My posts have been slow but I have been busy with school. Damn that school for always getting in the way of my hobbies.
Things have been pretty quiet around my place lately. Thanksgiving break was great. Food got eaten, and none of the truly annoying relatives showed up. I'd like to say that on a personal note I have evolved past all of my issues and concerns and am now a perfect student, good citizen, and social butterfly but I don't lie that well. I'm still wrestling with the unshakeable feeling that I do not belong in college. But since I already owe money I may as well make the best of it. I've got papers to write. Luckily semester ends in about two weeks. My best friend has temporarily forgotten that I don't want to cozy up to his new girlfriend, so that's been backburnered. My boyfriend apparently put a down payment on an engagement ring shortly before realizing that he only wanted to marry me out of a "strong sense of commitment" (how breathtakingly romantic...not love, but commitment, much like I am a new car). That is completely unresolved and can stay that way for all I care. My niece came to visit and has turned into a stunning young woman over night. We went to a bookstore and suddenly a couple of kids from the college who had to be sophomores started talking really loudly about all of the art that they knew (I remember doing idiotic things to impress guys and so kindly didn't point out that Primavera was NOT the Birth of Venus, and that they were by Botticcelli, NOT Rembrandt). I stood there, half tempted to lean over and whisper "jailbait" at them and half tempted to pat them on the heads and laugh. I did neither.
And thats life in a nutshell. Off to sleep.

My best friend is a 24 year old man who weighs 280 pounds and dresses like Mr Rogers. He is, in a word, geeky. To elaborate, hopelessly geeky. At least, on the outside. But he's happy that way, so it all sort of works. Where it really bites him in the ass is in the arena of dating.
You see, my hopelessly geeky manfriend is also a magnet for crazy women. I know everyone sometimes feels like a crazy magnet. However, until you have dated someone that you report seemed perfectly normal only to find out that they believe that the dragons of Pern live in your dorm bathroom and communicate telepathically only with you (which is how you know they're there because they are invisible) you really can't compete. Another one thought that she was a changeling (as in the rpg) in a previous life and that her ability to turn into a cat in that life left her with residual magical powers that evil people called "hunters" pursued (which he laughed at until he was telling his Mom the story and some guy claiming to be a hunter demanded with great intensity to know where this "changeling" was). Yet another one claimed that they had to break up because she and her 36 year old exboyfriend were two halves of an angel and the world would literally collapse if they didn't get back together; afterwards every time he went to the dorm food line she chewed him out for stalking her.
So when he started seeing a 42 year old polyamorous woman I was pretty concerned. But I got over it, because so far she's brought him the least misery of anybody else. My manfriend is weird, so it fits that he would be happiest in a relationship that is out of the norm. The problem is that she lies compulsively to me. At first there was this whole drama where he didn't want to tell me that they were involved, but they actually were. So she kept cornering me pretending to be disturbed by her feelings for him to gauge my reaction. I actually understand this, because she was deciding what they could tell me without me freaking out. If it had ended there I'd get it. But instead, after I said I didn't care, she kept pulling me aside with all the histrionics of a Barnum and Bailey circus, carrying the charade to the max until she persuaded him to tell me the truth. And then even after, she kept pulling me aside with massive histrionics to tell me that she was disturbed by the age difference. Another lie, according to my friend, who said that the issue was always thoroughly hashed out. It seems like she just did it to make me think better of her, little realizing that the fastest track to my shit list is manipulating me.I've been keeping my peace because it's not my love life, and if she brings him some joy I'm not going to do a thing to stop it. But the fact that I avoid her is grating on his nerves. We talked about it tonight, because he wants to go on a trip, the four of us (him, her, me, mine)-its the annual trip we used to take together and she sort of commandeered it. There's a hint of jealousy there but I'm keeping it to a dull buzz (mantra: she makes him happy, she makes him happy). Bottom line, I can't trust a single word that comes out of her mouth as 90% of them are lies, and he's pretty determined that we should bump into each other at all opportunities. I sooooooo hate dating drama.

Youtube addiction gone awry

Technically I am still supposed to be reading that damnable book on Mao. You can see how well that's working out. Instead I found myself surfing youtube for mvs of television shows that I like. I do this so often that I got hard up and ended up looking up mvs for the O.C.
Before I moved to the land with no cheap cable, I was watching season one on the sly, so that no one would know I had a guilty pleasure like the O.C. in all its teenaged drama splendor. Not having seen it in two years, I was learning some new things from the clips. Apparently the blonde that always made me want to feed her and slap a personality into her is dead. Okay, no big loss. Her poor bastard love interest needed more drama anyway because t.v. tortured souls are only appealing to audiences when they're good and tortured. Some guy fell off of a cliff. The Ryan character (token bad boy) beat the crap out of lots of people. Then he beat the crap out more people. Someone got shot. Someone didn't get shot. The annoying blonde had a trauma disorder. Then she didn't. She overdosed. Then she didn't. The slutty Mom slept with this guy; then with that one; then with another one off to the side of the first two.
And yet, in my two year absence, I really don't think I missed much.
Huh.
There's something about the pretty people with problems format that just draws you in, even if you cannot relate to the characters and are in fact from a seperate planet. For example, all of my friends when I was a teenager were Ryan Atwoods. Did we have a Summer? Nope. If we did we would have tormented her on principal. A Marissa? Heck no, a kid that nuerotic would have been in the county services nuthouse faster than you can say "eating disorder and borderline personality". And someone would have fed her, for God's sake. We would have shared a lunch or something.
I think that what really draws us to this type of programming isn't that we can relate, but that we can't. It's the sheer malicious joy of watching shows about people with lives more screwed up than our own. I would love to say that I am intellectually and maturationally above such sadistic rubbish, but that would be a dirty lie. I'm already putting it on my Netflix list. :)

THIS MUCH sick of being misunderstood

SI has come up a few times in conversations with my classmates-one woman recently suggested that it was all media based, that the media is giving people ideas. Someone else confused self injury with cutting and treated the issue as though all people who SI were hoping to leave scars so that someone would notice them. A few other near and dear issues have been mentioned as well; the failures of cps and long term effects of childhood abuse.
What do I do when this happens?
I pretend to have researched it merely for term paper purposes and explain as politely as possible why their info is bad.
It's annoying. Next time it happens I'm just coming out with something to the effect of, "really, I began to SI when I was about 11 and I never saw any media on it and I have no scars and I told no one." Damnit. It would serve them right for buying into a crapline and doing poor research.
I've actually began to consider moving towards advocacy when I find myself in those situations. At least it would be a productive means of shoveling emotional shit. And if it drove someone off they wouldn't be much worth hanging around with anyway.

I am such a list fanatic

But really, what's one more?
I thought that to close down this latest of my moody and broody blog sections and move onto somthing more shiny and happy (I hope) I would sum up some of the valuable life lessons that I've picked up so far.
1. It is better to be happy than rich, although if you're neither you're pretty much screwed.
2. Don't wish that you were someone else-you never know how many times that person has managed to humiliate themself in public.
3. Don't envy what someone else has. You never know what they had to do to get it.
4. If you go with greed and screw someone else over to get what you want, you will always have the taste of ashes in your mouth when you try to enjoy your ill gotten gain.
5. Friends come in all shapes, sizes, religions and sexual orientations. Collect them all; the world is a big place and there be monsters in it.
6. If you suddenly feel the need to send warm thoughts or prayers to someone else, do it. Trust me. The worst thing that can happen if you do is nothing.
7. When you get a box of chocolates, always poke out the middle-this is a shrewd move and will ultimately spare you the pain of coconut ickiness.
8. Violence is a single purpose tool- defense against other people who misuse it to cause harm.
9. The roommate who notices the dishes first always ends up doing them. Playing dumb is your only hope.
10. The law of Karma, however, dictates that whoever pretends not to see the giant hairball on the carpet is doomed to step on it. Barefoot.

life soundtrack

entertaining myself by coming up with a list of songs that I could use to play as background music to my life
1. seether's broken
2. Hoobastank's crawling in the dark
3. Rasmus' in the shadows
4. three days grace's scared
5. sarah mclaughlan's fear (emerging theme!)
(damn am i broody)
6. billy joel's shades of grey
7. agent orange's everything turns grey
(since i was on grey anyway)
8. counting crows version of big yellow taxi
9. meredith brook's shatter
10. meredith brook's wash my hands
(okay, now i know i've been watching too many moody mv's on youtube)
11. twisted sister's we're not gonna take it
12. kansas' carry on my wayward son (because they don't have a song that says carry on my wayward daughter, but what the hell)
13. bon jovi's its my life
14. the theme song to the breakfast club- i think it's don't you forget about me
15. three day's grace animal i've become

hmm. i could say that i am inherently depressing and kind of a wet blanket, but the thing of it is that this is also the music that i listen to when i'm happy. i blame the genre. songwriters in the rock genre are all extremely screwed up people.

Okay, I'm supposed to be reading this book on chairman Mao. However, Mao is not only dull in book form, but the writing sucks. It keeps making references to his "hooded eyes surrounded by shades of grey beneath the swiftly falling rain" or some such lyrical crap.
Oh yes, crap.
Why must I read this in an academic setting? If this were personal I wouldn't touch it. I would instead take the steaming pile of bad book to the used book store and trade it for the Rape of Nanking (which I wouldn't read because the photos make me throw up, but at least it would be a better textbook on China).
Instead I wandered around campus talking to people and working on being more socially open. This of course implies that I am usually not. Which is true-I like people and I like to hang out with them, but sometimes when I try my heart rate jumps and I experience the thrill of deep anxiety. I can't meet anyone's eyes, I stare down, I don't smile, I get nervous and babble, I respond to "how are you" with a strangled grunting noise. I've been this way since I can remember. It isn't a side effect of some horrible mistreatment-it's just me being me. It used to annoy my socialite wannabe mother way before I accumulated baggage. She would demand that I go out to the livingroom and do something cute for the company and I would hyperventilate, cry, or grab onto sturdy furniture and hang on (you haven't lived until you've seen a woman in pearls with done up hair try and pull a hysterical four year old off of the base of an enormous oak table-and I was a biter). Nobody started talking about social anxiety as a disorder or anything until waaaaay later (last five years or so); probably its what I would be diagnosed with, but my Mom couldn't know that.
I force myself to shake it off; I make myself talk to people, I make myself ask about them, I force a smile. I even made myself take drama, storytelling, and public speaking. I have a pretty wide circle of friends back home, but it was easier there because I could meet people through someone else, which helped because I could skip some of the preface bullshit I'm no good at. Here I only loosely know a few people. Recently it occured to me that my aversion to eye contact probably communicates a lack of interest in people-not true at all. So I walked around today practicing eye contact and smiling (which I don't do anyway; it just never occurs to me).
I hope I didn't creep anyone out.
It is aggravated by my personal baggage, like I have some kind of underlying suspician that I'm not as good as everyone else and that I'm not good enough to talk to them, but this is a problem of its own. And has an easier solution-smile, smile, force, avoid cringe, smile. Sometimes I don't pull if off, and people DO get creeped out. Sometimes there's even still hyperventilating. But if I let the anxiety win my social life whittles down to my WOW addicted couch ornament of a boyfriend. No thanks.
Smile, smile, smile..........
Ouch. Cheeks burning like flabby arms after pushups....
Recovery. Smile.

Just because I drank too much caffeine and now can't sleep

Ten more things you didn't know about me (and maybe don't want to)
1. My favorite t shirt is red with a cartoon Klingon on it that says "Kapla Klingon!".
2. I actually know what Kapla Klingon means in Klingon (hangs geeky head in shame).
3. When I was actually out in the dating world all of my boyfriends were martial artists who were also math tutors (and I did this without trying, seriously).
4. One of my friends does metalwork and has made me really wonderful custom jewelry for my birthdays .
5. I was once engaged (gasp!).
6. My brother is an artist, and we always tried to pool our talent for a graphic novel but he was too possesive with the creative parts (my version of events-I'm sure that his is different).
7. I actually have three brothers and one sister- I am the youngest.
8. Everyone else in my family is tall; I am only 5' 5".
9. If I could date any celebrity as his television character it would be Jensen Ackles for Dean in Supernatural, because Han Solo with stubble is sexy.
10.Every Christmas I sneak out of bed while everyone else is asleep to commune with the tree and stare at all of the sparkly lights. Last year my boyfriend caught me and was deeply puzzled. Was I cheating on him with the tree? He had no idea what to do with that.

Inner Mayhem

It is probably apparent to people that read this blog that I'm starting to lose my sense of humor. Mostly this is because I'm aiming for a 4.0, and it's that time of semester. But lately I've also been dealing with weird identity issues.
I was abused. I hate saying that. I was beaten. I was told that I wasn't human. I also got pulled out of school to take care of younger children and hence had to take care of my abusers and their offspring in between getting slammed around and told how worthless I was. And I won't say that it had no effect-anyone who has read some of my ealrier blogs would know that to be bs. I've done some SI, I've lapsed into eating disorder, I've learned to hate myself. But I also found redemption in taking care of people and on occaision I've used the survival skills that I learned in that home to take care of others weaker than myself. And my public face was always bold and sassy, even when it was two inches away from the flat of somone's hand. I taught myself to fight ruthlessy because I was always so certain that one day it would be that or die, although even when that day came I didn't have the heart to use what I knew.
Basically I aqcuired a skill set that is really only useful if you are training to be a mercenary or expect to be mugged often. Predictably, life turned out quieter. So I ended up in college, where I have been plugging along trying to tone down the badass vibe to fit in and pretending to be a clean cut all American slightly overaged college girl. There are days when it feels like I am wearing a tight costume. There are days when I am exactly what I pretend to be, and the other thing that I am feels like a tight costume or worse, a figment of my imagination. And the worst part is that the people close to me didn't know me when I was younger and...badder; hence they don't believe that I'm capable of much more than a little light bitching. And the people that did know me then stopped hanging out with me in disgust because I had "lost my edge".
It is a bad balance to have to strike.
Maybe I should take up martial arts. I'm not bad with a handgun either-maybe I could go target shooting. Anything to channel my inner mayhem before it leaks out during term paper time.

my breif but painful venture into girldom

My idea of dressing up has always been to mix my denim with a tight black tank and slap on some red lipstick. Eventually I hope to add a nice stylish tatoo and get my nose repierced. I am not one of those people that has the skill and dexterity to wrestle with curlers daily and come out victorious. As far as I'm concerned, lipliner is something that you use to write phone numbers when you forget your ink pen. Last birthday my sister got me a nail kit. I was still using the cuticle pushy thingy to jab my brother in the arm repeatedly and referring to the hang nail removal device as and "eye gougy thing" when his girlfriend finally told me what they all meant. I forgot ten minutes later, but at least now I can say that I was once initiated into the complex world of self torture devices that is a manicure set.
Last week I decided that since I was now 24 and therefore finally a real live grownup, I should learn about these things in the hopes of looking more polished when I hit job interviews. As it is the best I can manage is a sort of refined scruffiness with an edge of punk rock white trash sexy, like maybe I might be good for a night out at the bar but not so much the help desk. Not good. So I curled my hair and put on eyeshadow (remembering what my bro's girlfriend told me about the smudginess and bicolor schema) and looked really good. For ten minutes. Then it deteriorated like sugar in rain. The makeup got smudgier than it was supposed to, the eyeshadow sweated off and got into the weird fold in my eyelid, resulting in a line of bold color against normal skintone. The hair fell flatter than it was before under the weight of all the hairspray it took to get it there in the first place. Also, plucking the eyebrows is not for wussies.
It became plain to me that all of the strength training and self defense practice I have engaged in over the years were not enough to toughen me up against a pair of tweezers and a set of hot rollers. I have a whole new respect for those women that can pull this off every day-looking good is a dangerous sport.

The thing about always being made to take care of your family, even when they beat you, is that it breeds a certain steeliness of personality. I used to be very very steely. And I used to be pretty rowdy in a fight too. I was more decisive, because I had to be. And I was more determined, because I had to be that too.
I think I'm getting soft in my old age.
It wouldn't be soo bad- I think a lot of that tough bullshit was maladaptive anyway, it just kept me from looking normal which is why I tried to purge it in the first place-but the fact is that you don't go from certified badass to emoting wet noodle girl without certain consequences. Like periodic bouts of nostalgia accompanied by a strong but totally irrational urge to listen to Nirvana and put yourself through rigorous strength training as if in some weird televsion training montage.
I'm starting to workout again. For me its not about weight loss (though I wouldn't bitch it I lost say...thirty). It's about strength, and probably on another level its about reclaiming some of those tough characteristics that I worked so hard to lose because they may not have been so bad after all. And being a college girl who can throw a 200lb man over her shoulder and onto his back with speed and vigor is underrated.
This, and this alone could persuade me to stuff myself into a powder blue athletic outfit and run around my neigborhood in a large but ultimately fruitles circle. For no pants size do I attempt the dreaded pushups and the thrice cursed situps of doom. Nope-this is not the folly of girlish vanity. This is the folly of true fitness.
Wish me luck.