HOLY SHIT!

I forgot to tell you my fantastic news! About two weeks ago, while I was at work doing one of my first 12 hour shifts, Jessica called me a couple hours before I got off. I just happened to be in a situation where I could answer the phone, so I did, because as many of you know, I kind of enjoy me some Jessica-chatting-up.

Jess: "Hey, don't get mad at me, I got you a present."

Kel: "Oh, I always get so mad at you when you bring me presents."

J: "Well, I kind of made you a present. And It's kind of big."

K: (having fantasy where the "present" is that she's somehow swabbed out my horror of an excuse for a bedroom and made it livable and pleasant, then dismissing it) "Well, that's okay. I like big presents AND made presents"

J: "It was supposed to be just a little present but when I got started making it, I couldn't stop and now it's kind of...huge."

K: (Fantasy of clean, tidy room with 0% effort from me comes screaming back into my head with a sense of certainty, and instead of dismissing it I tell myself, 'Don't get your hopes up. There's no way anyone could do the whole thing in one day.') "Okay. Sounds good, I can't wait to get home."

J: "And you won't get mad?"

K: "Absolutely not. See you soon" (Doing a little dance as I turn off the phone.)

As I was driving home I kept repeating, "Don't get your hopes up. She probably started the picking-up for you and it's going to make it 100% easier to get started and you'll be done in no time and she's so awesome! Yayy!" I walk into the house repeating it. There is a palpable sense of excitement and suspense in the air as I walk over to the door of my room. Jessica looks like a pressure cooker right before it blows a hole in the wall behind the stove. I'm about to loose my mind trying to be cool. I open the door. My room is totally spotless. EVERYTHING has been picked up off the previously knee-deep floor and either put in it's place or assigned a temporary space. Jessica begins taking me around the room and showing me where she's put things that have never had a place before in this house. I notice that she's taken the six-inch-deep pile of mat boards, art paper and collage materials from under the bed and sorted and filed them under my desk. My arts and crafts supplies are no longer strewn around the room, they are neatly put away in one of three areas. All the clothing that was everywhere in the room is neatly in piles for laundry or putting away. Shoes are sorted. The closet closes. Every book I own is on a shelf, rather than in a box or on the floor. She's found all my cds and put them neatly together. The bed is made. You can find the bed easily, and neither pair of stairs is blocked. I start to cry. I notice Jess is crying. I call everyone I know and tell them about it, and they all cry. Rejoicing resounded througout the kingdom, and they all lived happily ever after.

Eeek!

Various horrible e-mail drama as Yahoo! fucks me around. Please click on the "write to me" link on the top of the sidebar and write to me at my gmail account (link now sends to me there) if you'd ever like to get an e-mail from me again, because the evil Y! people have deleted my account for the third and last time. Evil, terrible weirdness swirling. Here are more (mostly serious) things I'd like to become by pretending I already am:

-sober more often

-nicer in a more heartfelt way

-a person who says "yes" when she means "yes" and "no" when she means "no" and "I'll do that" only when she really wants to

-did I mention taller?

-stronger and more healthy, emotionally and physically

In other news, people just won't stop calling the house phone and hanging up on the machine. We have caller ID, people. In most cases I know exactly where you live. I know where you sleep. Just leave a fucking message, before I start pretending I'm already the kind of person who would stab you. Oh, wait, I already am.
Also, I just noticed that the dates were showing in Dutch, so I changed it back to English.

How to be happy

Who knew? Trying helps a lot. Back when I first posted about this, I was really hanging on by my thumbs, and really scared. I couldn't see a way out or a way to ever change what I was feeling, even though I knew I had felt that way before and it had gotten better eventually. I couldn't see how I could change anything; my lifestyle, my personality, my emotions, my behavior for the better. I didn't think I would ever stop feeling that sad. I was very afraid of what might happen to me.

Then I got really fucking tired of it. Tired of feeling bad all the time. Tired of my eyes aching because I couldn't stop crying and tired of missing my friends and wishing they could help and knowing that they were getting tired of it too, and tired of being angry and tired of being scared. Tired of other people being scared about me. And really, really fucking tired of how much it hurt.

Until I realized that virtually the only thing I had any power or control over at right that second, or any time until I could feel better, was my attitude. So now I'm becoming a happy person by pretending I'm already happy. Not in a fakey, assy way, but really trying to feel what it would feel like if I was really happy right now. And it's working. I definitely feel better and am reacting more like I would like to.

Not that it's a perfect system. The bottom fell out on me the other night, and everything went sideways and I felt as bad as I did right before I decided to change my attitude. It was all back, the crying and the feeling like a terrible person and the persecuted feeling and the anger and the fear and dissapointment. I felt like a stupid fucking failure, too, because I was right back where I had started and thought I had lost all that ground.

Then I realized I hadn't lost anything because I could change my attitude again and again until I got it right. This is going to work for me, I think. Then, when I have being happy worked out, I can become tall and willowy and Belgian by just pretending that I already am tall and willowy and Belgian. Then I'll pretend I have 8 billion dollars and a castle in France. And an 18 year old Italian boyfriend. And a tiara. And a pony...

photo musing

I need more pictures of myself. This is an odd state for me to be in, as I've, since about age 10, avoided having my picture taken or destroyed what pictures of me I could get my hands on. The cognitive dissonance between my picture-in-my-head of what I should look like and my retinal dismay at what I do look like is too much for my tiny little brain.

However. When I got my digital camera (which is a hunk of crap, but what the hell) I was suddenly able to sit, totally self absorbed, for entire hours, snapping self-portrait after self portrait until I captured something I actually wanted to see. This has caused unfortunate side-effects, because people are now getting used to seeing pictures of me. My mother, for instance, will not get off my back. "Why haven't you sent more pictures? Where are the pictures? Take more pictures!" I panicked and sent her every picture I have of myself that was taken in the last three years (I had been doling them out like a smart girl) and now she's even more crazy for more current pictures. Never mind that the pictures she now has of me taken in the last three years outnumber the pictures of me from the foregoing 10 years...

Which is only a problem because my camera is a hunk of crap that won't keep a charge. And because I'm tired of only self-portraits. I'd like to get some shots including more than one side of my face and part of my neck. I might even consent to let myself be photographed all the way down to the shoulders, if I could only get someone to agree to help...that won't be happening anytime soon, tho. I've asked everyone I could bear to ask and have been flatly refused...I'm trying to be cool about this development, but my brain wants me to be bitter and never take another photo. This time, however, my brain is not going to win.

Self-Portrait Tuesday

There's this cool thing on Flickr called "Self-Portrait Tuesday" where every Tuesday or thereabouts you take a new self-portrait or post an older one. I really like the idea, so I'm piling on. We'll see how long it lasts...I hope a long time. Ironically, I'm posting this from Photobucket because I can't use my Flickr account because it's tied to my old, now deleted by Yahoo! account. These pictures were taken last year sometime while I was living with my folks. I like to take a couple pictures in sequence with just a little change in between. I don't know why, but I thought it would be a fun thing to start with and since they're so tiny (when did I make them so small? what was I planning?) it seemed like putting them both up would be good.

Continuing near-normalcy

Still happy by main force. Getting easier every day. I mean, being happy is getting easier. I'm already as easy as I can get. And as Jasper says, I get what I can take. I had a moment this morning where I lost the center and hated everybody and everything and wanted to stab, stab, stab, stab, stab. Then I decided to not be like that anymore. For right then, anyway.

Went to lunch with Kathey and Rob today at Threadgill's. Yum. They brought Jessica a bed today, and they're MARRIED! I mean, I know, I know, I was at their wedding but I can't quite make it work in my head. I told my neighbor today, "My friend and her husband are coming over in a minute and they might use your parking space for two minutes." Then I got this dumbstruck look on my face and she said, "What?" And I was all, "They just got married and I've never said that word in reference to them before." And then of course I got to see the great look on her face when they came up and she noticed the 22-year age difference. I love that. In other K&R news, I'll be setting up their wedding Flickr site for them soon. Yayyyy!

Fasten your seatbelt and prepare to be astounded! And beaten with sticks!

It's my miracle new cure for depression: just be happy by pretending you're already happy! I'm holding my first workshop next weekend...only $500 per person per day (two day minimum). I've hammered out the notes for the class on smiling maniacally in any circumstance, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to teach "whole body fake-happiness" where you pretend you're happy even when alone or asleep. I wonder if it's okay to beat people with a stick? Is there some kind of release they have to sign saying you can stand over them for six hours and whip them every time they stop smiling?

Please disregard the last post

as it was written by an insane monster that lives in my head. The monster has had her internet priveledges rescinded and will be beaten bloody with bottles of beer and enormous spliffs the size of small dogs. But less hairy. So far my recovery strategies have included re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas daily, emotionally abusing everyone who loves me, the above-mentioned chemical treatments, and weeping uncontrollably at the slightest stimulus. I swear, if things don't get better soon, I may have to come up with something else to try.

I hate you

and everybody else.