Confession Time! (Or: Shutup, You're No More Normal Than I Am, Jerk.)

Long story short, I have trouble being (quote/unquote) normal sometimes. Oftentimes, even.  Some might say "frequently".

I get real anxious, totally and randomly out of nowhere sometimes, and other times under more predictable circumstances that I'm able to pinpoint as "triggers" for my anxious hyper-active control freak behavior.  I try to avoid these triggers if possible but life can be so damn pesky in that way; sometimes a normal day feels like a minefield of potential panic pits.  I've developed this bizarre but comforting "coping mechanism" where I scratch my head.... a lot. Sometimes until it bleeds. Anyway, it's gross and I wont make you think about that anymore. You're welcome!

Here's some of the semi-predictable circumstances that usually throw me off a little and drive me slightly bonkers (drumroll!):

-people moving my stuff around.  Like, if I leave for work and the lamp was at a certain angle-- when I get home it better be AT THAT SAME ANGLE.  If not, I'll move it back to where I feel it's "supposed" to be.  And then this often sets off a chain of events in which I move everything on my bookshelf so that all the spines line up and are equidistant from the edge of the shelf.  And then I notice that Noa has thrown her shoes all over the house, and I am compelled-- neigh, REQUIRED-- to pick them all up one by one and line them up over by the door where I've decided all the shoes should live. And so on.  This is called "obsessive compulsive disorder," and comes and goes based on how antsy and anxious I've been at the time, and...well, also based on how willing the people I live with are to play along with my fantasy that our home is a museum in which nothing should ever be touched or moved from it's designated place. NOTE: I am also a complete slovenly disaster in many ways.  It's not that I'm a "clean" freak...I'm a "things put in certain places and facing certain directions"  freak, you dig?  My pants are dirty most of the time and I usually have a sink full of dishes and I double dip the crudite at fancy parties, but I like ALL THE THINGS EVERYWHERE to be in their places. If they aren't I will pace and get ornery and jittery and be generally unpleasant to be around for an unspecified amount of time. Sad face , right?

-being super busy for too many days in a row.  Downtime-- time to do NOTHING but just exist quietly-- is a necessity for me.  So I worked all week and had a million things to do every night when I came home and never had a minute to sit and not be doing something?  Come Saturday I become comatose. I refuse to participate in anything resembling "socializing" and often feel compelled to remain within in the confines of my home, or even my bedroom, for a solid 24 hours or so.  This time is spent ignoring the outside world and often involves staying in my pajamas all day without bathing.   This is called "depression", and it comes and goes as it pleases, although having to pretend to be "up" and normal for too many days in a row often throws me for an exhausting loop and gets me all down in the dregs and such.  I get real boring and drab, and I don't smile much.  I watch a lot of season six of Buffy in the dark, and read a lot of Emily Dickinson.  It's like hibernating, but with my eyes open.  Except for when I'm sleeping and my eyes are shut, which happens a lot during these periods. There is not enough sleep in the world for me when I enter Silent Hibernation Mode;  I'm like the Paula Radcliffe of long distance napping.

-learning new things.  I love learning new things.  It's, like, pretty much my number one favorite thing to do.  Learning new shit is my bread and butter, yo. For example, I'll read something about how awesome bees are and then spend the next week regaling people nonstop with the amazingness of bee colonies until people either grow weary of hearing about it, or I run out of people to yammer to.  But other times-- when I'm FORCED to learn something new (like, ahem, a new computer system at work) if I'm not immediately good at it, and if I'm held hostage in that weird way where you have to fake patience while someone tries to teach you how to do something unfamiliar and terrifying-- I freak out.  My chest gets tight.  My heart starts to beat funny.  My hands shake a little. My face turns bright red and I get super hot.  I swallow a LOT.  Over and over.  I have, in the words of the professionals, "one o' them there panic attacks!"

So there you have it.  I mean, I'm weird in more ways than that-- I'm a loud talker, a spastic fast talker, an inappropriate laugher, a TMI-er, and sometimes an awkward hover-on-the-edge-of-the-group-and-don't-talk-to-anyone-er.  But my main poison is some mad OCD crossed with being a slob crossed with depressive episodes and anxiety attacks.  Like the Odd Couple crossed with Toby from the Office with a dash of the bat from Fern Gully that was voiced by Robin Williams. But I'm still kind of awesome and fun in a way, like....both Petes from Pete and Pete.  And I have great taste in sunglasses, like Hollywood from Mannequin.  OHHH, and I dye my hair red sometimes and have unpredictable angsty poetry attacks every now and then, a la Angela Chase (*disclaimer:  my boyfriend can read and I don't have a Rikki). I'm a whole mishmash of outdated pop culture, see that?  Check the recap:
                                    

                                     
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                                                                    (that's me!)


Do you get it all now?  Has this been a helpful insight into my personality and neuroses?  Or did I lose you at Robin Williams and Fern Gully?  In any event,  I do pretty okay day-to-day.... and I feel pretty fucking good having written this because I've been trying to find a way to write about my emotional freakiness in a way that I'm comfortabe with (and here I think I've found success!), but also because AUUUGGHHHH PETE AND PETE, you guys!  Fuckin' A.  That was some damn good TV and I wish I could go ride down a grassy hill on some giant iceblocks right now.

Anyway, in closing:  my good friend Rachel dropped a muffin in the car the other day and then used it as a Muppet to talk to me and tell me to chill out a little. This video cheers me up and makes me giggle maniacally when I'm feeling overwhelmed and shaky, and I watch it pretty much daily.  Without further ado, I bring you Muffin Love!

Godspeed, blog readers, and don't forget to try to remember the biiiiger picture, NOM NOM NOM NOM.

-Amy Em

My Triumphant Return To The Blogosphere! (Or: Remember When I Did This Once?)

Three years is a pretty long time to abandon a blog that was super half-assed to begin with and then randomly wake up one day teeming with motivation to start screaming into the same void again.  Important Note:  I scream regularly into the void of Facebook and Twitter (and occasionally/shamefully in the comments sections of some sites I will not mention). I just haven't screamed into this one for long enough that it took me about 40 minutes to figure out how to log into it, and then I had to update a million things, and Google kept trying to force me to join Google+  and I freaked out and came {{{{{THISCLOSE}}}}} to clicking that button that says "Delete every single thing associated with Google like it never happened!"

In the end I did not click that button, only because I was THAT motivated to get screamy into my old school blogvoid.

So with no further fanfare, the update that you've been holding your breath for!

-I am gainfully employed.  Remember when I was unemployed for like a year and cried all the time about not being able to pay the rent or buy food?  No?  Neither do I.  It was like a lifetime ago.  Funny how those hard times that we learn so much from are so easy to bleach from our brains once we're a good ways past them.  {shudder}

-Everyone I know has either gotten married or knocked up, or some combination of both, in the last few years.  I've done neither since Noa was born.  I'm okay with it.  FOR NOW.  {cue menacing music} Really though, the people I like make ADORABLE frigging children.  Someday when these wee lads and lassies are old enough I shall beckon them to my knee (probably at Chateau Neubauer on Arlington Pond) and regale them with tales of "That time you were THIS SMALL!" and "That time I held you for the FIRST TIME!" and the lipstick marks I will leave on their cheeks shall be coral, or canteloupe, or some shade of an offensive magenta. I will smell of Chanel and Maker's Mark, as all successful adopted aunties do, and I will wink and secretly hand them twenty dollar bills.

Moving on.

-I'm starting a podcast soon, and you're going to listen to it.  It may or may not be terrible, and it may or may not be recorded in my boyfriend's Closet Office.  Important Note:  The Closet Office is the giant closet that we turned into Matt's office when he moved in here in March.  It's not like he's stuffed into a little 18" X 36" space or something; the man has about 8 X 5 feet to work with.  It's pretty much the only space in this apartment that Noa is NOT allowed to party in, and I feel like it's a good enough size to get 2 or 3 people together to sit on the floor and blather and argue about what masculinity means these days--while being recorded.  Important Note: This came up in conversation recently and I can't wait to attack this topic in depth with some broads I know.  Let's just say-- sometimes I'm ready to blame the changing attitudes of masculinity on Ben Gibbard and that kid on the OC who listened to Death Cab For Cutie all the time, but a deeper look at The New Male uncovers many many layers that I will not begin to peel away here.  Ooooh, are you dyyyyying to know what kinds of layers I'm planning on peeling here?!  Listen to my podcast when I start actually making it.  I promise it will feature amazing and smart women, and all of us will sing the theme song together in a "....finishing each other's sentences {gigglegiggle}!" kind of way.  Hold thy breath!

-I'm tired.  Pretty much like all the time, but specifically right this very minute.  I'm sure this update has been breathtakingly enlightening for you, and I promise there will be more to come, SOONER RATHER THAN THREE YEARS FROM NOW!

This return to the blogothing has been SO TRIUMPHANT!  Go neckties!

Angry

I've never really been super comfortable feeling angry, although it's not uncommon for me to feel pisssed the hell off when I'm stressed out...so it's interesting that I'm so squidgy and uncomfortable with it. I have some theories, but who the hell knows. It could be because my dad and step-dad were angry, violent men.  It could be because I've chosen to have relationships with some angry and occasionally violent men in my adult life and I've come to see most anger as a hurtful, cruel emotion. It could be because oftentimes I feel that my anger is resented and supressed by the people in my life. It could be because oftentimes women aren't allowed to express anger in general without being accused of being raging harpies, and I'm well aware of that. It could be because I've just never learned how to constructively express myself when I'm feeling pissed off and fucking frustrated; I tend to either freak out and randomly yell at someone, or turn it inward and let it boil for awhile until I break down in furious tears or become physically ill. Neither outcome is helpful really to the whole point of being angry, which I've come to realize is just a way of letting us know that something is very, very *wrong*. Discontent and frustration become a fiery hot furnace of irrational outburst when allowed to fester, and that's never (ever) really a good thing. If I could somehow learn to use my anger as a set of directions to get to what I need and what I'm lacking, I think it could be a wonderful thing.

But seeing as I'm not quite there yet let's be honest, shall we?

RIGHT NOW: I would like to smash a series of breakables in the road. I would like to throw red paint all over the place and then roll around in it. I would like to scream and kick and cry and then curl up and sleep and have dreams about dropping huge stones off a cliff and watching them grow tinier and tinier until they slam into the ocean and send up flying bullets of water. I'd like to have someone show me the right way to weild an axe so I could chop logs for a few days until I have a mountain of firewood I could burn in a campfire while tossing dishes against an old stone wall. I would like to bellow and howl so loudly that the whole world hears and pauses for a moment before carrying on.

There are many reasons I'm feeling this white-hot rush and I don't even wish to discuss them at this point. I'm mostly just fed up, driven repeatedly into the same dead-ends over and over again. Experience tells me that it'll pass soon though, and I'll begin to feel better. The anger will either dissolve into some passionate momentum that will push me toward a new beginning, or it will exhaust me into a hibernating period where I'll figure out exactly what I need, want, crave, and then I'll quietly begin to make plans for my rebirth. I'll push forward somehow, whether it's with a bang or with a whimper. And in the meantime I'll try to learn how to live with this anger, how to accept it and love it and nurture it and help it grow into something new, something good. Somehow, I'll accept it and it'll find it's place in my heart as fuel rather than dead weight.

And somehow, I'll look back and be grateful.



Like this lady probably did, right?

The Creation (Or: Proof Of Chronic Depression Through Terrible Poetry)

This blog has turned into a pout-fest, so I'll just stick with it and keep that vibe going. I don't mean to get all Angela Chase on you or anything with my angst. Or yes I do. I don't know.

I pulled out some of my old high school journals recently and skimmed through them, and although much of it is the same boring woe-is-me teenage crap that you'd find in anyone else's old notebooks, I am slightly impressed by how dramatic I was about shit. I mean, I may have been in the throes of adolescent misery, but some of the stuff I wrote was suuuuuuuper intense.  For instance: "and now we are useless slugs incubating in this place, growing fatter and lazier with each passing day." Huh. I'd forgotten how much of a (kind of honest) downer I can be until I found this stuff.  A bit much for a sixteen year old, no? But how funny that almost 15 years ago I was feeling very similarly to how I feel sometimes now, but was more capable of fluidly articulating it then. My brain is supposed to be getting sharper, wittier...isn't it?! (ETA: And I'm supposed to be getting LESS depressed, right?) So...why have my creative juices dried up, and how can I can them back? I desperately want to feel the urge to create like I used to, although those rare times that I do get the inspiration to create I can't seem to get anything OUT; it gets congested and stuck somewhere and dissolves as though it were never there. I need Mucinex for the soul, something to force all the icky dark stuff to ooze out onto a page/canvas/tissue/sleeve.

I need to cultivate my inspiration and my execution. I'll start small with a daily excersize like writing one page of something, ANYTHING, and then move on from there. I think some kind of class could really benefit me right now too; a photography class, for one, would really wake me the hell up right now (I think). I've always had what people have called "an eye", and there's something soothing about viewing the world through a lens (or in my case, digital screen) and seeing your vision transformed into permanent evidence of a Moment. I wish I had more talent for visual arts-- drawing, painting, sculpting, and whatnot-- but unfortunately it just isn't so. I've tried before (trust me, I'VE FUCKING TRIED!) but the results are crushingly pathetic, and similar to the style I imagine a vision-impaired preschooler would embody.

One time my daughter asked me to draw her a dragon and after I was done trying she narrowed her eyes at me and accused "That's NOT a dragon!" So there you have it.



(This is NOT the dragon that I drew. I stole this one from Google Images, and it's much more technically advanced than my dragon was.)

Atrophy

Things aren't awful, but things aren't great. I find myself in the position of not having much "going" for me: I'm jobless and broke, my relationship has nosedived straight into the ground and exploded on impact, I need a cervical biopsy that I can't afford, and I can't stand my home. You'd think with this stuff happening that I'd be miserable and sad, and occasionally I am....but mostly I'm just *nothing*. I have this funny feeling sometimes that I'm dissolving, that my entire being has atrophied and turned into a puddle of vapid goo. I keep trying to remind myself that "an object NOT in motion tends to stay NOT in motion," but it doesn't do much to shift myself into action.

I'm paralyzed by an indecision about what the hell I'm supposed to be moving TOWARD. None of us really want to be floating, free-falling, but if we're not in motion toward something real and tangible isn't that kind of what we're doing? I try to map it all out, put it all out in front of me and figure out which road I'm going to start down, but so far I've got nothing. There's the typical things I'm "supposed" to want: a partner, a house, a job, another kid or two....and I DO want those things, but there's some mysterious secret ingredient missing that makes it all seem kind of trite and...dull. I must want more than that, right? but....DO I??

Existential crises are all pretty much the same when you think about it, so I know i'm no more or less interesting in my quest for inspiration than anyone else is... and maybe that's a little bit of the problem; maybe all I want is something DIFFERENT, whatever that is. I guess maybe I just want my identity crisis to be more...special...than everyone else's.

I recently saw that quote "You must not find yourself, you must create yourself." I agree wholeheartedly, but that doesn't mean I'm actually any closer to finding the energy to start creating than I was before. And so it goes, this battle for contentment, this neverending search for meaning. It's all par for the course, really, so I guess I'm doing okay.

Never Fear, The New Year's Here?

Resolutions.

Unlike most of modern civilization, I'm not crazy about the idea of the new year being a chance at a whole new life...like HERE'S YOU, NEW AND IMPROVED! In the grand scheme of things I guess the passing of each year is kind of exciting; for example, does anyone else feel like we're living in *THE FUTURE* right now?!? "2009" sounds like the perfect year for some futuristic sci-fi horror movie to be set in, doesn't it? But really, what does the beginning of a new year actually mean to most of us?? A brand new chance to fail at self-improvement? A half-assed goal of self-discovery botched by the mundanity of reality? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for both self-improvement AND self-discovery...I just don't pretend to do it every year on January 1st.

I pretend to do it all year long!

I've spent most of my adult life waiting to feel like a 'grownup', with varied results. There are certainly moments when I'm blown away by my maturity and ability to handle life's little shit storms, but there are just as many times that I feel like a twelve year old kid nervously reading lines off a cue card: "Being a mother is totally fulfilling!" "This isn't terrifying at all!" "I'm so happy!"

Maybe underneath all the resolutions and self-discovery bullshit we're all just trying to find the most sincere way to read our lines without being discovered as frauds. I'm sure I'm just as full of shit as anyone else. And the closest I'll come to a new year's resolution this year is deciding to admit it, publicly.

Wish me luck.