Aug 24

Awkward

So, I’ve disappeared for awhile. Here’s the thing, the stuff taking up my life right now are things I can’t write about.  As soon as I can write about them, I will write about them in a big way. I just can’t right now.

I don’t know

That leaves me boring as hell. I have nothing exiting to offer you. I have stories about my dogs. I could write about how utterly I failed at small talk the other day. I might write about that in fact.

So, Thursday I had to fax something, so down to the library I went. I worked there for a few years and still know the ladies who work there. I really like these women, but I have no small talk game. All I have in my head is things I shouldn’t talk about, boring things, dog stories, or stories about other people doing cool things.

This might not be a new think for me. I have tricks, mostly getting the other person to talk about themselves. This trick is rusty, apparently, because I did not wield it well. I froze up. All my standby questions drained from my brain.  All my brain could do is scream “Extreme awkwardness, ABORT, ABORT.”

The problem is you can’t say to normal people, “I’m sorry, my social awkwardness is acting up, and I need to bail now.” Instead, I have to stand there with Uh pouring out of my mouth with a look like a bewildered rabbit desperately wanting to bolt but not knowing how.

uh, uh, uh, uh I’m not equipped for this!

Get this, I’m doing it again tomorrow night. There is a benefit spaghetti dinner in honor of my friend Emily and her stupid colon, and the Viking and I are going. Well, technically it’s tonight. Tonight, I’m going to walk into a room full of people, many of whom I won’t know, and pretend I have social skills. I’m hoping to have my friends there who understand my awkwardness who understand my urge to *smoke bomb**runaway*

Okay, I’m done now. *Slinks off awkwardly*

 

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Jul 19

What the Frel is Happening Here?

Shit is bad, folks. Be better than the people who are making it bad. Smile more. Listen more. Hand out kindness like it’s candy on Halloween. Vote. VOTE.

Every action adds to the balance of the world. Keep adding to the side of the good. Compliment people. A kind word about someone’s shoes can make a person’s day better.  It costs nothing and can add so much.

I’ve been locked up with anxiety. I go through bad spells when I get so overwhelmed by problems or events I freeze up. I do a deer in the headlights. It tends to work out for me as it does the deer. I wish I could get into it here, but I feel like it could hurt some of the things I’ve got going on.

Be most excellent to one another and leave a place better than you found it.

But instead of ranting about things actually affecting the world, I’m going to rant about something purely about me. I’m a good, not self centered  person.

Let’s discuss anxiety and how we might all have it, some of us have a special flavored Big Gulp sized batch of it.

First, all anxiety sucks. Please don’t think I’m trying to down play anyone’s struggle. I just hope to explain why some things people say to us Big Gulpers is inappropriate and potentially dangerous.

Everyone I know has anxiety. It is a part of life unfortunately, but not everyone has the same anxiety. Now, I don’t want to start a pissing contest about my anxiety is worse than Susie’s anxiety. That helps no one, but I think there is a misunderstanding about the different levels of anxiety, and why some people do have worse than normal, and it can have a huge effect on our lives.

To be more plain and less placative: I get sick of folk acting like I’m weak or stupid because my anxiety prevents me from doing so many things. My anxiety is clearly different from ‘normal’ anxiety.

I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It’s the Big Gulp of the anxiety world. I’ll share some examples.

I have about one panic attack a week. Last week was a panic attack sort of week, so I had several. I’ll describe two for you. The first one was so bad I had to actively try to focus on what we were watching because the second I let my grip loosen I would feel the strong urge to scream some wild, wordless scream while matched with the feeling I was buzzing all over just beneath my skin. I felt like I was made of bees.

Another one I had the next day was even worse in some ways. I had to hold firm to myself again because if I didn’t I felt like I was going wretch up my insides. It wasn’t standard nausea, it was more like my body wanted to void itself. It was scary and just messed up.

I’ve almost become an old hand at handling the more common type of terrible panic attack, but it doesn’t make it less awful. It is terrifying to not be able to catch your breath and have your heart race. It feels like you are going to die. I have to find something to focus on like a game or television. (I personally prefer Bob’s Burgers during a panic attack.) If I lose focus for too long the panic attack comes roaring back.

On Thanksgiving, I ended up in the Viking’s parent’s bathroom crying on the toilet and fighting like hell to not crawl between the toilet and sink like my mind was telling me to do. Later,  I asked the Viking for help so he stood between me and everyone and the loud noises so I didn’t lose it again.

Keep in mind I don’t have anything I can take for my panic attacks since rules at my mental health care group prevents me from getting anything like Xanax, and the Oklahoma Board of Health just put a lot of stupid terrible regulations on a medicine I think could help me a lot. So, panic attacks are me and Bob’s Burgers, baby.

Now, those are just the panic attacks. I have a step down level of anxiety. This form of anxiety is the kind I think most people identify with. It’s either situational (like going shopping) or just completely causeless (I should not be this anxious while making toast.) The effective varies between fear with a side of bitchiness to full blown fight or flight trigger.

Now, Karen (damn Karen), I know you have anxiety about your life. I know it is awful. I think it is amazing you can play through it.  Please stop treating me like I’m weak or lazy because you get anxious and you still manage and sometimes I just can’t. If you tell me one more time that everyone feels that way and it shouldn’t stop me, I might just rip out your hair. Karen, you win, you’re better than me.

The Viking is a god send. He is learning what I need when I’m panicking and does his best to provide it for me. My sweet, wonderful man still sometimes asks me what is causing my attack, like there has to be some logic to why it’s happening. My brain, it’s a little broken.

Damnit Karen.

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Jun 19

Too Much

I’ve started a blog three times and never finished it. These past few weeks have been eventful.

Twelve days ago was the anniversary of Dad’s death, and 10 days after that was Father’s Day. I thought I was fine for both. I thought I was going to eat the pecan pie on the seventh in Dad’s memory and miss him, but I wouldn’t ugly cry or anything. I didn’t either until a few days later when I gave Tina his rainbow suspenders I had been keeping in my car for years for her.  She sobbed. I ugly cried. I super ugly cried while holding them before I left. I miss him still. I think that’s probably normal.

I expected to be sad on Father’s Day. I didn’t expect having to flee IHOP because a daughter/father pair next to us mad me miss Dad so much I needed a mini-ugly cry in the Viking’s truck. They looked so purely happy to see each other. I remember that. I really miss that.

Now our country is gleefully rushing towards being the Empire. Kids are in cages, and we are pulling out of the UN. Our president is becoming bros with dictators while pissing on our reliable allies.  I want to scream about having seen this before, but I don’t know it would do any good. I hate that I’m seeing us on the wrong side of history, and the people around me don’t care.  Vote VOTE VOTE. It’s midterms coming up. Vote. Oklahoma has voting coming up soon. VOTE. Right now we are still a Democratic Republic. Use your voice while you still can.

 

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May 27

Stick *Trigger Warning*

Perfect

I normally don’t post graphics like this because it feels like I’m snaking other people’s work, but this is too important to pass up.

Mental illness is a fight. Every day you are fighting against yourself to be better or to do better. Every day you struggle against what your mind is telling you. Your worst enemy is your own mind which insists on telling you awful things about yourself. Sometimes it gets too exhausting.

I’ve been there exhausted from the fight. I swing high, and I swing low. Low swings are difficult. It is a constant barrage of self loathing, lack of energy, lack of motivation, and paranoia. Adding something like hormones to the mix and it can all be too much.

I’ve found myself wanting to not be here anymore. I’ve wanted to just not exist. The pain, self-loathing, and paranoia has held me tight before trapped in their hands like a bug to be stared at and shaken between two palms. I’d get so worn down by my brain telling me I was worthless, nobody would be effected by my loss, I’d never do anything of worth anyway, it would be so easy just to disappear anyway. That place is so dark and scary, its hard to describe it accurately. Its a bit like hiking a trail with a steep drop off. You know the slightest wrong move will send you plunging over the edge, and part of you wouldn’t mind so much.

There is always that spark in me which doesn’t want to go. That spark reminds me when things aren’t so bad, and I’m not ready to go yet. Most of the time I can grab onto that spark and use it to help me survive just long enough to get through the darkness.

Sometimes, though, that spark is so dim I have to find an outside rope or even an outside thread. With my brains screaming about no one caring if I was gone and how me being here makes no difference to anyone, I ask someone I love if they’d miss me if I were gone and I pluck that thread and hang on to it until I ride through it all.

I don’t feel weak for having these periods of my life. There is no shame in them. I kept fighting.

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May 11

The Things We Fear

I fear birds. Seriously.

And fish

I fear failure. I define failure as never having done something worthy in my life. I’m terrified I will check out without having done anything that makes any difference to the world.

I fear being a waste of potential. I’m funny and really smart. I haven’t made anything of myself. I haven’t done anything.

I’m terrified I’ll never find my way. I feel like I’m still looking how to be more. I think writing is my way of being more. I just need to do it. I need to be less afraid that my blogs will suck and just write.

I’m afraid of what the Fuzzy Wiener just brought inside, but it’s by the Viking’s desk, so, I can make myself not care.

I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m also very afraid this country is so busy lining up in this messed up version of “Us versus Them” we will forget to talk and actually listen. Listening is the key for both sides. We need to chill our call-out culture and become a dialogue culture. Some people are too deeply entrenched on both sides to listen, but the rest of us need to take a chance. We need more vulnerability, more openness about our fears, and more searching for a reason to love other people. We need this or we are going to rip ourselves apart.

Fear is scary. Vulnerability is scary, but it is so much better than what we’ve got now.

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Apr 21

*Insert Canned Sitcom Laughter Here*

I’m going to attempt to tell y’all a funny story. My stories are generally funnier when I write them drunk, but I don’t have any wine, so y’all are going to have to live through sober story time. My precious Fuzzy Wiener loathes birds more than even I do. She thinks she’s a bird dog. Lemme tell you a story:

This couch-licking Fuzzy Wiener right here.

The Viking and I went to a movie and dinner, and when we got back the Fuzzy Wiener was desperate to be let out. If she had been a human she would have been hopping around. When she was coming back, she noticed a bird had gotten trapped on our back porch. The only open part of our porch is the front. The sides are glass, and the back is, obviously, the back part of our house. The bird just kept flying in back and forth zig-zags, never quite getting under the eave to freedom. Fuzzy Wiener lost her shit and started chasing the bird because she could have somehow have done something from 10 inches off the ground.

So

A bird is flying around in a panic. This long short dog is chasing under it, barking and causing chaos. I’m yelling at it from the back door trying to encourage it to fly the proper way and hiding behind our glass door anytime it came near. (I told myself I was trying to pretend I was trying to keep it out of the house, but I’m terrified of birds, especially when they are in flight.) Nothing productive was going to happen here.

I did what any hero would do: I put aside my terror and grabbed a broom.

Now we have one panicked bird blindly hurtling itself in all of the wrong directions, a ten inch tall terror out for blood, and one very large, mildly freaking out woman yelling and waving a broom. The bird kept flying and thumping it’s head on the ceiling of our porch. I was afraid it would knock itself out and the Fuzzy Wiener would attack it TO DEATH once it was on the ground. I kept picturing myself having to pry a bloody bird corpse from her jaw. I’ve had to do it before.

Oh, have I mentioned she thinks she’s a bird dog? Have I also mentioned she’s managed to kill birds before? Don’t ask me how she gets them, but one summer we finally had to make the “no bird corpses in the house” rule. She would drop them at the back door so I could throw them away before I got bird gore on my carpet… again.

ANYWAY, with all my yelling and dog barking, the bird finally flew under the eave thingy and out to freedom, hopefully without much brain damage. The Fuzzy Wiener stared at a corner of the porch for several minutes waiting for another bird to spawn, I guess.

Yep. Also, The Viking watched it all through our cameras. Sometimes my life feels like it is being written by sitcom rules, like when the well pump died right after I had shampooed and soaped up. *Insert canned sitcom laughter here*

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Apr 06

What I Don’t Owe Him

The Saturday before Easter, I reminded of the Viking of the male friend in high school who hit me and choked me until black bled into the edges of my vision. It was so long ago, but I still remember.

I’ve run into since. It was at work. I had to sit there and be polite. I made small talk and pretended he hadn’t marked me so much.

Easter I pulled into an empty parking lot and was preparing to go in when he pulled in. Sometimes you call your ghosts to you. I sat shocked for a second until I decided I didn’t want to be alone with him in the store. I couldn’t pretend  I wanted to talk to him, so I would be trapped.

I could have went in and done the polite thing. I could have nodded my head and asked about his life and fantastic wife, (he married a wonderful woman) but I didn’t want to. My thoughts raced plugging in niceties society taught me like never making a scene, grin and bare it, smiling nicely while pretending it never happened, maybe he had changed since it was so long ago, maybe he doesn’t even remember.

I buckled my seat belt and threw my car into reverse. I didn’t owe him politeness or the benefit of the doubt. I owed him nothing.

I owed him nothing.

It might have been a long time ago, and he might be a different man now, I know I’m a different woman. He might not remember it, but I do.

There in that moment the only person I owed anything to was myself.

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Mar 16

It’s Rant-Thirty, Bitches

Oklahoma state employees haven’t gotten a raise in a decade.

Oklahoma teachers now make less than they did ten years ago.

We are hemorrhaging our best trained, experienced, and gifted educators, not because they don’t want teach here, but because they CAN’T AFFORD to live here.

This doesn’t even touch other state employees, like social workers, who would also like to eat.

I’ve heard many of the lines of bullshit.

“Why should I pay more for schools if I don’t have kids?” Do you seriously want to live in a country surrounded by uneducated people? How do you think that will effect the economy? Do you think that will help us keep up with technology, medicine, or those other every day jobs that we desperately need? (I have a rant o’clock about why I love vo-techs, and why we need to encourage them more but not for now)

We can’t judge teacher pay by other states in the surrounding area, much less on the coasts, because Oklahoma is drastically different than Kansas. *Blink* *Blink* Yeah, Kansas cares enough about education pay teachers, provide for their kids, and isn’t forcing wonderful, dedicated teachers to migrate.

Well, in fourth grade I had a terrible teacher who didn’t care about me, so all teachers worthless. My fourth grade teach was a mean, mean woman. I had a teacher mock me for having a broken ankle and not being able to participate in gym. One of my high school math teachers told my class how stupid we were every class period. Yes, bad teachers SUCK. But, BUT, I remember having so many more teachers who wanted me to succeed, who tried to encourage my talents, and even some who saw the terrified, painfully awkward little girl and tried to help her.

We don’t have the money to pay them. My day-glow white ass the state of Oklahoma can’t find the revenue to pay the people it depends on every day to make stuff happen. (God knows they find a way to pay our Governor and legislators, and they are pretty fucking useless lately except for a few.) Tax the damn oil companies.

I don’t hate the oil and natural gas industries. Let’s get that out of the way. I hate how so many Oklahoman’s seem to worship energy companies like demigods, like Jesus’s second cousins or whatever. The industry does provide a lot of jobs in this state, and has shaped our history, much like the way we treated the indigenous people who lived here before white folks “settled” it. But, no, really, I don’t hate the industry. I hate how we don’t make them pay to be here.

But, Selina, you left-wing, pinko-commie, snowflake, libtard, oil and natural gas makes LOTS of jobs. We can’t risk them pulling up their drills and going home. Capitalism is a beautiful thing. The state has the oil, which they want. Oklahoma has already goatsyed ourselves ecologically for them. They aren’t going to find this much oil in a state this friendly to them. Asking them to pay their fair share is not unreasonable.

I know right now we are being told people on disability, food stamps, and welfare are taking all of the country’s money. I get how people are being told illegal immigrants are taking away jobs because everyone would be picking lettuce for 3 dollars a day or some shit if it weren’t for them damned illegals. Truth is, corporations pay less taxes then we do.

I know we are conditioned to stare doe-eyed at big companies and be thankful they let us touch the hem of their robes as they walk by. They are so kind to give us jobs and sometimes, if they are one of the good ones, even give us benefits out of the kindness of their heart. Bullshit. They exist to make money. Any job they open is because they need a worker to make them more money.

Oil is the same way. They NEED Oklahoma to make money. They have it real good here. Oklahoman’s are some of the toughest people in the country. (Except for me, I’m dandelion fluff.) We have a lot of oil. We decided to stop giving a shit if industries wreck our lands. Supply and demand means they need us, too. They aren’t here out of some kindness.

Except they don’t pay taxes. They skate by saying the people they employ pay enough taxes to cover them. How does this not piss off everyone in the industry? You are literally paying the taxes for your multi-billion dollar making company. How are you not ENRAGED?

Back to the point, if we taxed these companies they won’t leave. They need us. If we tax these companies, maybe our teachers and state employees won’t have to leave either.

 

Also, don’t look up goatsey in a public place.

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Mar 11

Oh, For The LOVE

This is a quickie.

Some dipshits hacked my site, and brought the whole thing down. The Viking and I had to fix it. By that I mean he fixed it while I played Slime Rancher. Thanks for your patience. I’ll put up a real post soon.

Here is a picture of my dog in a hat for recompense:

HAAT DOOOG

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Jan 18

A Series of Failures

A lot of things have been true in my life lately.

I’m on a weird and intense origami kick.

BOOM paper flower

 

This Christmas was one of the best of my life.

The week between Christmas and January 2nd was amazeballs.

I got insanely fucking sick because I started getting sick a few days before NYE and refused to slow down until January 2nd.  My NYE date with the Viking was too damn important to let something like no voice and concrete in my lungs stop me.

I also started to do some intense self hate.

It’s the same old shit. I get kind of bored with the same ol’ demons in my head. Sometimes I almost wish one would swap out for a new one, just for something new and fresh. The failure demons are the particularly strong ones right now. I feel like I’m a waste of a people, blah blah blah, I haven’t done anything with my life, blah blah blah, if I stopped existing tomorrow the world wouldn’t be any the poorer (this voice scares me and my mom does a really amazing job of helping me shut it up),  but the one which lingered most heavily and is the loudest and meanest is the one which hisses I always either fail or never finish everything I start.

Like I said, the same old demons with the same tired story.

I was wrestling that last demon  hard about three days ago. I make grand plans and begin life changes all the time. I do almost always fail or give up. Sometimes it festers in as self loathing or is used as evidence in all my other demons’ voices.

I spent the last year of my life stationary. I couldn’t do much because of injury and pain, and now my stamina is gone, my pain is worse in the rest of my body, and I’m broken down. I feel like a car on cinder blocks. I have to fix it. I have to build my body back up. I decided to try working out for a ridiculously small amount of time a day and just adding more to it as I can.

First demon: embarrassment and shame. These are useless and pointless demons, and I’m getting pretty good at fighting them.

Second demon: the big demon, the voice telling me I will inevitably either quit or fail. This crashed and roared inside of my head until I asked myself about my alternatives.

Really, what am I supposed to do? Stop trying things to improve my life? That… That doesn’t really feel like me.  I mean, I HAVE to start things in order to improve my life, right? But if I always fail or give up…

So my brain did this loop thing for a second. I have to start things in order to do anything with my life, but I always fail or give up. I could tell myself I could start something and just insure I don’t fail or give up, but even my twisted brain parts know that isn’t realistic. So either I start something to improve my life and fail or give up, or I stop trying anything. Not trying sounds too scary. It sounds too much like conscious death.

Failing or giving up suddenly doesn’t sound that bad.

So the fuck what if I fail or give up?

I’ll probably give up or fail at this whole micro work-out thing eventually. I’ll probably abandon origami. I feel like I know I’ll write another book, but I’ll quit and fail a lot before I do.  I’ll probably quit or fail almost everything I try for the rest of my life. I could get upset and rack up some quality self-loathing or I can accept it as a given before and start anyway.

BOOM paper dragon! Flap, flap, flap!

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