I could throw up.

I might.

I am warning you now, that my birthday blues bring out the bery worst of my self-indulgence.

The way I feel today reminds me of my college graduation. When it was an ok day, nothing really wrong, all family there, people congratulating, friends and parties.

But there was something clearly missing.

I knew it would be missing. I knew he wouldn't come. I wanted him to come, he was one of the most important people to me. I needed him to come. I hoped he would come, but I knew he wouldn't come.

That hope is the very worst sort of hope, the kind that, even before it dies a slow and agonizing death, hour at a time, you know it is doomed. And even though you know, know in the core of that pit in your stomach, that anxious and guilty and nervous feeling that mucks up a feeling that is supposed to be positive, know that it will die, you just can't kill it.

And so, you go on, hoping. And he doesn't come.

It is an asshole, feels like one anyway.

Effing Rant

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! If I had paper--newspaper, preferably--just lying all around me I would tear it. I would rip it just into shreads. I am so angry and frustratedandconfusedandsadandrejectedandstupid.

I am just BUSTING. I could just BUST. I want to shriek and make a scene and throw things and sob. And instead, I sit at my desk, passive-aggressively excising my demons to almost no one. Very therapuetic, clearly.

Last night was one of the most fun, energizing, positive nights I have had in a long time...for the most part. EditorFriend--name going unsaid for privacy reasons, but those in the know, know--was invited to the Grand Opening of the new Brazilian steakhouse downtown and let. me. tell. you. Holy crap. If the service and the artichoke hearts and the lamb chops and key lime pie and house Malbec are always that good, they should just fill in the "Cause of Death" right now: gut bust.

Nene was two tables away (He is SO big. SO big. And since I was strictly verbotten--rightly so--from playing the starstruck fan-girl card, I decided that earning a silent appraisal was the best I was gonna get. Maybe. So I sashayed my super-star strut right up to the salad bar past him and his equally unusually tall-sized lady and might, just MIGHT have gotten a once over. Yay me. NBA eye candy. Life-goal: Check.) Mayor Hickenlooper did a loop.

Not to mention the superior quality of our own company. A certain co-magaziner or two, both of whom I entertain on-and-off crushes on, attended and we laughed so hard, and the general atmosphere was one of such bouyant delight that my face actually hurt from smiling and I think my nipples were hard for a decent part of the evening--Pardon the crassness, please.

I mean really, it was not a single moment of delight. There was not one thing that was amazing. I was in an unwavering, overwhelming state of titillated. I mean, I WAS delight.

And one of said onandoff likes may have asked me out. He was a little lit. But hey, I will take it, Tyler, bring it on. But, I suppose that brings me to the rage-y, annoyed, frustrated and confused part of this little ditty.

The nasty, negative, newly-bitter part of me (I used to have so much less of this quality) wants to just say, "Why even think about it, E? You KNOW he won't call. And then I want to slap myself, tell myself to shut up and quit borrowing trouble. I sorta listen to this part of me, but there is a nagging little whisper underneath that talk that knows that I am almost always right about this. That, despite the fact that an evening is all but perfect, I will still be jilted. It has happened all too many times now. Apparently, I have this effect on people.

Take Dream-Boat. Well, let us adjust this to: Emotionally-Unavailable Wants-What-He-Can't-Have Giant-Child Fuck-Up Boat. Ironically, one in the same with Dream Boat. Every interaction together is perfection. If a night with a romantic interest could be a natural sweetner, this would be ambrosia. And I.Never.Get.A.Call.Back. Dickhead, quit screwing with my feelings, right?

Next example (mind you, this is totally disregarding my ability to repulse even those I am ACTUALLY in a relationship with, like I send out irresistably strong go-to-some-other-chick pulses that ACTUALLY propel them away): Had a date three (?) weeks ago. He leaked from his eyes and nose for the entire two hours we were together. He called me a luddite bc I said it was sad, the way people were dismissing the printed word (did he KNOW who he was going out with? And, P.S., KELLS--stupid name--I heart technology, there is lots of it I want people to buy me), and looked a TINY bit like that guy from A Clockwork Orange. That's right, that creepy ginger lead man. Even HE didn't call me. I wasn't sad about that, it just shows a pattern.

Last, but not least: Over the last two workdays, I have exchanged approximately 80 emails, 2 dozen text messages, and a moderate amount of Facebook chat with yet another fellow. An internet date. L-dog (again, privacy people) and I re-vested in a free, crappy internet site mostly just for distraction. It is fun. Most people, if you ever meet anyone, are not quite up to par, not to be a jerk. Just not. But clearly, judging from the absurd! amount of communication here, this was not the case. I laughed out loud. I should interject that this cube has not seen a lot of out-loud laughter of late, my normal source having, for the most part, dried up. (Or just disappeared, it is alive and kicking elsewhere, notta regular part of my life, eh.) So this was welcome change. We kept sorta making plans to meet in several days, and kept trying to push it up, eager, it seemed.

SO to get to it, I was excited about this tiny guy. Yes, tiny. He said 5'9 but I was in flats, and I have my doubt face on. Small.

Nonetheless, very excited. So much so that I did the most ridiculous, spontaneous, borderline unsafe thing and just went and met him after dinner last night. That's right, no one knew where I was, and it was at his personal dwelling (which he owns...grin), rather late at night. No Me! Don't do it! Right? But all was well, we had a Corona and scrolled through his AppleTV (amazing stuff, I dig it a lot...KELLS. Grrr.) He told me I was "very pretty," that he liked the way I dress (?), and that I was "so fucking sexy." (That, of course, was halfway through the Corona, to be fair.) Seems like a good start, right?

We laughed a little, it was late, I left, all parts in tact, not taken hostage by internet nutcase whose home I entered willingly.

Then today he cancels our other date.

WTF, batman? I mean, for cereal. WTF?

Hence paper-ripping, foot-stomping, tantrum-throwing pissed-off mood! What is WITH this endless stream of guys who say I am cute and and attractive, and they want to touch me, and we get along like dogies on an open plain and STILL this sort of runaround. I quit.

Linda Wortheimer (sp?) on NPR, I SWEAR, says nBr and I want to call in and ask that if they are going to keep employing full time RADIO NEWSANCHORS that they have some godforsaken ENUNCIATION.

A very ugly woman in the car in front of me today had 4 small children, IMPROPERLY STRAPPED IN to the back of her Saturn today. As she was driving badly, I might add. As I pass said terrible driver, I see that contributing to her terribleness (which was aplenty already) was the fact that she was TEXTING (come on, horseface, it is SEVEN THIRTY) AND smoking a cigarette. In her Saturn. With four 5-year olds. I quit LIFE!

AHHHHHHHHH! Where is something I can destroy?!

On the upside, I am def. going to start boxing lessons. ;)

There, my anger for the day.

Week.

Month.

Season.

Less than one week now until the big mess of an anticlimax known as my birthday and I am pretty sure that I am seeing things. In the corner of my eye, I keep seeing little twitches and vibrations on my screen, sure that there has been a change that someone has sent me a message or an email or...? And I can only assume this is a product of my desire. That, indeed that corner tab is not moving, only that I so wish it to that my eye has produced a spasm just to give me that single, short moment's reprieve.

I have been itching for a road trip lately. Not sure where to go, the few places within reasonable drive distance all rather...unappealing destinations. I was on my way back from the airport in the grocery getter and felt a sense of dull happiness at being on the (sorta) open road that I hadn't felt with that awareness since college and the days of endless back and forth between Lawrence and the Ville.

Driving, for me, has always been fertile creative ground, especially when I am prone to sadness--which, luckily for me and all my rapt readers (ha!), lately I have been--and has produced a number of short pieces for writing classes, all with themes of emptiness and open space and possibility and smog.

It hasn't felt as cathartic as that brief, late night drive was. I was tempted to just keep going. I feel the need to shake off my life right now so strongly, that there is some irrational, terrifying, urgent siren call to just fuck off and not come back. Take all my money ($31), shirk all my duties, leave all my acquaintances and just blow outta here. It is a dream.

In that dream it is warm and dry and I have some futureless, somewhat personally fulfilling job like bartending or driving a school bus or working the cash register at a convenience store. Somewhere small, lots of small places. Where I eat canned beans and PB&J and sleep in my van and spend my free time--so much of it!--walking around, picking through antique stores and talking to old strangers and musing about the world on driftwood benches around a lake.

Some sort of comforting nothing. With goals and achievements one in the same, doing what I want to do, and wanting what I do. Everyone around and nobody with me but me. Low expectations and pleasant surprises every day.

I'd write a book on the customer copy receipts that no one wanted and staple it together with a psuedonym like "Almetta May Van Duesel" on it and pay my $127 dollars to have it copied three dozen times at a Kinko's onto smooth, bold colored paper and send it to my loved ones. The people I used to know.

I'd sit at the ratty booth at some creepy truck stop diner and smile all my teeth at the greasy guy at the pie bar with almost none and get back to my novel, tea in hand, one foot out the door.

Gross-Out Blog

DISCLAIMER (though really, to be fair, un-needed, you all know what you are getting into and with almost every post there is an accompanying admission that it will probably bore all readers):

If you are uninterested in what one elitist snob I know called a "whine blog" please proceed elsewhere. While the rest of you may have drugs or shrinks or healthy, non-busy, in the same city, same-sex friends to entertain your issues and coddle you through them, I do not. This is therapeutic and the only way I keep myself from riddling my ACTUAL life and all the people in it with endless psychosis and actually make it through every day. SO, if you don't like it, fuck off. I will stop by to read your endlessly brilliant analysis of Band of Horses and There Will Be Blood, later. Probably not. BO-RING.

;) I say that with teasing affection of course. I just had an obnxious weekend of a pseudo-break-up with someone I was never with--over texting, no less; feeling perilously let down regarding a friend's maybe-addiction; having NOTHING to wear; falling down, being manhandled and borderline abused and then called a bitch repeatedly. So I had a moment of venting to do. Not even about you, button, turnip, poodle, schnauzer. The good news was I hit my first NBA game. And we won. An unceremonious, not super-well played game, but a win nonetheless. And I could use a win.

END DISCLAIMER
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Last night, I was standing at the window picking my nose and found myself staring at a pink foam Princess magnet that my sister sent me. I don't generally like to put things actually ON my refrigerator, as it would so detract from the dirty hippy motif that rules the home/fridge and ruin the carefully crafted illusion that I do not really live there.

Fresh out of the shower (which, I must mention, has become an ever-increasingly ugly prospect, this whole bathing thing. Mid-November Denver in a crappy-insulated house in a room that doesn't belong or have a vent just does NOT welcome wet legs. Sigh.) I stood at my window staring out at the far-too-early darkness, wrapped in towel, and thought just how much I had grown into that pink foam above-my-bed- label. A delicate, sea-shell princess, this one. Of course, the sort of princess that, just now when I was itching my ear, I accidentally wedged a strand of hair in the waxy canal. When I pulled it out...I liked it. That sort of princess.

But really, outside of that, I have come to have very high expectations. I find myself feeling satisfied less often and critical more. I have been a little irritable, relative to my normal mood. I have been feeling wider swings of emotion. I seriously considered trying to get back on some meds. I mean, I realize that PMDD is clearly a fictitious diagnosis aimed at giving people who don't have the time/motivation to get any therapy nor have any real, serious problem, a little boost to get em past the rough patches. This is ok with me. Unlike Tom Cruise, I have no problem with needless mind-altering drugs being prescribed to treat the symptoms and not the cause. That sounds just right.

BUT, because even that would really take more effort than I am willing to put out, I decided to take advantage of some of my monthly automatic withdrawals. No, no, this is not the time right before that time when I get reclusive and pouty like clockwork. I am referring to those purchases, long-term contracts, if you will that take $16, $25, even $35 out of my checking account each month and have gone neglected far too long.

I have returned to 24-Hour Fitness. My hips hurt, I am pretty sure that I don’t actually do anything particularly fruitful there and those guys with the shiny gloves and the biceps that are bigger than my head (by a lot, for reals) truly give me the creeps. But I am pretty sure I am getting my money’s worth. Right.

I also went back to tan. Or, rather back to orange. And all of this brassy-bronze, gyrating and squeezing really made me realize how much I dislike jiggling all over. So, I have also back a glorious WeightWatchers comeback (though I have yet to finish a week ON program, a feat that has eluded me since October LAST year) and am totally certain that in just a few short weeks, I will be JUST like the woman that teaches the pole dancing class I took.

Side note: I plan on climbing backwards up a pole by this time next year, if not sooner, due to my rapidly perfecting physique. Duh. I am taking donations, as it is what I want for Christmas. The class, you fools, not the ability. But if you know someone who can get me that, right on.
But all of these new operations, along with my general inability to feel stable and organized or even productive about them has left me feeling intolerably antsy. Even as I type this, my finger keeps wandering to my mouth, trying to fish out the hunk of lip I just bit off. That’s right, it’s a nervous habit. Anxiety + oral fixation = Holey Lips, Batman!

But it is not just those things. I am nervous about money of late. Mine, Citibank’s, my family’s, Fanny’s and Freddy’s and Eddy’s and who knows. I just don’t know if I have the gumption to make it through a depression. Depression, yes. But A depression? Sheesh. Well, at least I would have my stripping to fall back on. You know, it is a cousin of the world’s oldest profession, she’ll hook us up. Get it? Hook?

Additionally, I am having a major relapse of quarter-life crisis, obsessing over wasted time, missed opportunities, ones that I am GOING to miss if I don’t get my shit together, all kinds of useless thoughts that actually PREVENT action while requiring it. What a mindfuck.

At this moment I look for other jobs daily WHILE I try to stick with this one in hopes of a promotion/bonus. But there is the looming idea that we will just go extinct, here, in our ultra-floundering business. That’s comforting. I want to travel but have no money. I want to take this dance class but have no money. I need new glasses, want to mail a package, think my brakes are about to go out, would love a new car, new boots, to go back to school but I have no money. And I don’ t think any is coming my way.

Lost in the confusion of all this (to which one can add sporadic stresses of what is feeling like an increasingly chaotic magazine-work element to my life) I want to apply to grad school and am totally paralyzed by laziness (first of all), the total disorganization of trying to figure out what needs to be done to do it (could be helped—though not alleviated—if I weren’t so lazy. Lazy and, honestly, scared. Scared that I wouldn’t get in, sure. I AM applying to pretty unattainable schools (NYU and Northwestern, I think). But that’s not even the primary concern. Scared that I would get in, maybe. Scared to think about a change that huge. Scared to put that much into it and have it be all for naught, unnecessary, stupid, laughable even. I have already DONE that, for chrissake.

I can’t even sit still at my desk. I keep flipping back and forth in windows, opening new tabs on my IE, not even using them, trying to find the track list to Finally, Lillian and Dan, ONLY b/c it would be a good distraction, getting up and wandering into other people’s cubes so that they can be as disturbed and unproductive as myself, getting smacked—quite literally, slapped in the face—by my boss, feeling the crazy coffee jitters of some insanely high-caffeine brew on a small cup of Crispix, feeling like I desperately need to make a list and not even knowing what to put on it (no idea! Of what? What to do? In what period of time? With what money and time? Where do I start? Do I even HAVE things to do?). I even looked up Princess in urbandictionary. I keep opening my iTunes and staring at it blindly. Should I get something? Should I organize it? Add to it? Even turn it on? (It has been open and non-functional now for two hours, currently I think that music would only make me CRAZIER!)

All while pointedly NOT doing my job. I have done literally nothing this week. Other than show up late, take ten minutes too long at lunch, do my OTHER job while here, MASTER JoJo’s Fashion show and Games.com, waste time, money, effort, energy and still not do the ONE. MUNDANE. MIND-NUMBING thing I should do for this company. I SHOULD get fired. For sure.
But then who would they slap?

Just Smile All The Time

Laugh at every joke.

And it does work, to a degree-dy, Jeff Tweedy.

I blame my mood on the weather. It is tangible, visible, documentable that as colder weather onsets, so does my despondency. Really, I am uncomfortable all the time and finding it harder and harder to be happy. I carry a basic chill (and with it a tense rigidity that I cannot lose without an opportunity to be really good and warm, maybe even hot and bothered, in the recent past) at all times. I may have made a mistake in moving to Denver. I am not sure it has the climate-al tolerance required by someone with as low a threshold for cold as myself. Who knew it was so cold and snowy in Colorady? Well, I guess hindsight is 20/20.

But really, I would love to say it was my hormones. I wish it was a phase or a day or even a week, but I can feel the strain every day of maintaining my perkiness, of pushing aside the cloudy days and focusing, farsightedly, on the things that make these murky days just as good as others, in other months, in other mindsets. Just dust that frost off, it'll be good as new.

Plaster on my grin. If you tell yourself enough that you are happy, eventually, you'll start to believe it. That's how to fight the loneliness.

And I am not unhappy, let's not be foolish. I am just falling victim to that general malaise coming with losing a suntan, dreading even a minute out of doors, giving gam-bearing for a season or two, fitting (or not fitting) into last year's pants, having to crack the whip on the squatter hippy living at my house who keeps turning our heat up to 70. Excuse me sir, but one month of sleeping space, energy bills, water supply and refrigeration and cooking amenities AT NO COST does not, dear sir, entitle you to ratchet up my heating bill without a second thought. You cold? Get a blanket. Can't fit it on your bike when you travel cross country? Leave it. It's the least contribution to your mooching. Clogging our sink with your Orange County Choppers mustache then buying the Draino to clear it and giving the bathroom as cursory clean barely breaks you even for a week or two.

I am watching that thermostat, buddy. (AND I am watching YOU.)

See? I am an irritable grumpy fuck. But, in fairness, that is totally uncool, Matt, cut it out.

On the brighter side several things will set the tone for an A-ok weekend: free dinner on Friday at my roomie's (the paying one) new restaurant and the Big Lebowski party (one of my very favorite, annually sporadic, completely chaotic, poorly timed, costumed Sunday bowling events, of which there are many, naturally). These should surely be the dose of dopamine that my mood needs this week, that is if I make to the weekend...and through the birthday festivities of one very high-maintenance, generally agitating, heavy drinking friend. And, as a good rule of thumb, most weekend outings with said pal end in a quarrel of varying severity, duration and consequence. So THAT's something to look forward to.

Do I even get to come home for Thanksgiving? I dunno. I am poor, the airlines are poor, the country is poor. That's not a good start.

There is that nagging despondency again. Just feeling like my life isn't as lively as it should be. Missing arm-grabbing, curse-splattered, mean-tender desire and that gripping in my gut. Stepped into the elevator yesterday and it smelled of the cologne of the person who had just stepped out. It gave me shivers, like stepping into the ghost of someone, a lingering scent of... of? I don't know but it sure made me miss something/someone/somewhere/sometime. I am horribly sentimental and nostalgic for something I don't remember or maybe even know. That's what happens in the fall/winter.

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? - Rob

Ah, shut your trap, Eva. Turn off your "Sad" iPod playlist. Stop all that bellyachin, you sissy. After all, June is just around the corner.

Listening to: "Most of the Time" - Bob Dylan, then "Drive" - The Cars

(Would someone make me a mix already? I am craving new-to-me, less downer tunes and cannot motivate myself)

If you need to make up some of the intelligence lost by reading this, please spend a moment here: Mad Dog Palin, with my good friend Matt Taibbi.

Please let Obama win, or else give me a huge windfall so that I might flee for a while and live on strangers' couches in Europe and Asia.

I am sorry for even writing this.

Shut The Fuck Up, Eva

"Well, governor Palin, seeing as you watch comedy shows with the sound turned off..."

JON STEWART FOR PRESIDENT!

That out of the way...

An Old Spice commercial just featured a centaur that was half the cutest guy I have seen in a while and it made me laugh. Almost a whole laugh. Almost as much as the intro on the Daily Show that I haven't seen in months. And it was followed by a decently amusing preview for Choke. Like the book, intrigued by the filum.

Plus, Tony Blair's extreme likeness to silly cartoons in pink pink ties has lit up the night.

I guess I enjoy having cable for a night. I suppose this is the silver lining on three hotels in three nights. And an abhorrent amount of calories, taken in during a pathetic, futile and, frankly, repulsive attempt to meet with a moment of satisfaction.

I am revolting. Seriously.

My heart, right now, feels hard and small and ridiculous as Laura's fists. I can quite clearly map how my loneliness right now is both symptom and cause, root and flower of my icky feeling right now.

I hate having had something so nasty and terrible happen then have to put off the fallout, the real reaction. It doesn't get dealt with and disappears, normally in a bad way. Like you don't get to fix it, it just goes on, unstitched, while your insides spill out on the road and you have to fly to Idaho, while your heart bleeds out on your porch.

I am a maniac and an obsessive compulsive dater. I relate to way much of this article. Or I have. Or did. But I think that it's assertion of just stopping is not a broad enough solution. I truly think that there is such a complex cocktail of emotion and needs and stresses and activities and food and drink and biology that even gets you started on such a crazy-pants roller coaster to begin with that, while this remedy is a good step, I just can't buy it wholesale.

I know. I AM that crazy person.

And what about the aftermath? The withdrawal? The shakes? The looking over your shoulder forever? The wondering if you missed out on each other? The mutual enjoyment of Colbie Callait? I mean, you might be on to something but please, do not underestimate the psychosis that goes into this kind of behavior and therefore the far bigger undoing that has to be done. I mean, thats like putting a band-aid on a wound that is the size of the mountain I am making out of the molehill of my emotional and self-esteem issues. And I know it. And you know it. And you know I know it. And I know you know.

I am considering going back to grad school. Somewhere crazy. I am also considering watching Religulous. But for now I am glad that a random black guy told me I had the nicest legs in the bar on Saturday, that another random black guy told me I was increditable and thanked me for "the best view all night" and two people told me I looked like Sarah Palin (either the greatest chic in TV writing or the worst person-with-a-backyard-view-of-Russia she ever hilariously portrayed) on that same Saturday, and that the evil vice grip my own guilt, nervousness, tension and pathetic paranoia about my own behavior this past week and the probably-not-even-that-great-but-god-I-want-it-anyway opportunities and people I have rabidly pushed away just as I wanted to pull it close has only given me a heart murmur and an ulcer but NOT kept me from actually breathing.

Though part of me wishes it had.

At least then I couldn't talk.

Me, I'm The Asshole

To tell me the truth, I really don't want to write a thing right now. (And on that note, I, as usual, suggest you not read this, unless, like me, you have a nice, healthy masochistic flair or any tendency toward voyeurism. I have both in spades, so, if you would like to observe my failed human spectacle, I get that.)

I feel mean and uncommunicative. I want to say "Fuck you, blog." Well, really, I could address that to a number of people/places/things or any other Twenty Questions category right now, but I think I will stick with directing my anger one place--kind of. Especially because it is so infuriatingly directionless.

Sort of.

The very worst part of it is how annoyingly conscious I am about how I feel, why I feel it and how--most likely--irrational, silly or fleeting that feeling is. I KNOW it is. I REMEMBER how happy I have been for the last few days. Almost entirely, if you were wondering. Well, not so close to entirety after I had to come back to h-e-double toothpicks, also known as work.

I need to get out of this place. It is framing my whole perspective in dark, heavy, monastic wood. Fantastic for a stark, nicely contrasting effect on your Martha Stewart Goldenrod-painted walls. Not so beautiful when crammed into a rapidly gloaming brainscape. It makes me a stern, bitter nun, easy to anger, quick to reprimand, wrinkled and scowling always.

P.S. This is not me.

I normally have more patience for inane argumentativeness from people with a piddly sense of humor or something to prove. I usually would, not noticing, tune out the fact that my cube neighbor spends 5 of her 8 work hours on the phone with her boyfriend, lending me an earful of cooing, idiosyncratic love babble and pleading compromise and insipid inside jokes. Normally, I would never use the word insipid. Most of the time I wouldn't mind so much that she almost never refers to "her son" by his name or even by a nice, traditional pronoun. "Her son," is far too important. Her life around "her child," far too dramatic and to be taken VERY seriously. "Her little boy" is the center of her universe. And apparently the center of our miserable, temperature dysfunctional, smelly, germ-incubating, mind-fraying and soul-eating cube universe, too.

Typically, hauntings of my room mate's filthy habits (and the weeks-old, molded-into-their-vase WEEDS she picked!!) wouldn't last alldaylong. Normally, my colleagues rehashing of the same, stupid crap, doing the same pointless things every day only exists just beyond my mood.

But my dark, Victorian-furnitured mood is not so resilient. Absurdly, I am pretty certain it has something to do with the DNC. That sounds queer--rather, it IS queer--but all the goings-on, all the people, events and issues at such a frothy head in my city right now have cast in an embarrassing, depressing, painful light how unfulfilled both my desire and my potential is. Or at least I think it is. I just want so much more.

I want to be in it. I am sad I miss out on so much from my safe distance, from my terrible, suburban-job perch and my still-sort-of-insulated(isolated?) life. I want to be involved in something that means something--if only to me. I want less routine days. I want stimulus. I want an outlet for my unique brand of not very special and completely untalented creativity. I want to direct my passion outward instead of letting it point deeper inside myself, where it festers and becomes discontent and loathing. I want something to offer in conversation that is really mine and that people might actually want to hear. Other than my increasingly more dating infused life (though this means something different extra-recently than it did even a few weeks ago).

I want this icky, rejected, not-loving-myself feeling to get the hell away from me. I want to actually BELIEVE what I for SURE know about a certain few deeply flawed, completely aimless, aging and incapable, sorta gay, high-pitched laughing, body-shaving, manipulative, emotional juveniles, which is that I deserve better and I DON'T EVEN CARE. But somehow, the inky mark of feeling hurt and unwanted and therefore not good enough is a stain I just can't wash out. Even in the light of much better, more real and I think pretty solid prospects. (At least one, maybe.)

I want to quit feeling sorry for myself and quit hating myself for being the sort of weak, sniveling little bitch that lets me feel sorry for myself. However, I think that my intrepid, uncontrollably optimistic and dizzyingly hyperactive traits normally do a good job of keeping this self-pity out of my normal, every-day activities and moods. It only leaks out on occasion, when it's got all swoll up from some little (or big) blow.

Even then, I think most of the time I reserve it for my blog, where anyone can ditch my rant whenever they see fit. Or never read it at all. Or decide they can't condescend to be friends with someone who spends so much time on such trifling, shallow garbage. I would get that, too. However, if you DID have that grossly masochistic, voyeuristic, slightly stupid need to read all the way to here, you will be glad to know that, now, I feel better.

Or, at least, the tears have started to eek their way out.

But, that is actually sort of the same as better.

Gross.

Out Loud Diary (Heretofore known as OLD News)

Guess I am doing better. Better than what that last post might let on.

But I only guess, hard to tell for sure.

My life is seeming pretty full, that should be good, I think. But I am just not sure that I like what it is full of. Some of it smells like shit. Job for sure could be better. Doing nothing = feeling like nothing. More often than not anyhow. As my wise old sister (wink, wink, she ain't that old) once said, "Sounds like a pretty toxic environment." Understatement. Consider me a friggin' biohazard why don't ya? I think I am leaking onto people around me.

Then there is this current self-esteem issue. So old to me, so wrinkled. I thought I had banished it to the basement of my life like that dude in Austria did his first daughter and all their creepy incest kids. Only it SHOULD be there.

Damn that boy for unlocking that dark dark door, and letting old issues out of their dark dark room and up that dark dark stair and into my life. Which, at moments now, feels awfully dark dark. A certain sense of self that has taken me years to cultivate, I would have liked to think was unshakeable--it was, after all, well-nurtured by several years and a couple of exceptionally lucky relationships with people who truly built me up and treated me well. We loved.

Damn me for letting him, because here I am, shaken. I mean, I am practically fizzing.

I keep doing all the cardinal no-no's. Respeaking conversations, reliving moments, rereading messages, picking apart my every word, move, attitude, feeling, trait and quality. Generally kicking the shit out of myself. Even WITH that smart, rational voice that normally tells my friends not to do that coming through loud and clear in my brain. But I can't stop.

I am suddenly and compulsively doubting me. Everything about me. My sense of humor, my nose, my sense of style, my body, what books I read, my kindness, my opinions, my hobbies, what I have done and what I want to do in life, my lifestyle choices, my hair, my goals, my intelligence, my glasses.

What I bring to the table. Suddenly it doesn't feel like much.

Despite people all around me, things all around me, and my whole life behind me that suggests otherwise.

This is me according to you.

And all the while I KNOW I am too damn smart to let this get to me like that. And my mature, been through a lot worse, been through this bullshit before self is fighting it. Keeping busy (except when the black hole that is my work is in the picture, an unfortunately huge portion of my life), working out, TRYING to eat right, get involved in even more new things, spend as little time as possible sitting and picking myself apart.

I do all right. I am not mopey, I have great friends and great family and a great time, most of the time. But every once in a while, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a night, sometimes for only a few seconds, I really want to cry and not understand and sort of understand and want to know why and not want to know and always just wish it was away...away...away.

Every so often, I am just dying.

Don't Read This, It's Stupid.

Caution: Mostly writing this for my own benefit, do not read on if you easily lose interest.


I need change. I need to change, I need to change things around me. I need to feel even remotely whole again. It has really been too long. To whatever degree I indulge in self-loathing (more and more, it seems, these days), I guess I have been trying to fix it, hide it, fill it in and spackle it with all the wrong things.

I let myself believe in too many half-hearted signs. I clung to all the moments that came strong but few and far between. I allowed my own loneliness, desperation, regret, fear, anger, hatred, insecurity, sense of humor, desire, adventure, openness and honestly to steer my right past reason and clarity.

I tried so hard to back up, move away, move on. Several times, how did this just keep happening? Keep coming back? If all those moments, if all that fun, if all that laughter and affection was just not sincere, then let it falter, leave me the fuck alone! Tell me the truth when I ask you those questions, don't let it fester, don't let it grow, don't make it a huge, swollen, hopeful heart you have to break.

You should have let it down long ago, when it was a small, tight balloon. Much harder to break.

And foolish, stupid me. Foolish, stupid, lonely me. So close to good enough to love, just not quite there. So close that people try, try, try, try, try to love me. Want to see it, wish they felt it, but don't.

If god exists, I am SO pissed at her. I asked for guidance, signs, help, direction. Please just let me know. Whatever the truth, just make it CLEAR! I said thanks for all the positives, was grateful for all the GOOD signs. And there were plenty! Couldn't those have just been cut out? Couldn't he have been man enough to shut it down LONG AGO? So many easy opportunities for it, would have taken only a SLIGHT spine. Crush me a little now, or a lot later? Good choice, buddy. What fun is it if you can't REALLY obliterate someone. Gonna fuck someone over, do it right.

Be too nice to say no, be too scared to admit, be too weak to cut em loose, have some real fun with em first, torture them, fatten em' up.

Like a lamb to the slaughter.

Something died. Some hope, some possibility, some part of me??? I don't know. I hope not. I like my optimism, I like my sentimentality, I like my dreams.

I don't like how I feel with they get put to death, but I hope, for my own sake, they just keep coming back. I hope my wounds scab and heal and leave the the same, only with a new scar. Scars are all right, they remind you where you've been.

But for sure I feel stagnant. I feel like quitting, leaving, moving. I want to get out and get away. At the risk of being Cher in Mermaids, when this town gets old and hard, I want to just leave it for a new one.

All of those things that seemed right, seemed going for me, none seem to be so much anymore. Nothing seems meant. All seems wrong. Forced, bent.

I want to pare down and build up, start over, start alone, move on, be different, forget a lot of the things that happened here.

I wish I had never met you.

Purgatory (Please pardon my self-indulgence here.)

The last week has been a truly lopsided mix of laughter and tears. Feeling stymied by the unappetizing mixture, I was driven to investigate the formula. According the the label, ingredients include: finicky, foreboding lights taunting me from the heavy-browed dash on the Saturn; pestering (concerned and well-intended but ultimately cumbersome) father nagging about said lights; threats to longest-term friend I have to terminate friendship after staggering (and quite possibly record-breaking) display of mania, narcissism, and selfishness; cavernous wind-tunnel style empty bank account; text vomit (close relative of word vomit, only worse, because clear evidence of badly planned, terribly timed, and poorly worded communication is readily available for review and critique); coinciding blow-offs by anyone who has recently been a recipient of either my emotional or physical affections (apparently both require entry to a very dark nether-region that is quite unappealing); and abysmal, botched bangs and the accompanying loathing and resentment for Becky at Floyd's.

Also contains insignificant amounts of fun with new roommate (friend who manages not to feed directly on my soul, therefore sucking it dry), flirting with cute (and occasionally too old for the established age range for love interest) bartenders, and purchase of incredibly hot new vest (because 5 vests is not enough).

Interesting concoction.

After sipping on this cocktail for a few days, I found myself, for the second time in the past seven days, in the honeymoon stage of the 4th hour at Pep Boys AutoCenter, where, ironically, I am finding it hard to maintain any pep and as far as I can tell, the boys ain't doing any better a job.

That morning I had gotten up in a pretty dismal cloud. Not loving life too much, not dying to go to work, I worried that had been promoted to the new, Denver chapter Eyore. So I decided to garnish myself with loveliness and wear an attractive, winsome, and borderline too-fashionable-for-work outfit to work that day. I was hoping that a boost on the outside might translate to a boost on the inside.

Thus I found myself bedecked in a red dress, a trendy, wide, black belt, smooth opaque tights that made me want to rub my OWN legs, and fun new black suede, cuffed, Chinese Laundry pirate boots. Looking good if you can get past the fact that my hair makes me look a shade too much like Punky Brewster (spunky, and inspiring to young girls as she may be, she is not my number one fashion icon). However, there is a slight, infinitesimal chance that this kind of apparel is wasted on a Pep Boys AutoCenter audience.

It is in this way, that I find myself sitting in the wretchedly cold waiting area (gusts of ice-fringed January Colorado air tackled my knees each time someone entered, not even a stale, stinking cup of coffee in the so-called reception area) that smells somewhat of bug spray, toasted car oil, and an old sardine can, reading a Tom Robbins book hilariously out of place in the Pep Boys, and listening to what is apparently the only sad, weepy ballad that JT has ever performed and that my iPod has cruelly bestowed on me at that moment (damn you, random!). And at that moment is when I think that maybe this is it. Maybe I have died and, given my lack of faith and goodwill at the moment I deceased, been sent to purgatory.

Things DO seem a little off. The only two men working who are both cute and speak English as a first language WILL NOT SMILE AT ME. Aside from the fact that this bruises my ego, it is also incredibly absurd. EVERYONE should smile at me (please read this as forced vanity in attempt to elevate my self esteem). Neither will the regular looking sorta-emo guy in the waiting area (doesn't he KNOW I, too, have ultra-hip musical taste, I AM listening to an iPod, for chrissake). This is madness. Especially because there is one person on the hard blue plastic chairs who WILL smile at me: a largely overweight woman (would we call her obese?) with a limp who has just blessed my sneeze. She proceeds to offer me gum (an antidote for sneezing unbeknownst to me?) and, after I politely decline (mama told me never take candy from strangers), she proceeds to pop, chew and smack her gum as if she had made some deal with the gum that the more she mangled it (to OH! the chagrin of people around her) the better it would taste, the longer it would last. Which, apparently, in this devilish deal means forever. Forever in limbo.

When she starts humming (Hymns! She is humming hymns! In limbo! What a brown-noser.) I turn my hate rays on full blast and try to burn a hole into the side of her face. (Chances for upward movement are looking less and less real for me.) It is in this ray-blasting stance that I realize that she is reading the bible. And not just any bible. This one is exceedingly slim, what could a bible that thin contain?! It is wee and bound in black faux-alligator embossed leather. This makes me rethink my gracious thanks for the blessing she gave after my sneeze. I am repulsed, I wish my life hadn't been touched by the likes of a bible like that! That's the kind of Bible and gum smacking that gets you trapped in purgatory, no matter how much hymn-humming you do.

Eventually I get to slither away, released, surprisingly undead, into the outside world. In this reality, after all that time, fear, and burdensome annoyance, those fucking lights are still blinking in my car. Those un-peppy and apparently unskilled auto mechanics got in line behind the many who had queued before, took a bite out of my morale, and left me flaccid, and them cackling away from me in their Dickies.

Thank goodness for the (albeit comparatively weak) revival of some spirit by the following: super sharp, waist slimming vests that cost more than they should but are SO worth it emotionally; invitations to Operation S.A.L.L.Y parties with a crew from the new Irish bar-restaurant down my street (an AWESOME Sunday take-a-bus-to-the-bowling-alley, Lebowski themed affair for you Philistines who mightn't have recognized); and, days later, a simple, and simply delightful, text from a complexly delightful Allison:

"I stubbed my vagina." (Those of you who understand this reference, kudos, you are one of the few who have reached comedic nirvana, please, join Allison and I for an evening of laughter, farts, and Troll cards.)

And, on that note, I conclude this ludicrously long post with a sentiment from wild, wonderful Tom Robbins:

"Suppose you are one of those persons who feels trapped, to some degree, trapped matrimonially, occupationally, educationally or geographically, or trapped in something larger than all those; trapped in a system, or what you might describe as an 'increasingly deadening technocracy' or a 'theater of paranoia and desperation' or something like that. Now if you are one of those persons (and the author doesn't mean to imply that you are), wouldn't the very knowledge that there are clockworks ticking away behind the wallpaper of civilization, unbeknownst to leaders, organizers and managers (the President included), wouldn't that knowledge, suggesting as it does the possibility of unimaginable alternatives, wouldn't that knowledge be a bubble bath for your heart?"

-p. 52, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues