Drinking Coffee, Eating Cookie, Thinking About Fish

Even though I am not really in the mood, it's this or I read more of my self-help book.  Today, I chose this.

I just want to say, really fast, that the new season of Doctor Who, and the new Doctor--Mr. Matt Smith--are going to be great.  Great writing, great monsters/bad guys/aliens, great new TARDIS.  I don't like the new theme, but, what can you do?  Hum it the way it used to be while the new credits roll?  You'd better believe I will.  I'll miss David, Ten being my Doctor through and through, but Matt Smith is going to be fantastic.  Steven Moffatt is going to be fantastic.  This season is going to be good.  I can feel it.

In other news, today I heard from Gap that they wanted to sue me, so I agreed to give them $200 a month.  I am honestly more annoyed that they are bothering with my $600 debt, an amount they make from one card-holder's interest.  I will pay off the debt, thank you for making me, truthfully, but really?  Is this what they are wasting their time and money on?  Me?  I am sure someone owes more than me somewhere in this world.  It's GE Money, they probably have people who owe them tens of thousands.  And here I am with my little $600.  Oy, I say, to all of these stupid people in the credit world.  You'll get your goddamn $600, I'll pay you, I'll have to; but know this: you're a big lad, but you've got no brain, so shut your fucking face.

I was a bit sick to my stomach when they wanted me to pay them $230 every two weeks.  I told them they were crazy, and they knocked it down.  I have gotten a job that will cover my ass and help me save, so it's time I pay off somebody, but at first it made me a little scared to think about giving away $200 a month.  I shortly came to my senses.  I had been doing my thing where I write down the money I make and all of my expenses and what I could have if I did this or that, over and over again.  I tore out the page, crumbled it up, and told my brain (and my stomach) to shut it.  I can handle the money, I can be shrewd, and I don't need to lecture myself and preach day after day on how to do it.  It just needs to happen.  I need to be happy about this, because guess what?  I'll have them paid off in three months.  I could re-open an account with them and use it when I have the money for clothes to rebuild my score.  This is not a bad thing.  This is a progressive thing, a step forward thing, a see-how-it-can-work-out-and-you-can-learn thing.  A grow-up thing.

A grow-up thing.

Speaking of growing-up, or sizing down, I'm at 204 and ready to make it 195.  I took a lot of time off from the gym because of a wicked sunburn to my face, upper arms, and chest, and after having worked out with a sunburn yesterday and today, I am glad I did.  Turns out, when you have a layer of burnt, dead skin still on top of the layer of new, raw skin, and you sweat, you get weird little bubbles all over.  Full of sweat.  And then you have to scrub in the shower, which removes the burnt, dead skin before the new, raw skin is quite ready to see the world, leaving your shoulders and chest feeling like owie.  All night last night, but better today.

Sleeping with the burn has been a pain in my ass, but I am doing okay otherwise.  My face is tanned unevenly, but what can you do?

Anyway...I don't know what to talk about anymore.  So, there's that.

I Have Nothing Cute to Say

I Wasn't Expecting the Spanish Inquisition

I'm all hopped up on caffeine and anxiety.  The update I have to post is extremely long, but I am going to make myself post it, I may just do it over a couple of entries the next few days. I am making myself, no matter what. I am making myself.

Right now, I don't know what to say. I just saw the psychologist and I am not sure how I am feeling. I honestly want to curl into a ball and sob, but then I feel this lightness underneath, this little glimmer of hope, something I haven't felt before, and it's nice. It's hard to feel it, though, for all it's worth when I am shaking and aching with anxiety over the whole thing. I thought therapy was supposed to make you feel better, but I suppose the whole admittance of the problem doesn't necessarily make one warm and fuzzy. I don't know how I am supposed to be feeling, if I am supposed to be joyful or sad. I know that I am going to go back. I know that I am going to make an honest effort. I know that I am tired and worn and sick of myself the way that I am. But I don't know how I feel right now. I feel like crying.

All and all, March was a pivotal month. Several things happened, good and bad, and all of them need to go here and into the book. It certainly will be a chapter of it's own, but this second as I sit down to think about it, I can't think of anything to write. Isn't that scary?

I don't know about my friends, if I've still got them or not. I haven't really spoken to any of them in a while.  I don't know about my family, if our relationships are developing or we just don't care anymore.  I don't know about myself.  I do know that I am suddenly, for no other reason than because, on the right track.  Isn't that scary, too?

Whatever these past few months have been, whatever this year will be, I know that this is certainly important, that this is a moment to be noted and advantage to be taken.  I can feel it, just around the corner, a newer, better me. A happier me if just because I am in control and am capable and believe it for the first time. It is there, but it isn't going to come to me, I still have to reach for it, and reaching is still sometimes hard. But I am upping my game, I am set on pushing myself, I am determined to out-do what's been done. I am tired of being fat, of being scared, of being stupid. I am getting stronger, getting smarter, and getting better. I am tired of caring when it isn't necessary, and tired of wishing I couldn't care. Mostly, I am tired of being sad about nothing and hurt by nobody. I am tired of feeling trapped in my shell, fat and uncomfortable and lazy, and am ready to be everything I could be if I tried. I'm ready to try.

I don't know what else to talk about right now, because there is a lot to discuss. The fantastic thing is, things have actually happened that allow me to discuss certain aspects of my life and my childhood, I just have to do some analyzing.  I think, though, I'll save analyzing for tomorrow, and just enjoy the high I am starting to feel at realizing I am finally on the right track.  

I want to be unforgettable, and I feel like I am moving toward making an impression. I don't want to analyze right now. Right now, I want to reach out to the people who still remember me from long ago, and I want to feel like I am alive.  Does that sound really, truly strange? It does to me, but guess what, it's what I want to do.  Old friends, memories of times when I felt happy, even if I didn't know whether or not I actually was. People who remember me when I was good, and who remember me when I was bad, and who want to see the change and the growth.  I want to hear from those people, chat about life, feel forgiven and forgive.  That is the feeling that I have, other than wanting to cry--which happens a lot anyway. I want to be surrounded by people who didn't forget me when I forgot myself.

What a weird post.  I bit erratic.  Too much Python?

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

I am a Loony in a Loony Bin

I have so much to fucking write about, it's sick.

I did want to post a teeny update with some things for the booky book.

First of all, I already have four chapters planned.

"Chapter One" the first month, ish, is going to be called "Fuck my Life, Eddie" for many reasons.

"Chapter Two" is going to be called "When Mitt Romney Became John Cleese" and is curiously not about that at all, but it is about reinvention, in a way.

One chapter is currently out of my head and I can't put a finger on what I was going to call it.

And then one about friendship and redeeming qualities is going to be about my search for a very old, very distant friend and how I have changed and how friends have truly shaped me to be who I am, if nothing else.

Anyway, that's that for today, because there are four miles waiting for me to walk them and a high speed and an incline.

PS, I am at 207 pounds.

The Loony Bin is My Life

I Lick the Gun when I'm Done

I'm in Dallas.  With my sister.  What a shocker...seriously.

I very much need to make an update and write many things down. I think that I will do that, but after this trip. Trouble is, I felt that I needed this trip quite a lot, but it has now drained my pocketbook.  So, I am going to spend next week at home saving on gas.

I think it will be another good thing, though, because I can get things in order.

I did take some steps I can mention without a whole long, literate post.

I got myself health insurance.  It is for part-time employees, so it may not be the most comprehensive, but it is fucking better than nothing. AND, it included part-time dental/vision.  Thing is, I can't find any literature on what that entails. Probably one visit a year, which is fine. A dental check-up for them to tell me I have shit for teeth and a vision check-up for them to tell me my eyes have gotten a bit worse--gasp--here's a new scrip for contacts--yay!  And then a trip to the doctor who will give me a new inhaler, just in case, a new scrip for my favorite allergy medication, and possibly something for my acne.  Because I am nearly twenty-two and I still have acne.

I got a bank account.  It's there.  It's soon to be empty thanks to Dallas and having to pay for an extra tank of gas to get back and froth from Stillwater.  But, I have one, and I am not going to regret getting it either.

I filed my taxes, but I didn't.  Because I need my annual income whatever from last year, and I lost the flash drive all that info was on. So, I have to wait until I can pay twenty bucks to see last years W-2 from Old Navy--which I have to get to file last years state taxes--and I can add it up and e-file. That will be next Friday. Stupid.

Otherwise, I am in Dallas, and I am not going to regret it. Went to see dead people yesterday--the best part, sickeningly, were the fetuses.  Fetal bone growth displays, where they highlighted the bones of the little babies and made their skin transparent so we could see said highlighted bone, was the absolute coolest. If you get a chance, go see Bodies, whenever it is in your city/the city you are in.  It is very cool, and informative, and mostly very cool.  Made me want to get back into school, too, so that I might one day get to touch the bones instead of just go see them in an exhibit.

Today, the aquarium, which better not be expensive, and then something else she no doubt will want to do that will cost money that I won't have.

Ah well, it's nice to be in a city and to not have to worry about work or anything but walking around and enjoying the absolutely lovely weather.

The transit system here, P.S., is way fucking cool.  I am such a rapid transit nerd.

Also, thanks to Chetara, for putting the song the title and following lines are from into my brain.

'Cause I Know the Revenge is Sweet

Week of Ups and Downs

My best friend lost her V-card, my sister asked me to go on a fun trip to Dallas, I made an appointment with a psychologist, and I just had a fantastic work-out at the gym without a single sign of asthma.  I clearly have a lot to talk about, and a big post is coming up; but, right this second, I need a shower like a dirty dog and maybe a sandwich just as badly.

So, keep eyes and...well, eyes peeled for an update coming to a blogger near you. 

Definitive, to Say the Least

And the World Spins Madly On

I am about to call all of the companies to whom I owe money.  The last people I ever want to talk to are bill collectors, but I have to change my address and get my statements so that I can start the process of paying them off.  My biggest, most paralyzing fear in this world is my debt, and how terrified I am that I have fucked it up forever, fucked myself over beyond repair.  I'm twenty-one years old, and that is honestly my fear.

I have to keep telling  myself that they can't hurt me.  They really can't do anything to me, not for debt.  I don't even owe that much.  It's the fear of failure, of disappointment, of people looking at me like I am incapable and a loser.  And it is the fear that I will never, under any circumstances, truly overcome.  But, they can't hurt me, not more than I have already hurt myself.

So, I am going to get myself together and stop irrationally crying over this.  I am going to soothe myself, so that my heart will stop palpitating like it does every time I think of money.  I am going to chill out, stop shaking, and speak confidently.  They can't hurt me, not more than I've already hurt myself.  It isn't hurting me to trying and help myself.

There is something wrong with me, on the inside.  There must be something wrong.  How can I take a situation about someone else and make it about me? But, my feelings have been hurt, and absolutely no one has regard for the hurt I feel when we're busy focusing on someone else.  It isn't about me, so I don't get to be comforted, and I just have to believe that when I am finally allowed to be, these people will be there for me.  By all accounts, by all my memory, they won't be.  I have the hardest time believing that anyone will.  Part of me doesn't want to believe.  I want to kill that part of me.  That part that believes something will always go wrong.  That part that always tells me, in a whisper at the back of my heart, that everything will fall through.  And everything does, because I listen to it instead of to everything else that tells me it won't.  Everything else, that tells me to believe, to have faith, and things will come through.  I think I am being realistic by believing that tiny voice, but really, I am killing myself one pessimistic thought at a time.

I can't help everyone else when they are falling apart, because I already am.  I can't be there the way I should, so I feel bad, I feel hurt.  I feel pain and I believe they will walk away, they will forget I exist.  I listen to the little voice making me sad, and my friends follow through; they forget me, that don't care, because I can't see anything but the little voice.  I see what it says, not what they do.

I don't want to give up, not on myself and not on my plans, but if I believe everyone else already has--never did anything but--than that's all I will see and that's all that will happen.  I have spent my life giving up before I start.  I have spent my whole life listening to that little voice.  Where did it come from?  What is it's name?  Why has it been here all of this time?  What happened to me?  What have I done?  How did this happen?  What did this to me?

The problem is: we're focusing on someone else who is falling apart, for good reason.  But, I am left with this question myself.  I don't know how to understand it, and everyone in my life is too busy falling apart themselves to help me as I crumble after years of listing to this voice.  And, it isn't just today, it isn't just right now.  Everyone is always falling apart around me.  My mother, my friends, anyone I should be able to hold on to.  All of them and more have at one time abandoned me.  I have never been allowed to "fall apart."  I have never been allowed to focus on me.  No one else has focused on me.  I don't know what to do.  How to deal.  I don't think I can fix myself on my own, but no one is in my life who isn't falling to pieces and my health keeps falling through the cracks.  I have to ask, what about me, but no body wants to answer; I am made to feel selfish.  Everyone is too busy asking that about themselves.  I am told to accept that, because that is all being human is in this world, there isn't one person who is not thinking of only themselves.  I just need one person on my side.  I need one person to remember me.  To not fall apart on me while I am trying to put myself together again.

And for that, I am selfish, like everyone before me, and everyone after.  But I'm the only one feeling like a piece of shit for wondering what's wrong with me while everyone around me is worried about themselves.

I don't know what to do anymore.

I want to help us both, but I don't know that I can.

I'll Move Out of the Way for You

Okay, so here's the deal: I don't like to be tossed about.

And, yet, it happens at least once a week, if not much more often.

I don't like to be led on, I don't like to be lied to, and I don't like to be treated like a second rate individual when I am the one pulling your ass out of every bad situation you get yourself into.  I don't like to be toyed with, but I find I am everyone's favorite play-thing.

I am always there when people need me, and when they don't, I get left behind.

I have done my fair share of bitching about this in the past, people using and abusing me, and I continue to stay on stand-by, I continue to listen, to offer a shoulder, to help out in every way I can.  And I continue to get dumped on.

The problem is, I don't want to be unreliable, or labeled as such.  I don't want to be seen as a cold-hearted bitch or uncaring or unkind.  I want people to rely on me, but I often find people I cannot rely on.

Take my best friends in high school, one of which would go on to abandon me for my brother.  I was always there to soothe the ache for them, but when I needed someone, or when I planned something to make them better, they left me hanging.  One great example is my stupid-ass ex-friend Michelle, the one who thought she was going to marry my brother.  They broke-up one weekend--for the hundredth time, I'm sure--and I, still under her manipulation and thinking my brother was an ass, offered to drive to her city ninety miles away to spend the night and make it better if just for a few days.  Already on my way, I gave her a call to see how she was, and she cancelled.  I sat on the side of the road, trying to talk her out of cancelling, out of staying home alone, but she was already convinced I didn't need to come.  And there I was, prepared to drive an hour and looking forward to seeing someone I hadn't in a while, on the side of the road being told to turn around.  I was furious, but more than that, I was disappointed in myself for believing it was actually going to happen.  That I was actually going to drive the hour, meet her for dinner, hang out bad-mouthing boys, and spend the night on her spare bed.  I thought my problem was that I was an idiot; I am starting to think I am too desperate for something I can't quite put my finger on.

When I had a tarot card reading, one of the cards was to tell me how people saw me.  It said they saw me as unreliable; if I were to make travel plans with them, they would cancel.  I have to agree; but, I have to question as well, because it seems inconsistent.  I have spent the better part of the past few years trying to be anything but unreliable.  I have tried to be there for every bad thing, and have been scolded by it.  And I continue to be there, to go out of my way, even when I know I will eventually be overlooked, because I don't want to seem that way: unreliable.  Maybe my sister or my father put it in my head that I was, or maybe I have just always thought it myself, but it is the last thing I have ever wanted to be.  I don't want to be stupid, I don't want to be cruel, I don't want to be ugly, and I want to be reliable.  I want to be the person you can count on.  I want someone to count on me.

So I push hard to maintain that title, and usually what comes of it is this: your boyfriend becomes more important than me.  He does something truly shitty, and I come around to help out, and once he's back, even without offering apology or sincere regret, you run back to him and continue with your little charade that he loves you and everything will be alright.  I think if I honestly thought the boyfriends they run back to did love them, I wouldn't mind, but usually I am clever enough to realize they don't.  Ironically, of course, you will break up with him, and who will be there to hold you when you cry?  Me.  Because I am a sucker for the needy, and really all I need is to be needed.

And then, when we make plans, when we decide to travel and to road-trip and to do things that people our age are supposed to do, my friends cop-out at the last minute, and leave me hanging high and dry.  I wonder why I haven't ever done anything, it's because everyone bails on me, and I can't foot the bill myself.  And I am afraid to go by myself, but maybe I shouldn't be...maybe I should just keep on going.  Get in the car and drive wherever we were going myself, and then maybe I won't be unreliable.

I don't really know what the problem is.  I think it is that I am a pushover and allow myself to be walked on because I have severe abandonment issues.  I need to learn how to say no, and I need to learn how to not care if I have to.

I don't think I should stop being there for people.  I don't think I should just go away and not help when I am needed.  But, I am dead-tired of being walked on.  Of having plans changed because you let yourself sleep-on it and be swayed.  Some jack-ass treats you like shit, and I allow you to turn around and treat me that way, because you love him, even though he won't ever love you.  I will love you, and you won't ever love me. Not the way I need it.

My mother says I have to draw they right people to me.  I have to be the person I want to get to know, and I have to draw that time of person to me.  I have to learn to weed out the bad, to see them for what they are.  The problem is, that I fall in love too easily, and they aren't necessarily bad friends...when they want to be.

Whatever happened to chicks before dicks?

Whatever happened to loyalty?

Whatever happened to keeping plans with friends, because friends are the families we pick, not the one's we've been stuck with?

Whatever happened to being decent people?

I guess I don't have room to talk.  I guess I can't really be considered a "decent" person.  I guess that is my ultimate downfall.

You draw to you what you project.  I am needy and self-loathing.  Just look at my friends.

I'll Move Out of the Way for Her, Too

Insert Dexter Theme Music Here, Minus the Murder

I found out today that you can't deny who you are; not really.

I don't know that I was actually denying it, ever, but I certainly got confirmation of what I was already pretty suspicious.  That is, of course, that I am heading in the right direction by going into forensics.

There is something about blood spatter on white tile floors that is both attractive and intriguing.  Now, don't read me wrong and think I am going to go Dexter on everyone--who, by the way, doesn't actually enjoy the sight of blood, but does like to "organize it," so to speak, thus his career choice--I don't think I would put the blood there purposefully from the veins of either myself or someone else just to look at it shimmer, I don't think I could ever do that.  But, clearly, I could certainly one to photograph, analyse, and collect the blood that has already been spattered by someone else's volition.  And, in fact, if I possessed either slides or a microscope, collection and study would have been on my list, as I stared down at my own blood spotting my bathroom floor.

Sometime last week I stepped on a glass plate on my floor and broke it into three pieces.  My carpet is, for lack of a better term, shag, and I clearly missed a few pieces as I was cleaning up.  Thus, this afternoon, walking across my newly cleaned but not newly vacuumed bedroom floor, my right, big toe caught a shard.  I proceeded to pick it out, first laughing at my stupidity and then curious to actually see my own blood on its tiny glass edge.  I carried into the bathroom to be thrown away, but when I realized how badly I was bleeding, I got a bit nerdy.

I set the glass on the counter and let my foot hang over the tile floor, waiting for a drop of crimson to fall the six-inches to the ground.  When it did, I sat down and cleaned off my poor toe while I studied the varying droplets I had both accidentally flicked onto the floor and purposefully let drop.  From afar they looked remarkably similar, but band-aid in place, I knelt down with my camera phone--cleverly retrieved from my bed--and took a few close ups.  Two of the spatters I'd accidentally flicked onto the tile when I thought I wasn't bleeding where thicker along the opposite edge, proving they'd been flicked.  Whereas, the one I'd let well and eventually drop from my toe was consistent, one two-cc droplet of dark red that clearly plopped down and chilled out just like it was.  I could even tell the way they'd landed by the rims around the edges where they'd already started to dry.  When I wiped them up with a wet tissue, the rims held on a bit longer, darker around the opposite edges where the blood had been propelled from the subtle flick of my foot as I hobbled into the bathroom.  The bigger, darker spot from my standing still had a rim as well, consistent in color around the circumference.  And, of course, the whole time I snapped pictures and looked up close, I was giggling.

I wish that I had had some slides; maybe I could've picked up the drops with a q-tip and kept them for later observation under a microscope.  I wish I had a microscope, so I could do such an observation.  I've never looked at blood under the scope, but I have a feeling I have a taste for it.  It's curious, the weird things we're into, but I guess they can't be denied.  

The good news is, other than serial killer, there are some career opportunities out there for weirdos like me.  One of them, of course, is forensic scientist, exactly what I was planning on majoring in--along with anthropology.

I'd rather not have to become a serial killer.  I'd really much rather put them in prison, it seems like less work.

And the conclusion I came to: I'm a dork.  I'm a nerd.  I'm a geek.  I'm probably a forensic scientist as well.

Looks like I am on the right track to accepting that my life is literally around the corner, all I have to do is be ready to round the bend.

Now if only I weren't so afraid.

:\

Even the Stars Sometimes Fade to Gray

I have been thinking about why I am so afraid of moving forward.  I have been thinking about why I am procrastinating, often moving in reverse, the goals I tote all the time.  The dreams I spend hours dreaming.  The ideals I label future-self with, labels obtainable but so far away.  I have wondered about what's stopping me; what am I so afraid of?  In the past week, I have had serious downs; breaking down in front of new friends, fearing the need to say goodbye to old ones, my mother yelling at me when I've already been sent home sick.  Everything's just been shit, and I am certain it's self-inflicted.  I am certain that if I opened up and just let myself be happy, it wouldn't happen anymore.  But, I know that things down miraculously change for the better.  One day the tide doesn't just turn and everything is alright.  And the people around me know that too, though some of them are clearly in denial.  It takes time, it takes effort, it takes motivation.  And even still you fall, even still you relapse and question and wonder and you think hard about taking a drink, or shooting up, or doing nothing but lie in bed and eat.  It's going to happen no matter what you do.  More than once, differently people have told me "you're going to fail.  Just accept it, because it is going to happen."  I have argued that sometimes you have to succeed.  And that's true.  And by failing and learning, usually you can.  But if you never even try, you've never given yourself the chance.  Now, I don't want to fail.  Me?  This one time I'd like to win.  And people keep coming back at me with that line.  All I can think is they don't believe I can win.  And I am starting to think I agree. I realize I am going to fall down every once in a while, but I haven't accepted that I might actually stand strong.
My argument for putting it off has been this: I am searching for the things and the people who are going to make me strong, so that when relapse comes, I don't completely crumble.  And yet I have still fallen, and I have still crumbled, and I have still not moved forward.  There has to be more to it than my lack of support group--a group to which I am incessantly blind.  I keep telling myself I am trying, but clearly I am doing very little of that.  I am doing very little of anything.
Today, sick, as I have actually been, I laid in bed and read all day.  Patricia Cornwell, murder mysteries; I know.  Don't look so imperious, they are entertaining and don't require much thought.  I am sure I read them for the same reasons other women divulge in romance.  I also read them, because it reminds me of the things I want to do.  Of course I realize life isn't like a novel, the characters never quite do what they are seemingly supposed to, plots never really work out the way they seemingly should, but nevertheless, the idea is along the same lines and I have a forum by which to imagine myself taking part in the game.  And, as I was doing just that, all day long today with Body of Evidence, I thought about the life I wanted and realized something: if I get into the navy, if I become a Master of Arms; once I am out of boot camp and past A-School, I am a badge carrying, gun toting equivalent of a street cop.  I could literally be there, doing that, in less than a year.  My bother has do to more than that to actually become a cop, and I could do it in as little as a year.  I could actually be somewhere close to who I've imagined being at thirty in a year's time.  I could be literally a step closer, in school on my off-time, working fifty hours a week building life experience the FBI just loves.  It's literally right in front of me, so close I could nearly grab it with the tips of my fingers.  And yet, I stand still.  I stand back, get fatter, get sadder, and let it slip away?  What am I so afraid of?!  Everything I have ever dreamed of is literally right in front of my fucking nose!  What is holding me back?
I tried the move-away, grow-up, be-independent thing, and it went miserably wrong.  I've tried it twice, and both times I hurried home to my mother's house, to Oklahoma, to a death sentence in my personal opinion.  I've curled up in my mother's spare twin bed, curled up into my youth and clung on to the support of the familiar to comfort my bruised ego and battered self-esteem.  I've hidden away from problems and ignored phone calls.  I've just closed off.  And all that time, I dreamed up in my mind all of the great things I would do, a few years from now.  And the age I would be when I did them has increased with my own, as the belief that I could ever accomplish them slowly receded.
Somehow, I have found the easiest way to get what I want, somehow that was the conclusion I came to.  For years before, with all of my running and all of my hiding, I would scheme little ideas to get what I wanted; little ideas that turned out to be complicated and difficult.  I touted my favorite saying to tout, "Hard work is everything; without it nothing means anything."  And I would plot my little plots, never playing a single one out.  And, on my last straw, on my last leg, I came up with a new one.  An obtainable one.  One that will actually do it, and do it fast.  All I had to do is lose weight, and I think I knew I could stop myself.  But, I have found out it is harder to hide if I did.  It's easy to lie about bills and debt and jobs and money.  It's hard to lie about pounds and sizes and muscle mass.  I have stopped myself, and everyone can see it, and I have nothing to blame because they know it would come off if I ran every day, they know the asthma would settle if I ran every day, they know I would moving forward if I ran everyday.  I tell myself it's their knowing that stops me from doing things that I know are good for me.  I hate how they know.  And I hate how they look at me when I've done something they think I should.  Especially if they've told me, and told me, and told me to do it.  The look on their faces, it drives me nuts, I can't take it.  I don't want to fucking do anything for them, so I don't do anything.  I use this excuse, and I guess if that's the reason, I need to learn to not care.  Fuck them, I should tell myself, I know better; I know who I did it for.  I don't tell myself, that, however.  And I continue to use that feeling as an excuse.
But it isn't an excuse, and it isn't the excuse.  Never before in my life have a realize how close to success I actually was.  I have always been able to talk myself out of it, always been able to stop myself from happiness, always been able to quit my dreams while still dreaming them.  It's super fucked up, I know, but it is my cycle, and it's one I'm realizing is coming to an end.
Kirstie, a member of that group I can't seem to convince myself I have, may possibly be signing with a publisher.  She's two years younger than me and I am sickeningly envious.  But, what have I done to be where she is?  Nothing.  She writes, probably every day if she can help it.  I talk myself out of writing because I don't "feel like it," even though I know if I would just sit down and do it, I'd "feel" better.  I would, writing lifts my spirits.  That's why I truly believe it's the only thing I was ever really meant to do, and I put it off like geometry homework.  I realize, looking at Kirstie, that if I would do what she does, I probably would be closer to it than I am right now.  But, publishing isn't the only thing I want to do anymore.  I have thought about it, and just laying around writing all day isn't what is going to make me happy.  Not that I can tell.  I need movement, I need motivation, I need something everyday to keep me going, something to write about.
Yes, I could already be there, I am starting to get that.  But if it isn't yet for me, than I can't quite argue with that.
What is yet for me, as I am quickly realizing, is to break my cycle and move fucking forward.  I am not going to get away with putting it off anymore.  I am not going to get away with excusing and blame.  And I am not going to get away with rolling over and hiding.  I don't want people to look at me with "I told you so"s, or worse, that look they get when I've done something good.  But, I don't have to care about that.  I don't have to listen to "thank yous" and I don't have to be bothered by looks I am probably imagining.  I don't know what was done to me to make me feel this way, but it's stupid and childish.  This is the time when absolutely nothing should be stopping me, when I am literally close enough to touch success.  This should be the time I leap forward, not stand around and wait to be pushed.  I'm tired of hiding, and I am tired of sleeping when I could change the world.  I'm tired of closing the blinds.
But, I am afraid.  Everything I have ever wanted is actually within reach.  That has never happened before.  I have always found a way of avoiding accomplishing my dreams, and suddenly I have no choice.  I am not giving myself a choice, fate is not giving me a choice, no one is giving me a choice.  And I am terrified.  It's right there!  Right fucking there!  I could actually be doing it.  I am terrified.
I could be an adult, and I am terrified.  I have lied to myself my whole life about wanting that if I am so terrified about it today.  I have lied to myself my whole life.
I guess that's why, more than ever, I need to do random, adventurous shit.  I need to put myself out into the world.  I need to write everyday and I need to do crazy things.  I need to step out of bed, out of hiding, and just start forward.  I need more than ever to do things I have never done.  If I am so terrified of everything I have always told myself I am ready for, everything I have told myself I was working for; if I am so terrified that I can't let myself have them, then what is to come of me?  Not good things, more not good things.  So, now is the time to stand up and do something outlandish.  And probably a good time to do something responsible.
And probably a good time to do something smart.
I don't know how much of any of this makes sense...I think that sentence got away from me a bit.  What I know is this: I feel better than I did yesterday, I feel better than I did last week.  I feel tired, and a little on the verge of tears.  I feel like I needed to write it out and put it out there no matter its eloquence or its coherence.  It isn't really for you, but I hope it worked anyway.  I am going to go to bed, now.  Tomorrow, I am going to finish my laundry, I am going to run, I am going to clean my room, and I am going to try to find another job.  One that pays more, so that another Monday down the line, I can start paying off debts and saving for things outlandish and ridiculous but all the same cleansing and spiritual and awakening.  No more being terrified, no more standing still.  Just jumping.
Even the Stars Hideaway