Fun with Metonymy and Metaphor

This is my darkest hour.
This is my longest, starless night.
This is my hardest lullaby.
These are my furthest hands.
So this is the bloodiest stardust.
Those were the bluntest pigments.
That was the busiest sound.
These are the dirtiest figureheads.
These are the briefest of bounds.
So this was the luckiest hug.
That was the cruelest scent.
That was the frailest past.
I had the laziest of loves.
This was the strictest day.
I had the shyest pain.
This was my darkest hour.
Here is the loudest palimpsest.
I have the flattest memory.
We will have the truest future.

titanium

feel metal wrapping around each of my bones. adamantium-esque strength. uncertainty, compressed out. still held back, i revel in this: freedom of my own design, pure consciousness unencumbered by highs, lows, and deficiencies. erosion can not effect. what is sustained throughout.

Thirty Seven Fine

37. Thirty-seven, the number is so low I can hardly believe it. In fact, I should not be conscious. But here I am, unshaken and breathing calmly. I am laying down, true, in my bed. But I stand up, and I still feel steady. I gain access to my refrigerator and a soda. Additionally, there are dextrose tablets next to my bed. I feel fine again. But I never felt not fine. I felt drunk. But I had been drinking. I could have died with a little more carelessness. And yet I hadn't. How come I always feel death when my sugar is anything less than 80? Except tonight, after dinner? Maybe I should be drunk all the time. Maybe that would help keep my sugars low and my a1c below dangerous levels. Drink all the time. Health becomes a happy accident.

isolation pt. 1

Alone, all day, I haven't heard a thing. A glass of champagne changes all that, and I am shocked by the sound of my own voice.

so close... to writing...

and every night she laid in her bed, in her pajamas, listening. she was trying to hear the ticking of her heart, trying to find a rhythm that would rock her to sleep. she would--on loud nights, when weekend traffic blared past her often opened window or when summer heat required sprinklers to be turned on every hour throughout the evening--be unable to hear anything from herself besides the soft scratching noise, like crumpling thin paper, breathed into the world surrounding her as she turned onto her side underneath sheets. this perceived auditory deficit would startle her sometimes, wondering how her heart could be so silent and still function. and so every night she laid in her bed, in her pajamas, searching for the sound of her pulse, trying to find her heart, and wondering why it still beat.

Commendable

....and then sometimes my diabetes just deteriorates and I have so many lows in one day it just kind of feels like I'm literally fighting to stay alive. Yes, yes, yes. I've had this disease for almost a decade now. I should be better at controlling it. But it keeps goddamn evolving. There are also outside factors that come into play. I gain ten pounds, glucose is always high. I decide to randomly exercise for about fifteen minutes, suddenly my glucose drops. I don't know how, the last insulin I had was over two hours ago. But I guess it was just waiting around in my capillaries, you know, being a dick. I'll get used to waking up with moderate lows, and then my mom will tell me that I'm going to die in my sleep and suddenly I'm waking up with highs because the fear of death makes me eat everything in my vicinity during the few minutes of consciousness I have before I pass out. Already today my blood glucose has been under 60 three times. At least three times. Actually, four. Because I woke up and it was 50 something. I. Don't. Want. To. Do. This. Anymore. When my glucose is low I feel like my life is shit and I can't breathe and I'm coerced into an obligatory panic attack. Me?! Panicking?! So uncharacteristic. And so fucking crappy.  When my glucose is high I feel like my life is shit and I am just waiting for the feeling in my feet to disappear and then I'll lose my vision and then my kids will develop metabolic syndromes and my life is shit. Seriously. This is the most annoying fucking disease ever. It's serious enough to make you fucking hate everything about yourself and the way you live. But it's not serious enough for anyone to really care too much--I don't get optimal parking spots and nobody commends me for being brave. No, yea--it's not cancer. But it's not easily manageable either.

I don't know what I want. Clearly a cure would be nice, but I'm not that naive. And maybe I like the challenge of having to know myself so well that I can predict whether a headache is from glucose, sickness, or just stress. The few moments of pure adrenaline I have before I succumb to hypoglycemia have given me some great stories. But the panic that descends afterwards? Not so nice. I don't know. Maybe I just want a break. Maybe I just want to be attached to a dialysis machine and some IVs and just be able to lie down somewhere without wondering every five minutes if I should poke myself with a needle or just wait for the headache or the feeling of despair to leave. Just a little bit of time would be nice.  I really don't want to do this anymore. I just really want to be normal. I just really want to be optimistic about my future.

Categories + Social Phobias

I just realized how weird it is to label the people you know as friends, good friends, or best friends.

What's the difference between someone who is just a friend and someone who is your best friend. What if you haven't seen your best friend in years? Are you still best friends? I feel like I fade away from people really quickly. But then again... Nope. Even people I know I truly care about, if I haven't seen them in a long enough time, I just don't... I guess I get just as anxious around them as when I'm about to go meet up with acquaintances. I used to know why I did this--because I assume that if someone doesn't try to stay in touch with me, I have been more or less abandoned, and I hate feeling that way so I live without them. But now how can I expect people to actually stay in touch? All of my contemporaries are beginning their real lives and I can't expect to see any of them with any regularity.

But I guess even at a basic level, is there a difference in how I should feel around my friends, good friends, and best friends? Because in all honesty, I feel equally nervous around everyone.

The only two people I don't feel nervous around are my sisters.... and in all honesty.... I still feel nervous around them sometimes.

So I think this is mania...

But like a sustained one, which I usually don't get the pleasure of having. 

I cannot sleep.

About ten hours ago I couldn't stop singing, even though I knew I was singing in public. Usually I get by on whistling....

And I was taking risks. Like speeding. I still can't speed for like, another two months or something. I don't remember. I don't really care. I walked around barefoot across our parking lot. Usually this isn't worrisome, but usually it's light outside and I'm paying attention to all the broken glass everywhere. 

And I can't stop watching Star Trek and OH MY GOD it's so hilarious and so sad. I cried, like four hours ago. Deep Space Nine is really... really good.

Also I called my sister about nine hours ago and she said she was worried about me because I was talking really fast.

Somehow I got that under control. Went to a party at midnight. Fun party. Breakfast foods. I had like three mimosas. So that's depressing right? Like actually depressing, not emotionally but physically. I do not understand why I am still awake. I feel pretty happy. But I don't feel manic.

Right now I feel shaky, like shaky after twenty something coffee's shaky. Actually no. I'm not physically shaking. I just feel like I am vibrating underneath my skin. 

I think that's my heart actually. And now I have a headache.

And last night I only slept three hours. So why aren't I tired now? I am pretty confused. But I feel so lucid.

Apparently I suck on many levels

"Handling an illness or disability at school. Do you have a condition like diabetes or ADHD? Learn some smart tips about school, like how to work well with your teacher."

Yes and Yes. Wish I had help like this in high school. Or college. Holy fuck, people are really ignorant about common medical conditions. I almost died in a rhetoric class once, funny story. Funny story which I'll save for the book I'm writing this summer. 

Why Didn't You Tell Me?

My blood sugar is 102. Which means that I will now get off of my bed... drag myself into my kitchen... and start gorging. I am running out of food. It doesn't matter. I'll eat Cheerios I bought months ago. I always end up saving things... hoarding food items... just in case I need sugar... like I need sugar right now.

I kept a quarter of a sandwich, unwrapped, in my car, in the summer, for three entire weeks.

Diabetes has turned me into a very frightened and very cautious wild animal.

So kitchen. My blood sugar will drop. I do not know if I am using my long acting insulin properly. I haven't seen my endocrinologist in a long time. I could ask her so many better questions now that I've covered the basics in medical school. I think the only question I really want to ask at moments like this is: Why didn't you tell me I could end up this way?


So kitchen. I am hungover. It is almost eleven at night and I am hungover. I am also exhausted. I have slept nine hours in the last two days. I am also in caffeine withdrawal. I have ingested 560 mg of caffeine today. All within three hours. My head hurts but I can't drink alcohol. I want alcohol. Or at least wine. I feel like vomiting. I will vomit. I am going to vomit. But still I have to eat.

I want to drink down five sleeping pills with a tall glass of plain, filtered, great-lakes-quality water. But then I might not wake up. I go to sleep so often wondering if I'm going to wake up the next morning. Late at night sometimes, just for fun, my heart starts beating so fast that I have to listen, and it makes me know that yes, tonight could be the night. Tonight could be the night that your blood sugar drops at two in the morning and you are too tired or too drugged out to wake up. Tonight could be the night. I do not want to eat. But I do not want to die. I don't think anyone my age thinks about dying in their sleep as much as I do. This cannot be normal. Why didn't you tell me I would end up like this?

An Entry About Anti Depression and Dating and the Future

I tricked/asked my psychiatrist to up the ante of my antidepressants. Double the dosage. I didn't think it would do too much. Though to be fair, I really needed it. Everything about  my life is really great!!! I'm passing all my classes! I love all my new friends! I watch a lot of Star Trek and I still have time to write and sew and do other crafty things. Everything about my life really does make me really happy... Except for this one thing.

You are apparently supposed to rate your euphoria/dysphoria on a scale of -10 to +10, with +10 being complete mania and -10 being suicide. Personally, I really think you should just aim for 0 all the time, although to be honest if I ever got to that level of control over my emotions, I think I'd be ecstatic. Anyway, if I think about everything in my life, I fully believe that right now is the happiest time in my entire life. I'm doing something that's important. People actually like me. I don't get to exercise a lot, but I exercise enough. I control my life more now than ever before, and I like it. I am not worried about my immediate future. I should almost always be at around +3 to +6. I should go to sleep smiling. I should wake up smiling. I should walk to class smiling. I should always be happy because everything I'm doing--even the really boring things like studying--everything is so much better than I thought things could ever be.

But then there's this one thing that's been constantly bringing me down into the -2 to -5 range. I almost... almost cried. Maybe I did cry. I want to be deadly specific about this person, but in the updated rules of this blog and in reference to the Xanga incident of 2007 I am no longer allowed to use identifying details about a person--or I have to remain so vague the person would not realize that I was talking about them if they for some silly reason read my blog (READ MY BLOG).

Irregardless, I think the general positiveness of my life made me start thinking about my long term goals. (Note: If you're depressed, if you're a depressed person, don't think too far into the future. It's almost always bad, unless you're really good at lying to yourself.) And do you know what I want in the long term? I am twenty-two and two-thirds and in ten years, I want to be at least half way through the production of my four children. Now I know what you're thinking, clearly, yes, I would not mind being a single mom--in fact, I would actually probably enjoy it. But I am not an amazing human being, and to actually have four children, I would need a partner. Now I know what you're thinking, why not have two children and stay single? Because I've thought about family dynamics and two isn't a safe number, nor is three. At around four you can start breathing easy that your children will be able to fend for themselves in case you die. With two, you could have antagonists. With three, you can have unfair teams (which was me from ages 6-11). But with four you have equal teams, and if my children can't get along with each other, then maybe they can get along with just one of their siblings.

So it's four. This means I will eventually need to find someone. And holy fuck am I fucked.

I've been thinking about all the people I've dated, and I am totally screwed. I told my best friend about how all my significant others have literally been the worst people I could have possibly chosen, and she tried to comfort me by saying that I must have gotten better at selecting people. Nope. Not even close. My first relationship was either the best or the second best, but it was still pretty crappy. And my last one was the absolute worst. Oh my god that sucked so hard.

And I want to tell myself that even if most of the people I've dated haven't been good matches, that I've at least learned a lot about relationships and who I think I would be good with. I've analyzed the mistakes over and over again. Things seem to make a lot of sense. I know the general trajectory of me getting smitten and then slightly obsessed and then either ruining the entire thing or luring them into a relationship (no, but seriously, I should probably talk to someone about the way I choose to talk about my love life... I seem to always cast myself as a predator or an antagonist... that can't be healthy for my identity). Once in a relationship, things either go okay but are ultimately doomed to fail because it was set up on superficial grounds, or things immediately implode and it's just a mess because 1) I've dated some really crappy people and 2) I'm a pretty bad girlfriend, or at least I have a "unique" personality that I don't think a lot of people should get close to.

That was a challenge.

Irregardless (<-- that's a good example right there. I will fight someone on the use of irregardless because it's a fucking word and I swear to god if you don't take irregardless as seriously as the OED, I will insult you mercilessly), I know what my major flaws are in relationships and I know what the major flaws have been in the people I've tried to date and/or dated.

So I found this person who seemed to transcend a lot of the major flaws. Indeed, I even ran tests. This person passed. I was still suspicious. So I did some other things that I won't talk about because yo, I'm trying to be ambiguous. And now I am waiting. But now I am also horrifically scared and terrified and anxious and the anxiety won't end even though there are so many more things I'd like to think about then some person who may or may not be perfect. BUT I AM HORRIFICALLY SCARED. Because haven't I felt this way about a lot of people in the past? And didn't they always fail? So what's the difference between then and now? I am trying to remain objective, and I think I am being objective... but what happens if I'm not? And I don't know it?! What if I'm deluding myself into thinking that this person is better than everyone else ever before? Haven't I done this before? Haven't I? And I WAS WRONG THEN SO WHAT IF I'M WRONG NOW?!

IT'S A COMPLETE MIND FUCK.

And then this thought occurred and I wanted to cry:

We are all told we are going to meet the right person eventually, and we will get married and blah blah blah, happiness presumably. But I've never found the right person.... So many people are capable of being in long term, stable relationships. Did they find the right person? And if they found the right person, why is it so excessively difficult for me to find someone? I know I am pretty unique, but I'm not that obscure. I'm not underground. I like things that normal people like. I am an outgoing female, which I suppose is unusual, but otherwise I am pretty nice, pretty funny... pretty normal. I sometimes suck in social situations, but not more than other people, right? So why haven't I found the right person yet? What if this person is the right person? What if we actually did date? But more importantly, what if we date and it completely doesn't work? What then? I could romanticize this person but I'm just going to say I've never found someone who has goals and interests as similar to mine. I certainly have never dated anyone this similar. So what if it doesn't work? What if I never find anyone? What if I am this alone for my entire life? I'm twenty-two and two-thirds, I do not mind or even dislike being single. But what about when I'm thirty-two and two-thirds and concluding that no one could ever love me? Pretty fucking depressing. No one, ever. Isolating. What if the madness of being alone drives me into a marriage which is doomed? I intermittently think that this must have been what happened to my parents... I don't want that to happen to me... I don't want my kids to have parents that are aloof. What if I become a terrible mother (greatest fear, by the way: worse than dying, public speaking, the death of my parents, and slugs) because I am a horrible wife? I can't do that. But I don't want to be alone. But I can't do that. Alone? Alone is the better option, but this is a horrible would you rather. I don't want to think about it.

But you know the best thing about depression? You keep dwelling on what you are most worried about. So I kept thinking about this. AND IT WOULD NOT STOP. I could have been studying. I could have been showering. I could have been watching Star Trek. But no, I'd rather slump onto my couch and day dream, or more accurately, day nightmare. So I went to bed every night at -2 if not -7 and almost crying.

So I tricked/asked my psychiatrist for more antidepressants, and long story short, I am nearly manic! I feel as great as I should feel! I still think a lot about how much I have previously sucked as a girlfriend, but it seems irrelevant. Which is great! Because it is! I still think about this person, I still have minor panic attacks whenever I see them, but I don't dwell. And I don't frown... I actually smile, because hey! Maybe it will happen and maybe it won't. Maybe they'll be a good person to date or maybe I'll never know. Maybe there will be even better people to date. Maybe I will marry the perfectest person and everything will work out fine, and I'll be a great mom because I'm a decent, if not good, wife. Who knows? I still don't and I now accept that I never will. AH! I feel so free and almost invincible. But not that invincible. I still accept that I am merely human. I do not think I am having delusions of grandeur or being nonsensically manic. Still... everyone should feel like this! All the time! I feel as though I am always at +4 with occasional bouts of +7!!! So many exclamation points!!!! So many words like: "perfectest." I think I am living the dream. No, even better: I am living my dream. I know it and I feel it.

And still, why was I almost derailed by one person?

...Ominous....

Hmmm...

Nope. Don't care! Hahahaha, I'm sure in about two weeks or five months they will do something absolutely despicable and I will no longer care quite so much about them. And you know what? I feel pretty okay with that. I've only been dating people for seven years. In the next seven years, I'm sure something exciting will happen. In the meantime, I can look forward to actually being in medical school....! I keep remembering that and everything seems so much infinitely better. I am living my dream.

Finding My Mind

I hate the days after it happens and I have to catch my mind. There's not a lot to do when you're waiting for it to come back. You have to keep your anger down. It's best if you don't leave your house. You find a few moments every day when things are lucid and clear. Then you read something, or maybe the sun isn't shining the right way, or your friends texts you something illegible and it leaves again. My mind is a horrible, horrible person. Personified, I do not think we would be friends. But there isn't much I can do without it. So I wait. And I wait. And sometimes when I think I can't take it anymore, my mind writes me a beautiful note that attaches to my tongue and refuses to leave until I write it down and I read it and re-read it. The days after it leaves are the absolute worst--but the small gifts I receive from my estranged brain are worth it. Or at least, that's what I think at the time, all the notes piling up on my desks, all the note cards sticking to my walls. I rarely use markers in real life, but without a mind I no longer care if it appears childish to doodle on things. And then eventually my mind comes back and I realize that I don't care for all the paper surrounding all of my things. My handwriting sickens me. I tear it all down. My mind is unhappy, but I do not care. I have caught it again. It is mine. When it leaves, it owns me, exaggerates my whims; in pursuit I am always more thoughtful. Fascinating. Nonsensical. But when I have it, everything is so much simpler. Fascinating. Sensical. This is how my cognition functions.