Grief, and other ramblings

I know, I know, it's been a forever since I've posted anything to this blog.

Truth is... I've been hiding from myself. I'm still dealing with all sorts of emotional fall-out from my mother's death, and whenever I get confronted with pain my instinct is to run away, shove the pain down into a little closet in my mind and barricade the door. Not exactly the healthiest response to grief, I know (and have been told by countless people), but... it's going to be a long road to reclaim that pain and actually deal with it.

The ironic thing is, when you shove pain away from yourself and refuse to feel it, you also end up cutting yourself off from joy, and every other emotion, until you're left as a depressed husk of yourself. I've been trying to reconnect myself to my pain, in fits and starts, but at this point the pain has been shoved down into that closet for so long it's hard to find, and mostly what I've been dealing with is trying to dismantle the barricades I've put around it.

Right now, the barricade I'm dealing with is anger. Have I mentioned that my anger and rage absolutely terrifies me? Because it really, really does. My mom always had anger issues, and she would make a point of telling me "I can control my anger, which is why I allow myself to feel it". But when she was always yelling and screaming at me it was hard to see how her anger was 'controlled'. Keep in mind, even when she was dealing with MS, her body atrophying and her brain refusing to cooperate with her, she was still intimidating and terrifying as hell. She was always a very strong person, even to the end, and I was never strong in the ways she was. For the longest time, I thought that meant I wasn't strong, because the only model I could recognize as strength was Mom; able to browbeat anyone into submission, able to beat up anybody who tried to hurt her, able to intimidate absolutely anyone. So I decided I would never be like that, hid my anger away and just vented about whatever made me angry, reasoning "well typing words about a thing isn't scary, that's a good way to deal with anger".

Keep in mind that while I was growing up, most of my energies were spent in major, heavy-duty shields to protect myself from my parents pain (mom's illness, migraines, depression over being so reduced by the illness; dad's hurt that his wife was slowly being atrophied, having to take care of her, depression of his own), and also trying to carry mom and make her feel better. So my emotions were very shallow, simply because I didn't have the energy to support them.

Hell, when I went through boot camp (dealing with severe lack of sleep, strenuous activity, dealing with all the drama from my flight mates and having to shield myself from their suffering), I was so much healthier mentally and spiritually because after dealing with my mom, boot camp was a piece of cake. I had so much energy it was surreal, but at least that energy went to helping me support myself through all that strenuous bullshit.

Then I went to tech school (where you actually start learning about whatever job you signed up to do), and I had more energy than I knew what to do with. I had the ocean right next door, warm weather and happy skies to play with, and the worst emotional fallout I had to deal with was various people being frustrated about "oh come on I want to get to my real job already, I'm tired of school". So I could suddenly really connect with my spiritual power, and I was happier than I'd ever been in my entire life.

Of course, having enough energy to feel joy also gave me enough energy to really feel other emotions. Such as anger. I'm not naturally predisposed to anger, so I thought I didn't have to worry about it, but near the end of my time there I met this guy we'll call Knight. He was severely emotionally damaged, so of course I tried to help him, but he would constantly ask for help and then refuse to let me help him, which helped build alot of frustration on my part. I got transferred to Germany as my first active duty base, and he would continue the same cycle of asking for help and then refusing to let me help him, complaining endlessly over silly problems while refusing to tell me about his real problems, calling me either at the weirdest times and then apoligizing for calling me at the middle of the night (my time), or calling me at a decent time for me and then complaining over how he was losing sleep since he had to call me at the middle of his night. So I blew up at him, screaming at him and then telling him not to contact me again because I was sick of his shit. I thought that was the end of it, except he would text or email me constantly, begging for forgiveness, and I just kept getting more and more frustrated at the whole situation.

Pertinent fact: I am a witch, and I am very connected to air and water. Not so much earth. So I'll ground my emotions and energy to the sky, instead of earth. Which is a really big problem when those emotions happen to be anger and frustration, and when I'm connected to the sky of a coastal region, and I ground those emotions to the sky. What I managed to stir up with that anger was a hurricane. Specifically, Hurricane Sandy.

You can imagine why I'm absolutely terrified of my anger now, feeling that I can't ground it (because I can't connect to the earth, I'm not going to burden any plant with that toxic emotion, and I'm terrified to ground it through fire or water because that would be immensely destructive as well and I don't need any more guilt).

And I have alot of anger about mom's death. Not the fact that she died, no, I'm actually glad she doesn't have to suffer through having the core of her identity (being strong, being independent, being intelligent) being whittled away by her disease. No, my anger is over the fact that she had to suffer through that disease at all, that she had to have a longm drawn-out death because she refused to leave me motherless while I was growing up, and then wanted to see me one last time before she went. She told me the doctor said she had two months to live, and I immediately booked a flight to see her, and when I got home I discovered that she was dying and I had only an hour with her (when she was unresponsive, couldn't talk, could hardly breathe) before she could slip away. The day she messaged me telling me she had two months was her last coherent day.

What's worse is that, after I grew around 17 or so, she was fairly open with me about wanting to suicide. And of course I was alright with that, she had the right to determine that she'd had enough pain and wasn't going to stay any longer. She also said that she would absolutely write me one last letter, tell me all the things she wanted me to know, say goodbye before she went. And I never got that, I never got to hear her tell me goodbye (though message or voice), never got any closure from her. The only reason I knew she could hear me say goodbye to her was I was babbling all sorts of things I wanted her to know, and then when I ran out of things to say started reading her a short story from Mercedes Lackey, our favourite author, and she slipped away before I got two pages in.

And it hurts so damn much that I can't have her in my life anymore. I'd grown to depend on her and her magic mom powers to be able to come to her with any emotional problem, have her explain me to myself, and give me advice that was always right.

And I feel so much damn guilt over the whole situation. I feel so damn guilty that the moment I left, I apparently withdrew my magical support from her, and never gave it back. I feel so damn guilty because if I hadn't been born to her, she likely wouldn't have suffered though MS at all. See, Dad told me (after she died), that I was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, and Mom was so upset about the prospect of me not being able to live life as a functioning being she made an open-ended bargain with the universe, for me not to have autism and be able to function, and the price was apparently to have her identity and strength slowly whittled away from her by this fucking disease. Oh, did I mention that the only reason she had me in the first place was because she believed in taking hints from the universe? She'd managed to get pregnant two or three times before me, and aborted those fetusi because she didn't want any kids. All of her pregnancies happened while she was birth control, and she got really paranoid about making sure her birth control was solid. But then I came around, and she was basically like "Okay fine universe, I get the hint, leave me alone and I'll have this damn baby already, sheesh". I don't know if it was the universe at large ensuring her pregnancies, or if my soul was so determined to have her for a mother for my incarnation that I made her make a body for me, and I'm kinda scared that the second option is the answer.

I'm not sure why it's taken her death for me to start ruminating on the injustices of her life. But my connection to the universe and my own spiritual power is severely strained as a result. How can I connect to the universe when I'm so angry at it? How can I connect to the universe and risk my anger stirring up havoc?

No, I haven't asked for the reason for all of this, because I'm afraid Dad's answer is right and I really don't need that certain guilt piled up on me. No, I haven't tried looking for her soul because she'd beat my ass for trying and I respect her wish. Yes, I've gone to grief counseling, but all I received were unhelpful answers and platitudes so I stopped going after the second visit. No, I can't really go to therapy since I have no insurance, probably couldn't afford it, and even if I could I need to save my money for as long as possible.

It doesn't help that I've been living with my dad since I got separated from the Air Force. This is still a very unhealthy environment for me, and I can feel myself regressing to how I was as a teenager; artificially depressed (since this house still has alot of psychic negativity in the atmosphere, and I just don't have the energy to clean it out), unable to do anything (since we're out in the middle of nowhere and I don't have a driver's license), and just all around miserable.

I think going to visit my sister will help, though. She lives in a city (so there's things to do besides internet all day), she lives by the ocean (who I know loves me and is willing to help heal me), and she's much more emotionally intelligent than I am so it'll be so wonderful to have her support.

(yes, this optimistic note of an ending is deliberate. Don't want to depress myself over my own venting, after all)

Approx Half-way In

So, this NaNoWriMo thing... So far, I'm very happy for this experience.

Made a bunch of new friends, I'm able to talk about writing-type things with a huge variety of people, group encouragement is definitely awesome (especially in chat rooms, where the official purpose is kinda "encourage everybody to actually write by running word wars- where people all start writing for a break of time, like 10 minutes, then come back and say how many you got, not for competition but for a little kick in the ass of "Write right meow!" in manageable chunks of time- but in reality managing to hang out and shoot the shit and brainstorm as well as doing wars, which is awesome!).

I've already figured out that this novel I'm pantsing is never going to be able to be published without copious re-working and re-writing, which I'm not enamoured enough to do... It's not so much for bad writing, which can be edited out, but for the fact that it decided to be a rip-off of Alan Dean Foster's Flix series, and then morphed into a truly hideous rip-off of Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series, which is really fun to read and invoked copious amounts of Rule of Cool, but plagiarizing somebody else's ideas is definitely not a cool thing to do, so yeah. I'll probably make a few passes at editing, just for the learning experience and improving my own writing, but this will never get published and I'm actually cool with this.

At least I got to play with a few experiments; writing in second person, keeping the Main Character's gender obscured, writing a sex scene in second person while keeping said MC's gender obscured, writing in first person with that character's gender obscured...Oddly enough, it's easier for me to write in second person than first, though third person is alright (and it's a classic for story-telling, so I might stick with that for my attempts at a publishable work).

Mostly, what this has taught me is that when you just focus for a bit, writing actually isn't all that difficult. You're supposed to write 1,667 words every day, but I find myself pretty easily managing to hit 2.5k or more (as long as I don't let myself quit just because I hit the quota, which is surprisingly difficult to do. Guess I'm lazy to the bone...) And it's been pretty much pure fun playing in the sandbox, so that's awesome as well!

I already have an idea for what I'll do for next year's NaNo (if not sooner), because a cute little plot bunny came to nibble on my brain during a dream some time ago, so I'll have to do some research, world-building, and maybe even make a loose outline before I go again, and maybe then I'll actually have written a book worthy of editing and trying to publish!

Also, after seeing a bunch of people asking for naming advice, that inspired me to go research phonosemantics (which is actually really cool), and here's a good, succinct source for that (which actually required stupid amounts of googling). Honestly, after running an analysis on my chosen name (yes, I have quite deliberately chosen a new name for myself), it rather suits me as a person well, so there's another brink in the construction of this name this suits me ^.^

NaNoWriMo!

Yes, I am partaking in this madness (2176 words in two hours, right at 0200, go me!). I decided to completely pants this year based on an old post I did, just expanding it and seeing how it turns out. Funny, I hadn't even thought about the context I wrote that in, but in that little "I'm sorry" prefacer paragraph I was all "oh noes, I'm going to give up on NaNo"... and now here I am, expanding on what I wrote last year. Irony is fucking awesome sometimes. And no, I don't actually regret (much) not taking part in last year's NaNo, I had a bunch of shit going on emotionally and it just wasn't a good time.

I just realized I haven't talked about this, so I'm going to talk about it to you lovely imaginaries, see if that makes me feel any better. One of the things that was fucking with my head last year (well, actually, for about the past two and a half years) was constantly worrying about my mother suiciding. See, she had MS (nerve degenerative disease, made lose the ability to walk without leaning on a wall, or a waking stick, or my dad; lose the ability to think coherently when the temperature got about 80 degrees Fahrenheit; lose feeling in her hands and feet), which is a terrible wasting disease that slowly steals your body from you. And she was a very strong woman, took pride in being capable and independent and able to beat up anybody who bothered her, so this was about the worst thing that can happen to her. And of course I had to grow up with her while she was dealing with this every day (plus near-constant migraines, just because life felt like shitting on her), and neither her or me (or my father) have any moral objections to suicide. Really, your body and life is your own, you get to make your own choices, and if you feel you've overstayed Life's welcome then why not check yourself, right? So she gave me a speech, about when I was sixteen and brought it up, that she was seriously thinking about it but promised me she wouldn't until I'd left the house. She gave me another speech when I was eighteen that she wouldn't go without writing me first. So I spent pretty much every fucking day after Basic wondering, in the back of my mind (and then the more forward parts of my mind) "Is today going to be the day I check Facebook and discover that suicide letter from her?"

No, I never did, she died differently. Because drinking made her feel better (she could pretend "Oh, I'm not wobbly and falling on my ass because of MS, it's because I'm drunk", and it also helped somewhat with the migraines), she drank pretty much constantly. And developed cirrhosis. And then decided to fight the disease because she wanted to see me one last time. So when she finally got around to fucking telling me about this (basically right after a visit to a new doctor dad found her after telling her previous quack to fuck off, and the new doctor said "sorry, this is terminal, nothing we can do about it but dull your pain somewhat"), she said that the doctor gave her two months to live (and this happened in April, four months before I separated, two months before I was to be told when exactly I was going to be separated, btw).

So I panicked a bit, bought the soonest flight home I could (which was that Monday, the 14th), rushed home with my uncle (mom's brother who picked me up at the airport), got to talk at her for an hour (because she was too far gone to respond or move or anything, just breathe in painful-sounding rasps; the day she told me she was terminal was apparently her last real coherent day, according to Dad), managed to run out of babble and just started reading to her a short story from our favourite author (Mercedes lackey), and then she died.

At least I got to fulfill her last wish, right? At least I got to stop worrying about when that suicide note would appear in my inbox, right? At least I got half of her decent life insurance policy, right? Fuck all that, it still bloody fucking hurts.

I can't see a cheerful story about how some cancer patient was diagnosed terminal but made a miraculous recovery without getting angry. Sure, the idea of "the doctor gave her six months, but it's been two years and counting!" makes a great headline, but the converse "doctor gave her two months to live, but she only made it a week!" is also too fucking true.

Actually, I'm angry about alot of the shit in this situation. Mom was a good person (not terribly nice, but GOOD), wise and smart and willing to help out pretty much anybody. She got her most of her body, mind, and identity stripped away from her by a stupid disease, died painfully, and... I am so fucking angry at the Powers that Be for doing this shit to her. She didn't deserve it.

Dad told me a story, when I came back home (after I finished my leave, went back to Germany, dealt with outprocessing bullshit, then came back actually separated), about how when I was little I was diagnosed with autism, and this freaked Mom out pretty fucking badly, so she bent her will and decided to make sure that her little daughter wouldn't stay austistic, be able to lead a wonderful and productive life. So apparently the Powers that Be thought that was a good deal, so they gave Mom her daughter, and took herself away. This story kinda makes sense to me (because ever since I realized I had some power as a witch, I kept trying to make Mommy feel better but she wouldn't have none of it), but I really wish it didn't, because I feel I'm really not worth it. Lots of guilt in that, combined with the fact that Mom had two pregnancies before me which she aborted, because she didn't want to have a child at those stages of her life, and I sometimes feel that things would have been better if she had just aborted me too.

This story and the NaNo participation announcement are linked, I promise. I got more into the social swing of NaNo, joined the facebook group, fun times right? Well, one person asked "Hey, does anybody have ideas for a terminal illness that would give a person less than a year to live? Something other than cancer or HIV/AIDS, please"... And of course I had the perfect fucking answer: Cirrhosis. So I started going off on this huge, long rant, realized that it was way too much shit to bog this stranger's day down in, so I ended up editing my response a few times to get most of the feeling out. But I still felt like writing it, so congrats imaginaries, you get to see a little bit more into my fucked-up emotional landscape!

As a Veteran

No grand, terrifying secrets shall be revealed in this blog post, so don't get your hopes up. With that said, it's amazing what random little shit sticks with ya, being a veteran.

I honestly don't consider myself a real veteran, because I never saw combat, I never deployed, I never even served a base mission. I was stationed at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, under the 1st Combat Communications squadron; and as a combat com squadron, our entire job was to wait around on stand-by until we were called on to deploy and set up communications for some new little base in the sandbox. The stand-by was filled with makework (I've bored numerous aquaintences about my rants about fucking re-organizing our bay full of equipment every three months)... Like helping other people pack their shit for their deployments while they ran around getting their paperwork done, packing new boxes of shit to send to deployed people because they forgot something or leadership decided to add something to the requirements, or when leadership was feeling too overwhelmed with the paperwork to brainstorm make-work for us we would literally sit around in the office and bullshit (or sitting around outside in the smoke pit bullshitting). But all of that was fucking make-work, practically useless or completely useless shit to do while we waited to be able to do our real jobs, and I feel highly inadequate because I never actually got to go and do my real job before I got kicked out.

And no, I didn't do anything particularly naughty and troublesome to earn the boot. I just painted a big red target on my forehead due to paperwork (of the "failing a test summarizing everything I'm supposed to know about my job by five questions, because if you put a radio in my hands I can make it work but fuck if I can memorize the frequencies of each specific outdated radio the air force has ever had in the past 50 years" kind). And since Congress came down and said "kick out airmen, we need to save money", that put my commander in the position of saying "Well, I like ya, I think you're a good airman, but I can't justify waivering that test requirement when I'm going to have to kick out a bunch of deserving people who haven't failed that test"... So, that's the story.

But it's the little shit that sticks with ya, after you're out. Like the fact that you self-medicate with ibuprofin and water no matter what ails ya. Seriously, you know the saying "you get what you pay for"? Yeah, if it isn't serious enough to land you in the emergency room, you get a bottle of ibuprofin (a cute little perscription bottle of ibuprofin pills that are twice the size of what you get in over-the-counter bottles) and told you're not drinking enough water. And because you've scheduled that appointment to get that cute little perscription of ibuprofin, you've pissed off leadership for skipping out on work, so you learn it's not worth it and stop going (unless you're a dirtbag). Or if you're feeling bored, sad, want to party, the answer is always the same: alcohol! Alcohol is good for any emotional state. And then you get soooo confused when one of your civilian friends calls another one of your civilian friends an alcoholic for drinking multiple beers or a bunch of shots or mixed drinks every day, because for 3/4 of the people you know that aren't married that's their normal "get home from work" activity and you were probably like that yourself. Oh, and you've forgotten how to cook because you're used to eating out (or going to the dining facility if you were cheap) for every meal because as an unmarried person, you were stuck in a dorm with two kitchens for 150 people and it just wasn't worth the bother.

After a couple weeks of civilian life roll around, you start laughing because you haven't had to spend three hours listening to the weekly briefing of different levels of leadership repeating "Don't drink and drive, have a plan, have a back-up plan, and if your plans fail call AADD (airmen against drunk driving), call us, don't call the level of leadership above us you have our number and don't bother them, but seriously call us, or call a wingman because you should have your recall rosters on you; rah rah warm fuzzies about morale and how great we as a squadron and we as an air force are; you should volunteer because volunteering is awesome and looks good on your EPR, here are all these volunteer opportunities going on around this time; and seriously don't drink and drive, have a plan!" Yep, every fucking week we had three hours of listening to that. Then, after a month, it starts to sink in that "holy shit, I can actually unglue myself from my phone!". That recall roster I mentioned a few lines above? It had the names, phone numbers, and addresses of everybody in your shop; you were literally required to carry that and your cellphone on you at all times in case one of your wingmen had to get ahold of you for any reason, in case leadership decided to spread a message, or just call everybody into work.

No, I don't remember half of the cool shit we were taught in Basic training, like how to dismantle and rebuild a M16 in two minutes. But if there's every an accident, I will always treat you for shock (elevate legs, keep warm, keep awake) no matter if you seem to display symptoms or not, and if you ever get a sucking chest wound I know just what to do (cover the wound with a piece of plastic so it creates suction). I know how to bandage a wound, when and how to apply a tourniquet (and afterwards I will find a sharpie or something so I can write a big T on your forehead along with the time I applied said tourniquet), and I could probably improvise a splint out of anything. I was also taught the symptoms and remedies for heatstroke (and the two other illnesses leading up to heatstroke) and frostbite, but fuck if I remember that. However, I still remember how to roll and fold articles of clothing precisely and make perfect corners while making a bed (not that I ever would, because fuck that shit). And drill, I will probably never forget how to do facing movements and marching movements.

Eh, no more word vomit about the military experience comes to mind. I'm glad I did it, I might even do it again if I felt myself severely in need of a job, and I'm grateful for what the Air Force has done for me and the fun times I've had with the people I got to meet... But I am so fucking glad to be out.

Well... hi there

Gods, it feels like it's been forever since I've written here. No real excuse, I just kinda forgot this blog even existed. All those ramblings on "gosh, what is this blog even for? ... I dunno" really drove the point home in my mind that, well, if I'm going to be silly enough to blog without a purpose, then why should I be blogging at all?

But I do want to start up (again) with the working on my writing, showing my life to whatever random people (nobody) would be interested in seeing what the bits of my life are like that I share, etc. I do feel that a chunk of my life purpose is to provide a living example- here's who I am, see how I'm unconventional and live an awesome life and find awesome people to love me anyways, etc.

Fuck it. The real reason is I need something to convince myself that I'm being productive while I'm being held at loose ends indefinitely here. Why? Well.... Hold on while I dump a bucket of word vomit, feel free to give none of the shits, etc.

So on my 2nd anniversary of being part of the glorious USAF (January 17th), I got told that due to the force shaping (aka kicking people out because Congress wanted to shrink the military budget), I was going to get the boot. Still don't know exactly when I'm going to be gone, I'm not able to start completing any outprocessing actions (outprocessing = mounds and mounds of paperwork for arranging shit like how much pay you're entitled to, taking care of unused leave, getting a last free medical checkup, etc), so I'm left in uncertainty mode- all I can do is put as much money into savings as possible and think up distractionary techniques.

No, I don't have a 'real' plan- since I sincerely doubt it's a good idea for me to decide on anything permanent while I'm in this much stress and mostly spending my days drunk. My plan is to crash on a friend's couch and do the housework for him and his roommate until I can figure out a better. Assuming I ever figure out a better, instead of drifting around looking for things out of life besides the career ladder. Honestly, I don't see myself wanting to go the career path; I'd rather grab a job (clock in, do work, clock out just sounds so much better to me) and write on the side (assuming I can ever get myself to write, that is).But of course everybody in my work environment is trying to give me advice for the career path because they all think that's the best thing that a person could strive for, and.... nah.

So, yeah. Right now I'm focusing on saving money, spending as much time with my boytoy (hereforth known as Bastard- his mother was a hamster, and even if his father had wanted to do the right thing by her, it wouldn't exactly have been a legal marriage, so... We have that kinda playful jibing relationship) as possible before I have to leave him, and drinking the stores of mead I've collected over here in Germany while I can (this last because us military stationed over here can drink at 18, per host nation law, and I'll be sent to the states before that magical 21st birthday).

Gods, Bastard... It actually kinda scares me how much in love with him I am. He isn't perfect, but he's the kind of awesome that transcends mere perfection. I wish I could describe him without sounding absolutely trite, but my tongue/fingers get all twisted up and I start reciting "thoughtful, sweet, gorgeous", which obviously does no good at all. Bah. Trust me, he's amazing, I'm not sure what I'm going to do without him as emotional support (seriously, he gives top quality cuddles, plus I can literally tell him anything and everything and he'll accept all of it), and...

Well, I don't want to end life right now- I want as much time with Bastard as I can get. After a couple days in the states, though, I really don't know how badly the suicide ideation is going to hit me (recently, my suicide ideation has become disassociated from my depression, which feels freaking weird from both angles), and it's going to be easy as hell for me to go through with it then. I'll have made up a will sometime before I leave (hey, getting all I can out of the AF before I go), I'll have switched over to veteran's group life insurance which will pay out for suicides (and how weird is that, when I researched that and actually found that to be true, that literally made my day, that I could die of obvious suicide and not have to worry about the claim being rejected), and I already have a tiny scalpel blade, but it will be SO easy to find better knives, or a gun, in the states, that I can just have laying around in my area because I want them. Fyi, military doesn't work like that, at least not if you live on base- you're not allowed to bring weaponry onto base. Bad juju there.

Lately, suicide hasn't been about "I hurt and I need it to stop". The thought of suicide translates emotionally to joy for me- "Yay I get to flee all these bullshit concerns!" if I had to put a thought pattern to it, but all I think of when daydreaming about a bullet to the brainpan, squish, is straight joy. And I am okay with this. And I can't say this to anybody besides Bastard without having to worry about them freaking out at me, telling other people on my facebook, possibly finding a military-affiliated friend who would feel duty-bound to report me to leadership, who would then mandatorily sentence me to counseling, put me under surveillance, all sorts of negative consequences... And as a civilian, I don't have to worry about that! It's a beautiful realization.

Meh. Suppose I should end on a positive note, but the word vomit bucket is suddenly running dry, so... You can probably expect a bit more in the way of updates at least, dear imaginaries?

Blargh

"I tried so hard, and got so far
But in the end, it doesn't even matter
I had to fall, to lose it all
But in the end, it doesn't even matter"

I've had this song by Linkin Park stuck in my brain for the past couple days, to the point where I have it playing continuously on repeat, and thought I'd try to figure out why it's so stuck.

I know it's a cliche careless listener trait, but that lyric is the only lyric out of that song that I really resonate to- the rest of the words have their own message, but for me they're essentially padding for the rest of the song as far as personal resonance goes. For those who don't know this song, essentially it's speaking about a betrayal in a relationship, but that doesn't really speak to me. I've been lucky enough to not run into unpleasant personal situations- most of my struggles have all been internal rather than external.

But anyways. After taking a look at that chorus in words, I realize I'm interpreting it in a positive way- a sort of reminder that this great big game we call life isn't worth putting too much worry and pain and negative into to try to "win", because in the end it really doesn't matter. And that even when the wheel turns and you lose everything, in the end that isn't going to matter either. And that's a philosophy I can definitely get behind (or rather, apparently I have already gotten behind this philosophy... and shut up gutter brain I don't mean it that way). There's alot of freedom in not caring about things. Of course there's things you gain when you care about things (stability, passion, joy), so it really comes down to your personal balance.

And yes, I realize this post is full of suck. No, I don't particularly care.

"Well, go see someone!"

Try talking to me about my depression. I dare you. Actually, I don't, but here's what that conversation looks like. For my dear imaginaries, the main reason I'm writing this is so when people try and start this conversation with me I can just link them to this post, since I'm kinda sick of trying to type this all out articulately at various times when I'm in various mindsets.

"Well, go see someone!"

Um, well, see, there's a problem with that. Several, actually.
 A) I'm in the military. Which means I do have an option for confidentiality (chaplains, and of course there's the speech over how they won't shove their religion down your throat to help you, which I do actually kinda trust), but I'm still putting my career (and essentially my future, since I don't really have prospects for a plan B if I get kicked out just yet. We can discuss this in a later post) in the hands of a random person who would feel bound to do anything necessary to keep me from killing myself on their watch. These options could range to breaking confidentiality and relaying this secret of mine up the chain of command, or they could order me to the doctor and shove pills down my throat, or they could declare me unfit and get me booted out.

Admittedly, I'm not quite sure how a chaplain would handle this situation, and it does kinda depend on what I tell them- there's a sliding scale between absolute truth: "Well sir, I've known I was bipolar well before I joined the military, and I've had suicidal ideation since I was around 7 years old, but I lied on every psych eval to get in the military since I didn't see another option for myself to have a future, but I recently realized that I don't like my brain that much so I want to take shameless advantage of the military's benefits to fix this life-long problem I lied to the Air Force about", half-lie: "Well sir, I recently found out from my parents that I was diagnosed with bipolar at an early age, and it's made alot of things come clear for me- I've always assumed that I was normal, but I did more research and holy shit but my brain is actually rather fucked up, and I think I'd like to see what it would be like if I didn't have random depressive spells, maybe see if I could be an even better, more productive Airman" and shameless lie: "Well sir, I've recently developed suicidal ideation, and thanks to friends not leaving me alone I haven't given into the impulses, but it's gotten to the point where I honestly scare myself and I want to take shameless advantage of the military's benefits to fix this problem". Problem with the truth is that I could very well get kicked out; problem with the half-lie and outright lie is that everyone involved would make incorrect assumptions about the sort of treatment I would need and probably end up fucking me up worse.

B) Treatment options. The two main options are therapy and medication.

Therapy: The is probably the safer route. I could probably go to a chaplain, spill everything that's bothering me, let them help me work out issues, or let the chaplain refer me to a therapist who could help with said issues. The problem with this is... professional therapy wouldn't actually help that much, permanently. I already have a cadre of friends I use as therapists, I meditate daily and I'm slowly researching therapy techniques, psychology, all sorts of things in that general body of knowledge to help myself out. I'm already getting alot of theraputic value at no risk to myself, so to involve risk to my future for better therapy when I'm already getting enough to keep me alive? Hell to the no.

Medication. Aka having some random-ass doctor feed me a bunch of chemicals designed to fuck with my brain that doctors haven't quite gotten the science down on. Meaning there are all sorts of horror stories about how different chemicals affect different people for different reasons and the doctors haven't figured out why yet, and I'm terrified of being a horror story. What's worse, bipolar II (my issue) hasn't been studied nearly as much as bipolar I, bipolar hasn't been studied nearly as much as depression, what works for depression makes the depressive side of bipolar even worse, AND the medications for bipolar are all designed around treating the mania first, depression second. Which sucks for me because I LIKE MY HYPOMANIA, and I know I won't be able to convince any doctor that letting me keep my hypomania is a legitimate option.

C) I am managing alright already. I have made loads of progress on the therapy front; Basic was hell but it also forced me to confront alot of what I hated about myself, so now depressive spells just entitle lac of energy rather than loads of self-hate, I was serious when I said I have a good group of friends as therapists, and I've been meditating daily and doing my best to resolve issues as they come up. As far as intellectual and emotional understanding, I'm pretty damn far ahead of alot of healthy people. I've been paying conscious attention to my mood, the sort of things that trigger certain reactions, practicing emotional regulating techniques to keep bad spells from getting worse and great spells from getting too out of had, and I'm much more regulated than I've ever been. For the chemical front (which is the dominant factor of this whole issue), I've started taking fish oil supplements based on some research I found (multiple sources confirming this, yes it's casual internet research but then again I can't really do much harm to myself with this) that suggests that the omega-3 proteins can help ease depression while boosting/ignoring maniac effects (differing opinions), which is certainly my goal. And yes, I've been incorporating ways to protect my life from suicidal ideation- not letting myself research best ways to kill myself (beyond what knowledge I've already gathered, and I know half of which is probably inaccurate), not letting myself buy rope, not letting myself leave my room when I'm depressed unless I'm in the company of friends or going to work (aka not letting myself climb the stairs and jump off the fourth floor), etc.

And yes, I do know that my bipolar is all about the chemicals in my brain, therapy won't really change the fact that I get major depressive and maniac spells, so if I want to stop feeling depressed I need to seriously fuck with my brain chemicals. Which I'm terrified of doing. And adding the possible damage to my future as a condition for fucking with my brain.... yeah, hell to the no. I'll stick with what I have and occasionally rail against Fate for putting me in the position to where I'm no longer allowed to consider killing myself as an escape option. Life sucks and then you die, and all that...

And no, I haven't figured out why the hell I'm feeling the need to talk about this shit on this blog. If you figure it out, let me know XD

Rant

"It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem"
"Everyone has something to live for"
"Each suicide leaves behind an average of six survivors- family and friends who mourn for their lost loved one"

I really, really hate quotes like these. DESPISE them. What they all boil down to is "we as a culture don't think you have the right to choose to die". And... I find that despicable. Every single individual on the planet should have the right to die, for whatever reason they have, without having everyone around feel the need to constantly thwart them because everyone else is too fucking selfish to let them die! Of course this doesn't mean I think people shouldn't be offered help, nor that people shouldn't seek help if they want help, but for goodness sake, can we all just take a deep breath, realize it's not all about us and we're stupid if we feel guilt about someone around us committing suicide, and add "right to die" along the general independent entitlement cultural mindset? Pretty please?

Drowning

If's it's not one thing, it's another

This one and that one falling down

Spending all my time trying to keep people afloat

Abandoning the ones treading water

In favor of those slipping down

But the ones treading water

Seem to sink down as soon as I turn away

And the ones half-drowning

Can't seem to be taught how to swim

And honestly, I feel myself losing strength

But how can I quit?

So, the other night, I ended up discovering why people want to turn to alcohol to drown their sorrows. I know I’ve recently actually admitted to being suicidal, but the sad thing is I’m not the only one- I’ve had to talk 2 people out of suicide, one of whom is my own sister, the other a dear friend who just can’t get a break from life and I had to talk away from a knife multiple times, and there are four more people that I know are depressed and worry about. And let me tell you, worry is EXHAUSTING. Keeping track of all these people’s emotional states, trying to comfort them when things go wrong, trying to cheer them up to counter their depression, worrying that they won’t be able to get ahold of you when shit flies, worrying that what you can do won’t be enough and knowing they really don’t have anyone else in their life willing to help… It’s a lot of responsibility to put on yourself. Of course I know nobody can control another’s emotional state and people are responsible for themselves, etc, but it’s hard not to get yourself emotionally invested in people, you know? I care about these people, and I want to help, but it does get very draining to care so much and then I end up feeling guilty for wanting to care less so I can get some emotional energy back, and it’s just a huge, vicious cycle. People tell me that I let people take advantage of me, and I don’t really see it that way but I think they’re all right… but how can I do anything different?

I ended up trying to dive into a bottle and drown my sorrows because mother ended up panicing and screaming… and I had dropped all my shields specifically keyed to her since I thought I was safe from all her random chaos halfway across the world. Yeah, apparently not so much. Had to raise all my shields up in a hurry to defend myself, then go cry on a healer friend’s shoulders to heal from the pain of that scream. The horrible thing about being a little bit psychic was that I could tell why she was screaming, but I still had to ask her for a definite answer… but of course I was right. Dad had threatened to suicide, which freaked me right the fuck out because I didn’t think he would actually start thinking about suicide until after mother dies… But I guess the stress is really getting to him. I’m pretty sure he’s STILL on the antidepressants he got prescribed when his dad died, which was 4 years ago, and he still suffers headaches that are progressively getting worse, and even though mother allegedly got easier to deal with when I left the house he still has to deal with her and her sickness, so I think it actually is starting to pile up more than he can handle.

Alcohol can work as liquid courage, but you can’t really drown your sorrows. You can get so drunk out of your mind you have no clue what’s going on, and you can get drunk enough you can barely remember what happened whilst you were drunk, but unfortunately you can’t use alcohol to forget things that upset you whilst sober. And it honestly scares me that my first thought was to turn to the alcohol, because both parents are alcoholics (and smokers, and dad’s a gambler, so I’m genetically predisposed to have an addictive personality). Of course it didn’t work and I’d rather not go through that recovery period again, but… What the hell’s left? What the hell am I supposed to do?

Blargh, humbug, spaghetti

I've been trying to avoid these little personal bullshit posts, but insomnia struck without the courtesy of leaving me enough of a brain to scribble with, and thoughts tend to be easier to organize when they're written down and detangled. So, you dear imaginaries get an update on my life, how amusing, righty ho?

Thing is, being female, not unattractive, and enlisted in the military (on an overseas base where the local language ain't English, no less) means you get lots and lots of company. Lots of people striking up conversations, lots of people wanting to hang with you, etc. etc. Honestly, it's harder for me to not get laid than it is to get laid. But a side effect of being a nice, pretty girl is I get virtually drowned under all these people wanting to be social with me, which means I often have to choose between people (all of whom I rather like) and sleep (which can be ignored in favor of monster at the expense of health and sanity). But apparently I've gotten to the point where sanity has made a last-ditch effort to intercede, and I've actually started growing a spine and demanding alone time and getting more sleep, so yay me. Horrible thing is, that's only come to pass since the depression swung around with a vengeance and I just didn't have enough spoons to be social and pretend to be okay all the time, so I suppose depression can be a positive thing after all? Or am I staring too long at the glass all cross-eyed to make myself see the silver lining?

Being depressed without being suicidal is such a weird feeling... Same apathy, same lack of energy, but I'm not really hating myself, I just want to hide from the world since I don't want to deal with people. Then again, apparently separating "suicidal" from "depression" doesn't make the suicidal bit go away, and it is VERY strange to feel suicidal whilst not depressed. Everything was going fine, I was feeling fulfilled about work and friendships and was excited for plans later, but I still ended having this feeling that I really, really needed to die right then. Of course, then the tree that grabbed me at Keesler gripped me tight, and I ended up spending half a day arguing and essentially bruising myself against her trunk, and I ended up very sore by the end of it. Note: People, seriously, don't argue with trees. They're always right and it's just going to be a bad time. 

Janurary 17th

was the day I shipped to Basic training, the official start to my Air Force career. I had been waiting 9 months to get to ship, 6 months past my graduation from high school and 6 months past my 18th birthday, but it's only been recently that I've truly felt like an adult. The Air Force has definitely changed my perspective and my life for the better. And because my Air Force anniversary is so close to New Year's, I figured I would transposition the reflective part of the holiday to the anniversary; after all, New Year's is a quirk of the calendar, which is rather mish-mash when you really think about it. But of course, I find myself writing this on the eve of New Year's, so I may as well post it now XD.

2012. 12 has always been my favourite number; it's the number of sections on a clock, it provides pleasing symmetry, and I just find it pretty. To throw numerology at it, 12 consists of 1 (essentially "masculine", aka forthwright, strong, uncompromising) and 2 (essentially "feminine", aka flexible, subtle, perceptive) combined, making it very balanced in nature. It also reduces to 3 (creative, lucky, witty), which happens to be what my birth date reduces to. To take in the full year, 2012, it reduces to 5 (dynamic, mercurial, independant). The funny thing is, those traits are what this year was based around, for me. Ain't numerology fun?

Before I joined the Air Force, I was a very sad little girl indeed. I had no life, no independence, no ambition and no pride in myself. I was depressed on a few different levels, which I didn't realize at the time because I thought it was normal, and I didn't have any opportunities to really experience Life. But then I shipped to Basic, which royally sucked (but I would still repeat Basic rather than go back to living with the rents), made me really face myself, and generally helped transform me into someone I like alot better. Then I lived out my version of "college crazy years" in tech school, which was basically my outlet for experimenting and doing a bit of finding myself, and then I came here to germany and have been working though an existinal crisis. Overall, I've done alot of searching and finding myself, and even though I'm not nearly done with this process, I've made alot of progress. I owe the Air Force alot, for giving me this chance to go and live life, giving me the means to be independent, and for being a support while I grow up.

As for the next year? 2013... I've never really thought much about the number 13, never bought into the superstition of bad luck, but numerology says it reduces to 4 (stability, prosaic, predictable), and the full year reduces to 6 (harmony, caring, idealistic). I guess I'll have to see if those themes carry on into the year, but for now, I do have certain things I'd like to accomplish (and despite my opinion of "dammit, anytime is a good time to make a resolution to fix the problems in your life", the new year does offer a good reminder to really take a look at your life in general).

First off, I really have been feeling a need to schedule my time, because it has a way of slipping by without me accomplishing anything. I've been feeling a ache to be useful and productive, and I know it's only going to happen with discipline, which I've never been good at summoning randomly. Of course, spontaneous things are going to come up, but having some sort of schedule should hopefully help keep me from feeling like I'm wasting all my free time. I don't have a concrete plan for arranging this, but I do have a couple ideas (setting aside certain days of the week for things like art, errands and cleaning, being social, volunteering, etc, rather than trying to schedule a little of each in every day; leaving me alot of wriggle room for spontaneous things, but giving me a setting I can fall back on).

I've been also noticing that I've mostly lost the introspective habit I picked up in Basic, and I'm missing it. I'm pretty sure I need to keep on being introspective if I'm going to keep being a person I like. Also, I've been having trouble trying to notice all the things that are influencing me and trying to pick out which thoughts are entirely me and which came from the influence of other things. Plan for this: got myself a little daily planner booklet, and every day I'll record a list of variables (moon phase, weather, day-to-day circumstances, overall mood), then at the end of every month I'll see if any general trends develop.

Other than that? Get myself to get out and have adventures, instead of sticking to what's comfortable!

2012, you were a good year. You granted me change, independence, joy, epiphamies, love, a little bit of wisdom and a hell of a good time. I'll miss you. 2013, you ready to step in zie's shoes?

Ramblings

Yes, it's been awhile since I've written... I was seduced away from an online life by a lovely young man we'll call Lion. It's funny- taking a quick look at the dates, I've actually been managing to keep a fairly steady stream of writing ever since I came here (except the past month), but it feels to me like I've hardly written since those jet-lagged posts. Oh, the tricks my brain plays on me, they're so great....

'Tis a fact about military life that never really sank in until recently, despite my father telling me a bit about what it was like to switch schools and live all over the place as an Air Force brat, but... Being in the military means that you're going to move somewhere, get settled in, then have to leave. As soon as you make some friends, they're going to leave; others you get to keep for awhile, but they're still going to leave. Either that or you're going to meet a newcomer shortly before you leave yourself to go repeat the process. I'm discovering that you pretty much have to be able to develop affections quickly and either shallowly or be able to heal quickly from the pain of losing your friends and lovers. Still... tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, and traveling so much and encountering so many people pretty much ensures you'll always be able to find people you can love.

Lion is an amazing person. I met him after my week here in Ramstein, and we clicked instantly. It was one of those times when one thing lead to another rather quickly, and before I knew it we were an item. Dear soul that he is, he was alright with my polyamory... but much to my surprise, I found myself not actually wanting anyone other than him very much. Just a random tidbit, having a long-term sexual relationship with someone really does make the sex awesome; it's what happens when each person spends more and more time learning their partner's bodies and what really pleases them ^.^ I only got to spend three months with him, but we made those months count, and he really taught me alot, and tossed alot of assumptions I had about relationships right upside their heads. I was able to confirm that I'm not really a settle-down type (I do need my independence and lots of alone time, and I do have this habit of making more friends than I have time for), but I do like longer-term relationships (as opposed to one-night stands), and connecting on emotional and mental levels as well as on physical levels makes everything amazing.

But alas, he has left, and I am left to continue on continuing on. Yes, a little bit of situational depression ensued from him leaving, but people refused to leave me alone, and I think I'm mostly over that depression. Don't know if it's entirely natural, or if it has something to do with the fact that I've started taking fish oil supplements (supposedly they have a greater than placebo effect on depression, and don't have side effects beyond *possible* hypomania in bipolar subjects, but the research isn't too clear on that, and anyways I LIKE my hypomania).

Yep, that's about all I feel like talking about. I'd apoligize for leaving you with a sucky post, dear imaginaries, but I know you don't care anyways.

Exposure

A few days ago, me and a friend got to talking about our blogs, and he requested the link to mine so he could read it. I gave it to him without thinking, and then promptly had a panicy “holy SHIT what the hell did I just DO?!” fit. I felt terribly afraid, terribly exposed, like someone just revealed my deepest, darkest secrets to the world. I know I’ve mentioned that I’ve had issues with revealing personal things on here to strangers, but there really is no reason for that instinctive reaction- I am a rather open person, I’ll answer any question and it’ll probably be honest. But, then I realized the entire reason I was worried was I thought he might actually read the archives and read this post (in which I talk about depression and being suicidal). I’ve been paranoid about people finding out that I’m suicidal forever, but it hasn’t been until this incident that I’ve really been prompted to figure out WHY. Well…

My first memory of dealing with this issue was when I was 8-ish (as in, anywhere from 6-ish to 8-ish; my chronological memory is rather fuzzy like that). My father bought me this cute little multi-tool (bright pink with rhinestones spelling “princess”… he’s sentimental like that), which included a little knife. I don’t remember exactly how this went down, but I ended up telling my mother that I wanted to kill myself using this little knife. She promptly flipped out, yelled and screamed and cried, threatened to ground me, threatened to send me to live with her mother (whom I never liked very much), send me to therapy (which I thought would have been the most horrible thing in the world, and also convinced me how scared she was, since by then I’ve listened to enough flavors of mother’s rants to know she absolutely hates therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists/the whole breed), destroy what little privacy I was allowed… I was a quick-thinking little bastard even then, managed to convince her that I wasn’t really serious, that it was nothing. I never saw the knife again, which made me rather sad (I loved my dad and the little presents he would give me, and I was upset about having that escape route cut off), and I learned that letting people learn I was suicidal made them freak out and threaten me with unpleasant things. And the things that you learn when you’re little enough really stick with ya.

This got further reinforced later down the road, during Basic. My flightmates put me on suicide watch early on, although I didn’t find out about it until about the middle of the whole ordeal. I had my MTI, his supervisor, and a counselor all asking if I was feeling suicidal. During Basic training, when every moment of time is filled up with important things you need to know/do, when the LAST thing you want is any attention on yourself, that’s the LAST thing you want. I was able to talk my way out of it, figure out the correct level of “well yeah Basic sucks but I’m getting through fine” bullshit to spin for everybody, but it made me even more skittish about ever letting anyone know about this. The awful thing is of course I was suicidal during Basic, but I don’t really know how I got put on suicide watch. I have a couple of guesses; I had a conversation with a flightmate about how I didn’t know why leadership was so concerned about suicide risk, since they had effectively removed any and all means for suicide, someone might have looked into the little journal I kept about , someone might have taken the fact I cried about my first letter way too far, or someone might have just been feeling mean and decided to put me under everyone’s eye. I’m more pissed about not knowing why they put me on suicide watch than anything else, really, since I really am careful about trying to make sure people don’t know...

I can recite all the symptoms of a person going through depression and of a person thinking about suicide. I try to get my hands on every piece of suicide, depression, and homicidal literature I can get my hands on, so I can study it and learn what not to do (in the case of homicide and death literature, it’s to figure out what methods of killing oneself are inefficient). When I get into a depressive swing, or sad about something, I immediately hide from the rest of the world, making whatever excuse I have to, so people can’t see. And usually, when I do this, I bounce off of other people (I tell person X I’m with person Y, tell person Y I’m with person A, and person A I’m with person X), so people don’t realize I’m withdrawing. When I do random cleaning sprees, I end up needing to get rid of a bunch of stuff, but I never give more than a couple pieces away- the rest I sneak off to Goodwill, just in case someone else actually pays attention and makes the connection from what they remember of suicide briefings. When I become friendly with the type of people who tend to inquire about people, I literally calculate how often I need to show a problem (including distributing the appropriate ratio of minor things, such as going to bed late, to major, such as friend being stressed over not being able to find a job) so people don’t suspect I’m hiding. I usually use the legit things that crop up, but sometimes I hide when a bunch of things happen at once, and during a long smooth phase I’ll start inventing stuff. When I’m in a depressive swing and have to go to some sort of public place (say, work), I’ve learned to fake smiles and cheery reassurances about something I’m happy and excited about. Half the time, when I’m wandering around, I’m looking up- I’m looking for places high enough that I can get to so I can jump off or tie a noose. I deliberately make myself a bit hard to get ahold of, enough so people think nothing of it if I don’t answer, just to buy myself time before people start looking for the body, so I don’t get rescued.  I tend to ask people alot what they think of me, so I can measure whether I'm acting correctly or not. And of course, I lie on every form that comes by that asks if I’ve thought of suicide, and lie when people ask if I’ve been depressed. A lot of this has become subconscious, and I don’t even realize I do it anymore. And it works- the only people that think I’m suicidal are the people I have actually told (and of course my flightmates at Basic).

One of my most vivid memories dealing with this occurred when I was 13. I had just moved to a new place, into a new school, and I hadn’t really made friends. My parents grounded me for not doing my homework- and grounding didn’t consist of letting me sit in my room all day (since that was basically what I did anyways). I had to actually work outside in the cold, cleaning the outbuildings, raking walnuts, etc. Wasn’t allowed to get on my computer at all, wasn’t allowed to read, wasn’t allowed to anything except eat (quickly) and sleep and go to school. In short, I was absolutely miserable. One evening, I had gotten a lecture from pretty much everybody consisting of “why don’t you apply yourself? Why don’t you make something of yourself? Be better, dammit!”, which lead to me thinking “they don’t understand, I can’t be awesome... might as well die, save them the trouble”. The ironic thing is my parents have always been very big on being honest and keeping your words, and have always thought less of me because I saw no problem breaking the promises they made me say, but the only thing that kept me from running off into the woods and cutting myself right then and there was a promise I made to an aquaintance to show up the next day for scholar’s bowl practice.

Depression is funny… simply speaking, there’s two types of depression: one type involves a person’s situation (a person in absolutely miserable circumstances is very likely to be depressed), and one type involves the chemicals in a person’s brain (thus you get the people who are depressed even when there’s nothing wrong with their life). The first type is treated by therapy, the second with medication. Either one by themselves is miserable and deadly, but combining the two gets ya a real piece of the shit pie. That’s what I described above, and what happened during Basic. For me, the brain-chemical type occurs a lot. It’s part of me being bi-polar; I’ll be high on life, being awesome and creative and full of energy and shit for a couple weeks, then either it’ll die down to “normal” or I’ll have a depressive spell. These depressive spells aren’t actually that deadly; the self-loathing that makes me want to kill myself is accompanied with extreme apathy. I can manage to get to work, do what people tell me to, manage to hide it from the rest of the world, but only because I have to. I literally don’t have the energy to do much more than think about suicide. It’s when situational depression gets thrown into the equation, and combining both factors is when I’m at most risk. I can handle it when life sucks and turn it around into something positive, or just accept it, when I’m feeling normal or hypomaniac; I can’t deal when I’m depressed. The fact that people around me generally keep a really close eye on me is probably the only reason I’m alive, to this point.

Don’t worry, imaginaries, I’m not allowed to actually kill myself. Like I said, people keep a close eye on me (especially here- I have friends in my dorms who are always hanging around, and the people in my shop are extra careful since they lost one of their own to suicide last year, over the holiday). I have four people I can trust to talk me out of being suicidal, because they’ve had to do it before. I have had to talk my sister out of suicide, and I know how terrifying that can be, especially when it’s over the phone and you can’t actually sit on the person and make them hold still or run them to see a chaplain, and I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been if I had failed, if she had died… and I’m determined not to do that to my kith and kin. I might unconsciously look up to find a good spot to hang myself, but I have carefully kept myself from actually acquiring rope, knives, ways to tie weights to myself so I don’t have to worry about reflexes kicking in to keep myself from drowning, pills, chemicals, a gun, etc. I’ve put off making my will, simply because I know that’ll make impulsive suicide a lot easier (of course, it’ll get done eventually, and I already have my life insurance all up-to-date, but still).

My last close call with suicide happened back in tech school. It was my 19^th birthday, I had gotten a tattoo, I was all sorts of happy about feeling like a real adult, with a private life, when I did what I wanted when I wanted, pretty much, etc. However, late that night I ended up at a hotel party, with everyone else drinking besides me (I wasn’t actually interested in alcohol, and was terrified of a hangover), and felt terribly lonely, and realized that although I had a ton of aquaintences who ate up all my time, I didn’t really have anybody I deeply connected to. So I went and wandered off for a walk… the hotel was near the edge of a suburb, so I ended up wandering through residential area with a bunch of trees, and then followed an empty highway for a while. After an hour’s worth of walking, I came to a point where that highway became a bridge over another section of highway- and the lanes beneath me were super busy, with a healthy dose of semis passing by underneath me. I was in an open state of mind, really thinking deeply, and I was talking to some of the things I passed (trees, buildings, and then the moon). The moon was full, and she basically told me to make a decision already, to either be fully in this life or fully out and die already. Spent a good bit thinking about it, and then I finally came to the conclusion that dammit, I actually wanted to die. I didn’t see what good I could do for anybody, and I was tired of feeling like I could never repay this debt I incurred just by existing, because other people had to take care of me, presumably expecting something in return and never getting it. I was so close to just hopping over the railing… but one of the trees I talked to earlier on that walk reached out and grabbed me, anchored me to life, did the psychic equivalent of sitting on me so I couldn’t leap. Boy, was I pissed… I yelled and raved and screamed at the poor tree, but to this day zie still hasn’t let go (and tears form and surprise me now, thinking about how much zie cares for me). So really, at this point I literally can’t die… which scares and disappoints me like nothing else, but I’ll live.

So, why have I never once wanted to get treatment? Obviously, I’m instinctively paranoid about letting people know this (and I have no idea what’s driving me to write this post, and worse publish it). Also, my mother had no problem ranting about every single opinion she has, and I’ve always been a rather gullible child. One of her opinions is her detest of the mental health community; “either they insist on telling you what you already know, because you just told them, and therefore are of no help, or they want to fill you with drugs, without actually knowing what they’re going to do to you”. I no longer believe the anti-therapy portion of that rant, but I also know it won’t be able to help me much, certainly at this point: A lot of the self-loathing has been fixed thanks to the miracle of getting out of the rents house and actually making a life for myself, and I don’t have (and don’t expect to encounter) situational depression again. Hell, my last depressive episode, I managed to be depressed (apathy, failing to find enjoyment in hobbies (wasn’t able to focus on creative work), avoiding social situations) without actually thinking of suicide, so progress! As for the chemical bit… I have more faith in the medical community than my mother does, but I’m also terrified of what drugs would do to my brain. Even if there aren’t any side-effects (which I am leery of assuming), it’s still fundamentally changing my brain. Even though it’s designed to make the depression go away, it’s also designed to make the mania go away, and I LIKE my mania! I’m one of those people who always needs an escape route, and I’ve always lived a regimented life (first my parents home, and now the Air Force), where I don’t really have a way out except death. I have no fear of death, and don’t believe it to be a moral sin to suicide, and I always want that option open to myself (which is why I’m still angry at the tree for saving me, since zie has effectively trapped me here). Being bi-polar is a significant part of my identity, and since it doesn’t actually seem to interfere with my life, just with how I react to things…. I don’t want to mess with my brain. Yes, this is probably denial, but I don’t care.

Later I’ll figure out why I felt the need to post this monster self-analysis that none of you dear imaginaries probably care about… but right now I’m gonna go sleep. TGIF!

Gyaaaaaah

So, I wrote out this huge, nice little post giving a basic introduction to how complex Tarot readings can be.... and guess what happened? That's right, poof. *sigh* yeah, I could shoot something right now... except I'm just sane enough to actually realize that wouldn't fix anything. Kinda debating trying to write it out again, but until then...

Hearts are sore and breaths are quick
Snow floats to the ground without regret
Grey skies overhead, bare trees behind
And through it all, a life lead through sighs...

Yeah, kinda been dabbling in poetry... you can see how much it sucks, it's basically just me setting up some imagry with a little bit of emotion behind it, leaving the reader to intuit a story behind it. Actually, I realized I like doing that with alot of writing- setting up a scene, and leaving the reader to make a story for themselves. Not sure if that makes me seriously fucking lazy or not... or if that's a brilliant way to go about a book (since it lets the reader make a story that rings true to them at any moment, since they're always creating a story, able to read something new into it every time they read). I dunno, guess I'll figure it out eventually. Not like I've actually been serious about my writing, ever... and I doubt I will ever get serious, either. Maybe next year... the rest of this year is pretty planned out, and I've fallen into the social butterfly trap again, but it seems like half my social circle is leaving shortly *sadface*, but if I can avoid making more friends (or develop a backbone and get more assertive about demanding me time), and actually make time for myself, I'll actually work on writing actual stories (as well as meditating, talking to trees, sleeping, all that good stuff)!

In other news... you know how last year I wrote about being fucking depressed? Well, that actually mostly went away after I went to Basic, and I figured it was just that Basic managed to reprogram me enough that I didn't hate myself any longer.... but then recently I overextended a bunch with my power (basically I had to take care of a bunch of shit all at once), and tried to hide behind shielding to recover, and then I got a major case of depression again. So now I'm figuring that I get depressed when I close myself off. Though I managed to be depressed without actually seriously thinking about suicide, so go me?

And for a random epiphany I feel like sharing with the internet, I've realized just how amazingly fucked up my life was when I was living with my parents. Like, you can imagine how much Basic sucks, right? Bunch of people having all their freedoms stripped away, packed tightly in close quarters, half of them getting sick at various intervals, stressed as all hell... imagine having all that around you from all the people all around you, compounded by all the echoes from all the flights before you, as an empath. Scary thing is, I was able to open up my shields during Basic because the emotional pressure around me was seriously reduced. That's how much pain my parents house is in (basically both parents suffer continuous headaches, mother has continuous migraines plus a random neurological disease that means she has no sense of balance and her brain melts anytime she's exposed to +80 degrees, both parents are alcoholics and have serious depression issues, the entire area feels dead, droughts regularly happen in our area, etc). On the plus side, I learned how to make very strong shields almost unconsciously (I can be in a super crowded club and not be bothered, while other sensitives around me are freaking the hell out, and not realize what they're bothered by until I deliberately reach out and then run away because holy hell), but on the negative side, I have to actually consciously let down my shields if I want to sense anything. And considering how I do alot of things unconsciously... yeah, it can be a bitch.

Anyways, that's about half of what's going on in my brain. There's a whole other chapter on the shit going on in my brain, but it all involves other people and/or current events I'm not actually sure I want to share with the Internet (and the three dear imaginaries who read this blog, all of whom know me in real life), so... At least I've gotten this much off my chest. There's a reason I created this little "personal bullshit" section, so I can get this shit off my chest and pretend I have an audience who cares, while relegating it off to the corner so decent people don't actually have to look at it! Yay organization and human ingenuity!

Freaking everything

Unfortunately, time flies when you're having fun. I've left tech school, after six and a half months, and even though by everyones standards I'm lucky (I had basically as little time as can be expected), I wish I had more time at tech school... I like the place, I love the people, there's so many things and people and places ill miss, and I wish I had more time to enjoy it all. I don't have many regrets- I definitely lived by YOLO, and even though its gotten me in trouble a few times I still think its worth it (mostly), and I used all the time I had... just wish I had more. *le sigh*

But still, its better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all... all the people back at tech school I saw being super negative and hating the place, when they finally graduate they were all "omg seems like I've been here forever", while time has flown by for me. So it seems to boil down to "like the place, have a good time and be off to your next place before you know it" or "hate the place and be there forever". Personally, the first choice still sounds far more awesome.

But anyways, this is me writing this in the airport, waiting to go home for a week of leave before I go off for on the job training. Dunno how horribly my posting will be affected, and I don't know if ill end up telling you dear imaginaries about my little trip... guess you'll have to see. I promise ill be creative and interesting later ^.^

40 (Life, the Universe, but not quite Everything)

I know, I haven’t been around in a while, what kinda blogger am I… Funnily enough, this absence hasn’t been because I have nothing to say, it’s because I’ve been distracted! You know how it is- you find this awesome person you have a lot in common with and can spend all your time just chilling with them… and then they graduate tech school and leave in 2 months because like everybody else, he’s a poptart ><. I do miss him horribly, and I can’t even be mad at him for leaving (he has a bunch of shit at home he needs to take care of before moving on to his next base), but… I’ve noticed that I kinda like having all this free time now that I’m not spending it on him XD. Yes, that is my fault- I’m very much a friend-oriented person, I’ll let a friend do anything and do anything for a friend (up to a point of course, but that point is pretty high), but still, I don’t have any true friends left here (hell, even most of my aquaintances are gone or about to leave), so… I obviously need to find things to do with this time XD. I actually have a few things in mind (writing more, actually practicing my roller blading, learning German), and of course when I get tired of being by myself I can always wander down to the smoke pit and find somebody to tag along with for an adventure like I’ve been doing for most of my time here, so… I should be good.

It’s funny, I’ve had this blog for a whole year now, and I still don’t know what I want to do with it XD. But, let’s see… Blogs are generally for people to talk about what’s important to them, so I suppose that’s a good direction. Only problem is, I’ve always been very terrible at figuring out what’s important to me that I can talk about; of course friends are very important to me, but I don’t want to compromise their privacy on this blog, even with changed names or other protective measures. What a person does, and who they are, is very identifiable after all, and since they’re showing me sides to themselves they don’t share with the world at large, it would be very unfair of me to display those sides of them to the world at large and I won’t do it. So… I don’t actually do a lot by myself, actually. That’s fixing to change, since I want to explore solitude and see if I enjoy it. Apparently I’m an introvert- I love socializing and hanging out, but I do find it exhausting, and since generally all I do to recharge is sleep, that makes me a very uninteresting person, and I don’t think I like that. After all, people are generally attracted to people with some sort of passion, and since I don’t have a lot of passion… I’m surprised I have as many friends as I do XD. Though I am a good listener and can tell them what they need to hear, so that makes sense.

But what I do on my own… I scribble (especially during class when the instructor decides they don’t wanna teach that hour), which is mostly journaling random thoughts or some issue I need to think through and organize, with the occasional doodle, I design tattoos for myself (it’s a slow process, since I would love to cover my body in ink but obviously right now I can’t quite do that, and since I insist on designing all my tattoos myself and having loads of meaning behind them it takes a while to think of ideas, design them, make sure all the meanings behind them are harmonious with myself; plus I have to think about money, since tattoos get expensive and since right now I’m saving for my trip to Oregon after tech school to be with my sister for a couple of weeks I’m not going to be able to get it done until after I reach Ramstein at least, longer if I decide to save for a motorcycle before getting more tattoos…), I read (lately it’s been non-fiction; apparently I’m starved for something to learn that’s actually interesting XD)… and that’s about it, actually. Right now I’m studying the tarot, Wicca, and anthropology.

With the tarot, I’m nowhere near the point where I’d be comfortable giving readings to others, but I have the basic meanings of all the cards down; right now I’m at the point where I’m cross-referencing the different directions different decks will take the meanings of the cards and studying the subtleties. I have one deck that I learned the basics from and I’ve had forever, but it isn’t quite right for me and now I don’t know what to do with it; another deck that’s a Steampunk novelty deck, I would use it as a public deck and read people with it if I ever go in that direction; and then I’ve finally found MY deck, one that clicks with me very well, I use it on myself, let it help sort out the chaos in my head. Most people think of reading the future when they hear “tarot”, but what it actually does is analyze your life as it stands, and the past patterns within your life, and then takes that path and shows you what the next step along that path is. How it does this… basically, while you shuffle the cards, you’re letting them sample your energy and “see” you, and then when they’re dealt out the cards will have arranged to have the right ones show where they need to in the reading. As a witch, I talk of this process in terms of energy, but if you don’t follow that path an atheist buddy said that he thought they were able to do what they do because when you shuffle them, you introduce randomness, and then when they’re dealt they’ll come up correctly because you will have shuffled them in a way that’s peculiar to you and thus have arranged those cards relative to you instinctively. Either way, the cards are a very useful analytical tool; you can use them to see how you’re going about your life (so you can use that information to decide if you like that path), make a choice (basically by making a divided spread, with the two halves representing the two choices and the consequences of those choices), take a deeper look at the relationships within your life (see the underlying dynamics between you and whoever you need to examine; your parents, siblings, friends, lovers, teachers, etc), analyze your past (if you’re confused by what really happened during some vivid event, or just to see what sort of patterns you’ve been raised in), etc etc. If you’re a witch, you could also to determine your future (arrange the cards into a spread showing your life as it is now and what you want your future to look like, then leave them in that configuration and marinate them in power), though personally I don’t like to; I trust Life to lead me where I need to go, and since I basically see life as an adventure and something to explore, trying to carve out a definite path seems rather silly to me.

With Wicca… I’ve talked about my issue with calling myself Wiccan in an earlier post, and since then I’ve figured “well, why not actually study Wicca, see where the fine lines are between different flavors of Wicca and beliefs that are actually outside Wicca, and then see where I fit”, so I’ve found a few books on the subject from a few different people, and been going through them (slowly, I admit, mostly because I’m finding I don’t like ritual very much, and since most of Wicca revolves around ritual… yeah). What I’ve come to so far is that Wicca is about a person’s connection to Life (most wiccans call it God and Goddess, or Lord and Lady; still deciding if I want to go that route. Basically, God and Goddess are about duality, opposite ends of the spectrum of Life; day and night, height and depth, air and fire, earth and water, etc etc; and how these aspects of Life interact. Interestingly enough, Good and Evil are never mentioned; it’s always understood that neither God and Goddess are “better” than the other, just different. Haven’t found a Wiccan explaination for evil yet, actually…) and the various rituals one can do to affirm that connection. You have probably figured this out by now, but I’m a free spirit, and ritual just doesn’t make sense to me; you’re going to celebrate Nature by setting up a little altar and praying? You’re going to preform a spell by setting up a ton of focuses, rather than just willing what you need to happen and moving the energies needed for that yourself? You’re going to talk to the Goddess and God, rather than the universe itself, or the specific aspect you want to talk to (ocean, sun, etc)? The whole system just frustrates me… but I can put a lot of what I do into Wiccan language (energies, spells, etc; though my definitions probably differ than the classic Wiccan definitions. For example, my spells are simply me moving energy to make something happen, no ritual necessary. Or, I often think of music as a spell, since it’s energy will make me respond and harmonize with that energy. It doesn’t mean I can calm myself down with peaceful music when I’m anxious, though- it will simply fail to harmonize with me and I have to turn it off. Mostly I use music to amplify what I’m feeling already; say, if I wish to call up a storm, I may put on Nightwish. And of course there are times when my energies are confused enough that I can’t bear to listen to any type of music, which means it’s time for me to go withdraw or talk to the sky or a tree, let them sort me out), so… Yeah, still debating that one XD.

And I’m studying anthropology as my “frivolous” subject; not that anthropology is frivolous, but I find it easy to read and read and read, and besides it’s fascinating. Learning the underlying mechanisms for why and how cultures are formed and maintained and developed, why cultures collapse, how cultures shape people, the different values different cultures have and how much people tend to take those values to heart… I believe I have mentioned that I’m rather introspective, and anthropology is another tool for me to use to analyze myself; besides, I like to challenge my assumptions, and how better to do that than learn what assumptions I was raised under (even if I was raised unconventionally, I will still have several American assumptions), why my culture makes those assumptions, and contrast those assumptions with the assumptions other cultures make?

Anyways, that’s all that’s going on at the moment. Hopefully you enjoy that rare meaty post XD.