Archive for the ‘the history of me’ Category

It’s been more than four months, hasn’t it? And that’s a very long time. So much can happen in four months! Of course, I am trying to remember what’s happened in the past four months, but mostly what I’m thinking about is how we have cheese in the fridge and granola bars on the counter and I have a lot of work to do and I want to get some writing done tonight and has anyone fed Porter yet? I am a distractible person, but for you I am ignoring the thing that’s shiny over there. As far as you know. There could have been a week and a half between those last two sentences! You don’t know! There wasn’t. But I thought about getting up to put the teakettle on.

Anyway, what has happened? Firstly and most obviously, Jennette Fulda of Make My Blog Pretty has—wait for it—made my blog so pretty.

It happened with a quickness that is still a little puzzling to me, and makes me think that it was some extended practical joke that was broadcast live somewhere in a European country where smoking is still considered sexy. Things were rough, for a bit—a crazy man and threats of having my dog put down, and money woes, always the money woes, and endless, neverending, eternal fucking winter—but there was Mexico! Sunshine! Sunshine in Mexico! I will be cured! And for a week I was the happiest thing in the land.

And then I came back to a happy cat and my clean apartment and was glad to be home, except that things started to feel inexplicably bad, and badder, and the worst, until a week or so later I was up out of my bed and googling “painless suicide” in my underwear.

Googling “painless suicide” will make you feel a little bit like a dipshit; it will also, probably usefully but not in the way that you hope at three in the morning in your underwear, not provide you with the answers you’re looking for.

Since around 2001, I’ve had a online journal, which means that since 2001, I’ve chronicled the majority of my depressive cycles, sometimes in breathtaking detail, and sometimes just with one meaningful post heavy on the choking/drowning/black hole/night sky metaphors that really, you know, capture the feeling of a severe bout of depression and or despair.

Sometimes the post was to explain away an absence of posts for days or weeks or months and sometimes it was to round-about apologize to the friends in the audience who may or may not have been reading who may or may not have even been my friends any more, to say—I’m sorry I’ve been flaking. But it is hard to put on pants when you are choking in a black hole under a night sky that is drowning in sorrow, am I right? Except without the danger of possible embarrassment and potential ridicule and or doubt and or skepticism that might arise if I actually was brave enough to resurface and apologize in person.

My cat, who is named Fang, is fat and round, neurotic, a little retarded, cuddly and dog-like. My cat Fang is the greatest of all cats. He is the platonic ideal of cats, and without him I would never get any work done because he sits and supervises very carefully and puts his paw in my face if he senses I am slacking off, or if he wants to put his paw in my face.

I lucked out in the cat lottery, and because of that I am not afraid to sing the praises of my sweet little man, to acknowledge that I am a Cat Person, possibly verging on Crazy and Lady, if I’m going to be honest with you. I am crazy—about my cat (see what I did there?), to the point where I will talk about him on the internet without shame, and I will tell you also that he worries me.

You know the three wishes game? Which is pretty much–that. You get three wishes. And you spend a lot of time crafting them carefully, wording them in very specific ways so that you are not screwed by a mischievous genie over a technicality because you had a dangling modifier or forgot to be precise in your choice of adjective. I spent a lot of time working on my major wish, and it was this: to be perfect. I don’t remember how, exactly, I phrased it, but what it boiled down to is that I wanted to be perfect in every way–physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually perfect. That is a whole lot of perfect. That is a whole lot of wishing.

I want to be perfect and unassailable. I want to be absolutely bullet proof. I want no one to ever find fault with me, because there are no faults to find, no cracks, seams or crevices.

My memory is notoriously spotty–I do not remember what I’ve said ten minutes ago (and sometimes–more often than I’d like to admit–directly after I’ve said it) and I do not remember events, people, places, names, or things. It makes for an exciting world in which everything is constantly new and interesting and absorbing. Every experience is a new experience! Every person is a new person to get to know and love! Every birthday is forgotten unless I’ve taken great pains to write it down in one or more spots and then set up email reminders and a singing telegram to remind me.

It is not unusual to forget things, to require an outside brain that is made of paper and is operated with a pen. Almost everyone needs lists and reminders and notes and strings around their fingers, and I am only a little embarrassed that I need to add things like “take vitamins” and “shower” to my to-do lists.

I have discovered the most amazing thing of all about living in the future, and it is that you can call up the nostalgic, rosy past whenever you like, with a click of your fingers and a credit card number. Did you know that onto the Nintendo Wii you can download the classics of your gaming childhood? Did you know that if you had a Wii , and a wireless connection and six bucks, you could be playing the original Legend of Zelda? This is among the most beautiful things that I can think of, and it makes me happier than happy. It makes me the happiest, in fact.

My baby brother and I spent a ridiculous number of hours in the basement with our Nintendo and our enormous collection of games, flailing our arms and yelling at the screen and mashing buttons and throwing our controllers and stomping around and hunching forward filled with grim determination and saying things like YOU CAN DO IT GO GO GO GO YAY YOU WIN YOU ARE SO GREAT!

On Saturday there was a Chinese new year party at a friend’s parent’s house, and it was delightful, as their parties always are, and filled with excellent people who I want to talk to and good food and a lot of booze and I was very excited to go, because people! Conversation! Dressing up and wearing lipstick and socializing! It was all so exciting. I was careful all day, with my eating, because I did not want to embarrass myself with socially embarrassing gas or by getting sick. I wore red for luck, mascara and lipstick and it was all very exciting. E drove so that I could have a couple of glasses of wine.

The house was packed full of people, mostly around the food. I poured myself a glass of white wine, and hugged people and laughed and kissed and fed cheese to the pug and exclaimed and laughed and then had to excuse myself because I had started to feel hot, jangly-headed, flushed and nauseous.