eww

I found my avacado.

two tampons and no lights

Between PMS, acquisition of the guilt-mobile, and my sister having to euthanize our family's 19-year-old pet cat, I managed to fall back into the slump of which I had being doing so well to evade. I struggle to write this just as much as I've been struggling to do everything recently. In fact, after staring at a partial sentence for over an hour, the only way I've suddenly been able to muster focus now is by turning off all the lights, closing all my open web tabs, looping some Bunyan to keep my thoughts from wandering, and enshrouding my body in an exaggeratedly over-sized flannel hoodie, which belonged to my sister back when she was in junior high and that I have since transmuted into my ragged uniform for pensive days. I latch onto such extreme solutions (though this being the tamer of my otherwise unmentionable antics) as desperate methods of escape from these cyclical autistic fits. Of course the escape itself is an illusion, as such behavior only augments my symptoms further. I am outside myself, both unable to realize the induced distance and maintain the prolonged concentration necessary to regain control.

My manager came over to my desk on Friday to ask how I was doing. I assumed he was referring to my calling in sick on Tuesday and that I have been taking a number of days off lately for doctor appointments and illness without ever explaining to him the reasons. When I made a very brief and mumbled explanation of my ailments, he seemed slightly confused (as he usually is by anything I try to say) and proceeded to tell me that if I needed to talk to him about anything, he was always available. After he walked away, I began questioning if I had answered him correctly as his gestures implied that I hadn't. Then I realized that maybe someone had actually noticed that I'd spent the last two days crying at my desk and had ratted me out.

About a month or two ago, I had crashed so far as to allow myself to be pressured into seeing a shrink. Psychiatry has always seemed like psychological prostitution to me, i.e. paying a professional to listen to one's problems because one either can't, just prefers not to, or is just unsatisfied with discussing them with a friend. I'm not meaning to debunk the profession or the need as a whole so much as say that my personal lack of trust and disinterest in opening up to strangers makes the option rather undesirable and likely to be ineffectual. My negative expectations may have doomed the half-hearted attempted from the get go, if you can call one session, in which I knew from the moment he introduced himself that my being there was a mistake, an attempt. My fluctuating and panicked curiosity in medication was what intrigued me amid that dire time and last week the interest reoccurred. Yet now, I still remain stubbornly reluctant to succumbing to such potentially damaging experimentation. My impatience for such a trial and error, cop-out approach tends to supersede such intrigue, negating the possible drastic consequences of my dismissal.

I don't mind my melancholy. I don't mind my reticence or even my solitude. What frustrates me though is the stagnant lock-down state that periodically engulfs me and that I am incessantly trying to evade. In these moments I completely lose my abilities in both self-expression and social communication. I can't muster an opinion, let alone a complete thought. I can't write. I can't talk. Apathy thwarts my every hopeful inclination and for days, if not weeks, I get nothing done. Every friend I've made in the past two or three years I've now lost because of these fits, and as they become increasingly more frequent, I fear that I'm wearing the patience of those that remain.

There's a boy at work that I like. He's now made numerous attempts to try and talk to me and nearly every time I've manage to briefly amuse him, I then baffle him with my sudden awkward, evasive tactics. Only twice have I taken the initiative myself and both instances were indirect: loaning him music and e-mailing him for advice on something I didn't really need. Both times his responses demonstrated increased interest in communication and both times I did nothing to further it, let alone reciprocate. For indirect attempt number three, I'm enlisting a friend because 1) I don't want him thinking my interests go beyond friendly in nature and 2) only in the presence of someone that I'm comfortable around do I think I stand a chance of being able to act like myself. I don't know if this is ridiculous or just plain pathetic. Either way, it's quite typical.

Although I'm obviously in the process of recuperating from my most recent fit, I still dread to think how long I have until my next one. Will I have enough time to make it worthwhile to start this or that project? Should I attempt planning this or that social activity or should I wait a little longer to make sure I'm past the point of imminent relapse? It is ridiculous: I've put my life on permanent hold for fear of my own instability. One lesson I have learned from this most recent occasion is that I've relied too heavily on unreliable people. I used to always use artistic interests or creations to get myself out of ruts and actually my most prolific periods have always been when I'm either trying to avert an attack or recuperate from one. I'm trying my hand at a number of different methods nows, as not all moods are helped by the same efforts. I'll take my chances this way, rather than agreeing to be sedated.

pause

This place no longer feels safe.
I don't know where to go.

desperation, perhaps

Did I just buy this album?

recovery (again)

Frustratingly, I've been wanting and not wanting to post many things, but I'm too disgusted with everything I try to write to find it worth doing so. So in the meantime, while I continue to get my act together, I figured I'd post my other doings (well, the two that are more earnest of the four); there's generally too much text here anyway.

Click images to enlarge.

slit

Is it better to be hated than to be missed?

*starves*

Why does cereal taste so bad when mixed with water?

mopes

I could read or I could just watch the same film over and over and over and over again.

Update: Okay, I just watched this clip and realized just how shit it looks on youtube, so maybe I shouldn't even be posting it. Avert your eyes, turn off all the lights and submerge yourself into the oneiric and melancholy sound of the accompanying Japanese pop song! *sigh* And now I can't help but swoon at how heightened of an experience it would have been to see this in a theater versus DVD.

fantastic idiots

"It's a diplomatic job now, being the director. The producer makes the picture and the star makes the picture, and in the end you have a very fun industrial product. But it's not deeper. It's an amusing thing. It's like a cigarette, you smoke it, and then you forget it and you have another cigarette. And then you die of cancer. If you see only that kind picture, you end up with spiritual cancer, because they don't help you. But you have a lot of fun." AJ

mired

I keep thinking that if I can just make it through this year, I'll be all the more stronger. But what if things don't get better; what if they just keep compounding and getting worse? I try to seclude myself into more controllable scenarios, but I can't stop (nor give up) life around me. My mentality feels tougher, now more so than ever, to handle what comes my way but still I'm not handling the situations themselves any differently, let alone better. Instead of mustering the desired confrontation, I reflexively distanced myself, becoming increasingly numb with every blow. Although I have been resilient enough lately to avoid complete upheaval of my progressing mentality, the inflicted foreboding sufficiently nurtures my doubts. Perhaps I'm excepting too much too quickly but my current preoccupation is how unshakably my depression persists despite my best efforts; inescapably, it constantly looms over me as an omnipresent threat, mocking my every attempt and seething in my every failure. At my best, I suppress or ignore its presence but never does it wholly go away.

Not that that is excuse enough to discontinue, merely a disenchanting observation.

evening

I'll be using this weekend to catch-up on a list of delayed tasks (yes, I say this a lot) so that on Monday I can begin again somewhat anew (yes, I claim this even more often, but lately such claims have not been false so much as progressive). Mainly, I really need to start sleeping more than five hours a night, eating more than once a day, start exercising more and stop moping into work two hours late every day so that I can actually get out at a decent time. I have to start taking better physical care of myself before these absences become prolonged enough to be damaging.

Expect great things! ...most instances probably won't be perceivable, but rather tasks done in private, which I guess makes this entry useless, if not seemingly redundant.

progress

Over the past few months, my favorite Indian restaurant has been in the process of being remodeled. Each time I walk in it looks less and less like the comfy hole-in-the-wall eatery I first started going to. The first thing to be added was a buffet option. The table started out in various makeshift forms until a permanent fixture was added. Recently though the various changes and additions have sprung up with alarmingly rapidity. The tacky, Nickelodeon-orange, wooden booths in the front area, where orders were placed, were stripped away, as well as the partitioning wall. The once few oversized tables, which accommodated large Indian family gatherings, were replaced with an array of more modest sized ones. White table cloths were added. Plate-glass table tops were added. The eco-unfriendly Styrofoam dinnerware and plastic utensils were replaced with real plates, glasses and silverware. The self-serve water cooler disappeared. The clientele also changed accordingly.

And today to my even further dismay, I walked in to discover that I not only had to wait to be seated but was also given a laminated menu from a waiter(!) instead of just ordering from the counter. The front staff had changed and only when I saw people pop in and out of the kitchen did I recognize a couple faces. I miss the teenage girl who worked the register. She caught on that I was only ordering the buffet if it had mattar paneer, and so whenever I walked in she'd either smile and hand me a plate or give me a pouting face and shake her head so that I knew to order something off the menu instead. In fact, all that remains of the old aesthetic is the once beloved projector which still screens cheesy Indian movies on the back wall to watch while dining, but somehow amid this new sterile ambiance the projected films feel like an awkward relic of an eatery now gone.

random thoughts of recent

should write, don't wanna... *rambles*

The more I sequester myself amid my own interests, the more strange and oddly choreographed the outside world appears. An eerie, unspoken shock paralyzes me whenever I return to this environment, garbed in the conventional facade which I seem so stubborn to discard, and the true absurdity of both my act and theirs reveals itself, amassing obviousness with each further incident. Although I remain unwilling to relinquish the aspiration for uniqueness, I continually combat its adverse condescension and the distance is obviates; I gain contact only with my own will. What was once aspired for now seems just as distant and undesired as what was left behind. Inconsequential, the option of retreat has passed. I hear nothing ahead.

Going through all my notes and what-not, I realize just how much I repeat myself, dwelling endlessly on the same ceaseless drivel without resolution or initiative.

In jest, I let truths slip in as unnoticed self-mockery. Such concealed candor yields the necessary, surreptitious relief.

I'm not sleeping enough, yet I'm not gaining any more time for its lack. Stability regained: implementation required. I have a plan collecting dust as I stall in marginal capacity. These fragments may not be enough.

start

I haven’t been writing here because I’m still not sure what direction I want to take. I am running a series of experiments and I waiver between wanting to document them for the sake of tracking any potential progress and wanting to keep my efforts secret. Of course that isn’t my only excuse. I’ve been in a reading mood lately, as well as occupied with all sorts of miscellaneous social melodrama, so I just haven’t had the necessary time to devote to writing the past month. Starting now though, I’m going to push myself back into the habit of trying to write an entry every other day. They’ll be bad (as in overly self-absorbed) at first since I’m out of practice, but hopefully they’ll get better (as in more interesting to read than just being written for the sake of writing). But enough with my disclaimers and lame-o excuses!

politeness which reeks of lazy condescension

I will make an attempt to pause and think about what I’m saying before I blurt out the expected, amiable cliché response that I don’t even agree with just so I can get away as quickly as possible from whatever person has had the gall to try to speak to me to defer his boredom with himself.

but seriously

I will stop mocking my own interests thinking that that is the only way to make them conversational.