Tonight

I’m

So

Fucking

Sad

Tonight.

Giving Advice

Today, I had to give some hard advice to someone I care about greatly.  We ran into each other randomly.  I had stopped at a gas station on my way home from work, and she had to come back as she had bought an item and left it.  Felt pretty fated for us to be walking in at that same moment.  She started to cry when she saw me, and I knew she needed help. I did my best to be the person she needed, but I also gave her advice she needed to hear.

I’m worried about her. I know how it feels to be where she’s at, but she has so much positive in her life. I hate that we get to a point in life where we just can’t see the good. I’ve been in that spot for so long, I’ve just accepted it.  Though, I don’t want that for her. She’s too good. I want her be happy, but I want her to reasonable and practical.  It’s a difficult combination to manage.

I just realized today that I don’t know anyone that’s truly happy, or at least I don’t know anyone well that I really like that’s happy.  Am I more attracted to friendships with people who are in pain?  Do we attract each other like magnets, or is it just that the smart, intuitive people I choose to surround myself with are always the ones most prone to depression.

I wish things would ease for both of us. I keep trying to be happy.  I just don’t know how any longer.  I guess a lot of people have lost their way.  Unfortunately, instead of making me feel reassured that other people are suffering also, it just makes me realize even more that it’s not worth trying to be happy.  Happiness doesn’t truly exist.  It’s either be resolved, or cease to be.

I’m still trying.  I hope she keeps trying too.

Sunshine & Saviors

Today is the first day I’ve felt like me in weeks.  I’ve been hit with a lot the last couple of months with my dad’s sickness, my sickness and some internal warring between my heart and head.  I think it’s all going to get sorted though.  Though the last three weeks, there were days that I really didn’t know if I could make it no matter how many pep talks I gave myself.

Yet today, inexplicably, I woke up still a little sick but determined.  I have such a hard time with things ending even when I set the ending in motion.  It’s really been dragging me down lately to sort of deal with moving on and putting things behind me, but time helps.

I laugh it off and call it ridiculous, but in all honesty, I was hurt.  The whole thing was dumb.  I hurt myself with it, but I was hurt all the same.  Self preservation has prevailed, time is healing the hurt, and I will be just fine.

Just fine is about all I aim for anymore and just fine sounds wonderful to me.

 

 

Wake up

I woke up sad on New Year’s Eve. If I don’t fix it quickly, I’ll wake up sad on New Year’s Day. Please let me fix it! I can’t think of any other day that it’s worse to be sad on than New Year’s Day.

Everyone is making resolutions, so hopeful for the new year, and I’m like whoa this life thing doesn’t feel so good. If my dad wasn’t sick, maybe I’d do something about it, but I sort of can’t at the moment.

So it’s mind over mind at the moment, I can’t be sad. I can’t. It’s not a good time. Come back next year. This year I have enough real things that will make me sad that I don’t need some manufactured bulllshit sadness that makes me wake up crying on a day I don’t have to work. Sure it’s cold. Sure everyone is sick, but there’s plenty to not be sad about, now I just need to think of what those things are.

For all those people not sad on NYE, I envy you. For all those people sad like me, if you send me help, I’ll send you help? Thanks in advance!

And the 2017 Award for Best Me Goooooooes To…..

Surprise!  It’s not me.  No seriously, the 2017 award for “Best Me” can not possibly go to me, because I did a really shitty job of being me this year.

Let’s recap (Oh, random tidbit, I LOVE, ADORE, SUPER IN LOVE WITH, WANT TO MARRY AND KISS ALL OVER, end of year reviews/recaps.)  Soooooo, seriously, let’s recap this bitch, 2017, me, all of it in gory detail, hit it:

Starting with something easy, music.  According to Spotify, I listened to about 17 days of music this year.  I feel fairly diversified in my musical tastes, I mean look at that 25 genres, that’s a lot.  Can you even name 25 different genres of music?  I didn’t think so!  This really doesn’t even count my car listening time as I rarely use Spotify in my car.  That’s 17 days of music I listened to at home while reading, showering, cleaning, dancing around, tripping over my dog, irritating my dog, cuddling my dog, okay yes, I listen to music a lot with my dog to his miserable delight!

I’m actually a little ashamed of my book numbers for the year, as I usually read a lot more, but my next yearly stat will easily explain why my reading is slightly down in 2017.  First, I didn’t travel at all this year, so my airplane reading of about five books a week was reduced to only about five books a month.  The sad thing is I couldn’t even tell you a fantastic book I read this year that I would recommend.  Nothing really captured my attention.  I did finish The Shades of Magic series which was pretty decent.

The real thing that captured my attention this year was ta dah….

I spent 1,772 hours, yes that’s almost 74 days, 74 out of 365 days in the year, 74 days playing Xbox, BUT I need some explanation of that number,  Please for the love of God, Alcast, Rigby, tell me that includes my Netflix viewing, otherwise, I’m feeling super duper ashamed!  I put 1,772 hours into a game that I’m not even decent at playing!  lol

I mean seriously, I’m 100% average at ESO, and if Xbox is right, I played the freaking game for 73 days.  I feel like if I put 73 days into anything else, I may at least have something to show for it.  I just feel so stupid.  I mean I did enjoy my time. I enjoyed the quests, the lore, the visuals, but I wouldn’t have stayed so long if it wasn’t for the other players, which I guess is the true purpose of a MMO.

413 hours of music, 60 books and 73 days of video games doesn’t make my whole year, but it comes close.  Sure we had some trips in there, but I didn’t accomplish anything truly noteworthy.  I didn’t learn a musical instrument, a foreign language, travel the world, run a marathon or change anyone’s life.  I didn’t even change my own life.  I just consumed media.

I was a consumer, not a creator, not a generator, not a producer and for sure not an inspiration for myself or others.  One thing I am though is honest.  I’m honest with myself, and I can’t promise that next year will be any different.  People would say if you’re not happy with 2017, then make 2018 different, but I’m not 100% dissatisfied with 2017.  I do think I can manage my free time better, but isn’t that the purpose of free time to not be managed?  Just to be free?  Free to binge that eight episode show on Netflix, free to listen to the new Kendrick album on repeat on Spotify, free to get lost in a video game and honest enough to not be so hard on ourselves when we realize we lost 6 hours and it’s 2 AM and we were so lost in a video game, so distracted that we didn’t even realize it was way past time for bed.

See that’s the thing, life is pretty fucking mundane and sometimes we need distractions from the 9 – 5 bullshit.  I’m not saying you need 74 days of distractions, but I think whatever distractions it takes to allow you to keep getting up each day and heading to the job site or the office or whatever way you earn your living and to keep yourself sane, do it, even if it’s 74 days worth.  Just when you sit down to review your year, instead of thinking Jesus Fucking Christ, I spent 74 days playing a video game, think instead, I sure did need a lot of distractions this year, I wonder if there’s something I’m distracting myself from that I need to address.  If there is, might want to take a look at that, if there’s not, I’m about to invite you to an Xbox party, just ignore the music playing in the background and the sounds of my dog whining!

Happy New Year!

All I want for Christmas…

THIS!!!

Reality

My dad is dying.

I spent the last night in the emergency room with him. He can’t eat. He’s vomiting up any liquid he drinks. He’s lost 11 pounds in ten days.

It’s all happening so quickly. Everything is turning to shit. Eating with just my mom and me alone at the table cemented it.

The person who loves me the most in life will be gone soon, and my mom will become my responsibility. I’m not ready, but life has a way of making us ready quickly.

I wish Joel knew what to say. I wish we were closer right now. It’s been so hard to feel so apathetic and maintain that loving tenderness. I love him. He loves me. Yet, it’s a love where we are both entirely alone even while together.

My siblings aren’t sure what to do. My sister is willing to throw money at it. My brother is beside himself. I’m just resigned.

Life will never be the same. I feel like I’m locked into a new role when I never even really got to master my old role.

Here lies my new normal. I can’t be selfish. I have to embrace it. My dad is dying, and so I must kill a part of myself that I was trying to nourish. Reality sucks.

Cheese :)

Daddy’s girl from way back!

Helping my mom sort through pictures and wanted to share because my dad looked so happy!  I sort of look like I was indulging him by taking a picture that looks sort of like first thing in the morning.  Not the best quality, but I think our relationship shines through.

In so many pictures he was the one behind the camera instead of being in the frame.  I wish I had video of him singing and playing guitar for me when I was younger.  He’d always do my favorite songs!  His voice is already suffering now.  Heartbreaking, but once a daddy’s girl, always a daddy’s girl!  ❤

Mixed Signals

When almost every woman in the world can relate to one short piece of fiction, you know you’ve stumbled upon something important.  When I finished reading “Cat Person”, I wanted to share it with everyone and say “this, so much this”.  But the story itself isn’t that amazing, it’s in its simplicity and honesty that it captures what it feels like, as a woman, to be caught up in the idea or romance of a budding relationship.  The idealization we project on our potential partners is so incredibly unfair and complicated that we’re already setting ourselves up for failure.  When most relationships start and end via text, it makes it that much harder.  We fake so much in text.  We fake our laughs.  We fake our realness.  I could be lol’ing and sending wink emojis, all while I’m internally freaking out about the stress of my life, but my words convey a lightheartedness, a carefree attitude that can be attractive.  As I have said over and over again, no one wants realness.

No one wants to know how people really feel, but this piece of fiction captures it all. From the dance we do via text that is so exciting to the awkwardness captured after sex when the man feels so relaxed and certain and the woman can be so filled with regret all while faking it behind sweet words and doe eyes.  When someone gives good text and boy there are some people that really, really do give good text, it’s so intoxicating that it’s almost a certainty that no face to face interactions could ever live up to that buildup.  It’s so obvious from their first “real date” in the story, how little they really know of each other.  They have no similar interests, but yet Margot still imagines having sex with him as they drink together.  Women do this.  I do this.  When you’ve had this build-up of what you expect out of an interaction and you can feel things going south, you want to capture that moment again, that feeling you had when you were texting at 2 AM or when he kissed your forehead, that feeling of possibility.  Sex is the path to recapture that magic.

As Margot describes the sex, you begin to really see the glaring holes in both her and Robert’s internal story they had written about the other. Margot wanted to be wanted.  She wanted to feel like she was the most desirable, beautiful thing that Robert had ever seen and how lucky he was to see her naked.  Robert wanted to believe the same but more that he had lured some young, inexperienced virgin to give up her virginity to him or maybe just the awkwardness Margot was feeling was wrongly interpreted by him to be inexperience.  Either way, Robert comes across as vulnerable and uncertain, most likely being overwhelmed, as some men can be in ensuring his partner is enjoying it. It’s funny how very important and so unimportant sex can be between two people.  In this case, the sex opened Margot’s eyes to the realness of the situation and removed her romanticized blinders, all while cementing Robert’s feelings in his mind.

The rest of the story from Margot’s inability to be honest and Robert’s lashing out seems both contrived and real all at once.  Sure, people react this way a lot, but most often the ending is more just they never talk to each other again and the situation gets filed away.

I think what I disliked most about the story is Margot imagining telling someone else about the encounter in years to come, as if she really just wanted an experience, a story to tell at the expense of a lonely man.

I guess as relatable as the story is, the significance of the encounter is somehow lost on me.  It’s a classic case of this didn’t work out, or it seemed so much better in my head than in reality.  I don’t think that in any way Robert took advantage of Margot, nor do I think Margot took advantage of Robert.  Perhaps, at some moments she was regretting the encounter both during and after, but in some respects, Robert could also have been. Regretting a sexual encounter sometimes is more about ourselves and our actions than the actions of the person we are having sex with.  The reaction Margot had when seeing Robert in the bar a month later seemed childish to me. I think it’s easy as a person when we are done with someone to just be like “ewwww, why won’t this person leave me alone” when they seek contact again, but I don’t think Robert waiting a month and showing up some place he could run into her was stalkerish or too much.  It was more just him continuing the story in his head.  Just because Margot woke up from her Robert fairy tale doesn’t mean that Robert’s fairy tale was nearly as short.

Situations like this are a part of life.  We seek acceptance, love and understanding from others, sometimes creating it where it doesn’t exist, where it may never be able to exist, but that doesn’t mean we should stop our pursuit to make connections.  It’s what makes us who we are and for every Margot/Robert situation, there’s the story about the guy buying Red Vines at the movie theater from the cute girl that ends happily or at least less sad.

 

Happiness Is…?

I think I may have a dysfunctional relationship with happiness.  Obviously, this moment in time is not the easiest time to be happy, and no one expects me to be.  Though, here I am with no reason to be happy, and I crave it more than when I had every reason to be happy a month ago and didn’t care to be.

I watched old home movies recently, and it struck me how happy I looked in most of them. Just blissful.  I want to track down where I lost my happiness, and I guess the best place to search for it is to try to remember the last place I had it.

I guess I need to be honest.  I’m not always unhappy.  Most of the time, I think I can laugh and enjoy a moment. It just doesn’t stick with me.  It’s gone so soon.  Happiness is fleeting.

I feel like I was happy in February with Joel in Florida.  Maybe not blissful, but a couple of nights at a really good dinner with a great band, a drink in one hand, his hand in the other, I felt happy.  Who isn’t happy on vacation though?  I think it’s learning to be happy and content with our everyday, all day, that is the real goal.

I think I just need to redefine happiness. Why can’t my happiness just mean not being sad? If that’s the case, I’m happy a lot.  I’m happy right now, I guess.  Maybe, like most things in my life, I just want it to be more than it is.  Maybe, happiness really is a choice, maybe it really is homemade, maybe it really is just as simple as defining it as not being sad.

Or maybe happiness is a warm gun.