She's Not Broken, She's Just a Baby

Things I learned today:

1) Just because chocolate flavored Ex Lax tastes delicious does not mean you should eat twice the recommended dose;

2) There is a scientific approach to how best eat an ice cream sandwich;

3) It's more than me that struggles with bipolar and fibromyalgia;

4) Of the three people I never expected to tell about my disorders, every single one of them has gone out of their way to offer their support;

5) My neuroses, strange paranoias and wild gesticulations are part of my charm;

6) I might just be the luckiest unlucky girl alive.

I Fucken Hate Xmas Music

Around Xmas, I'm usually a grumpus.

Well.

I guess I more extra grump than my usual run-of-the-mill grumpuslikeness, because if there's one thing in the world I hate more than Nickelback and grapefruit, it's hypocrisy.

And guess what? After dictionary.comming hypocrisy, as I am often wont to do because I cannot abide grammatical errors in real life and therefore cannot abide them on the blogosphere, this 'related searches' list came up:

Related Searches
Christian hypocrisy
Hypocrisy in history
Religious hypocrisy
Hypocrisy in religion
Types of hypocrisy
Quotes about hypocris...
Essay on hypocrisy
A writing on hypocris...
Hypocrisy poems
Hypocrisy affects peo...
Hypocrisy in church
Origin of hypocrisy

...are we noticing a trend here?

It is my personal belief that religion stems from anxieties surrounding love and death, and in this sense, I believe religion is a perfectly logical illogical way to resolve this issue.

What makes it illogical, other than the obvious hundreds-of-species-fitting-on-one-boat-and-not-killing-each-other types of things, is that what people take as the "inerrant word of God" is actually a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation that was edited by a bunch of dudes with clear social and political agendas.

People of color? Let's enslave 'em. (lol Ham seen Noah's weiner XD)
Women? All silence and subjection. (let's turn some bitches into salt)
Poor people? Fuck 'em. (no, srsly, sodom fell cuz of buttsecks...swear)
Animals? OM NOM NOM NOM (NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM)
Masturbation? KILLING BABIES (The expense of spirit in a waste of shame D:)

...this by no means is an exhaustive list.

What grinds my gears about Xmas music, and the holiday more generally, is that a hella ton of Xtians are all DERP A DERRRRR CONSUMER CAPITALIST GREED :D :D :D when Jeebus was faaaaairly explicit in his teachings re: Christian charity.

"You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." (Mark 10:21)

Okay, I'll grant you that one need not give all worldly possessions to believe in the Christian god. But to systematically deny them basic human rights and dignities doesn't sound overly Christian to me, especially with the goddamn propaganda of right-wing thinktanks decrying people as 'unmotivated looking-for-handout' types without considering their OBSCENE amounts of privilege.

I think I am a little off-topic.

What also pisses the living shit outta me is this "Xmas" business.

KEEP THE CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS D: D: D: OR ELSE NO ONE WILL KNOW WHAT X STANDS FOR D:

MLLLRRRGGHHHH. 'X' HAS BEEN USED FOR FUCKEN SERIOUS EVER TO REPRESENT CHRIST. 'X' IS THE GREEK LETTER FOR CHI, FOR MOTHERFUCKLOVINSAKE.

What I am trying to convey here is that I fucking love Jesus. I think he is the bee's knees. He was a cool dude, and he stood for pretty much most of what I stand for today. It's his fucking followers that I can't stand, who take the Bible so wildly out of context that it makes my head full-on Exorcist twist.

50 points if you got that Buffy reference. I am going to stew in my impotent rage and sleep restlessly to gear up for round two of really awkward familial conversations in which I either surpress righteous feminist rage or get disowned.

Blooooop.

Straight-Up Laughed My Ass of for Twenty Minutes

I texted the question "Why is Nickelback allowed to exist?" to Cha Cha (242-242). Their reply:

"Because some people like it when their ears bleed from crappy music exposure."

I'm in love.

Fuck Capitalism, Too

mlllrghhffp.

Diagnosis: Fibromyalgia

Prognosis: In the US, terrible; if I go abroad, juuuuust fine.

I've been toying of late with the idea of living elsewhere for a couple years--to clear my head, to find myself, to really get at whatever the fuck is up with me. Last time, though, things didn't pan out so well--I did what I basically do at home all day, except with my social, emotional and financial support over three thousand miles away.

I've also toyed with the possibility of taking a semester off. It would be the most important semester, my graduating semester, that things would fuck up so bad, but maybe I'm being responsible for once in my life in admitting that I am not well enough to lose the safety net of college. When I lose this net, I lose my status as full-time student, which is to say that I lose my health benefits.

Benefits.

As in, not rights.

As in, a payment or gift for services rendered.

Because if you're not rendering services in the US, if you're not contributing to unfettered and unregulated free-market capitalism, you're goddamn useless.

The reality of my situation is that I cannot perform simple tasks. I cannot lift things, I cannot sit or stand for long periods of time, I cannot even bend my knees without feeling like my goddamn kneecaps are going to explode.

There goes the food industry, the service industry, and an office job as potential areas of underemployment for me.

Grad school would be an obvious and viable alternative, but if this past semester has taught me anything, it's that when I am severely depressed, or manic, or fibromyalgic, or whatever the fuck it is that I am, I cannot do anything. This, of course, is seen as laziness, as an unwillingness to work, as a blatant disregard of our capitalistic system.

It is seen as everything else but an illness.

I Felt a Funeral in My Brain

Head in the clouds, head in the sky--that is to say, high, though not chemically so. Agitated, mostly--forgetful, late, twitchy, bitchy, avoidant, searching--I'm losing it finally, I think, after all this time. I forget to eat, and if you knew me from how I was before, that was not something She (Me?) did. I was blue-tongued at my comp oral, for no other particular reason than to maintain my irreverent street cred. They asked their questions, unavoidable, and I skirted around most of what they were asking for. Pointed question, they'd ask, to which I'd respond star, circle, triangle, or, more precisely, not. I'd just not respond.

Eyebrows raised.

A pre-comp meeting today: more pointed questions, more confusion at my lack of coherence. Tread softly, because this girl is clearly not okay.

Take a few days, they say. Take a few days before you start narrowing your topic.

Narrow, yes. Too many things I'm trying to accomplish with this comp--four or five comps, to be precise. What is the central question, they ask--a legitimate one. Can I answer, though, on the spot, without crying? Not exactly. So I do not answer, I blink, I stare, blink once more. My eyeliner, it occurs to me, makes me doe-eyed, vulnerable, scared; all true things, but without, I could hide it better. Whatever IT is.

I've been reading Madness by Marya Hornbacher, author of Wasted, and as I read, I sit in abject horror. Is this what I will become? Bipolar runs in my family, courses through our veins, makes us mad, makes us invincible, but incapacitates. This is where I am now, and I am terrified. I always knew I was atypical, and maybe it's just the confluence of my life crashing down upon me that's finally making me crack, but the degree to which I am maddened by all these goddamn feelings makes me suspect that maybe, just maybe, I have inherited much more than anyone could have ever guessed.

Could not have happened at a more convenient time.

clear vision

Pretty much implied that I'm a drug addicted psychic cat lady in the intro of my comp:

"Whether it was the copious amounts of Mountain Dew I'd ingested, painkillers I'd popped like M&Ms, or the contented, soft purring of my kitty in my lap, I had a moment of clairvoyance where I decided that it doesn't have to be this way."

Goddammit.

Is it what we need, and will we ever succeed?

Omfgggg I drank too much Mountain Dew again. As in, I can actually hear the HFCS giving me diabeetus as I write this.

Meh.

So the whole reason I'm writing now is because I'm trying to comp and I'm all LALALALANOTCOMPING which is alarming since it's due on Monday, which means I will have to go to Staples on Sunday and get it bound so I can turn it in on time.

Coherent?

MOUNTAIN DEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

And I was just thinking today, or rather, have been thinking for quite some time now, that I don't have a future. Or not so much that I don't have a future, but that I have so many options for a future that Brain shuts down and says timeforanap. I shut down partially because I am overwhelmed by the amount of loans I have--pretty much every flavor under the sun. Could be that I'll pay $58,000 on a $9,000 private loan because the state of Ohio for some reason does not have their shit together. Unlikely, sure, but the fact that such an unfathomable sum is even in EXISTENCE freaks me the shit out--I live my life in fives and ones, so even twenty dollars makes me feel like I'm a fucken millionaire.

And then, I think, wow, it's really incredible that I even have an opportunity to be in this much debt. Because the truth is, I charge more money on a single cup of goddamn coffee to my credit card than some people in so called "third-world" countries make in a week.

This astounds me.

Frightens me.

Makes me want to crawl in a hole and die from all my goddamn privilege.

A good friend once told me (pretty recently, actually) that I can't and should not beat myself up for this, because it's totally counterproductive.

And she said a lot of other things that make sense, like usual.

It's nice to have friends that are so logical. Clear-headed, especially when I can't be.

Won't be.

I'm an atypical depressive, that's for damn sure, and I hate it, hate it so much sometimes, but in some ways--in a lot of ways--I'm really lucky and grateful for it.

Maybe the reason I feel like I don't have a future is because my future is other people. Other people like me, other people not like me, other people I love, hate, am ambivalent towards. Ghandi said to be the change you want to see in the world, but I think that's only half right. All well and good in theory, sure, but to really change the world, I think, you've got to realize that you can't change the world, that idealism is damaging, that monumental gains lead to inevitably monumental backlash. To "change the world," I would argue, would mean to leave an impression on someone's heart, however large or small, without expectations of "change" in return. Paradoxically, to change the world, we must stop trying to change the world.