SheFallsSoftly

I’m on a new antidepressant, and I’m finding the world harder to deal with than ever before. The first few weeks are supposed to be like this, and then when enough builds up in my system it’s supposed to get easier… It’s just hard to get through this part.

I feel distinctly like no one understands me today, and there is not enough trust in those relationships I truly cherish.

There is nothing worse than getting criticism from someone you consider your lesser.

Does pinocchio live in fear that if he’s ever a bad boy again he’ll get turned back into wood?

My metaphors are overly vague and also stupid.

Ch: "Platypus is a funny word."

W: "Platypus is a funny animal."

C: "It uses too much racial humor for me."

Well, school has started and greek looks incredibly promising. I’m finding it surprisingly easy to read the words, which is great. I also had my first day of Chicano Lit yesterday, and got to give an anti-statism critique on my homework assignment. They asked us to define words like chicano, hispanic, latin american, white, mexican american, etc… And in the space where otherwise each individual answer would have been written I went on a tirade about how national borders don’t exist and patriotism is a lie. It’s pretty much fantastic.

My kidneys are splendid once again, thank you for everyone’s concern.

Today I start my Latin course, along with my Women’s Studies course with Dr. Irvine. I’m pretty excited about both of those classes, I’ll have 3 phenomenally awesome teachers today. My greek teacher, Dr. Beck, is about the most laid back person I’ve ever met. Homework is due within a week of the day we go over it in class. Tests and quizzes can be corrected after the fact for credit. He doesn’t have a proper attendence policy, but you do get points for coming in. I like him a lot. Dr. Wagner is terrifically witty and simply very good at what he does. Dr. Irvine is who I want to be when I grow up. All in all, it should be a nice day.

Work has been going well, I haven’t actually trained anyone yet but I really feel like I know what I’m doing now.

My ego is on high these days. I’ve been feeling happy and well adjusted. It’s a nice change. I’m still liking my therapist, we seem to be making some progress. I have a meeting with a psychiatrist on wednesday and I’ll likely be prescribed some medication at some point for my anxiety and whatnot, but I’m not certain anymore if I’ll take it. We’ll see.

I’m off to class. <3

Okay, so I’m alive… Essentially, here’s what’s happened in the last three days.

Monday night, I went out to Pho Sooner with Chris and had some very tasty pho. Then I went over to Andrea’s place for a number of hours, and was out til a little past 1 am. Given my very weird neuroses about using other people’s bathrooms, let’s just say that I really needed to when I got home. One would think that would be the end of the story, but oh no, Casey’s fragile little body and virtually non existant immune system has always got something to throw at her if I treat my body poorly. A little while after that I started shaking uncontrollably and having really awful muscle spasms, and jolting pains. This went on for 1-2 hours before I finally fell into a fit of restless sleep.

Tuesday morning, I woke up and didn’t feel too awful actually. I was able to make it to my 10 o’clock shift at work with very few problems, aside from a lot of muscle and kidney pain. After I left my shift, I went home and napped for a while and woke up feeling infinitely worse. I felt really nauseous, had a terrible migraine, very dizzy. Luckily what woke me up was my manager asking me to come in an hour early. So, because we’ve been severely understaffed this week, I headed in and spent most of the time with my head on the table doing my best not to move. I ended up taking a bunch of tables, getting them to the point that they were almost finished, and then transferring them to someone else because I just didn’t feel up to staying the half hour to get the tip. I went home, took some nyquil, and had another night of really restless sleep.

Wednesday morning, I woke up and called Goddard and made an appointment. I went in, and had an X-ray, a urine test, a bunch of blood tests, a full vaginal exam, talked to a surgeon,  and 2 other specialist doctors. By this point the pain is pretty much unbearable and all of the running around and insinuations that it might be appendicitis, a gall bladder problem, a kidney stone, or a really terrible kidney infection were giving me panic attacks. My doctor finally decides that I need a CAT Scan, and so they actually make me take a wheelchair out of Goddard and William drove me to the hospital. I had never been to a hospital before, but they’re much more calm environments than clinics. I got there and got to do more urine analysis, more blood tests, and had more people prod and poke me. Also, when I arrived my fever was at 103.2. They put an IV in my arm, and made me drink 3 cups of Barium Kool-aid which is sort of like Arsenic and Old Lace, except less you want to hug the sweet old ladies and more you feel like you’re a five year old again. Might I mention that I hate Kool-Aid and barium tastes awul. After that was allowed to circulate through my system for about an hour and a half, they took me in for my CAT scan. They hooked me up to an IV of some dye that burned like nothing I have ever felt before, and made my whole body tingle. After the CAT Scan, they let me go back to my room and gave me morphine, which was probably the only good part of the day. I wouldn’t say it really stops all of the pain, because I could definitely still feel it, but it was this great cloudy floating feeling that made me really just not care about it. A few minutes after that, the doctor came in and told me that I had a really bad Kidney infection, that there was blood overspilling from my kidneys, and my white cell counts was about 2.5 times higher than it should have been. They hooked me up to an antibiotic IV and I slept in a happy morphine-induced bliss. At about 5 o’clock they told me that they were releasing me, and they wrote me a prescription for some anti-nausea medication, some antibiotics, and loritab. then I went home and slept once again restlessly, and now here I am.

I feel okay today, still in a lot of pain, but it’s good to know what’s wrong.

i went to the hospital today. there was much pain and sadness. i am home, now. i’ll post what actually happened at a time when i’m more lucid.

also, they gave me morphine… and i have decided to become a drug addict.

I don’t always do things because I think they’ll be good decisions. I do probably about 50% of non vital daily activities solely because they’ll entertain me and I know they’re bad choices. I embrace life as a vaguely entertaining dramatic farce. I presume that everything I’m feeling is fake, that I don’t mean a word I say *really*. Of course, this is the nihilist in me telling me none of it has any meaning, nothing can be true. As long as I can think, I can doubt, and as long as I can doubt reality never quite hits tangibility.

With all of that in mind, let me feign a tear for the past and some hope for the future. Let me say that this is hurting me so deeply, and I’m so sad that I had to do it. Let me pretend like I won’t be able to sleep at night.

The problem is that everyone is writing their own farce, so the part I’m playing is always getting misinterpreted by my critics. Oh, the pain of being an artist. I play honest and genuinely exposed. They interpret as crazed and obsessive.

Let me put it this way; I don’t want him back. Hell, I don’t even want him in my life. Doesn’t mean my characted isn’t obligated to show lots of remorse and even have a dramatic crawling back type scene. For the moment, this is where my script is leading me, and right now I hope that it keeps leading me the same way, no looking backward, no self doubt, no sudden relapse.

What I want, or more accurately what my character is scripted to want, is to stop thinking all of the goddamned time. I want to stop worrying and asking questions, and pondering philosophically, and I want to stop being this type of intelligent. I know lots of very booksmart girls who have never once questioned their existence. I want that. I want peace of mind, and simplicity, and I want to really have a unified vision of what I want that doesn’t involve going back in time and changing all of these atrocious choices I’ve made.

I am angry right now. I had my feelings hurt, and I feel exposed and humiliated. I am bitter right now because what I thought I wanted is turning out to be something entirely different than I had envisioned. It isn’t what I wanted at all, it is some gross charicature of one aspect of what I wanted. Angry and bitter are good motivators when it comes to making changes, and I have been pretty certain for a good long while that this change had to be made.

I’m really no good at goodbyes. What I wanted to say in that conversation was not what I said. All I really wanted to say was "I am so much better than the way you treat me. I do not like the part of you I have found, and I don’t want to know it anymore. Go fuck yourself." I always add lines that just clutter the meaning and the feeling. Likely, even if I had gotten that far I would have added on a  good "Someday, I hope you pull your head out of your ass long enough to be happy," but it really wouldn’t have portrayed the selfish self preservation that I’m indulging right now.

I’m the sort of girl that loves a challenge. Maybe I should keep my challenges rooted in academia from now on.

Massive edit. I never seem to say quite what I want to.





I don’t know how many times I’m going to repeat these mistakes, but it’s hurting more and more every time now.

Don’t start games that you don’t intend to finish. It’s callous and cowardly.

Sometimes I remind myself that I’m not strong enough to play these games, but then I remember that I’m not weak enough to take this abuse.

Missing someone, really missing someone, starts when you look through pictures of the two of you together, and you stop noticing the way your hair’s a mess in all of them. The goofy look on your face, how fat or thin you look, if you can see that wrinkle, all of those details just melt away and you get caught up, not in yourself and your flaws, but the memory of the skin and hair and eyes you’re looking at… When you remember the taste of fingertips, the warmth of skin, the shadow of a kiss. When all you can see is the person you want to be with more than anything.

That’s only how it begins, though and it gets so much deeper. Talking on the phone, they’ll make a joke that warms your heart up, and you’ll laugh so hard you think you might burst, and then maybe, just maybe, you’ll reach out to touch them in gratitude for that moment, that feeling, and those words. They won’t be there, though, and you’ll remember that you are a thousand miles away from being able to say thank you in a language that makes sense to you.

Maybe late at night you’ll wake up, and slide to the other side of the bed, seeking chest, hands, skin, and by mistake pull the extra pillow close. Still nearly sleeping, you’ll start awake, wondering why it isn’t them you’re touching. You’ll look at the clock, the walls, and you’ll remember, and it’s hard to feel more alone ever than you will at that moment.

There are a million tiny little things that will remind you, an urge to retort to some friend with an inside joke they wouldn’t understand, a sentiment that just can’t be expressed in words, but mostly the loneliness at night. You’ll feel isolated, and you’ll feel far away, but you will also feel how real this has become, this need. This passion. This entire thing… You can say I don’t need just anyone, I need them.

I came here because I wanted to learn to let go of one person… Maybe instead I’ve found how to hold onto another.

Let me tell you a story.

In eighth grade, when I was still young, impressionable, and highly awkward, I sat next to a boy named Rob in art class. He was, and I suppose even now is, the portrait of the boy I desire and wish to date. A brilliant artist, incredibly talented, with an undernurtured sense of motivation. Self aware, intelligent, witty, passionate, and deep, and with a bite of danger. Rob, you see, was a skater boy and not just any skater boy, but a stoner skater boy. He’d talk to me while we worked, explaining how if he’d just try he could do anything, but he didn’t care enough, how he knew if he wouldn’t do drugs he’d be so much more talented. I would swoon. I would imagine that maybe I could change him. Back then, though, I wasn’t my forward and outgoing self and I certainly wasn’t willing to ask him on a date, and as such my swoonings never amounted to anything.

But what if they had?

I’d probably be an entirely different person, and most likely would have been pulled into the wrong group of friends, done drugs, became an unmotivated little soul as well. I’d probably be relaxed and easy going, less socially awkward, but I wouldn’t be going to college across the country, I bet. I wouldn’t have a full ride scholarship. I might not have met Tony, or Zack, I might not have become my little emotionally distraught self. Not in the same way, at least. Maybe I’d still be an artist, and I never would have focused on my writing. Maybe my little sister would have learned from my mistakes. Maybe she would have followed in my footsteps.

Sometimes I let these hugely important moments of self definition pass me by and I don’t recognize them until years later, sometimes I don’t recognize them at all. It’s 3 AM where I am right now, and I’m thinking that what you know of me would not exist if I would have known then to smile and act flirtatiously.

Would it have been a big loss?

I think so.

I like who I am… and I’m going to start acting like it.