in Chicago. And barring the obvious inherent WTF? in that imaginary coupling, there is the feeling that when you make open-and-shut decisions like that in your life, you miss out on a lot of the tortuous angst that makes you the well-rounded, articulate individual who can get along at most dinner parties. What is a cocktail hour if we can't discuss some sort of existential crisis? My whole life seems to be about toeing the lines between creativity and criminality. I think that is why I don't have any friends who are doctors, lawyers, or accountants. I like to start with people from the netherworld of "Okay, people, where the hell are we and where are we going?" If both of these premises are understood, I really don't know where to go from there.

There are people in my life like Playboy and Girlfriend and Little Brother who have more solid ground than I do, but the reason why we can still relate is that they are constantly changing their footing. We are all antsy in our own ways. Some people are accepting--of their jobs, their cities, their friends, their lovers. They are into settling down in some ways. And then there are those of us who don't know the meaning of settling down, no matter how secure they may be. I am in awe of people who can commit to their careers, their partners, and their cities. But I know they have a lot to do with people like me who can't commit to a damn thing. This great American travel writer once said, "You can't shoot a cannon from a raft," or something like that. And it's so true...! But if you did try it, it would certainly be a hell of a ride.

jobseeking

“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Gustave Flaubert

One Friday every month, I have a nexus of mental wellness appointments, where I see my therapist, my psychiatrist, an hour in-between where I treat myself to a Korean lunch, followed by bikram yoga. It's like take care of Seriously day. Korean lunch is awesome, because they give you like an assortment of six different pickled delicious treats, and I sit there and pick at them with my chopsticks and think about how fucken sober I am and then when you think the meal is over, they give you this bowl of cold, cinnamon-flavored liquid that goes down like "ah."

I'm gradumucating in about six weeks and I now spend at least two hours every day thinking about what I'm going to do be doing following this massive, life-changing event. It fills me with unspeakable anxiety. For the past two years, I have been on a Mom-and-Pop-endowed vacation, with my rent and living habits generously supported, no questions asked, because they believe in higher education, and are largely unaware that this degree is preparing me to actually make less money than I was making before as a graphic designer.

Ha!

Jobseeking is the most demoralizing activity, even more so than smoking crack, cleaning up cum in peepshow booths, online dating, and going through detoxification. It asks you to trade your life and time for the illusion of security and self-preservation at one low, devalued price. While you're doing it, you always feel this strange mix of nausea and excitement, kind of like a fourteen-year-old girl giving her first blowjob. It's very dirty. You're thinking, "This feels inherently disgusting, but everyone does it...and maybe if I do it right, someone will give me a bonus." And this is just the first step into one of many of choking down something that just doesn't seem right, thinking that this is the way the world works, and you better goddamn get used to it and do it better than everyone else.

But today I am ready to say fuck it! I had a very supportive conversation with Keetens last night. I don't much like to talk about how terrified I am about The Future, mainly because I know what I have to do, I just don't like the idea of hard work and poverty. It sucks. I've been poor before, and it sucks. But I've also worked a job that I've hated before, and I think it largely contributed to the rapid escalation of my alcohol consumption. What good, really, is a decently-paying job, if you just use the extra funding to numb the gag reflex? I'm older now. And sober...so maybe I don't need all that extra money anyway. I don't want to have to numb the gag reflex. I'm sick of choking down life. I only want to add things to my life that I like. If that's too much to ask, well, then, I'm asking it anyway. I just don't want to add more meaningless shit to the world. If I can start with just me, with only adding things that mean something to me, then that's where I'm going to start.

no country for old men

I watched that movie the other night and only one thing stuck with me, the scene where he is laying there in bed and he can't sleep, so he gets up in the middle of the night and leaves, and his wife is asking "Where you going, Lou Alan?" And he just says, "Oh, I'm fixin' to do something dumber than hell, but I'm going to do it anyway." And sure enough, it is dumb as hell, and he does do it anyway, and it leads to even more dumb shit, and even more dumb shit, and instead of anonymously smoking away $2 million with his thumb up his ass, he ends up bloody and dead in some crappy motel far away from home.

Somehow, that is how I feel today. Like, I look back and I try to pinpoint the exact moment where I made that statement, the exact moment where I got out of bed, where I was lying there in that comfort zone and I got out of it and plunged myself into this confounding reality.

How did I get here?

Yesterday I ate about 4 pounds of sugar. Everything started to vibrate. It was pretty intense. I felt funny all day. There was a cocaine-addled mirror on my table taunting me. I held it in my hands for about ten minutes and then threw it away. It's strange to throw away something that is in perfectly good condition. It made me feel like I was insane. I felt hungover, even though all I did was smoke cigarettes and eat every fucking thing in sight. Oh yes, and then I did something very odd, which was to spontaneously crack out on spending the next 24 hours applying for a Soros Foundation fellowship. When I finally got to school today I realized I'd slept more in the past three days than I had in the last three weeks, probably. It made me feel really weird, almost woozy.

As I was leaving the house I checked my mail, and got a sweet little postcard from Joe. He told me he missed me. It made me hate him with all of my heart, because I am feeling lonely and spiteful.

home again

I'm back in the Chi, and it is even colder and snowier than the NY. I was stranded at home without snow tires, so I was thwarted from my hotly-anticipated day of hanging out with New Crush, which was a big letdown, but I went took the train downtown to wander around in the slush and see E, which was marvelous.

I was so charged to get out of the house today that I embarked on a three-mile walk to get to the train station. Let me tell you that this is no small order of business in my town, but being at home makes me crazy. The bickering with Mom & Pop has been steadily escalating since sobriety happened, and I'm crazy anxious about the massive amount of time we're going to spending together. We haven't spent this much consecutive time together in about a decade (yep, that's right). It makes me want to gnaw through my wrist bone. Somehow I will get through this, and somehow I am going to do it without (a) drinking (b) smoking and hopefully (c) a murder-suicide. It's a lot harder for me to handle my parents dead sober.

WonderWoman told me that I've lost at least one blog reader because I've gotten too depressing. She also asked me one night if I was bored, because I seemed bored, thus pandering to two of my worst fears about sobriety, that I would become boring and depressing. I know she didn't mean to do this, but hey, there it is. I don't know what to say to that. I hate the idea that my adventures in booze are so much more entertaining than my repetitive battles with reality.

I've been distracting myself by thinking of how I'm going to de-stress following two weeks of vacation with M&P. I've become totally obsessed with the idea of going to Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. I really want to go to the desert, and have some kind of near-death-by- dehydration experience. I know this is totally specific, but I envision this as being a kind of natural high, and remember that I'm totally fucken sober, and I could really go for some kind of out-of-body experience. I imagine that almost dying of thirst in the desert would get me very close to the kind of high that I need lately. Maybe I would have some kind of epiphany. I am a big fan of epiphanies. I would be like "Oh my god, everything is going to be okay. No wait, everything is okay." That is the kind of epiphany I want. That is what, I think, my adventures in booze gave to me most nights.

M&P do not think it is a good idea for me to spend a week camping by myself in the desert. This is understandable, because I've only been camping a handful of times in my life, and always in the company of some burly dudes. But this lack of faith, of course, makes me hate them. This is why I hate coming home. Instead of having a dick and flying a plane, I am like a eunuch without a driver's license. Everything I've done in the past fifteen years evaporates and all I want to do is run away from home, or smoke cigarettes in the bathroom and read comic books.

But, back to Big Bend. I talked to Ex the other day, as I waited for my flight home, and he was interested in coming camping with me. Camping with Ex is fun. In fact, most of my camping experiences have been with Ex. He's been to Big Bend before. He would be a great sherpa. He would probably make sure that my near-death wish doesn't accidentally go 100 percent.

Or maybe I should come home to the NY. I miss it already. Funny when you realize a place has truly become home. Even when you don't really want it to, because it's so cold. Then you go someplace even colder.

the lighting of the candles

I am so stressed that: (a) I went to the driving range to hit golf balls with my dad yesterday even though it was snowing, (b) my period is so late that I'm beginning to think I'm pregnant and (c) I searched "stress" and when this link came up, this photo to the left came up with a caption that said something along the lines of, "A severely stressed person will find many differences between these dolphins jumping out of the water when in fact they are identical," and it took me several moments of severe inner reflection before realizing that some people out there think it's funny to toy with people who are on the brink of losing their minds.

I have embarked on my 8 days of serious business. It is that time of year when I want to give up on things like (a) the five classes that compose $chool, (b) attempts at self-reformation, and (c) geniality. I become generally unpleasant. I don't know how I got through this last year...and last year I had quit smoking at this time. I have lost a lot of faith in myself I guess. When I looked at that cow and that dolphin and really doubted myself, I knew I was in trouble. It's funny when you go through big life changes and instead of feeling proud and strong, all you can think of is that you sure weren't as smart as you thought you were. It makes me wonder if I know anything at all.

I have been thinking a lot about Joe lately, but I can't call him or anything. Of course not. This is part of the lack of self-trust that's happening lately. In the absence of any high for my mind to latch onto, it seems to want to glom onto Joe really fucken badly. When I think about him, it kind of has the same effect on my brain as the fond recollection of a seventh beverage. I'm starting to really miss the love-inducing feeling of The Booze. Without it, I guess I get like this. All self-doubty and dolphin-and-cow-y. I'm getting all weird about everything now. Everything feels strange. Dolphin. Cow. Dolphin. Cow. Dolphincowdolphincowdolphincow.

I have decided not to go to Miami with ACLU lawyer. The dates turned out to be a weekend off kilter, and I want to try out being good to Joe now. I know I said that I thought I was going to marry the lawyer, but like I said, dolphincow.

Or, like this dude said to me on the plane last night, "I'm trying to be honest in my relationships now, and part of that is giving relationships an honest chance."

hope and change, and it's not about obama

...though I am so anxious about tomorrow's election that I don't know what to do!!

BTW, free Starbucks on election day, heads up...

On the advice of my new CMC doc, I'm "sobriety sampling" this week. I promised to try and do three drinks per day. I'll actually be happy with six. Gotta start somewhere. But, in an effort to do due diligence, I've switched to wine, so I can indulge my oral fixation for longer periods of time and not feel like I'm depriving myself.

I've been secretly obsessing over the nice man I met last weekend in Chahlston, and thinking that I really should marry an older man, and possibly even someone who lives all the way across the country. That would get rid of so many Y-chromosome-related challenges in my life, at least for the moment. I've never dated someone significantly older than me and I think the stability would be such a good thing for me. Maybe he would find my fear and loathing somehow charming. Or he would just put up with it because I'm twenty years younger than him.

So I haven't called Joe in two weeks, since that night I called him up and he came over to calm me down. He very sweetly offered to make me dinner when I got back, but I have been in such a wretched mood that the only people I can bear to speak to, much less be around, are people whom I've known for at least three years. He called me tonight and something tells me I'm not going to call him back. Suddenly all I can think is, "What the fuck would I say?" This is the problem when I ease off the drink. My body has some kind of liquid quota, and it just fills in the gaps with piss and vinegar.

But I'm trying. I have to keep telling myself that it's just like quitting smoking, that the moodiness will pass. I just wish it was May and not November, and that I was pulling out my sandals and pretty dresses and not putting them away. I have *such* a hard time with the cold.

Anyhow, Big Brother thinks I should stop hanging out with everyone I know who tolerates my misbehavior. Hence my third night at home in a row, though to be fair we did cook a massive dinner last night, and Saturday night Entourage kept me company. Trimming the fat to me means Joe, even though he has expressed interest in going sober with me. I guess I just don't believe him. John said the same thing about the coke, but that lasted all of one day. I guess more than belief in someone, I just don't think that anyone can take care of me except for me. That's not being cynical, I don't think, just realistic.

I just don't want sobriety to be lonely. But today Doc hit a nerve when he got me to reveal just how insecure I am when I am sober, how I allow my thoughts to torture me, how at times I feel like it's about to happen...that the destructo part of my psyche will finally win this war of attrition, and I will just SNAP violently or silently disintegrate...and that it will surprise people even more than it surprises me, because lately it's been harder and harder to engage in self-deception.

This blog is really on its way out. I feel like it's started to replace real human interactions. I assume that the ten or so of you read it and that I don't have to explain myself to you anymore, and I think this is a bad thing.

November be damned. We will win, I will win, we will get through this.

mania in motion

I am writing this post at 9 pm, somewhere outside of Richmond, Virginia. I’m almost in my eleventh hour on the train, and we are running horrendously late, so we’ve got almost seven more to go. I stupidly got on the train with a small bag of snacks and zero cash or booze, so it’s going to be a long ride that feels even longer.

Can I tell you what transpired in my last night in Charleston? After having a homemade lasagna dinner with the parents of my CS host at his childhood home, we zoned out and watched television while I pounded vitamins because I wasn’t feeling well. But I didn’t want to deal with more rejection, so I briskly hugged him goodbye and walked out into the night. Charleston is not a big place, and I ran into several people I’d met during the weekend. That was kind of nice. A little before midnight, I decided it was time for my second dinner and a game of pool, so I paid my tab and went to migrate to another bar, when this old fortune cookie fortune fell out of my wallet: Everything is coming together.

At the bar I met a sweet guy who works as a lawyer for the ACLU and we bonded while waiting almost an hour for the food he ended up paying for, and talking to a big white guy who doesn’t believe that mankind has any impact on climate change. I thought ACLU was charming and intelligent—everyone knows I have a weakness for Southern boys—though he was not a boy at all, probably a good fifteen years on me. When we left the bar and he invited me back for a nightcap at his place. This led to an hour of the following inner monologue on repeat:

I shouldn’t do this. Stranger. Rental car. Hotel. Not my city. Makings of a disaster film. But that’s not reality! This is reality. This is a nice, sweet man who works for the ACLU. I’m not afraid of him at all. I actually really like him. I trust my instincts. Or are they really my instincts? Am I just drunk? I don’t think I’m drunk. I’ve only had seven drinks over as many hours. See, that complex sentence structure shows just how lucid I am. But what if I regret it? What would I regret? Am I just being paranoid? I hate not trusting someone who seems totally trustworthy. It makes me feel like a paranoid, crazy freak. Seriously, you should just go home. But where’s the fun in that?

He was staying at a fancy hotel downtown, and hadn’t even checked in yet. It was two a.m. and I looked like hell, and when the concierge asked us if we needed one key or two, I suddenly felt like a prostitute. Hotels do that to me. We went upstairs, had a brandy, and I started to leave because you know how I feel about hotel sex…

So I am thinking about dissolving this blog because I think it’s gotten way too personal and I feel like it’s apt to cause more problems than it solves, mostly because it doesn’t really solve any problem other than the satisfaction of my gratuitous, self-obsessive impulses.

After a few hours of sleep, I suddenly woke up and realized I had to leave right then if I were to get done what I had to get done—buy cartons of cigarettes, get back to my host’s apartment to pick up my stuff, and get to a café to download some work files—if I wanted to make my train. When I got to the lobby, I was greeted by three staff members, and for the second time in several hours, I felt like a whore and was so flustered that I ran out the wrong exit, cornered myself in the hotel garden, and had to pass them all again on the real way out.

I thought about him in the back of my mind all day, and regretted only one thing: running out on him this morning. He looked so confused. I don’t know where this flight syndrome comes from, but I find it very hard to fight. Then I convince myself that I was in love with them, and I feel tragic and infantile and pathetic. It’s one thing to want what you cannot have, it’s another thing to prevent yourself from ever having what you want.

motivation and change, institutionalised

Yesterday a counselor at $chool referred me to the Center for Motivation and Change, what she described as a "skills center" for wealthy, functional people. I think she said something like, "Oh, you know, it's full of like, stockbrokers and lawyers who know that they party too much." It kind of cracked me up. It is totally expensive and the home page is littered with stock photos of Buddha and bamboo, but apparently $chool will cover parts of it, which I find both hilarious and exciting. I am motivated to change, thank you very much. I just don't really believe it is possible, when poisoning myself slowly has proved itself so effective and accessible.

Last night I smoked a spliff, watched Ciao, Professore! and went to sleep at 8:30. It was so needed. I was so bitchy and exhausted Sunday night that I almost didn't go out when Curly called me over to Red's for what has become a weekly Sunday night cookout, followed by dancing at Black Betty. But of course I did go, and didn't get home until almost 4 a.m., and so I was a sad sight yesterday, trying to talk to the counselor and conduct a phone interview with an ICT policy wonk in DC. He was interesting though. Functional and wealthy! Hah! That makes me laugh in my most sad, deeply cynical way.

radical upswing

There is a reason why people seek professional help, and I think it's to avoid posting horribly depressing things like the post I put up yesterday! I don't know what compelled me to do that. Wait, yes I do. I was picturing people's reactions when they'd heard I'd gone completely fucken insane and thinking, "She did what? I didn't know she was feeling like that." I just didn't want there to be any surprises. You've been warned. And thank you for your love anyhow. I love that you love me, even if I'm a finicky little bitch. I'm sorry to worry people. Sometimes I want people to worry about me, and sometimes I don't. But don't worry. If I need you, I will call. Just pick up the damn phone!

I'm feeling a lot better today. I woke up and still couldn't really breathe, but I did sleep, and in my mind I told myself that I would not die, that even though mental instability does not feel good, it will not kill me, at least not directly. I am working through things. I just need tranquilizers in the meanwhile, or to wait until the pendulum swings in the opposite direction and I can think about more serious things, like why the Wall Street bailout makes me so angry and why I can't concentrate on school and why I want to be in a relationship if I can't seem to commit to anything at all. I read a piece of iFluff today about OCD dating. Bwahaha! That's totally me. Anyhow all the little pieces of ecstasy flooding my brain feel good today instead of bad, and this is good news. I have to take advantage of my good moods and try to get things done.

Tonight I am going to try a radical experiment in my NYC dating spree, which is to basically tell John that I have no idea what is going on, but that he can't expect anything of me, really. I don't know what I mean by that because the whole creation of any kind of relationship is managing expectations. Maybe it's saying that I don't want to be in a relationship at all? But I don't want to just continue having casual sex. What if I go celibate for a year? Now I'm just talking crazy. Okay, so I haven't figured out what I'm going to say to him at all. I'm just going to wing it. This is how it's probably going to start, though:

Me: So....
J: So...
Me: I want to say something but I'm not sure what.
J: Okay...
Me: Hm, maybe I should have another drink.
(20 minutes later)
Me: Let's fuck!

Just kidding. Jesus Christ, I'm just kidding. FYI, I haven't had more than six drinks in one night in a week! It's this new thing they call "moderation."

Me: So....
J: So...
Me: I want to say something but I'm not sure what.
J: Okay...
Me: Look, I don't want to dwell on the intense exchange we had last weekend, but it's got me thinking that maybe I've led you to believe certain things that aren't true. I've been accused of leading people on before, and if that's the case, I'm sorry that my actions are misleading. So let's just clear shit up right now. I am not looking to dive headfirst into anything serious right now. I know we had sex within a few hours of meeting each other, which doesn't typically equate to anything serious, so let's just stick with that for now. Maybe in a couple months after seeing each other weekly, I'll ask you what your last name is. If that is going to cause more scenes like the one we had the other night, though, we better have a couple of cocktails and call it a night.

up to no good

So...shit has been crazy lately, and not in a good way. Went to the CP and read to her. I read to my doctors when I feel like I am just going to go in a blather on unproductively because there's so much on my mind that I want to explode...

This is what I read to her:

I feel fucking terrible, tweaky, horrible, and I am just sitting here waiting to leave to go speak to the CP and tell her yes, I want to see a psychiatrist, I want drugs drugs drugs drugs drugs! I want Xanax; I want tranquilizers; I want to beat my head against the wall so I can pass out and dream about unicorns and oceans and clouds. It is bizarre. I have been on the verge of tears since I woke up this morning. There was a moment when I swore I could feel all these tiny pieces of ecstasy flooding my skull and soaking my brain tissue, and then I got the chills and felt very cold. I couldn’t believe it, but I wanted coffee and cigarettes despite feeling so tweaky tweaky tweaky and I had both and felt a little better. Maybe it’s just the force of habit that I find calming.

Yesterday I was a tweakfest. I could hardly sleep and when I woke up I felt like I was so awake that I could hardly breathe. Neighbor popped in and I think I scared her but I cooked her food and ranted about my borough tour the previous night where I somehow went from Williamsburg to Hell’s Kitchen to Park Slope and then to the East Village and still made it home by five. I was so tired and all I wanted to do was sleep but I woke up at nine. I tried to read boring things to sleep, but I was so tweaky that I had to go outside and run up the hills in Fort Tryon to try and burn it out of my system. Thank god Friend appeared on the scene and we talked about all our issues and lay on the floor of the Elifur Oliasson exhibit at PS1 and giggled at the mirror on the ceiling spinning around and around. Friend asked me what my deepest dark fear was and I thought about it for a long time and said that I fear that my mind will turn against me and destroy me. He said the same thing. Then we lay and laughed so hard that I cried. I felt so high and beautiful and happy.

It’s funny because if you ask me about my weekend I’d say it was great fun. I got some shit done at Strong and Whisper’s and I felt calm, good. Strong has a calming effect on me. I feel like my thoughts are in order when she is around, maybe it’s because she thinks she’s crazy and out of control. It’s when I’m alone that I feel the worst and most desperate. This morning I had the old feeling of wanting to jump into traffic and that’s when I thought I must see a psychiatrist and he must give me drugs and I must take them. I can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen. I know that it’s coming. Once again I think of K and that infamous line of his as he comes out of meth hell and probation: "It’s okay. I knew it was going to happen.”

The boys are driving me crazy, and I am letting them. John texted me Saturday and we are going out on Tuesday. Fucking JOE called me last night and I was drunk and didn’t know who it was and we are going out on Wednesday. Today Sohji, the beautiful Caribbean boy I met Saturday night texted me and left me a voicemail which I am scared to pick up, because I told him he could take me out on Thursday and I know I’m going to go and I hate myself for it and I don’t know why. Last night I found myself at Black Betty dancing with Model and Red and Red’s Brother and Curly, who makes me delirious with desire. I went outside and sat on the curb, all drunk and stoned and wondered what the fuck I was doing there, if Friend was right, and if I’m about to start hurting people, hurting boys by playing with them too hard. John has already been hurt by me. But it’s not my fault. As I was leaving, Model grabbed me and asked me what my deal was, why I don’t call him. I don’t understand why we are like this, why these boys think they can claim me, and they get angry when I tell them they can’t, and they still want me and I still hang out with them. It’s bad for everyone. I think this is what Friend was talking about. I feel like I’m about to destroy someone, and they are going to destroy me right back and I will have deserved it.

My mother is coming on Friday for the weekend. I am terrified for her to see me like this. The thing is, she doesn’t have to. I can spend all weekend with her walking and reading and eating and telling her about cute boys and parties and my thesis and my novel and take her out with friends and never talk about anything. I don’t want her to worry about me. But more than that, I don’t want her to see that I’ve failed to recover from what worried her so much so long ago. I don’t want her to know, but I do. I don’t know if I should tell her what’s going on. I think she would want to know, but what would that accomplish? If she could have done something, she would have.

Sober September

I am not a happy camper this week. Sobriety has left me in a cold, unstable place, and this morning when I woke up, I coughed up blood. It's not like I'm mentally fiending for alcohol, it's just that I don't understand why I feel so much better when I'm allowed to drink 3-15 drinks each evening.

Oh wait, yes I do understand why I feel so much better. I guess what I don't understand is why it's so bad for me.

The day before yesterday I received an email from a friend who disappeared six years ago from San Francisco. I'd heard he'd rejoined the world and was looking for me, so the email wasn't a total-total surprise, but let's just say that there was a lot in that three-paragraph email. It was the kind of email you can write when you hit rock bottom and completely lose: any sense of shame, any desire to embellish/entertain with your stories, the ability to restrain yourself from telling every single person how much you love them.

Aside from the bare facts and indicators of having crawled out of hell but still being on all fours, one of his last sentences really got to me. He said, "It's okay--I knew it was going to happen." The first "it" referring to life, oneself, the general state of affairs, and the second "it" referring to all the bleak allusions to hell. This simple statement really got to me. It makes perfect sense that we should drive ourselves through shit like this, knowing full well where it will take us. It doesn't make any sense, but we do it.

And, I suppose, this is what drove me back to seek some psych services this week for the first time in more than eight years. I don't want to say this statement to myself, that it is okay, that I knew it was going to happen. I don't want that to resonate with me the way it did. I know where things are going. They have been going there for the past few years, and they are progressing in a way that seems manageable and socially acceptable. I also know that I'm really good at (a) coping via self-medication, (b)going through extreme work-reward cycles, (c) spacing out my social engagements so that few people see how hard I'm hitting it every single night. I'm one of those girls that thinks to herself, "What was I wearing the last time I saw this person?" Only these days I think in terms of how fucked up I was the last time.

It's my September regression, and it scares me. I am too old for this shit.

Doppelganging

this post is dedicated to keetins and to anyone else who knows that it is possible to love life so much that you wish you were dead.

Last night we went on an internet binge and read all about doppelgangers, our phantom selves that accompany us throughout life. As part of my new separation from mind and self, (or feelings from thoughts) I feel like I'm kind of prancing around, holding hands with mine and, like any relationship, sometimes hating her, sometimes winking at her slyly for being the only one in the secret, which makes me love her.

In the middle of my 8 days of intense concentration, however, my mind is not easily ignored, and my "feeling" doppelganger has now begun to put the "thinking" doppel on a pedestal and started to write odes to her. Usually, it's the other way around. By "usually," I mean that certain periods of intense exhilaration that I have come to suspiciously regard as mania, the "thinking" self becomes fully obscured by the seeking and sating of all of life's worldly pleasures. Let me illustrate. This is the normal pattern of thought that occurs when "feeling" and "thinking" co-exist and, in my case, "feeling" usually beats "thinking" into submission.

Feeling: I feel bad. I need something. Sex? Booze? What is it?
Thinking: Is that what you really need? Sex and booze can fulfill your short-lived desires, but your deeply rooted unhappiness will still remain.
Feeling: Shut up, you. Deeply rooted unhappiness cannot be corrected right now, can it genius?
Thinking: This is a self-destructive pattern. We've got to start somewhere.
Feeling: All right, genius. Start. Make us feel better.
Thinking: Uhh...I'm thankful for my friends. My family. My health.
Feeling: I'm not feeling better. Are you?
Thinking: No.
Feeling: Of course not, genius! You got nothing! Let's try this again. Sex or booze?
Thinking: Well, booze would make sex easier.
Feeling: Yes! I knew you were good for something. Great, that's a plan. We're in this together now.
Thinking: Okay, but I'll get you back tomorrow morning.
Feeling: Stop trying to play the "you" and "me" game, friend. You mean, you'll get us back in the morning. If we got to make the trip to Shame City, we're getting a double room.
Thinking: Yes, double rooms are a better value.
Feeling: See, you can't deny me. We're one and the same.
Thinking: You're right. I don't know what I was thinking.
Feeling: You're always thinking. I exist for a reason.
Thinking: Yes. Without you, we would never have any fun.
Feeling: Now quit your yapping and get us a drink.
Thinking: Yes, sir.

In times of mania, feeling and thinking kind of merge into this kind of thought stream:

Feeling: I feel bad. I need something. Sex? Booze? What is it?
Thinking: What is this, junior high? You forgot drugs, guns, and the reckless endangerment of everyone we care about!
Feeling: God, where would I be without you? Of course.
Thinking: Okay, let's call everyone we know and get this Tuesday started!
Feeling: Yeah! Let's do it! God, I love you.
Thinking: And I love you.

Synergy is indeed a beautiful thing. It eliminates so much conflict. Now, what happens when thinking wins over feeling?

Feeling: I feel bad. I need something. Sex? Booze? What is it?
Thinking: God, your material desires bore me. Have we learned nothing? We will always feel bad until we learn to think outside of ourselves. The only way to not feel better is to cure the world of its ills through the disciplined practice of Extreme Intellectualism.
Feeling: Are you serious? We've been through this before. And last time I checked, sex and booze got us lots of lovin'.
Thinking: I am ignoring you. I'm serious about this. Where can we start? The politics of the world stage? The labor market? Marxism? Capitalism?
Feeling: Okay, I can see you're feeling a little overexcited. You're delusional. You need to settle down there. Why don't we calm down, take a Xanax, and go to sleep. We'll talk about booze tomorrow.
Thinking: Sleep is for the weak. I am on the brink of something huge here. Oh my god, it's so obvious. Freud. How can we possibly think about society as a whole without first considering the most basic unit of society, the individual?
Feeling: I thought I knew you. I'm hurt. I have needs, too, my pompous friend.
Thinking: Well, you're going to have to go get tanked without me. I have bigger concerns now.
Feeling: I can't do this without you! We're a team, remember?
Thinking: I am ignoring you. Perhaps you haven't noticed.
Feeling: Nobody will like us anymore.
Thinking: Those people don't concern us anymore.
Feeling: Do you think you can do this without me?
Thinking: Oh yes. I am quite capable. You, my childish ghost of a soul, are what's been holding me back all these years.
Feeling: Right. Well, go then. See how far you make it on your own.
Thinking: I will. Once I achieve world peace, we can be friends again.
Feeling: Not unless you bring the bourbon.
Thinking: You'll see.
Feeling: So will you.

Hanukkah madness, madness, madness!

Strangely enough, my eight days of go-time here at school correspond exactly to the eight nights Yo La Tengo is playing sold-out shows in Hoboken, as well as the eight nights of Hanukkah.

It's been a most invigorating week, kicked off by a Saturday gazing into the mirror of my soul, reflected in the eyes of keetens. There are some people who are so like me in such pointed ways that it makes me uncomfortable to spend time with them. At the same time, their very existence is comforting and inspiring. This is why I have this love-hate relationship with my NA groups, and why I couldn't go this week. But I thinking talking to her made me realize that change is inevitable, because without change we either (a) continue to kill ourselves, or we (b) have no conflict, in which case we pretty much cease to exist.

Then Sunday vertical writer woke me up to tell me to look outside. For a long and beautiful moment, my mind was completely blank except for the sound of myself saying "Holy Shit." Everything outside was covered in a pure white silence.

My five-mile jog in the snow and the couple of 14-hour days on campus this week showed me that I am more or less comfortably enmeshed in a manic state of finals and euphoria. It's about fucken time. A few years ago, I realized the signficance of October, during which I flicker through being depressed and acting like it, and being depressed and exhausting myself trying to act like I'm not. RLP also fears October, and one October evening we had the following phone conversation in San Francisco:

RLP: What are you doing?
SB: Sitting in the dark. Watching TV.
RLP: What are you watching?
SB: Snow.
RLP: Snow?
SB: I just realized the TV is on, but it's not on a station. I've been watching snow for a few hours now.
RLP: Why is life like this? Why does October suck?
SB: You mean, why does life suck?
RLP: I feel like we could be on an after-school special right now about how to be a depressing shame to yourself and everyone you know. It would be called "Wasted Potential."
SB: That is really funny. I would laugh if I hadn't been doing all those drugs for the past five years.

Last year, I came to terms with November being a time of intense self-reflection involving massive life changes, accepting responsibility, and quitting smoking.

This year, I am accepting that, following October and November, it is only right that December and January are times of extreme energy and excitement about everything, everything, everything! This year it is a little tempered because I am pretty much sober, so now I get to crack out on Extreme Intellectualism.

I am incredibly excited about the world that has been opening up to me as a result of Columbia-induced malaise, Eckhart Tolle, and cuz, a PhD student whose lecture on Tuesday made me incredibly happy and loud. All this brain function makes me want to be a PhD student, a thought which is alternately repulsive and awe-inspiring. How does that work? How can you possibly not work for 7 years? I just don't get it.

Yesterday I had a funny meeting with my Quit Counselor because when I am amped up about life, I don't like to talk about the past or any kind of struggle, something that I normally cream over. I was kind of in denial that I have quit smoking and that it is affecting me at all. I felt like it would never get better, and then it did, so what is there left to talk about? Let's move on.

We started talking about winter break plans, because he is going to have to give me a large supply of nicotine patches to last me the month. Last week I would have only been too happy to talk about how stressful my return to San Francisco is going to be, but yesterday the stress was a moot point, and instead I turned to extolling the virtues of Love Affair. He said, politely, "Well, you'll have to tell me what happens when you get back." And instead of saying "Fucken A, you and everyone I know is going to get a blow-by-blow account of everything we said, ate, and saw, whether you want to or not," I told him that there would be nothing to tell. Or, rather, I would tell him right then and there would would happen, because I already knew. We're going to have a good time, see some sights, and enjoy each other's company. We will have fun. We will laugh a lot about stupid shit. We might have sex, we might not, it won't matter. We won't talk about the past; we won't talk about the future, and then we'll leave each other again and not speak for a while.

Hearing myself say this was quite satisfying. Not terribly awe-inspiring, but satisfying.

november i loved you but you brought me down

It's been *so* long since I've posted that I thought I should do it now, before it got to be so long that to write would have required too much explanation.

My dear friend's disclosure last week left me feeling detached from the world. When you live in New York and someone is breaking your heart from Alaska, I get the feeling your insides dump out somewhere in northern Montana, a cold and mountainous place, from what I understand. It's jarring, but then again, what are you going to do? After you cry about it for a while, you've got to find your heart thumping somewhere and swallow it back in to where it belongs so you can smile when some good-hearted soul buys you three shots of tequila for looking so down. Organs in glaciers are good finds for the explorers of the future, but they don't do as much good right now.

Speaking of right now, I read a book this week called The Power of Now, which I want to tell you all about. Seems I was ripe for an injection of spirituality, because when my mother offered it to me over the break, I jumped at it like she was offering me a pack of Winston Lights. And yes, yes, YES!--this book was on Oprah Winfrey's Book Club.

When I told my little brother about it, he asked me what "the take-away message" was. I love him. Basically, there are two themes of the book: Forget time, and forget yourself.

Forgetting time is hard. I, for one, am always brooding over the past: how it fucked me up, how it's still fucking me up. I am also one to pin all my hopes on the future: things will be better once I get through this, once I figure this out, once I meet and marry Joey Comeau. (He writes! He plays chess! He's cynical and edgy but maintains that idiotic faith in life that I adore!) But, simply put, how can we be happy in the future? We never live in the future. We live in the present.

Forgetting yourself is even harder. Eckhart Tolle writes that one of the most damaging spikes to inner peace was Descartes' proclamation "I think, therefore I am." The notion that we are our thoughts seems obvious, but we really are not our minds. There is a challenging dualism that we so frequently face, evidenced in cliches like "My heart says yes, but my mind says no," or the author's wake-up call one day: I can't live with myself anymore.

There's so much in this book that I found really resonated with me, and it's written in a question-and-answer style way, for all us non-believers who are quite skeptical and, perversely attached to our pain and our thoughts, as tortuous as they may sometimes be. But I really have to believe that kicking my Self to the curb is the way to go, because so far all my mind does is fuck with me, urge me to compulsive and self-destructive behavior, in addition to keeping me awake at night.

In trying to settle my mind, ease my utterly worthless anxiety, and in general lead a healthier life, I have more or less retreated into as much solitude as is socially acceptable. A random kid I met the last time I went out...uh...two weeks ago...found me on MySpace. I was self-medicating that night, so it took more than a few moments to remember who he was, and his message (Subject: You Are Fun. Message: Let's Hang Out!) didn't do much to jog my memory. What kind of sorry sap thinks that a depressed drunk girl is fun? Turns out he's a comedian. We live in a fucked up world. He invited me to his show Monday night AND gave me his number, which I thought was funny (I tend to laugh *at* comedians rather than with them). I didn't go to his show.

November has always been an interesting month for me. But, as I'm forgetting time, right now is quite pleasant. My internet, after a week of vacation, has returned, and the heat in my apartment is on.