I remember what it was like to be a high school student and how every little thing was a crisis. OMG he likes me, OMG he likes her, OMG my life is over. My friends and I basically had variations of the same conversation every day that usually involved the boy of the day, hair, clothes, how ugly/fat/gross we were, and how lame our parents were. Every story had the same theme: I’m a victim, my life is horrible, no one understands me.

When I graduated from High School I would like to say that realization hit me like a freight train and I stopped acting that way and hanging out with those people. It took me a long time. but we had that summer where we clung to those last vestiges of being a teenager just in case those really were the “best days of our lives”. Slowly my friends spread out into the world and I stayed behind with my remaining friends.

I wanted to  start over – rather, I liked the IDEA of starting over - but I kept being me, having the same conversations, and most importantly being the victim. Sure, at first it was easy to be a happy-go-lucky sprightly individual who was the life of the party and everyone loves. But eventually depression would rear it’s ugly head, I would hang out with my old friends, I would start the victim story all over again and be back to where I started.

After Christmas my Freshman year a few things happened that gave me that real edge on the victim front. My boyfriend announced at a party while I was within earshot that he had cheated on me… three times over Christmas Break. One of my new friends and I got in a huge friendship ending fight over something ridiculous, trivial and utterly forgettable because I can’t even remember what it was. And all in the same week I got fed up with one of my oldest friends from high school and told her that if she was going to keep dating married men, I couldn’t be friends with her anymore.

I spent that whole next week playing the victim. I watched movie after movie in my bed, I turned off my phone, didn’t go to class, and I definitely cried in the shower for a bit. I didn’t want to do anything, go anywhere, or see anybody. Just when I was about to head over the edge and get really dark, twisty, and victim-y my new roommate, Kit, dragged me to a party.

She was everything I always pretended to be when meeting new people except that she was real. She was fun and casual, no drama, no bullshit, life was meant to be experienced – and just because you were sad didn’t mean that you had to let it swallow you whole. At first it was hard because I felt she didn’t understand me, that she didn’t understand how hard my life was. 

And then I was confronted with the truth, her life was MUCH harder than mine: among other things that are her story – not mine - the previous spring her boyfriend of several years had died in an avalanche while snowboarding. My life wasn’t hard, it was filled with petty fake drama that I dreamed up to feel important. Her pain was real and instead of walking around with a chip on her shoulder being a victim and claiming that she had every reason to BE a victim, she lived her life.

When you keep choosing to live it gets hard to have patience for those who choose to be a victim and walk around with a chip on their shoulder.  I have no idea how she put up with me.  But she did, and as dramatic as it sounds I know she saved my life on more than one occassion.

There are many reasons I chose Kit to be my Maid of Honor… but I think the most important reason to me is that she showed me the importance of that choice, choosing to live. I have many things to thank her for, and in the world we live in today it is often something we don’t even think about: thanking our friends for all the little pieces of you that they are.

Thank you, thank you for being my rock. Thank you for taking me under your wing. Thank you for showing me how to grow the fuck up.

the problem with my depression is that it isn’t sadness. I don’t allow myself to be sad. I don’t like being miserable, crying, or taking things out on other people… except, if we’re being honest, my mom. oh boy do I ever take it out on my mom.

I have this annoyingly overwhelming sense of self awareness. I don’t want to be sad because I never feel that I truly have anything to be sad about. I don’t want people to think I’m sad. and so I’m always HAPPY. Look at how happy I am. or “angry” in a self deprecating humorous sort of way. and people laugh. making people laugh distracts me from myself.

but the issue with the depression is that you can ignore it, you can pretend it isn’t there, you can try to drink it away, eat it away, or exercise it away, you can call it something else, you can blame it on someone else but the problem is still there. dirty, muddy, and getting paw prints all over your clean carpet. and the only way to fix the problem is to confront it and clean it up.

I don’t want to clean it up, I want to hide from it. but it seeps into other aspects of my life. I’ll be watching a television show and feel like i’m drowning in the problems the pathetic and fake characters are experiencing. I’ll be at work and come across immense mental road blocks and I can’t work around them. I will try to kill myself on the Stairmaster because at the end of it I’m so exhausted it is hard to worry about anything else. Or I try to eat my feelings.

and any one of those things are the way I live through my anxiety that a million horrible things are going to happen and there is NOTHING I CAN DO TO STOP THEM.

but when things are REALLY bad I start staying up late. I will read books I’ve already read, magazines that i’m not really interested in, watch TV shows, play computer games, all the while telling my irrational self that it is time to go to bed and then promising my rational self that i will only be 5 more minutes. and then I am constantly in a cycle where I’m too tired to worry about anything. I’m running myself ragged so that I don’t have the energy to be worried about anything or confront what is bothering me.

I’m getting married this summer. we’re buying a condo. I have never been more excited and more scared about two things in my whole life. I want these things. but I don’t want to make any more decisions, spend any more money, or paint any more walls. isn’t that so whiny and childish? I can just hear myself, “But daddy, I want an Oompa Loompa NOOOOOOOOOOW!”

and so at the end of the day I have to stop hiding, stop running, stop eating, and just stop. go to sleep. I’m allowed to be worried but I can’t let it take over my life.

so easy to understand… so hard to actually follow.

I’ve lived that life before, the one where self confidence is in short supply; everything you are belongs to someone else.  you can’t be pretty unless someone else thinks that you are.  You can’t be skinny unless the perfect number in your head matches the one on the scale.  and nothing matters unless he looks at you the right way, says the right thing, shares that special smile with you.

and as insignificant as you feel when you aren’t perfect, as contradictory as it may seem to the outsider; the whole world revolves around you.  anyone who is upset is upset at you.  the rain falls to spite you.  the washing machine breaks and your whole world is ruined.  your boss is out to get you.  your friends are holding secret meetings behind your back.  arguments are won by throwing tantrums because the most important thing is to be right rather than to communicate.

and despite that being the very definition of a drama queen you know, KNOW, that it is the whole world that is wrong.  you are the martyr.  no one understands you, not even your friends.  no one is on your side.  you are alone.

and it gets to the point that the people who are standing by your side cannot make you see reason anymore because you simply refuse to listen.  and what good is talking when you can’t do that essential half of talking.  and what good are apologies when you don’t mean them; you cannot be sorry if you continue to be a drama queen.

and maybe it is at that point that you must grow up or lose your friends.  to stop believing that the world spins because you are on it.  i can never apologize enough to the people who stood by me while i relived being a toddler.  life is pain, for everyone.  we all go through the pain of living every day, and to think that you are the only one is the worst kind of selfishness.

and despite the fact that i lived that life, that i did this to my dearest friends, i was still unable to find the words to say.  i can only express my hope that one day this person will wake up, one day this person will find their way, one day this person will see.  one day this person will stop hurting their friends by their behavior.

until then, I have “nothing” to say.

do you ever get the feeling that you are having a conversation and just not getting anywhere?  i have these conversations in my head a lot.  i picked up a book from barnes&noble the other day about learning to relax.  so far the only thing i have learned is that when i worry i let my thoughts spiral out of control.  one worry leads to another worry and down the line they get less and less rational.  and i was reminded that taking ten deep breaths would help… but i have that whole inability to focus thing i really need to work on.

and i’d like to just apply my favorite notion that if you can’t deal with/solve the problem you should learn how to prevent it.

and it all starts with my inability to say no to people.  i can’t say no.  and it leads to a lot of rock-hard place situations that i’ve landed myself in.  if only i had said no in the first place, i might not be so stressed out.  i create 99% of my problems.  and 1% of my problems are caused equally by hate commenters and alcohol.  i would make a pie chart but i would most likely spend three hours picking out the colors and well, frankly, i’m supposed to be sleeping right now.

here is my game plan: i will now tell everyone no, except bartenders.  and i will write on here more often especially when i am awake at hours i shouldn’t be.  and then 30% of my problem will be alcohol related, 17% of my problems will be the haters, 50% of my problem will be shit i’ve created because i still can’t say no, and 3% will be because i said no.

and if that doesn’t add up to 100% you are going to have to wait until i can find my TI-83 because i have no fucking clue where i’ve left it.  and i’m supposed to be sleeping.

when i was in high school (shut up Kit) my counselor asked me what i would do if i had a million dollars.  i thought about it for a minute before telling her that i would buy a car for me and one for my sisters so that i wouldn’t have to share with them anymore.  and then without pausing listed clothing items, shoes, jewelry, furniture and electronics that i would purchase.  i knew that my counselor wanted me to search in my soul for what i would do if i didn’t have to work for money, but i handled the situation like i did with most things at the time: avoidance and sarcasm.

looking back on it i kind of wish i had spent more time trying to figure this out and less time trying to be snarky and flip.  because when i daydream about having a million dollars i think of all the things i would purchase, and not what i would do once i had spent to my heart’s desire.  and i know that this speaks something about my need for instant gratification and inability to plan for the after.  whatever.

up until a few months ago, if you asked me what i would do if i won the lottery i would tell you that i would stay at my job.  i love my job, i love being needed, i love being the go-to person to create documents at work, i love helping people.  but recently things haven’t been so great.  work politics really wear on me and it becomes harder each morning to drag myself out of bed just to go to work and pretend that everything is ok.

and so if you asked me right now what i would do if someone gave me a million dollars and told me to leave my job and do whatever i wanted to do with the rest of my life?  a million things start flooding into my mind.  the thought that i might actually go back to school (!) get my LCSW and become a counselor.  or maybe i would work part time at a coffee shop and then spend my afternoons in a corner by the window writing.  or maybe i would finally start auditioning for musicals.

it is such a strange feeling to finally have any answer to this question when most of my post-high school life has been spent answering “I don’t know.” while jumping from job to meaningless job just so that i could pay for things.  and maybe i loved my job because i could do it every day and not because i really enjoyed it.  maybe something good came from all of this bullshit after all.

that is worth more than any amount of money to me.

this past weekend the family dog, schmellie, passed on to that great big mud puddle in the sky.  i was more upset than i thought i would be.  and i spent a good amount of time on Sunday realizing that no matter how hard i try to shut myself down and not care about anything so that things won’t hurt me as much, i can’t truly make myself not care.

schmellie was the dog we got after my dog passed away.  maggie was lonely and so my mom went out to golden retriever rescue and picked out a psychotic golden who was terrified of thunder and camera flashes, would squeeze herself behind the water heater and under my parent’s bed for several hours and not come out until she felt like it, and was stubborn as hell.  we got along great.

she was a great dog.

once i was done moping, i went to hang out with aiden.  we started talking about how sad i was and about past dogs and how much it sucks when they die.  and it wasn’t until i talked about it with this great guy who understands me so well, that i could really start to stop feeling so crappy about schmellie, and start thinking that the world was going to end any minute.

and i realized that no matter how much i think shutting myself off to feeling is going to help, it won’t.  and that the best thing for me to do is to talk to someone, no matter how stupid i feel, and let it all out.  it won’t make things better, but it just might make me feel better.  maybe i’m not as crazy as i think I am.

sometimes i think that the only reason i really wanted to be a movie star is that somehow, somewhere i would always be remembered.  i like to think that as long as someone remembers you, you are never really gone.  and i somehow equate that to being invincible.  which is why i think it is so bizarre when movie stars die.  i just saw her in Parent Trap, how could she be dead?

it feels like death has been following me around lately.  it is almost as if i am obsessing about it but not on purpose.  does that even make sense?  and it so weird to me that a few years ago i used to plan my own death and now i am afraid of the lack of control i have over the rest of my life, however long that may be.  i wonder what exactly that all means.

i hate how much i worry about death.  it is like watching it on tv, or a nagging verse that won’t stop repeating itself in your mind.  no matter what happy thought i have it usually comes to an abrupt halt when i think about how i might not live that long to have it.

aiden shared some interesting information about birth control (the joys of dating a med student) and how the hormones, no matter how low dose, can have a myriad of side effects including depression and weight gain.  i don’t usually medicate because i assume that i will be the small percentage that experiences the side effects but then i never really thought of birth control as medication.  we had a decent talk about it and decided that birth control with hormones might not be the best idea for me.  so after three years i am going off.

i am sincerely hoping that this has some effect on my craziness, otherwise i think it might be time to start seeing a shrink again.

i guess my biggest problem with dying is not knowing when it is going to happen.  i like to plan things.  not like how i plan to clean the bathroom and never get around to it until one day when i’m supposed to be doing something else entirely and just start cleaning top to bottom and singing along with Flight of the Conchords.

but i like to plan things in the way that monday, wednesday and saturday i go to the gym… unless i’m getting my hair done on saturday and then i go to the gym on Friday night.  or in the way that i plan what i’m bringing for lunch to work the next day.  or i plan to go out to lunch on a certain day of the week.  or in the way that i plan to go out on Saturday night with aiden every week.  i have plans.

and what if, one day on my way to one of my plans, someone just has a seizure while going 98 miles an hour through a red light and kills me in my car.  there is nothing worse than starting something and not being able to finish.  what if i were on my way to see Wicked?  Or a movie I really wanted to see?  Or something cool that I don’t even know about?

or maybe i’ll be in my bed and an earthquake will hit and i’ll fall into a hole that opens up underneath my house.  i’ll have planned my lunch or my gym for the next day and it would be a waste of my last moments.

and that is why sometimes it is so hard for me to make decisions or plans.  it takes time and energy and who knows where i’ll be tomorrow.  i’d rather sit in my bed stricken with the panic that all of these horrible things are out there just waiting to happen to me.  and then i try to remind myself that i can never be happy if i live my life in fear.

of course, that is what the flying singing banana slug told Charlie before he fell, hurt his back, and returned to the meadow only to find that Sprinkle and Sparkle had stolen his living room furniture.  so i have to take what the flying singing banana slug says with a grain of salt.

i’m a digital hoarder.  i save any electronic thing that has ever been emailed to me since 2005.  once in awhile i attempt to purge.  i come across account creations for sites i don’t even use anymore and batches of emails from people that don’t even make sense to me anymore.  i then remember why i don’t go purging: forced flashbacks.

it occurred to me that in three short years i could completely forget about these emails, the arguments we were having, and how we used to be inseparable yet now i can’t recall the last time i talked to this person on the phone much less saw them.  do i save these things in the attempt to remind myself that memories and friendships can be washed away as easily as drawings in the sand once the tide comes in?  

or maybe i kept these things to remind me that you can create the illusion that people are your friends and they can stab you in the back so fast that you will do just about anything to forget it.

or maybe, like every email, i keep it because at some point, somewhere in the distant future i may need to reference it.  pack rat behavior for the 21st century?  

maybe all of the above.

my evil sister Lana came home from Spain with a clip off of youtube about a bird named Kiwi.  a bird without wings.  you watch as Kiwi nails trees, that he has (somehow..?) collected, to the side of a very tall cliff.  and when he has finished doing this he puts on his little aviator goggles and JUMPS.  

as he falls/flies down the side of the cliff you see his little eyes tear up as he imagines that he is flying.  because Kiwi’s whole life he has had the one dream to fly and he is fulfilling his dream the only way a wingless bird can.  then my eyes tear up because OH MY GOD YOU STUPID FUCKING BIRD, STOP THAT SO I CAN HOLD YOU AND HELP YOU COME UP WITH A BETTER WAY!!!  and then he closes his little eyes and the screen goes black and you hear the thud of Kiwi becoming bird squish.

I can always be counted on to cry during this clip.  and cry when i’m telling people about this clip.  and cry when i’m thinking about the clip.  and i sit there crying and wishing that i could erase the images and thoughts about the fact that i have watched this clip, because it makes my heart hurt.

and it briefly makes me aware of the fact that i can realize my dreams without jumping off of a cliff… before i resort to telling myself that Kiwi landed in a deep body of water that was below said cliff and when he gets back to the top of the cliff he is just going to play his fun little game again.  and not die.  ever.  and one day come to my house and live with me.  so i can cuddle and love him forever and ever.  amen.