the wrong side of the bed

I went to the pride rally with my roommate and her girlfriend today. We watched Tammy Baldwin speak and then they refused to walk three quarters of the way around the capitol because one of them preferred to go to Urban Outfitters. Really?

Perhaps I just don't like to think of my neighbor having sex, but it distresses me that the two times I have had to pull his laundry out of the washer or dryer I have found condom wrappers.

Labels: gross

Warning: I am going to be using the word "snap" an awful lot in this post. Can't be helped.

When I was in high school, my friend Clare and I would go through silly little obsessions. We pretend to be in love with Sting and our friend Adam. We drew pictures of woodpeckers all of the time. * We drew pictures of people with mohawks almost as frequently. ** We wrote ongoing stories about a blue stick figure and the characters in his life, like a cat named Dr. Sandoval.

We made many trips between Houston and Austin both together and separately. There used to be a warehouse with a drawing of a turtle snapping on the side. We didn't find the drawing terribly convincingly, so we would try to draw better snaps. Snaps are hard to do. You should try.

When I was in college, I briefly dated this girl name Jenn. She sat in front of me in my sociology theory class. We also new each other from the college radio station. She was a bit of a player, or absolutely a player, well before that word was popular. In class, she would sometimes grab my foot and hold it. She told me that, while she wasn't all that into me, she felt at ease opening up to me in was that she didn't with other people. Could have been a line because she was good at those things. At the time, I was also dating this guy who told me, straight up, that he loved me but was not in love with me. He often asked if I understood the difference.

Jenn and I both had shirts with snaps because we were hipsters and that was sort of the thing to do. She asked me to tear her shirt off, snap! snap! snap! She would also do this to me. It is something that thrills me to do. I currently have two shirts with snaps, and I highly recommend you yank my shirt open when you see me.

Try this: draw a snap right now. Do it. Now pull my shirt open and see what happens. Be prepared. Outcomes vary, but are never good. I could be yours forever. I could be bitter and angry. But, could you do it anyway?

* Our English teacher insisted that we always talked about woodpeckers, which we did not. This did, however lead us to throwing woodpeckers into all of our conversations. We would draw pictures of them over and over. We researched bits of trivia. Anytime she looked our way, there they would be. We did not like that teacher much.

** No real reason for that.

Labels: childhood, friends, memories

It used to be that when I was depressed I would listen to sad music. It seems that now when I am depressed I also visit epilepsy websites.

Sometimes it doesn't bother me as much, but other times taking pills everyday just reminds me of all of my problems. The pointlessness of taking the pill when I am destined to die alone and it is just making me gain weight easily. The constant need for me to take anti-anxiety/anti-depression meds so that I (supposedly) don't get really sad. The 600mg of Lamictal and 900mg of Gabapentin I take to keep the seizures at bay.

Ah, shit. A song by Daniel Johnston just came up on iTunes. Impossible Love.

Labels: epilepsy, music, pity party

When I was in high school, I had something of an obsession with a girl named Mali. We had been in school together beginning in kindergarten. We had a lot of things in common, but she was always more popular than me and things often seemed to fall into her lap. As an adult, I realize that she was more outgoing and tried much harder than I did, but as a kid, it really just seemed like magic that she was so popular and I was a pariah.

I was fascinated with Mali. I simultaneously hated her and had a crush on her. For every reason that everyone else was enamored of Mali, I was too. Bitter and jealous, I tried to sabotage her when I could. I paid too much attention to her every move. Talked about her too much to my friends. Even I recognized that my feelings were unhealthy. Still, I wanted to knock her down and make her finally the same as me.

In our junior year English class we read something in which a character was a mistress. Everyone in class was eager to malign the woman in question. Mali asked a question, phrased a bit strangely, that caused an uproar in class. "What if you plan to be the other woman?" she asked. She surely meant "are" and not "plan," but we were quick to jump on Mali. Girls in class were especially angry. How could someone be a party to someone else's infidelity? I have no idea what I felt at the time. Now I would likely argue that it is much less the fault of the interloper than it is for other parties involved, but at 16 I really hadn't given it much thought. I did, however, see an opportunity to humiliate Mali. My barb was sharp, complicated, and painful. I was effectively able to imply that not only was it Mali's goal in life to be a whore and home wrecker, but that she perhaps already was. The way I said it brought the whole class to silence. All of this because I wanted to hurt Mali just as much as I wanted to be her and just as much as I wanted to always be around her.

I am not sure why I had such little compassion then. I was generous to people outside of my world, but those I interacted with regularly were not to be trusted, even my friends. I felt that betrayal was always around the corner. My mother has said that teenagers are selfish and self-absorbed and she is absolutely right. Even still, it upsets me that I matched this formula so exactly. I remember thinking that I was a compassionate person, but maybe I never did. It is possible that I recognized my potential to be cruel, but I am certain that I blamed it on other people.

This morning I was listening to a segment on NPR with book recommendations. One bookseller recommended a collection edited by Jeffrey Eugenides called My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro. A story called "How to be an Other Woman" by Lorrie Moore stood out in my mind. It sounded like a guide for the life that we had all decided Mali had planned. A workshop that might be offered or a short course at a community college.

The bookseller recommending the book read this selection, "When you were six you thought a mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet." I'm not sure I understand how a child might understand mistress to mean putting your shoes on the wrong feet. Like mis-dress? I think I may understand better the adult meaning. It would making walking awkward but doable, you could maybe make it so people wouldn't notice, but it would probably hurt a great deal in the process.

The year before we read whatever it is we read that lead Mali to announce her plan to be the other woman, we read To Kill a Mocking Bird. This book, I always thought, was the closest thing we ever got to sociology in my high school. At least it encouraged us to examine things from perspectives other than our own. I believe there is a part in which Atticus tells Scout to imagine herself walking in the shoes of someone else. Maybe Mali was just doing this. The other shoes just happened to be on the wrong feet.

Anyway, Mali, I'm sorry for being a teenager and selfish. I know you wanted to be an actress, and I have looked for you on IMDB and seen that you have been in some things. I don't know if you really wanted to be an other woman and I don't know if you are now. I am sorry for making fun of you if that was really your plan. If it is and you are, I don't know if I would still be jealous of you. It doesn't seem an enviable position, but I am, after all, a very jealous person. I do know that I would think of you with compassion and then try not to think of you at all.

I'm trying to apply for jobs. I've been saying this forever, but I really mean it. I've got to get out of this place, if it's the last thing I do. I'd really like to be closer to my family and/or in a place that I can make permanent. I get worn down by living a temporary life. It has been over 7 years that I have been waiting to get a move on. A silly approach to making progress.

I have found six jobs that I need to apply for this week. None of them are perfect fits, but who am I? I'm supposed to let them decide I'm not qualified, or so I am told. Needless to say I am stalling sending out resumes and such. I'm not good at tooting my own horn. Procrastination is always a nice and painful way to approach responsibilities. Instead of applying for jobs, I've just been updating a exercise/diet plan that I had started, but stopped, on Spark People (like Weight Watchers online, but free). I'm getting chubby again after having mysteriously lost a lot of weight. The website, in addition to nutrition and exercise goals, recommends a schedule of affirmation/reinforcement techniques. Most involve talking to supportive people and such. My very favorite was the suggestion that I give my self a five minute pep talk every day. I have no idea how I could fill five minutes with pepping. I don't know if I could keep it up for a whole minute. Really, what am I supposed to say? In high school I attended as few pep rallies as I possibly could, but from what I witnessed, there was a lot of "we've got spirit" going on. Is this what I should say? Should I just give myself compliments?

"Dorotha, your the hottest girl I have ever known. I'd really like to get your digits."

"I would give my eyeteeth to spend just one day with you."

"You are my Dinky Bossetti. My my Duckie. My Edna Shinglebox. My Watts."

"I have more faith in you than I have in the sun rising in the morning."

"Dorotha, I do believe that you are watching us with the eye of a tiger."

"I can see that St. Elmo's Fire is burning in you."

"Dorotha, I cannot live without you."

This last one, I think, is the most true. I really can't live without me. I will start chanting this for at least five minutes everyday. Starting tomorrow. Or sometime this week. I swear.

Okay, most likely no one is reading my blog anymore. I became bored with it and probably you did, too. I am going to change it. It isn't going to be much about me anymore. My new theme is....

Props to my friends!

I may even start a new blog. I will let you know. Please stay tuned.

Labels: friends, trying to be positive