what's so special about three months?

I am!  I got my three-month chip this morning.  I've been thinking about a lot of stuff, and have a post sitting waiting to publish about it all once it stews a bit more.  It's really the first big thinks I've done seriously since jail, and I think I'm getting ready to start really being serious about sobriety.  I'm starting to accept that it might just take me longer to do everything, and that it won't be a problem unless I get impatient.  Anyway, a big cosmic thank you to everyone at LL&LL and to Hope for going with me and Steve for driving us and Jasper and Leslie for pep talks and everyone who cares and my whole family for just being there.  As someone in my group says, "This chip belongs to you; all of you, because I couldn't have done it without you.  But I'm taking it home with me."

saving my life

It's become increasingly obvious to me that the past ten years, and my escalating drinking/self-destruction had exactly one point:  to cause me enough pain to make it alright for me to die.  There were lots of peripheral reasons, and I had no idea at the time that that was the point.  I thought I was having fun.  Or maybe I thought that it looked like I was having fun.

That's a complicated thing to say, though.  I hear people share about "when drinking stopped working" but for me it was always about pretending:  that I was like the other people in the room, that I didn't hate what was going on and where we were, that I could be whatever it was I thought I had to be 

Right here I could point my finger at a couple of people and say it was all their fault for making me think I was having fun, or for pressuring me to be something I'm not, but that's a lot of bullshit.  

I was the only one in control of my actions, and I chose to do what I thought other people wanted from me.  I knew.  It might have been subconscious a lot of the time, but it was there.  I knew it really wasn't fun, and that it led to bad places that I had a sick desire to be in.  I knew I was hurting myself and other people.  It was my place to refuse to do that, to stick to my guns and protect myself and to BE the person I knew I was.  

I just didn't want to.  I wanted to wander a little way down the primrose path and see.  I wanted to see if I could let it all go.  To literally let it all go--to inch far enough toward the end of my rope that it was permissible to let go.  To die.  To hurt bad enough, and to throw away enough of myself that I could make it okay to throw away the rest, to make a job of it.  To stop hurting forever.  I thought that was the way to be safe.

And it didn't work.  I was totally shocked about three weeks ago by the fact that part of me is really pissed off about that.  I had left class (a nearly 3-hour ASL class) for a little break, and went into the bathroom.  As I was sitting down on the toilet (I know, TMI, but that's where it happened) I just had this flood of emotion; regret, wistfulness, longing, and I heard my voice say (out loud) "I can't believe I don't get to drink myself to death and I have to do all this."  I felt a little betrayed, even.  It beggars the imagination, even mine, but I think if I had the balls to bring it up in a meeting I'd see a lot of nodding heads, a lot of people who know exactly what I'm talking about and lived through it.

Here's the thing, though.  A big part of the power of A.A. is in the fellowship, the letting people get close to you.  "G-D works through people," and all that.  There is so much help and care I can pick up just by being there, and just by listening, and living on the fringe of it all.  It helps so much.  But there's no way of getting around the fact that to really get weller I have to jump in, make friends, socialize and get into service.  Or at least get brave enough to get a damn sponsor.  And I can't.  I just can't.

It's bullshit, and a stupid reason, and I just can't.  I'm too scared.  People just aren't safe enough to trust my heart to.  I'm just too damn scared.  And that scares me.  Part of the reason I started drinking is because drunks are shallow, and you don't have to let them in.  They're happy with acquaintance-ship and, "Oh...I'm fine..." and not having any responsibility to each other.  I know that these people at my meeting are wonderful, loving people who are helping each other and supporting each other, I know that.  I WANT that, deep in the core of me, to be with them and be like them.  I also know that they're flawed human beings just like me, and they'll screw up, they'll hurt me and they'll let me down, just like I sometimes do.  Like everyone does.  I even know that for me to be happy, joyous, free, fearless, thorough and honest I have to learn to be okay with all that.  

And it's not so bad...I've made it three months now.  I got my chip this morning, and despite being so scared I almost passed out on my way to the front of the room to take it, I made it.  And the attention was awful, and wonderful, and I felt the love through the tears.  I want this, and I want it badly enough to keep doing something that every fiber of my being says is wrong, bad, scary and dangerous.  It's the best, safest and most productive place I've ever been this scared.  So that's my dilemma--I'm too alive to die, and too scared to live.  That's all.  I'm working on it.  I'll let you know how it goes.  

Thanks so much to C. of A Passion for Jaywalking for graciously letting me use the three-month chip picture above.  I was frantically searching the entire internets for a picture of one that I could use and found this one, which is so beautiful.  I consider it a triumph that I wrote and asked a total stranger for permission at all, and the fact that C. was willing to let me use it for just a credit and a link was gravy.  Incidentally, it's also a great blog about sobriety, poetry, life, etc.  Definitely worth reading.  

my age

I've been thinking about this for years, since working at Celebration! when I asked a lady her baby's age and got, "Oh, she's 27 months."  At first it hacked me off, because really, why can't she just say, "About a year," what's so special about three months?  I think a co-worker had to point out that, at that age, everything is special about every month. 

So why not continue this into our later lives?  I know, I know, we're not learning to sit up or speak or walk (unless we've been subject to Unfortunate Incidents, in which case we do often revert to the months accounting), but why shouldn't every month be just that special?  We're learning something new every day, from mending a broken heart to how to really love someone, to how to get our shit together.  How to live more fully, how to cut our losses, and practical things, too.  How to train a dog, or become an accountant, or make a real friend.

Or maybe we're not.  Maybe we stop learning, and start congratulating ourselves for having gotten to the end of all that.  Maybe we decide we're finished, and ignore all the learning opportunities that present themselves to us, and we become Grown Up.  Maybe that's why time seems to go so much faster as we age, we stop counting the days and weeks and months, and move to years or even decades.  We count by the last thing we learned, and so instead of treasuring this week, this month, this year, we gloss over big chunks of years, chunks of our lives that we weren't really paying attention to because we, we've got this shit down cold.

Let's nip that in the bud, let's treasure the smaller increments of time we grow through.  Look, listen to me now, I'm going to talk about something I know.  Give up your hang-ups about age, and aging, and death.  When you are 98 years old, if you are lucky to live to be so old and decrepit, you will wish for your strong, youthful, lusty body, full of life.  You will not care how your skin was or whether you felt attractive.  You will think that you were stupid and vain and foolish and selfish, back then, to be so picky about yourself, so nailed to others' opinions.  You will say, "Oh, God, to be 65 again!" and you will be deadly serious.  You will yearn for the days when you had your teeth, your hair (you too, ladies, and you lose it all over your body), your spouse still alive, the days when you could remember, at bedtime, what you had eaten for breakfast.  Or dinner.  You will mournfully cry, "So young!  So young!" when a friend dies at 77, because he didn't know how good he had it, he without a walker, a hearing aid, a 30-year-old Guatemalan helper with better things to do brusquely helping him toilet;  he who had so much life before him.  

I was 250 months the first time I got my heart broken, but I've learned since then to do it more often.  I was 300 months when I moved back in with my parents.  I was 370 months when I went back to school.  I periodically calculate my age in months because it throws off my brain.  Does that make any sense?  I can't really get any perspective on being 32, but 384.4 months kicks in a new gear in my head that understands something I can't when I'm in the "years" gear.  Being in AA has got me thinking about days, too.  Just so you know, I'm now 11,700 days on  this Earth.  That's 1671.4 weeks, if you were wondering.

It's like a four-year-old in here.

"Why won't things be good?" She wails in despair.  

What things, and how are they not good?

"I don't know, you know...things.  They're bad, not good.

And I thought they would be GOOOOOOOOOOOD!"

She is very sad. Saaaad.  SAD.  Just look at that lip jut out.

Are you disappointed?  Frustrated?  Hungry?  Angry?  

"No.  I don't know.  And my teacher is mean.  And my classmates are stupid.  

I want things to be excellent and they are only good.  And I don't have my cupcake anymore."

Things won't always be like you want them to be and sometimes people are mean, or stupid.

Er-herm.  And you ATE your cupcake.  Excellence is an ideal, a journey, not something 

you can just have when you want it.  I know this is sad news, and you're disappointed.

I wish I could tell you something else, but this is life.  The sooner you accept it the 

sooner you can get on with it.

"NooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  Make things BE GOOOD!"

Things are go...

"GOOOODER!"

Nobody said it would be easy.

It's cripplingly simple, but not always easy.  Easier than I ever thought it would be, or even thought it had a right to be.  I thought it had to be hard.  But it doesn't.  Mostly it's just getting out of the way of it.  Who'da thunk it?  Not me, that's fur shure.  It feels like my brain is learning a whole new way to think, and at the same time that I'm recovering something I thought I threw away and shit on and put down the drain years ago.  Something I forgot that I forgot I had.  I know, I know, it sounds crazy.  It sounds crazy to me sometimes.  It's like I have deja vu and jamais vu and presque vu at the same time.  The best part, for me anyway, is not having to react anymore.  I mean, I'm not miraculously healed, I still react sometimes, but I don't have to, and I know it.  I really do feel miraculously healed, sometimes.  Other times I feel like nothing, or not much has changed, but really so much has.  I'm not making any sense.  And that's okay.  

Ok, maybe it IS a little bit a poetry blog...

I'm going to see the world's best baby!  My nearly-brother and his wonderful wife (my almost-sister-in-law) have this wonderful kid.  In Vermont, pray for my tiny cold tootsies.  I can't wait to see Les and meet his lady and cuddle my practically-nephew!

Lookit that baby, she thinks.

His open face is both solemn and happy.

The light in his eyes says his spirit

lives down in there full time and 

finds it safe and good.  He's heavy 

and solid with it, and she envies

him and longs to protect him in 

equal measure.  Her brain sings

of all the sorrow he'll see if he's 

lucky to have long life, but she 

brushes it away and thinks of the

joys.  It's the same story, really;

told with the heart in the throat 

or on the sleeve.

More poemage:

Faced with an afternoon all to myself, when several things I might have done fell through and I was left to my own devices, I actually decided to treat myself to my favorite things.  So amazing to me, that I even knew what they were anymore.  Clear head is wonderful.  So I went to the State Cemetery where I had a nice conversation with a stranger, and to Natural Treasures rock shop, where I bought myself a rock or three, and rode my bike around until I was tired enough to get on a bus for home.  I shared my orange with a bum waiting for the bus, and once boarded sat calmly through the meth-head next to me getting bitch-slapped (twice!) by his nutso cohort, though I wanted to feel as though I should have intervened.  While I was sitting in the cemetery I sat down to write and this came out:

Cemeteries soothe her, the comfort of the 

promise of death less morbid than centering.

Long impatient, ever perfectionist, she loves

a goal toward which she need not strive.

Reclining on a stranger's grave, unsure of any

afterlife, she communes more with the life lived

than the liver.  At these times it is easy to 

imagine the day that this shading tree, the

soft grass beneath her back, will have covered her

for longer than she will live.  She arises content, 

prepared to make of it what it will have been.

Isolated graveyards have their purpose, she

supposes, but prefers those that are overrun with life.

Traffic noise should counterpoint the creek beside

the willow, bustling homes be visible from every

lonely plot.  Her favorite boneyard sits beside a 

school--an orange never more delicious than one

eaten crouched among the solemn influenza 

victims to the lively strains of recess.

Uh, oh! She's been writing poetry!

Yep.  I must be feeling better.  I've been sleeping really well for a while now but last night I had a hard time drifting off and gave a big think to all those long, sleepless nights.  Then I dashed off a non-rhyming version of this and slept immediately.  When I woke up, my brain had neatly arranged it to rhyme while I slept.  Enjoy. 

Night has always been her enemy, 

When constant, soothing motion is forbid.

Her head mines the breadth of her pillow

As if that's where her precious sleep were hid.

She tosses so regular, and

Turns with such state!

So pendulously tolls, "It's 

Late, it's late, it's late!"

She calls it restfullness and prays

To God in imperious tones, "Thou wilt

Give me peace and respite."  Meanwhile

Her thoughts sift deep around her, fretful silt.

In the end, she sleeps, or doesn't.  Either way

The sun and she both rise and greet the day.

Sounds like something I would do...

Watch this man's truck "steal" itself! The way it parks right out of sight makes me think of TankGirl...

I am writing this in the future.

I don't even know, yet, that my life has changed profoundly.  Much later, more than three months from now, I will post-date this entry to mark the day, to have an easily recognizable break between before and after.  I will only cry a little, and it will be grateful and easy.

Why I feel misunderstood.

I take things personally a lot.  I feel misunderstood a lot.  I'd like to post on this topic about once a week with little reasons why I think that happens, and why it's okay.  Something just came to me on the subject.

I was thinking about getting my new tattoo.  It's a laborious process that involves me actually drawing the image for it and getting used to it hanging next to my bathroom mirror for a few weeks, then revising it and looking at it for another month, forgetting about it, drawing it on myself in various areas, lots of stuff. It takes years.  All so that when the image is committed to my flesh for the duration of my natural life, if I find fault with it, I can only blame myself.  I can't explain why this is an important component.  If I should look down in the shower one day when I am sixty and suddenly hate my tatoo, if I should be able to trace my discontent to the oversight of some anonymous tattoo artist I should never have trusted with my future in the first place; this is the moment that I will despair.  However, if I can follow the train of events that led me to imprint myself with this regrettable stamp, step by torturous step through every fail-safe of concept and design and execution, I will accept my decision and live with it in happiness.  

Yes, I actually live that far in the future sometimes.  No, I don't understand how I cope with it either.  Yes, I think it is why I'm so anxious and nervy.  I'm working on it.  It's hard.  I'm doing the best I can, each moment.  Some moments I can be a total cunt about it.  Write me a postcard from tomorrow and we'll figure out the answer.

Anyway, I was thinking about all that (yes, that was just the setup, now I'm going to tell the actual story.  This is how I've always been, and yet you're so surprised every time.  And I'm so surprised that you're surprised.  What a world).  There's a conversation you have with "the non-tattooed" if you have one, even a tiny one.  The, "but what does it FEEL like?" conversation.  Because they ask if it hurts, and you can't answer properly, because it does, but it does so much more than hurt that hurting is kind of irrelevant.  Your skin is suddenly and repeatedly invaded by irritant-clogged needles, much too quickly for your brain to mount any kind of response.  It's a shock response, and the pain isn't so much dulled or killed as put in a waiting area.  It's fully visible, and you can experience everything that it's doing, but it doesn't matter as much as what is actually going on right in you.  Which is weirdly unexplainable.  Like in "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson, when he talks about the sensation of, "It's almost just like...but it's not."

The two analogies that pop most readily to mind for me are, "it's like when you're on fire, or being electrocuted."  The first problem is, it doesn't exactly feel like either of those things, it feels more like what those two things have in common.  Also, it feels kind of like when you're really cold, like you've been out in freezing weather for longer than you should have been, and you come inside and lean up against a hot surface and don't realize that it's burning your skin through your clothes until it is too late.  But not exactly like that.  More like what that has in common with what the first two have in common.

Which leads us to the second problem.  "Have you BEEN on fire?" the person I'm talking to asks with alarm?  "Have you BEEN electrocuted and frozen and then burned upon defrost?"  I am nonplussed.  "Yes," I mildly answer.  "Which time?"   

Too much iTunes?

I'm going to start a band.  We're going to be pretty good, and really popular, and we will put out a single about every other week with some amazing guest star you won't even believe, and the songs will be so good and new and cheap you and everyone else will be buying every one.  You'll feel like a champ when you turn people on to us because it will change their lives and you'll feel a little responsible for the fact that they're a slightly better person than they were before.  However, I've been looking at a little too much iTunes today, so I'll be naming the band "feat." just to fuck with everybody, just a little.

buythisbuythisbuythis

Please, for the love of god, buy and wear one of these, everyone!  I'm begging you, down on my knees.  You have to do it!  I am!  You might have to click on "view larger" to understand my agitation, but once you do, I swear you'll be stealing someone's identity and buying a gross of them to give to your friends and family.

oh, p.s.

my Red Bike came back!  about a week and a half, maybe two weeks after it was taken, I rode past it (on Blue Bike, my new love) on the way back from the beer store, about a block and a half (if that) from my house.  I rode into the driveway (after taking two turns past it to make sure the huge red-white-and-black beach cruiser with red panniers and lots of red-and-white reflective tape that could only be my bike was ACTUALLY my bike) and tearfully asked for it back.  

The man in the driveway was a little non-plussed so I asked him if he was the one who took it, and explained that I had another bike, and that I would give Red Bike to him if he had taken it because he needed it, because I had tried so hard to give it up after it was taken.  I'm still crying, you understand, while I'm explaining this.  

He quickly explained that this was his mother's house, and he and his wife were spiffing up the yard before she came back from a long trip, and had found the bike in the yard.  The neighbors had shortly come over to explain that they found the bike, the morning after it was stolen or roundabout, and were afraid someone had knocked the old lady off of it and done something terrible to her.  Somebody is watching too much Law and Order.  But they called the cops (too bad I didn't, I might have gotten it back sooner, since I can identify it; que sera.)  

The cops somehow determined that no foul play had occurred and pushed the bike up against the house.  The nice couple (the wife of whom used to own Cycles 360) thought it looked like a cherished bike, since it had lights and panniers on it, and stuff in the panniers, put it back against the house and hoped for the best.  They've both had cycles stolen, so they knew what it felt like.  The husband even rode it back to the house with me and met Hope, and saw the house.  They were sooooooo amazing, and I just love that even after I gave it up completely to whoever had needed it badly enough to take it from my porch, it found me again.

I guess I should admit it wasn't locked up.  It was just sitting on my porch.  With the porch light on, and the bike sitting about a foot from the front door.  A bike I ride every day.  A bike that obviously, someone cares about enough to cover with personal touches.  It is NOT yellow.  I assumed a drunk had taken it, because Hope and I had been up watching cable about a foot from it until about midnight the night before it was taken.  I seriously wondered if I should call the police and report it missing, just in case someone got killed on it or committed a crime on it.  It can be easily traced back to me, you know.  Not if someone wanted to keep it, but if it was involved in a criminal investigation (Pung! Pung!  Where's Jerry Orbach?  Who's watching too much Law and Order, now?)

I was initially concerned that the drunk who had taken it would discover several blocks away that it was too much bike for them.  It's almost too much bike for me, and I've been riding it for ten years.  TEN.  YEARS.  No wonder I was crying when I found it.  I was afraid they would get really hurt trying to ride it.  Not that I would be held liable (which I'm sure I would have been--"If you'd only locked it up, I could still walk!") but that I would feel terrible for the person who got hurt, not that it was my fault.  Stealing is nasty, especially stealing bikes.  If you don't want anyone to take anything of yours (even if it's not under lock and key) you just shouldn't take anything that doesn't belong to you.  I try to live by that, kind of like I try not to rape anyone or murder anyone or commit vehicular manslaughter.  Because I wouldn't want anyone to do it to me.  Not that I'm perfect, my commitment to trying not to do these things is contingent on my humanity. 

How funny, then, to find it semi-crashed (there was no obvious damage, but if you know me you know how I ride it--it wouldn't be obvious amongst all the daily wear) not two blocks from my house.  Hope will even tell you, when she woke up and looked out the window and yelled, "Where the hell is your bike!" I ran out in my nightgown, barefoot, and walked a lot of the streets in our neighborhood.  I was totally convinced I would find it nearby.  I could feel it calling me to come get it.  I just didn't walk down the right street.  Then we had a car to use for two weeks, and I was trying SO HARD to let that bike go.  I thought it was some bad karma I was burning off for being a bitch, or for stealing things  when I was younger.  I was trying so hard to pray that the person who took it would have a rich, happy, blessed life with it or without it, from here on out.

I'm still trying, you know?  No matter who took it, I still wish that for them.  Even more since they fell off the damn bike, or decided it was too much trouble to ride home.  Whenever I want to damn someone to hell or send them bad karma or wish that they would get what they deserve or die of some horrible, wasting disease, I try to turn it around and wish for god to bless them so much that their lives become a vehicle for joyful change for everyone around them.  That they receive the blessings of life so strongly that they can't help but change and become a catalyst to spread it to everyone around them.  That their problems melt before them with divine grace and allow them to be the person they deserve to be, spreading love and happiness everywhere they go.  How can I do anything else?  It's what I want for myself and the people I love.  

Not a pushy, evil kind of change, but a joyous, blessed, beautiful change that works by showing what life can be if you have love, and know that the universe needs and loves you because you are you.  Not effortless, but full of the best kind of effort.  The kind that helps form you into who you were truly meant to be, the kind that rewards itself.  The kind that changes the world, and lets you meet Oprah.

Not that I didn't initially wish for the seat (My brand new, $20 seat!) to fall off while they were riding and the asshole get what they so richly deserved.  I'm not by a long shot anywhere near perfect.  It probably took me a week or two of practicing (and a lot of love from my friends and family) to really commit to the "I hope you use it in good health, and that it transforms your life into a cornucopia of delight" camp.  Probably more like two.  

I was so astonished to find it, that I kept trying to give it back to the couple who found it.  I told you I offered it to the man, thinking maybe he had taken it and needed it.  Shit, I can't tell, just by looking at people, who is well-off and who might need my help and forbearance.  No more than anyone else can tell, just by looking at you or me.  And it might have been time for me to give it up, I told them that.  I said, "I worked so hard to forgive the person who had taken it, and to wish it a good next life!  I had really given it up!"  That was when the husband offered to ride it home with me, so I wouldn't have to come back (a little over a block) to get it back!

I don't know what the conclusion of this post is.  Life is beautiful and wonderful things happen.  Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.  Don't take bikes that don't belong to you.  But if someone takes yours, try to think about the terrible life circumstances that would have to occur before you would take one.  I know people who don't have a hard time in life take bikes, too.  I know that people make a living, sometimes, stealing bikes.  I'm not stupid.  But for god's sake, let's be kind to one another.  For my sake, let's.  

I can't handle a world where we don't, because, you know, I'm sensitive.  I can't live in a "devil take the hindmost" world, because that would leave out the people who are not only the most annoying and time-consuming, but who need the most help to get along in our world.  Let's give people the benefit of the doubt.  Let's assume that no one thinks that he or she is being evil, or would take the actions they are taking if they had the wide view.  People who do antisocial things like stealing usually can justify it, some way, just like everyone else tries to justify what they do.  They have a reason, most of the time.  It doesn't excuse them, but it is a reason, and if you think you wouldn't do the same thing in that person's circumstances, I want to be on the drugs they have you on. 

often I am

sure this whole dirty, messy process is worth it, if only for the color green

ye gods i am a shit

some movie is on tv

meg ryan has taken her daughter for ice cream

the little girl is glumly stirring her ice cream

as mommy tells her about mommy's cancer

"does it hurt you?" the little girl asks

there is a sense of betrayal in her eyes

she won't understand the pain for years

but nothing will ever be the same again

and how can she trust god, now?

i think, damn, now i want some ice cream

god bless the internet

and god bless youtoob.

I just watched an octopus eat a shark.

often I am

abrasive when frightened or confused

End the ultimatums!

No more ultimatums!  Ever!  Or else!

very sad, but calm day today

I'm taking this class called The Execptional Person.  It's so awful.  "The Exceptional Person" is the new euphemism for weirdos and j.d.'s and gimps and simps and 'tards.  Of course, we can't use any of those words, anymore, because we're so fucking thoughtful and sensitive.  We wouldn't want to use any words that would make the troublesome little fuckers feel bad about themselves.  

Please understand, this animosity is directed towards the smug, sanctimonious people who decide who is the exception and what we're all going to do about it, not the victims.  I'm having a really hard time with the last few chapters, because we're discussing the kinds of processing problems that I had as a kid, that made my life torture.  Things that it was adamantly denied I had.  There was nothing wrong with me, nosirree-Bob, that a little trying harder wouldn't help.  Even now my parents deny that I'm anything but exceptionally bright.  And a little, "awkward."

They think they're helping me.  Don't want me to get a label that would make people treat me differently.  No, it's just my personality/most intimate self that makes people run screaming for the hills.  

And then my teacher says, "Let me describe to you how a kid like this would look to a teacher or schoolmate..." and describes me at age 5 or age ten or age 15.  She sounds like she's quoting from letters my teachers sent home.  I cry and cry when I'm reading the chapter, and then I sit through the lecture and pretend I'm fine.  Wouldn't want to do anything exceptional.

Today was a really hard lecture.  I felt totally vulnerable and exposed, and the whole discussion was like, "Why are these people so weird?  Why don't they just do what everybody else does?  That sounds crazy and dangerous.  I wouldn't want to be around that person."  I really wanted to tell them, but I was so emotional I knew I was going to seem crazy and dangerous if I tried to explain.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I didn't feel understood and supported, and I didn't want to be there.  Maybe I just have a persecution complex, but I didn't feel that today's topic was being discussed with the same kind of sympathy that the discussions on other exeptionalities included.  It's probable that I'm just much too sensitive, and overtired, but I felt that a class which had heretofore been painfully aware of everyone's viewpoint turned into a mildly malicious gossip session about someone absent.  

The best I can do is to say this.  I seem to make a lot of people uncomfortable.  If you are one of these people, I am sorry, and I think I can explain why it is.  I perceive life a lot differently than you do.  Nobody knows why.  There are hundreds of reasons, from genetics to environment to brain lesions, and almost everyone has an opninion.  But perceive it differently I do, and part of that makes me into a really intense mirror.  Another part of it lets me see a lot more of the silly arbitrariness of life than most people usually do, or maybe it just makes it bother me more. 

People are basically just perceiving machines, pattern recognizing machines.  My machine just works a little different.  Like, I bought mine in Europe.  It pretty much does what yours does, but it's geared a little differently, and you have to work on it with a different kind of screwdriver.  It's missing a couple of functions yours has, but it can do these other things.  Maybe the other things are more important to me than whatever yours can do that is really important to you but that I just don't care about.

I really want to explain this lucidly and the part of my brain that knows how to do that feels like it's packed with broken glass and barbed wire.  I just can't do it.  

I'll stop trying for a moment and leave you with this final thought:

Jesus, why can't you just be like everybody else?  Would it kill you to go along to get along?

What, if everybody jumped off a cliff you would too?  Be your own person!

-took a nap, other side of brain had this for me when I woke up:

(There's a reason I'm fucked up, and it's called Human Culture.  It causes people to do crazy things and then rationalize them much more virulently than I ever thought about.  In its highly concentrated form it is poisonous, and if I make you very uncomfortable, I can be reasonably sure you are so contaminated with it as to be a danger to me, and cause you to avoid me by being rude and unkind to you.)

Thank you, other side of brain.  Sometimes you scare me, but I like your confidence!

 

wonderful words by someone else but me

I've been having a wonderful/terrible time lately with motivation and creativity.  I mean, up until about 6 months ago it was just a terrible time, so that's better.  It's just now I kind of still feel that icky feeling a lot of the time, but I find it hopelessly funny.  What?  I'll never amount to anything?  I'm a terrible artist/writer/person/friend/daughter/pet owner?  Everyone has these feelings and they never go away, no matter how hard you try to do better or ignore them?  Then I roll out of my chair in genuine, life-affirming laughter.  Which usually pisses me off.

Why?  Because I'm special.  Special as a stomach pump.  Just like everybody else.  The wonderful blogger Finslippy is special as a mysterious foreign postcard in the mail, and she has these feelings, too.  Except her can talken more betterer then mine.  Seems like everyone I know is having a hard time with the creative product coming out of their head, not just me, lately.  Read it up, and if you don't believe me or her, listen to Ira Glass.  That guy really fucken knows what he's talking about.

hey, kids! it's the usage nazi!

Dear The Internet,

Discreet and discrete are two different words. They mean two different things. Please stop using them interchangeably, especially in personal ads. "Seeking clean, discrete kinky person, no fatties." Doesn't make any sense. Discrete means, "constituting a separate entity : individually distinct."  

Maybe it's your really deep way of saying you want to be with somebody who can be their own person, who doesn't need to be with someone to feel like themselves. But I don't think so. I think the word you want is discreet, which means, "having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech : prudent ; especially : capable of preserving prudent silence." "You told my wife we're fucking?! Are you insane? You agreed to be discreet." "No, I agreed to be discrete. And I wanted to tell her. That's just how I roll."

Considering how many other rules of grammar and usage (and spelling, and punctuation) I just ignore, this post might seem a little silly. Especially seeing that I (surprisingly) came down on the side of the them/they solution to the he-or-she/his-or-hers controversy. (That's right, there's trouble over it in the grammar world, and I'm playing fast and loose on the wrong side of town.) But if you're thinking that, you're probably the kind of person who misuses their and they're or hear and here. And jerks off to pictures of Ryan Seacrest holding a puppy. With your mom in the room.