meditation. hm. maybe i'd like to try it but what are you supposed to do when you meditate?
silence the mind. be filled with gratitude.
gratitude for what?
being alive.
what if i'd prefer not to be?
alive?
alive.
to be honest i'm not really alive. i don't do anything besides read. right now i'm reading the short fiction of virginia woolf. wasn't she a writer who killed herself?
i go to class. but i feel so foreign, so like i don't belong there, so like i'll never be able to be a teacher, so much like i don't want to be a teacher.
this hits my inferiority complex. i don't feel good enough for myself. like maybe i expected more from myself. or maybe i always thought i would actually be something eventually. but here i am, still an assistant, afraid of taking the steps it takes to become a teacher.

quiero que me mate y que se muera conmigo. esa puta cancion que no sale de mi mente todavia febril.

here is how i would tell the plot of my favorite book to someone who is not likely to read it:
cathy marries linton but is in love with heathcliff, whom she has loved since childhood; she says it would degrade her to marry heathcliff. he overhears this and leaves. he comes back having made his fortune. when he comes back, linton puts up with his visits but eventually cathy goes crazy and dies. she haunts heathcliffe for twenty years, then he goes manic and dies after having taken out all his bitterness anger and rage on anyone left of the linton and earnshaw clans.

i went crazy and died.
this is why i feel like a ghost.
(everything was figurative mind you, i'm not really typing this from beyond the grave. and for me, i wish there to be no grave. i want to be cremated and have my ashes shot into space so i can come back to earth as shooting stars.)

i watch the tears i can't cry fall from my head as i'm wrapped in a towel that embraces me like no human arms can. i've taken to liking the rain, and to walking with my head always tilted down, as it is now. my lips are mashed against my fists and pure gravity is what brings down these hair tears. this is the best part of the shower, when i am between worlds and have no responsibility or standard of human conduct to follow, protected by my white towel, anything dark bounces off.

and hair tears fall as a result of my blank downward stare, the same stare i find in the afternoons, sitting in the kitchen with tea waiting for last night's dreams to make their way to my memory. maybe the semblance of tears will bring even the smallest spec of light through this nightmare cumulus that has me staring at the ground lately as i walk desolate halls. it has me hearing, but not listening. it has me here but absent. it has me staring but not seeing. talking but not speaking. all i can hear are the rumblings, teasing me with the thought of rain, but this cloud will not move on!

desolate halls despite all the young voices, all their light i cannot receive. i'm wrapped in my dark blanket from head to foot, a black hole, nothing is reflected. i can smile and i can imitate the adults but i'm invisible, giving off no perceptible light. whatever light i had i spent, played with it, held up another mirror to my own reflective surfaces and canceled out the waves. or maybe the reflective surface is charred, covered with a black soot, a souvenir of my trip to the sun.

i don't want to do this but i don't want to do anything. i don't want to be here but i don't want to be anywhere. i don't want to be on autopilot but here i am, merely existing, a vegetable, and if i weren't on autopilot where would i go? this isn't just depression it's a nightmare. i thought i knew what i wanted, i thought i had a career path that i enjoyed but now it's all gone. i'm just going through the motions, i don't care (of course my therapist recommends that i don't dwell on the apathy). i don't care i don't belong i don't want i don't fit i don't i don't i don't.

and if i skip dinner tonight it's no big deal because i'm already back to my normal weight. except that i am growing hungry which is a rare sensation i'm never hungry for anything. cutting is too messy, plucking is a bore, starving is hard when one is hungry, drinking gives me a headache, pot is unavailable, sex is inaccessible, too many pills is unconsionable, overeating impossible.

how terrible when no self-destructive behavior interests one.

i feel lost again. i don't feel like doing anything but curling up with the book i'm reading and shutting myself off from the rest of the world. i have to do some studying but all i can do is think and obsess
cosas que vi
si antes no creia en el amor, creia que eran cuentos que la gente se contaba para entretenerse, pero en la fiebre que tenia senti que era algo que si existia, creo que por eso empece a sentir tan conectada, a la verdad universal. y ahora que estoy con los pies ahogados en el fondo del mar me queda el fantasma de todo lo que sentia. mi ser tiene memoria de haber experimentado eso.

is my soul lost?

because maybe that is the seat of my crisis. i'm not me anymore. and i don't know what to do to get back. i feel useless, like a parasite, like i am just taking up space. at work i feel useless because there is nothing for me to do. i feel useless in my one class because i have nothing to contribute. there is nothing coming from me. i would be a failure as a ghost because nobody would register my presence. i possess no energy, no light. so i might as well stay living because as a ghost i wouldn't be able to haunt anybody. i feel like i can't function. the only thing in which i take pleasure is reading. which i am going to go do now.

i am empty.

depressed. bored? uninspired. questioning everything about my life. this is normal. for myself anyhow.

at this point i do nothing and am nothing. ok there's graduate school. the class is multicultural education. i don't have anything inside of me that wants to come out about that. all i have right now is what i am feeling and the dreams i manage to remember. today there were none specific, except something about a rope ladder. ha. maybe i am the one on the rope ladder and it's about to break and it is strung between two cliffs and i have no idea what is below it because of the fog.

i was manic for a period this summer. over the fourth of july holiday. i was convinced i was being followed by an old friend. earlier he and i had had some conversations, more talk of what was previously talked about a year before (that of my going to visit him). then the mania took hold. the weed may have had something to do with it, but i was out of control. i believed (or at least said it was part of the story that i was writing in my head) that he was a song writer and had managed to get all the songs he had written onto my mp3 player. the songs were all about me. i realize that this is not true, but the songs took on meanings of their own. kind of like they all started to make sense and they were all about the same universal theme: love. at one point i also imagined he was somehow connected to franz ferdinand and all of franz's songs were about the same thing too (he WAS vantango, from the song on their bonus CD).

i was sick.
i was exposed.
i was lucky i bounced between husband and mom and didn't make any new friends. i would have been friends with anyone, i thought they were all involved. involved in the grand scheme to put me and him together. i thought even husband was involved, that he had been paid off to marry me and keep me safe and hidden until the time was right. he had been paid off to keep me a secret.

i remember having a distinct fantasy, a vision if you will. i may still retain photographic evidence, though it will be on the hard drive (purchased with mania) i bought this summer. the fantasy (i was high at the time and doodling on a mirror with a dry erase marker) was that i was from this irish guild and was reincarnated as who i am today. that this is why i can crochet, this is why i have an artistic side to me. that he was once an italian artist or something like that, a designer's apprentice. and that we were meant to find each other again. what i doodled on the mirror really had nothing to do with my fantasy, i was indulging my manic propensity to document everything. somehow everything was so important and i wanted to share every moment. with him. by uploading photos to the internet.

this was my mania.
my manic episode
my delusions
and i don't even know how much he saw.
now that i am in a saner frame of mind i would like to know.

for instance, i want to know if something really did happen, or if i made it up, told it to a friend, forgot about it, and had that friend ask me about it.

the last time i saw him we had argued over whether i would go to his house for the night. i would not. i refused because he had a girlfriend at the time. so he drove me half way home, and i got in a taxi the rest of the way. i did not arrive back to the place i was staying until sunrise. this was because the taxi driver appeared to be a senile old man. he had to stop three times to ask for directions. in the fever of my delusions, i supposed that my friend had paid the taxi driver to get lost, in the hopes that i would get frustrated and call him to come to pick me up. i was talking with an old girlfriend of mine one night while i was high when i told her all about this guy. in my delusions i kept getting confused, thinking that he was hacking into her chat account and talking to me though her. so i was saying things to her that were really meant for him. a couple of times my friend had to stop me and say WHAT? and i would giggle and say "not in a sexual way, silly!" i was manic so the conversation continued ad infinitum, my thinking i was really talking to him, and then i tired my friend and was talking to myself. or i moved onto some other poor soul who was still up and online, still thinking i was talking to someone besides the person who was really talking to me.

i'm pretty sure i made up the part about the tachero being bribed. and there is no way my girlfriend had any contact with my friend because she would have told me.

of course mixed in with all this were the real conversations, by internet, that i managed to have with the object of my delusions. because i kept talking to people who i thought were him, i have no idea what things i told him, i have no idea what he knows and what he said to me and what i made up on my own. when i was at my granddad's house, someone was talking to me who said they wrote the da vinci code, that they had "pooped on a toad." i told the person, thinking it was mister delusion subtly asking my forgiveness for fucking something up (or somebody), that he should wait to see what the toad does, then clean up his mess. i proceeded to tell about a time when i was a young child, i had taken a dump outside in the yard and our neighbor had stepped in it. then whoever i was talking to cheerfully led me into a "good night."

sometimes i feel like i saw too much, like i got too close to the sun, too high, saw too much truth, and am still having a hard time coming back down. husband unfortunately was left clear out of my delusions, but he was there to rein me back in when i needed it. i wasn't sleeping. and if i was it was maybe an hour each night. i would get in bed, feel restless, then get up and do something else. there was one night i got up and went into the bathroom with two dry-erase markers, a camera and a tripod. i wrote silly things on the mirror and drew mermaids (my personal joke with myself that was meant for him - nada - swim to get to me, and also, nothing). this time the fantasy was that i was somebody's inspiration - that i was the inspiration behind a movie that was being made. all the pictures i took had that look, i didn't pose for the camera but instead looked like a director taking still shots on a movie set. of course the movie was the breakdown of my mind.

the movie theme must be common in bouts of mania. one of my delusional fantasies was that he was connected to a movie that was currently being made, or being written. that i was the inspiration for the main character. it didn't help the mania that a well known young director was in his country making a movie. that was one of the dots in my web. another dot connected to the movie fantasy was this: once while driving down to my mother's house i passed a grey bus that had "la fuga (the escape)" painted on the rear. as if were a tour bus for a band that was somehow involved in this delusional movie. i smiled and laughed and made the hang ten sign with my hand as i drove past them.

therapy

so here i go again, beaming myself back up to the blogosphere.

the truth is ever since i've been on this medication i've wanted to write but just haven't been able to find the proper writing utensil - one that feels right in my hands. so here i am back on blogger. it's what brought husband and i together - we met through our blogs. it was always very therapeautic for me to write things and blogger makes it easy.

plus it feels good to have the small hope that somewhere somebody will come across my blog and think about the words i type.

until then it's just me here. typing my thoughts. i know that sounds pussy but i need some where to write down all the garbage that is in my head.

take this morning. the alarm woke us at seven. we got ourselves up out of bed but by seven-fifteen i decided to set the alarm once more to eight. we even had tea on the table and i still insisted on some cuddle time.

cuddle time is very nice. we were at my mom's this weekend. well, saturday to sunday. saturday night before going to bed husband and i were arguing over whether to let the television stay on while we fell asleep. that made me smile, giggle even. of course we went to bed with the television off, and i with a smile on my face. when we woke up i was very relaxed and was kind of in the middle of a dream. we had lots of cuddle time and i thoroughly enjoyed it.

i'm still getting over the events of this summer. the doctors say i had a manic episode. i felt like the movie girl,interrupted. i was delusional. it scares me to realize how delusional and paranoid i was. the whole time i knew way back in the back of my head that the fantasy i had created was just that - fantasy. but i wanted to believe it and so i acted as if it were so.

i went off the happy pills at the start of all this. perhaps that change, plus weed, plus moving, all allowed for this to happen. it still scares me a lot. but one thing i have to remember is that i can only move forward. i can't go back to being who i was before i started taking pills because that's not who i am anymore. sure, it's all in the blog if you go all the way back to the first few posts. but this is me, here, now and i have to live with it.

i'm really feeling a lot of anxiety. i couldn't go back to sleep after resetting the alarm. we spooned, husband fell asleep and got all twitchy, but i couldn't relax. i was visualizing my brain, compartmentalized. the whole right hemisphere was occupied by my husband (who at the time happened to be on my right hand side). then the left hemisphere was divided into two parts, quarters if you will. the front was yellow and relaxed, but the back is where all my thoughts were screaming at me. this made it difficult to concentrate on relaxing.

speaking of relaxing, i am going to go read and do some relaxing of my own. maybe some yoga.

something, something, drop out?

what was that saying in the sixties, turn on, tune in, drop out? this generation needs to come up with another that has something to do with waking up from the hypnosis of pop culture.

i can't watch tv anymore. i'm sick today - i just don't feel right, maybe i woke up in a psychosis? but anyway, per my sick day tradition i watched the today show. i've been away from tv for too long - it was absolutely intolerable. they had this "don juan" character on and were grilling him. it was like, they didn't even give him a chance to explain his point of view, he was already proved an evil careless person. well, i applaud the don juan. he's more grounded in reality than the person interviewing him or the sex therapist sitting at his right. his perspective was, i love women i like to have sex and i don't want a relationship right now; i try to be up front about it and if some woman misconstrues my intentions, it's her fault because we are all responsible for our feelings. that's fine with me, i would still be friends with him if he were an interesting person.

i'm not sure i ever blogged about bullshit chris, but he was a guy from penn that studied in buenos aires with us the second semester. the two other girls from my university had him written off as an arrogant asshole because of something he had said or done during orientation, and would have nothing to do with him. but i found him quite interesting. he was fun to hang out with and people watch, and his stories about trying to find a telho the night before a feriado were quite entertaining.

as my brother says, (or used to say; law school might be screwing with his head a little) you have to be an equal opportunity friend. in my words, don't write someone off just because they seem like an asshole; don't write off a don juan just because you don't live or can't even imagine his lifestyle.

then they were talking about turning fifty. one guy was saying he still felt like thirty, like he didn't want to "give in" to being fifty. give in? to the stereotype that fifty means taking it easier and acting like you're fifty? that's bullshit. it might be true that you've got more years behind you than ahead, but you don't have to live that way. you have more new experiences ahead of you than behind you - given that through your life you've been reflective and have learned from your experiences and therefore have some kind of wisdom. wisdom/knowledge/perspective applied to experiences equals revelations!

this might sound like raving deleriousness but no more tv for me. it's all bullshit, all lies, all propagation of stereotypes that lead to unfulfillable desires. it's better to be grounded and seek the truth for one's self.

"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

yes, that first reaction you just thought is known as a "knee-jerk reaction." just observe it and move on to read the words and understand them as any rational person should. i think in this dr. watson is entirely correct. however we have to understand what we mean by "intellect." if we take out "intellect" and anything related to it and replace it with, hm, something like resistance to xyzitis disease (ok i made up the disease but just walk with me)... the quote then reads something like the following

"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the resistance to xyzitis of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal resistance to xyzitis as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

it makes sense now doesn't it! people need to stop being so racist and instead think in terms of evolution and natural selection.

is blogging dead?

no! it's just asleep for now. i'm considering starting/continuing my anonymous(ish) blog because i MUST have SOMEWHERE to unload all the secrets and gossip about my work environment. to this blog here i cut all social-network ties (despite how proud i am of all the hacks i've implemented) in response to a little bit in wired magazine about a canadian not being let into the US because some border patrol person googled him and found less than flattering info on him. is that not the most ridiculous terrifying thing? is that even LEGAL? i think in the same article it mentions another problem with a guy who had admitted in his blog to having smoked pot in 1960, getting into unwarranted trouble. yikes.

so i'm off to read the news. will have a special announcement, pending permission being bidden of my father, in a few days.

it's like seeing what's between what people say and what people think.


that's why i had to wait until after my grandma left.

don't call me

you know what i think is absolutely profane?

that music artists use so much profanity and sexual imagery in their "art"! in fact it's actually encouraged because we all know sex sells!


ok so that's not the whole of it:
it's quite profane that there is so much sex and sexualization and violence allowed in music and other media, but that what is not allowed is political criticism. (this in response to remembering something i read about that i think pearl jam got mad at producers of lollapalooza (sp, i know) for censoring a few of their lyrics that were critical of the president).

THAT is profane.

for the record

i think i understand the difference between an agnostic and an atheist.

the atheist disbelieves the existence of god. that is, he believes there is not a god. the agnostic ("the divine is unknowable") believes that there might be a god, but we can neither prove that he exists nor prove he does NOT exist.

agnosticism seems kind of wimpy. i remember i used to think of atheists as bitter people - like they'd given up on god so threw out the whole idea of his existence. but that's not atheism - that's turning one's back on a god one believes in. and i'm not bitter.

i think it's easier on the psyche to be atheist as well. one isn't waiting for someone "up there" to intercede on one's behalf. therefore one is forced to take matters into one's hand and accept things one cannot change and take full responsibility for one's actions. is that not a "family value?"