Planning for Success

1. Sign up for an independent study.
2. Halfway through the semester, agree on a reading list (over 40 journal articles, a few books to skim) with the professor. Tell her you'll send her your summary "as you make you progress."
3. Over the next few weeks, read some articles here and there. Maybe 5 or 8 in total. No need to strain yourself.
4. Two to three weeks before the end of the semester, realize that you still have 45 articles to read and summarize, along with all of your other final assignments, and also your 25-hour-a-week job.
5. PANIC.
6. Read furiously.
7. Check clock.
8. You've only read one article in two hours?!?
9. Repeat steps 5 through 8 until you are no longer physically capable of further panic.
10. You need a drink.
11. On Saturday afternoon (your assignment is due Sunday), go hang out with friends from 4 to 9 pm. Drink a glass of wine, or four.
12. Arrive home at 9pm. Did I mention your assignment is due tomorrow? Homework is hard when you're intoxicated, you know.
13. Have a nap til 1am.
14. Wake up, mainline soda, work til the wee hours of the morning.
15. Finish assignment in an exhausted haze.
16. Swear you'll never do this again.

SEVEN MONTHS LATER: Begin again at step 3.

Lifestyles of a Young Recluse

I know it's already March 9th, but I have finally settled on a goal for this month, and now I shall share it with you. This week is actually my Spring Break, and I'm celebrating by lots of sleeping and homework. Also, playing The Sims, because I live the kind of glamorous life that most other 20-somethings only dream of. It's all this extra free time and the excessive Sims-playing that has inspired this month's goals, which are as follows:

GOALS!: By the end of the month, I'd like to finish reading at least one book for pleasure and at least one crochet project.

I'm making this goal as a way to push myself to spend my free time a little more constructively. I have all these fun things I'd like to do, like reading books, or crocheting things, or building that biplane I keep talking about, but I always put them off until I have "more free time." But the fact is that I have a fair amount of free time as it is (or, I make free time for myself, even if it's not the best idea), and I usually end up spending it screwing around on the computer or watching TV. And really, if I'm going to waste my valuable paper-writing time, I might as well waste it in a more active way rather than just passively soaking up pop culture. So! Time to get at least one of those unread books off my bedside table!

Make no mistake, these goals are really no more glamorous than what I've been doing with my time, but at least they'll help me build valuable skills which will someday make me a much better housewife, or something. Plus, maybe now if I waste a whole day without doing any homework, I can at least say that I accomplished something other than helping my Sim get a promotion. Not that I've ever considered that a major accomplishment, I mean... that would just be sad.

Pulling Ourselves Up By Stepping On Others

At the beginning of the month of February, I set a goal for myself: to stop vocally criticizing other people. Then I spent the rest of the month trying to figure out why it was so hard to follow through on that goal. Obviously I knew from the beginning that I had a 'problem' with criticizing people, otherwise I wouldn't have made it a goal to stop doing it. I just wasn't prepared for how often the issue would come up day to day. I kept finding myself about to criticize someone, then stopping myself, then deciding to go ahead and say it anyway because 'this one doesn't count.'

That sounds like I was just rationalizing bad behavior, I know, but hear me out. Does it count if I'm commiserating with classmates about how I've been disappointed by a professor's teaching style? Does it count if I'm telling a friend about what a difficult time another friend has been giving me lately? What, exactly, had I meant when I made such a broad goal?

I wanted to come back here and post about how hard it was, but I couldn't because I couldn't even put my finger on what the problem was. I felt like I instinctively understood the difference between 'ok' criticism and 'bad' criticism, but I couldn't put the distinction into words.

Then, sometime last week, I happened upon a blog post called Why Being Good Sucks at obeymyblog.com* and suddenly everything made sense. You can go read the whole post if you like, but the part that's really relevant is this passage:

"If you consider yourself a “good” person, then that means other people must be “bad.” Not you. Never.

In an effort to prop yourself up as “good,” you will attempt to call out and crucify others who you believe contain the very “bad” qualities you deny in yourself. You will create enemies, point fingers, blame others and get mad. If along the way, other people join you, you can all call yourselves good and others bad – solidified in self-righteousness and in your total denial of ever doing anything bad or wrong."

When I first read it, I thought, "Yeah, that!" That's the problem! That's the reason I'm sometimes filled with guilt after I get done with a particularly satisfying rant about someone else's faults. It's not necessarily the nature or the accuracy of what I'm saying, it's my motivation in saying it. Because I've noticed that a lot of the people I most vehemently criticize are people that... how do I say this? *DEEP BREATH*

...They're people I'm scared of. They're people that intimidate me, or that I envy, or that I believe think they're better than me, which we all know is probably just The Crazy projecting itself onto others. When I find faults in those people, I shout it from the rooftops, and then I feel better about myself. Ha, I think, who's the better person NOW? But of course the joy of establishing myself as superior is immediately followed by overwhelming shame. "Good" people don't spend their time tearing other people down behind their backs. I know this. And if I have to disparage other people to make myself feel better, I'm not a good person at all. I'm just a dirty bully.

I don't want to paint myself as a monster here. I spend plenty of time doing things other than pointing out other people's faults. I have hobbies! I read books! But I think any time spent engaged in petty criticism is too much time. I'm not convinced that I did a great job meeting my personal goal for February, but I have gained some insight into why I keep doing something that invariably makes me feel like dirt. I'm hoping that in the future I can take this information and use it constructively. If I feel compelled to take someone down a notch, maybe instead I'll take a minute to ask myself: Why do I find this person so threatening in the first place? Isn't there something more productive I can do to address my own issues, instead of distracting myself by acting like a character in Mean Girls? I'd like to think so, at least. I'll let you know how it goes.

*I think I found the link to this post on twitter, through Zen Habits, which I sometimes read. With regard to Obey My Blog, I've only read the one post, so I can't yet vouch for the quality of the rest of the blog one way or another.

P.S. I know I need to come up with a goal for March, but I haven't decided on it yet, so I'll have to get back to you in the next couple of days. If you stop by and you have any suggestions, holler!

Living With No Regrets

Since I was such a huge internet crybaby when Lee and I broke up, I feel obligated to notify the internet now that we're, um... back together? This is great news, of course, but it also makes me feel a little embarrassed and silly to have to announce it, because you can break up with someone and get away with not explaining why, but it's a little harder to break up and then get back together without offering an explanation. At least, that's how it feels to me. Why am I compelled to explain myself? Who knows! Just join me, won't you?

While it's great news(!) that we're back together, Lee graduates in May, at which point he will permanently relocate to Texas in order to get started on his goal of becoming a Big Deal. (Or a Republican, I'm not sure.) Although Texas is kind of a stupid state in general, that in and of itself is not a huge problem. I'm sure a person can learn to love Texas, in the same way that a child learns to love her crazy uncle who is constantly preparing for the apocalypse. The main issue here is the fact that I have recently started a PhD program, and I have approximately four (4) years of graduate school left after Lee moves. Four years of graduate school that must be completed at my university here in North Carolina. Which is roughly 1,000 miles away from Houston. A $400 plane ticket away. Thirteen hours by car, one way.

I know what you're probably thinking right now. This level of long-distance relating is impossible. This is a disaster. We're fools. I know you're thinking it because I've thought all of it myself, as has Lee. It's why we broke up. But the fact remains that life, while livable, just doesn't feel right when we're not together. And I can't seem to get behind the idea of ending a relationship with someone you love when there's still a chance it could work out. There are plenty of stories of couples who carry on in extremely long-distance relationships and manage to make it work and live happily ever after (whatever that means) in spite of it all. Of course, there's also a huge chance that we will crash and burn and it will be quite a spectacle. Either way, it should make for some interesting blog reading, I guess. And either way we're going to go down fighting, with no regrets. Because if there's anything I think it's worth being a fool for, it's this.

So that's that. What's up with you?

A Different Kind of Death

(Before anyone gets too alarmed, I should say that I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and it doesn't really accurately reflect my current feelings, but I'm posting it now because I have serious writer's block and I don't have anything else interesting to share. Enjoy my melodramatic ramblings!)

Sometimes when someone dies, it's kind of OK. People say things like, "At least now her suffering is over" or "He's finally gone on to a better place." I think a little bit of what people feel in those situations is relief. When you wait so long for the end, the waiting can become more scary than the death. When it finally comes, it feels like you're reliving something that's already happened, because in a way, you are. Part of your mind has been running over and over the possibility of death for days, or weeks, or even months, already. Even though it hurts, it's nice to let that part of yourself collapse and rest at last, secure in the knowledge that the worst has finally happened. You can give yourself permission to move on, to start rebuilding. Things can only get better from there.

On the other hand, some deaths come on like a tsunami, like an Escalade merging into your living room. Those are the ones that leave people slack-jawed and wide-eyed, exclaiming in disbelief about how young and healthy the deceased was, as if the fact will somehow undo reality. I've never lived through something like that, but I've been close to people who experienced it, and I can imagine it. I can imagine how the knowledge of your loss sinks in slowly, one mundane moment at a time, and you find yourself thinking inane thoughts like, He'll never make fun of my movie choices again. He'll never drink another milkshake. He'll never tell another terrible joke. After enough of those tiny epiphanies build up, maybe the force of it finally hits you, like the sonic boom that comes after a jet passes overhead - an echo more powerful than the event itself. That's the scary time. That's the time to fear. When the concept passes from being abstract and curious and instead becomes viscerally, horrifyingly real.

Obviously, losing someone to death is more painful than losing them in other ways. But losing someone, even in a divorce or a break-up or because they moved to a distant island with no phone or internet, always involves a grieving process. The dissolution of a relationship can fall along the same scale as death: from an end that was long-expected and practically a relief, to one that feels painfully premature. An example of the former would be the relationship I was in before I was with Lee. By the time it was over, I was relieved that he had finally crossed a line that made it impossible for me to make any more excuses for him, that at last I could move forward and look for something as good as I deserved. We had sucked every bit of the marrow out of that relationship, and then beaten the shit out of each other with the bones. On the other hand, with Lee I feel like the end came too soon. Maybe it's better to end a relationship before you're thoroughly broken down and disgusted with each other, but I hate the feeling that there was still... more, is the only word I can think of. But that's just how I feel. Maybe while I'm mourning the loss of a young marathon runner, struck down in the prime of his life, Lee feels more like he's finally said goodbye to his 90-year-old grandmother after a long battle with Extremely Painful and Drawn-Out Disease.

I wonder if it's really always more difficult to lose someone to death. After death, a person lives on primarily in your memory. If you like, you're free to mold that memory into whatever is most comforting to you. You can talk to the person, pray to them, imagine that they look down upon you benevolently, that they're proud of you. You can believe that every painful word that ever passed between you is forgiven, that they would still be here with you if they could, and that wherever they are, they are thinking of you with affection. But when a relationship ends, well. In that case, reality is what it is. You don't have the same luxury of converting your memory of that person into some abstract spiritual idea. In that case, the ghost carries on, with infinite potential to stymie any attempts at establishing meaning or closure. If you're like me, constantly in search of The Absolute Set-in-Stone Truth, that could potentially drive you insane. Sure, you can tell yourself comforting things, but how do you know?? It's so easy to torture yourself with split-screen visions of painfully incongruous images: you, feeling miserable while your ex-boyfriend has an enthusiastic threesome with two Scandinavian models. Or you, drinking cheap beer alone while your ex-girlfriend is happily riding a tandem bike with a devastatingly handsome rugby player. It may be unlikely, but it's not entirely impossible. You seldom have to worry about those kinds of things when someone dies.

The scariest part is wondering how long it will be before the grieving process is over and the experience goes from being "the most traumatic thing that's happened to me recently" to being "one of the many life experiences that has proven my ability to overcome adversity and which has also put me on the path to meeting my extremely handsome and successful Doctor-Lawyer-Revolutionary husband." They say that it takes half the time you were with someone to completely get over them, which means I have roughly a year to go before I'm completely in the clear. Worse than that, it also means that I really only JUST finished getting over my LAST boyfriend. And really, when you put it that way, the bottom line is this:

Fuck.

I Don't Even Know Where to Start

I promised my friend MB that I would post a blog today, so that is what I'm doing, even though I don't even know what to tell you guys. There have been a variety of new developments in my life, and I feel like if I tried to fill you in now I'd just get tired and confused and start drooling on myself. HOWEVER, because I love you and you're so BOSSY, I'm going to do my best to bring you up to speed. But I make no guarantees that this post will encompass everything new that has happened since 3 weeks ago when I stopped posting regularly and everyone got really disappointed in me.

Oooook... the first thing I need to tell you is kind of sad, but I just found out about it today so it's fresh on my mind: one of my gerbils has some kind of brain damage. Well, actually, I don't know for sure that it's brain damage, but he's holding his head kind of tilted to one side, and he's walking around like he's drunk or concussed or something. But I googled "gerbil leaning to one side" and wikipedia says that it's probably an inner ear problem and nothing to worry about because he'll... get used to it? They may be right, because he's still eating and digging and gerbiling around like he usually does, so I think this situation is bothering me more than him. I keep standing anxiously over the tank like "Heeey buddy. How ya doin? You wanna start walking in a straight line again, please, because mama finds it unsettling."

This issue is of particular concern to me because in about 30 minutes I'm leaving to go to the airport to fly to Houston for the weekend, and right now my roommate is also out of town, but she'll probably be back before me. So what if my gerbil isn't ok and then he DROPS DEAD while I'm gone and then my roommate comes back and has to cope with a dead gerbil and then she naturally assumes that it's my fault he's dead because I'm neglectful? Or, even if she doesn't assume I'm neglectful, it's still kind of uncool for me to saddle her with the inconvenience of a dead rodent when we've only lived together for a week. What if he's been dead for several days at that point? What if the other gerbil... like... eats him, or something?

... I'm going to stop thinking about this right now, because I don't know whether to cry or throw up.

Also of note is the fact that I moved! I'm still in North Carolina, but in a different city, where Grad School will happen, as I'm sure I've mentioned. My new apartment is pretty sweet, and includes such features as: balcony, roommate, washer/dryer hookups, and more than 2 windows. My last apartment had none of these things, so even though I am taking a serious paycut, I'm still moving up in the world. (For the record, there were windows in my last apartment, but there were only 2. It was on the bottom floor of a building built into a hill. This parenthetical is so boring.) I was really pumped about having a roommate to talk to, but then the day after we moved in, she said, "Oh hey, I'm pretty much going to be gone for the next 3 weeks, see ya!" Which was sad, but also kind of a blessing in disguise, because that means I get 3 more weeks before I have to stop indulging in my treasured pastime of walking/sitting around with no clothes on.

I'm a little embarrassed that my roommate was only here for 2 days before she left again, and all of her stuff is put away neatly, whereas I've had 4-ish days to unpack and there are STILL boxes all over my room. It's no big deal, I just have to keep moving boxes off the bed when it's time to sleep and back onto the bed when it's time to... walk... anywhere. It's alright, though, because at least I put up curtains, so it's not like I'm some kind of savage. Maybe later if I'm feeling generous I'll post some pictures of the new place. Tell me, would you prefer photos with or without boxes? Keep in mind that I lived in my last apartment for 2 years and when I moved last weekend there were 2 boxes in my bedroom that still hadn't been unpacked. So saying you want to see pictures "without boxes" may be equivalent to saying that you want to see pictures "never." Just keep that in mind.

Ok, it's almost time for me to head to the airport, so I need to wrap this up. I promise - I mean, I will try really hard - to update you on my Houston trip as soon as I get back. Also stay tuned for answers to important questions like, "Will grad school turn me into a trembling ghost of the woman I once was?" and "Do you think I should put the clothes hamper in the closet or the bathroom?"

Two Inappropriate Things for Tuesday

I just want to quickly share two very important things with you. First off, you should know that whenever this song comes on the radio, I and embarrassingly enthusiastic little dance in my car...



... and I'm not nearly as ashamed as I ought to be.


Secondly, I think about this scene from Grandma's Boy more often than you'd imagine.



At any given moment the probability is pretty high that in my head, I'm drunkenly singing 'Push It.'

Now, on with your day!

Early to Bed, Early to Rise, Shut the Hell Up

About this whole "getting up early" thing...

I'm failing pretty miserably.

During the day, it sounds like such a great idea. I'll get up early! I'll get to work earlier than usual! I can leave work early! It will be such a relief! I have fantasies of quiet mornings spent basking in the sunrise, mentally preparing for my day, and having profound epiphanies about life, the universe, and everything.

But then I get home at night (late, because I got to work late, and OH the vicious cycle!), and I eat dinner, and perhaps I'll watch some television if one of my stories is on, and then I talk to Lee, and then dammit, it's midnight. And of course I, being the delicate flower that I am, require 8 hours of sleep a night, so simple math tells us that I will not be getting up early the next day as planned.

I mean... I could, I know. There are other factors, as well. For example, I use my cell phone as my alarm clock. It sits right next to the bed, within easy reach, so that when it goes off I can reach over and turn it off without even opening my eyes. Sometimes I even forget to change the volume from 'vibrate' to 'whole lotta noise,' so I'm even LESS likely to wake up. My phone's alarm also has a unique snooze feature - it tells you that if you hit snooze, you will get 5 more minutes before the alarm goes off. Well, who doesn't have 5 minutes to spare? I know I do! Let's go back to sleep! What they don't mention is that if you do that 12 times, you've actually slept an additional hour, you fool. It's so just so eaaaasyyyy to reach over, grab the phone, and cuddle with it while I semi-consciously press snooze every 5 minutes. And then, my ambitious plans for the day are ruined before I even get out of bed.

Anyway, enough whining. I found this post at Zen Habits about why you should get up early and how to do it. This guy gets up at 4:30 - which, no thank you - but he has some good points like maybe I should be using a real alarm clock placed away from my bed, for example. When I was in college I had my bed lofted and kept my alarm clock on the shelf above my desk across the room. That meant that if I wanted to hit snooze, I had to climb down, turn the alarm off, and climb back up into my tree-bed for another 7 minutes of sleep. I didn't do that for an hour, I can tell you that much. Thus, step 1 in somehow salvaging this challenge I have set for myself is to dig out my old alarm clock tonight. Wish me luck!

(If this doesn't work, I'm going to rig up a complicated pulley system that will release an angry cheetah each morning if I'm not up by 7:30.)

I'm Trying to Think of a Polite Way to Put This

Dear High School Version of Me,

I know that right now there are some people (mostly girls) that you maybe dislike a little. It's ok. This has been the way of high school girls since time immemorial, ever since some teen cavegirls became cheerleaders while other teen cavegirls played in the marching band. I just want you to know that you're right to think that your dislike of these people is silly. Don't waste your time on it. There are two reasons for this: for one, most of those girls are actually pretty nice people, even though you all have nothing in common. And for another, someday someone will create a thing called facebook, and many years after high school it will show you that... umm... things change. Just trust me.

Love,
Your Future Self

P.S. To My Present Self: Come to think of it, you'll probably find this to be true about people who went to college with you, also. Just something to think about.

Mental Health: A Tricky Thing

(Fair warning: this post is long as damn.)

Alright, so. Now's the time I tell everybody about how I'm crazy. (Every time I say that, Lee says, "You're not crazy," to the point that now every time I say it, even if he's not around, I hear his voice in my head saying, "You're not crazy." So, thanks a lot, Lee. I may not be crazy, but now I'm hearing voices.) I mentioned before that I've been seeing a Mental Health Professional, and I feel a need to elaborate on that for some reason. Partly just for the opportunity to be able to sort through things and look at it all from a different perspective. I think life is a lot easier if you can accept yourself, be honest about who you are, and laugh at yourself, so we'll consider this post an exercise in all of that.

My Mental Health Professional is actually a clinical psychologist. One of the hardest things about seeing a Mental Health Professional is the fact that it's hard to refer to her casually in conversation. My Mental Health Professional and I have had some good conversations, and she has often said things that I think might benefit other people I know. But, alas, I can't tell them, because I can't figure out that best way to refer to my Mental Health Professional, beyond the admittedly cumbersome phrase "Mental Health Professional." Talking about "my psychologist" makes it sound like I've been committed to a state hospital, I think. Other euphemisms I've considered are:
- 'counselor' (sounds too much like 'life coach' or 'person who helps you decide where to apply to college')
- 'therapist' (sounds too much like I lie on a couch and talk about how I wish I had a penis)
- 'shrink' (OK, I've never even actually considered this one, because I think it's actually kind of offensive to the MHP, and also doesn't make a lot of sense to me)

Ultimately, I decided just not to mention her at all. When I talk about her to Lee, I just call her by her name, which we will pretend is Cathy. Because I've been extensively educated about different types of mental health treatment and therapy and how effective it is and how it's a very good thing and not shameful in the least, I was honestly kind of surprised to find that I was sort of ... embarassed about it. I shouldn't have been surprised, I know, but I was. Which is another reason that I wanted to write about it. I've read a lot of things on the internet that left me feeling shocked and soothed by how similar they were to my own experiences, and if anyone feels that way after reading this, then I'll consider it worthwhile.

The real question is: why have I been seeing a MHP? I'm honestly not really all that crazy. I like to think of myself as Medium Crazy. I function well, I'm not a danger to myself or others, I don't need medication, hell, maybe I didn't even need therapy (or counseling or whateverthehell). But. I have this voice I hear sometimes. I guess you could call it 'insecurity' or 'anxiety,' but I prefer to think of it as Some Asshole Who is in My Head Without Permission. It's been there for as long as I can remember, and was probably exacerbated by a four-year tour in the great War of Dating a Mildly Emotionally Abusive Jerkface. But after I graduated from college and moved out on my own, the voice of the Asshole in My Head got really aggressive. It was particularly bad at night, and it would start telling me things like...

"You don't have any friends. What if you never make any more friends? What if you're always alone?"
"No one at work likes you, they only invite you along to be nice."
"Are your parents taking good enough care of themselves? What if they die? You'd be all alone. What would happen to your brother?"
"It's all your fault your ex treated you the way he did. Maybe if you had been a better girlfriend, things would have worked out."
"Lee probably wishes you were more like [insert random girl he knows]. You'd better figure out how to be more like that, or he's going to break up with you."
"You shouldn't have gotten into that argument with Lee, now he's going to think you're crazy/awful/a pain in the ass, and he's going to break up with you."

You know, the kinds of things that all happy, well-adjusted people think about.

It came to a head one day at earlier this year. It was Administrative Professionals' Day, and in the space of a few hours I: 1) accidentally went in and sat down on a meeting I wasn't supposed to be in, 2) realized I had forgotten to get a gift for our secretary, and that someone else had gotten her flowers, and 3) found out everyone was going out to lunch with our secretary to celebrate and I couldn't go because I had to interview a study participant. I left work to go to my appointment, and on the way I started crying, while the Asshole in my Head went on and on about what an idiot I was and how nobody at work liked me because they thought I was unfriendly and rude and not thoughtful.

Later that day (when I was calmer and more rational and the Asshole in my Head was out on a coffee break or something), I got to thinking... you know, I bet most people don't become inconsolably upset every other night about their family dying or their boyfriend leaving them. And possibly, it's not a normal occurrence for people to leave work in the middle of the day crying over, basically, nothing. If I remember correctly, it was at that point that the Asshole piped up and said, "Oh no, what if you're depressed? What if this is just the beginning of a long downward spiral into chronic depression, and you end up like those people you saw in the videos in Abnormal Psych, who are medicated and still can't ever be happy and make everyone around them miserable?" And that was when, for a change, my OWN voice spoke up against the Asshole and said, "ENOUGH. FUCK THIS."

Because, you know, it's not as if I haven't put a lot of effort over the years into trying to shut him up. I bargained with him in much the same way you'd talk to an embarrassing relative. "Just be quiet for a little while," I'd say. "Just stop talking to me when my boyfriend is around, and we'll talk later." "Please just lay off the weirdness for today." "Just don't let any of my friends see you." "What do I have to do to get you to act normally??" But the whole thing got overwhelming and I decided it was time to bring in an expert.

So. That's when I started seeing Cathy. And she's a very nice, intelligent woman in her 30s, and we talk things over, and mostly it's been all about recognizing when things are getting a little irrational and out of hand in my head. Cathy is the source of my recent interest in Buddhist psychology and meditation, because she suggested that maybe meditation would help with everything. And I think it does. I think part of the problem is that by just going on with life and trying to ignore the Asshole, I was implicitly accepting everything he said. Then, it would get entrenched in my mind and become a Belief and THEN eventually it becomes 'the Truth.' On the other hand, when I just sit down and listen to him and look at what he's saying objectively, without being distracted by everyday noise and busy-ness, it becomes much easier to see that the things he says are ridiculous. And I can confront him, and come right out and say, "You know, I highly doubt that it's true that everyone dislikes me, and that I'll never make another friend again. And even if you're right, so what, Asshole? Are they still making new episodes of House? Is the sunset still gorgeous from the hill behind my apartment? Can I still obtain Oreos at my local grocery store? If so, I think I'm gonna be all right."

And it's times like that when it becomes clear: It's not me that's crazy, it's the voice in my head.

Things I've Been Afraid to Admit/Discuss on My Blog/In Public

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently realized that there are several things about me that, in spite of the fact that they're relativley innocuous, I have been keeping to myself. Mostly because I don't want people to judge me or love me less. But I think I should be honest with myself and say that if anyone loves me, it's certainly not because they're laboring under the delusion that I'm "perfect" or "cool" or even "normal." If anything, the people that love me love me because, like me, they are drawn to slightly unstable people like moths to a flame. Plus, it's a lot of work to try to hide the things about me that I think might make me seem weird. If I hide all of that, then what else would I have left to talk about? So I started making a list of things that I usually try not to mention to other people, and I'd like to share that with you now...

1) I'm really into crocheting lately.
2) I love paint-by-numbers.
3) I have 2 gerbils, named Punkin and Roo.
4) I tend to skip when I think no one's looking.
5) I've been seeing a Mental Health Professional for the past few months.
6) I've recently gotten very interested in buddhism and meditation.
7) I'm trying to be a pescetarian, with questionable success.
8) Sometimes I worry that I'll fall into a deep, dark depression and/or that I'll have to start taking medication in order to make myself bearable to those around me. (For the record, my Mental Health Professional has never mentioned depression or medication, so this fear is probably completely ungrounded).
9) Sometimes I worry that I'm not crazy or mysterious enough to be very interesting.
10) I never thought Obama's "socialism" sounded all that bad.
11) I'm afraid of the dark, and sometime last year I called 911 because I saw "shadows" outside my window.
12) I've been trying to exercise/eat better/get healthier since about this time last year. I even gave in and started "counting calories" (hang on a second while I gag). I've lost about 12 lbs and 1 pant size.
13) As part of those efforts, I signed up to meet with a personal trainer once a week. Sigh.

There. It feels better to have all of that off my chest. There are probably still other things I could confess, but I think it's important to take baby steps. Anyway, my intention is to devote posts to elaborating on some of these things in the next couple of weeks, because the only way to overcome our fears is by facing them! Woo! Also, I have 20 more posts to go for NaBloPoMo, and that material has got to come from somewhere.

But I Like the Smell of Irish Spring

Ok, I was just reading the comments on a post over at the bloggess, and everyone over there was talking about their neuroses and phobias and compulsions, and while I have a lot of weird hangups, I think that there is one thing that I have got to FINALLY get off my chest and out in the open. It's time.

I'm just going to take a deep breath, and put it out there.

I hate soap.

People, I am so serious right now. Please don't walk away while I'm vulnerable. I'm not sure when or how this began. I think it has something to do with a) the way it dries out my skin and b) how slippery and ICKY it feels. Now, don't get me wrong, I bathe, I wash, ok? It's really only bar soap that we're talking about here. I thought that once I became an adult, I could use shower gel for the rest of my life and never have to worry about this again. But then I dated a guy that thought he knew what was best for me better than I did, and believed that shower gel was not real soap, and did not get you as clean as bar soap would, and refused to use my shower gel when he stayed at my place. And because I was young and stupid and thought he knew more than me and wanted him to stop implying that I was dirty, I bought bar soap. And I can use it, ok? BUT. This my personal procedure for the use of bar soap:

1) Have loofah, at the ready, in right hand.
2) Pick up soap, CAREFULLY, with left hand.
2b) God help you if you get soap under your fingernails.
3) Hold soap carefully in dead center of left hand, avoiding pruny fingertips and fingernails.
4) While holding soap stationary, rub loofah vigorously over it, working up a good lather.
5) Return soap quickly but CAREFULLY to its place.
5b) Don't you dare drop that soap! If you drop it, how will you pick it up without letting it touch your fingertips or fingernails? It will have to sit in the bottom of the tub until your boyfriend comes over.

The more quickly you can get this done and get the soap out of your hands, the more points you get. So, see? I can use bar soap, provided I am given the freedom to work within my very rigid soap-use guidelines. And by the way, NO, there is nothing wrong with using a damn loofah. You may be able to convince me that shower gel doesn't get you as clean as bar soap (even though that is a DAMN lie), but you are not going to convince me that the loofah is also somehow a liability. Plus, the bottom line is: if the only way for me to get clean is for me to actually HOLD SOAP IN MY HAND for an extended period of time, the time it takes me to clean my entire body, then by God, the water better be extra-germ-killing hot that day, because I'm damn sure not touching that soap.

(In case you were wondering, it is permissible for me to touch a dry bar of soap with dry hands. Hey! I could even carve it into something, if you like!)

You know, now that I'm reflecting on it, the issue probably has more to do with the increased sensitivity of my pruny hands than it does with the soap itself. This all goes back to my childhood, when I still took baths under the supervision of my mom, and would demand her to dry my hands off with a "kwof" each and every time they got wet. True, we were fighting a losing battle, since I was sitting in a tub full of water at the time. But what can I say? I was precocious, and my mother is a saint. Anyway, the point is that even when soap is not an issue, the pruniness still upsets me. Because of this, the shower has rules, much like Fight Club, except it's not a club, it's my private insanity:
1) You do not touch things unnecessarily with the pruny hands
2) You do not touch one pruny body part with another (hands touching each other, hands touching feet)
3) You must moisturize your legs as soon as you exit the shower, whether or not you have shaved them (this has the added benefit of moisturizing your hands, also)
4) You must put on socks as soon as you exit the shower, so that you don't have to think about how pruny and dry and gross and sensitive your feet are
5) If you have just taken a shower and your hands have not yet plumped up to their usual level of elasticity, don't you dare touch me
6) OMFG GET THE SOAP AWAY FROM MY PRUNY HANDS AND FEET.

Also, because you're obviously riveted by all this talk about how insane I am (and what's one more numbered list?), here are a few other textures/things that upset me irrationally:
1) Bananas
2) Pears
3) Socks bunched up in my shoes
4) Underwear
5) Too-tight pants
6) The sound of metal scraping against metal (You People that cut your steak by putting the knife in-between the tines of your fork? You are on notice.)
7) Wet food from the sink
8) Certain types of textured plastic

So, I have 2 questions for you: Does anybody out there share some of these problems? And if you're a guy, do you too have some kind of vendetta against shower gel and loofahs?