Vroom, Vroom bitches.

I have never been a teenage boy but I am fairly certain that I am turning into one.  Last night, I spent countless hours on Craigslist searching through ever single town in every single state looking for 9c1 Chevy Caprices…the best cars ever.  Yes, even better than my beloved El Camino.  The finest Caprice that I found is in…wait…I’m not going to say because those beauties sell quickly and I would hate to give it up.  It is the perfect vehicle for me.  It has a Corvette engine (LT1 5.7 V8) and a heavy fucking duty body.  It is a retired cop car!  It is indestructible.  It hauls ass and can survive my awful treatment of vehicles.  Plus, it gets better gas mileage than my little Ford Ranger and it is ridiculously affordable.  Especially when you take the Corvette engine into consideration.  Booooooom, bitch!  That’s going to be my car.

This car was built to withstand the classic PIT maneuver.  This behooves me because it is safe for me and it is a beast.  Hopefully, I won’t need to be performing any PIT maneuvers but just in case, I will have the right car.  Honestly, I might just start to PIT bad drivers though.  “What’s this?  You are going five under?”  WHAM!  “Oh look, there you go you dumb bitch!”  A spray of cheap car parts left flying through the air.  The answer to road rage.  What a relief that would be?  There literally would be no drivers left on the roads in Colorado.  This state would be my post-apocalyptic Australia and I would be Mad Max.  Hell, if I’m going there, I might as well mount an enormous blower on my 9c1 and complete the look.

I have never been much of a car person until recently.  It is hard not to get sucked into the craze when over half of the people that I hang out with are complete gear heads.  I now find myself judging people by their rear axles.  If it isn’t a floating axle, it is inferior.  If it isn’t a DANA axle, it is inferior.  If it is a Sterling axle well you might as well go drive that thing off of a cliff.  It is total rubbish.  Now, do I know what the hell I am talking about?  Not entirely.  In the world of automotive jargon, I am a novice.  I am in car-talk 101.  What I can paraphrase about the above review of axles is that it goes from most heavy duty and sturdy to crap.  One thing that I have come to appreciate after volunteering in EMS is the protection of a sturdy vehicle.  Sorry, but no amount of German engineering could save you from a failed game of chicken with a tree at 50+ mph.  Splat.

Another beautiful aspect of the automotive world is Top Fuel Racing.  Holy baby Jesus on a pogo stick.  If you have never seen, heard, or felt a Top Fuel dragster, do it now.  You will NOT regret it!  I pinky promise you.  Top Fuel dragsters will make your eyeballs shake in their sockets with epileptic fury and will rumble in your body as if you had just swallowed thunder.  This little video is merely a sample of just how earth shatteringly loud Top Fuel is.  It is a camera sitting on the bleachers at a Top Fuel race…

Even these 20 seconds make my stomach tingle with excitement and spreads a smile across my face.  Top Fuel Finals consist of three days of beer, sun, cars, more beer, more sun, more cars, and awesome people.  Hands down some of the best times that I have ever had.  I cannot wait until Nationals this year.  The sting of the Nitro Methane is the perfect test of one’s personal fortitude (or lack of brain cells)…the longer one can stand by the dragster which is spewing exhaust, the more macho they are.  I can’t lie, I sucked it up and stood with my face covered by the fumes and my lungs screaming for Oxygen.  My throat viciously burned for the next couple of days.  But goddamn, it was worth it.  It is an experience that you must have for yourself.

So does this new-found love for vehicles make me a teenage boy?  Well, I also love beer, rock and roll, and sex…hmmm.  Let’s just hope that my balls have already dropped.  Or maybe this makes me a pretty chill girl.  I am going to vote for the second option of me being a chill girl.  Booooooom.

Self-loafing…

now that I have drawn you in, allow me to gently let you down.  No, this is not a blog about some awesome self-loafing bread machine that I bought off of the HSN at 3am in an Ambien-induced shopping spree.  Actually, after a little research, I don’t think such things as self-loafers exist.  Plus, I no longer take Ambien.  The reason I tricked you into reading this blog is because it covers yet another depressing topic…self-loathing…get it?  Loafing…Loathing.  Ha!

I wish that I loved myself.  I wish that I had the self-love to stand in front of the mirror, arms spread like a Condor in flight, lips fiercely pursed, legs awkwardly crossed to hold my penis tucked between my thighs…draped in a luxurious coat of human skin…saying “I’d fuck me.”  Okay, so maybe I just said that I would like to be Buffalo Bill which isn’t really true but man, did that guy love himself or what?!  Probably not.  That’s probably why he captured, killed, and skinned young girls.  I suppose this would explain part of the reason why I don’t know what a healthy ego is.  I use Buffalo Bill as an example of self-love.  Hmmmmm….

In all seriousness though (and don’t worry, I find Buffalo Bill’s character revolting.  My mind just goes to weird places when I write), I have a very severe problem with self-loathing.  I stumble down a weak line between tolerating myself, even enjoying myself a little, and hating myself.  Where in my life did I lose the feel of what a healthy ego is?  Was it when I was child?  Do I need to take a crow bar to someone’s knee caps?  Or should I just take personal responsibility for my self-loathing?  This subject stumps evens my psychologist.  He said on Monday, “you are so great. This doesn’t make sense.”  I agree…with the not making sense bit.

I know that almost everyone goes through periods of self-loathing but what makes mine so much more drastic?  When my self-loathing overcomes me, I turn into the amazing slicer and dicer on my arms and legs.  I reach a point where the hating turns into abandonment.  I abandon any chance of hope for myself and can justify cutting my skin apart.  My crippling fear of abandonment is another topic that my psychologist has been dissecting recently.  We have made some progress but none that I am comfortable sharing quite yet.  Yeah, that’s right…I’m not comfortable sharing something so you know that it is a big, hairy, scary, fucking deal.

I have been trying to figure out specifically what it is about myself that I cannot tolerate.  It is everything.  From the split ends on my hair, down into my inconsistent, temperamental brain,  to my Jew nose, to my Scoliosis shoulder, to my heart which does not know what’s best for me, to the stretch marks on my ass, all the way down to my calloused toes.  Mostly I hate my brain.  It makes me hate myself.  Or rather, it is the source of all of my self-loathing.  It is the master of all of my infinitesimal OCD ticks which drive me up a fucking wall.  It is the power supply for everything that I despise about myself.  It is why I hate myself.

How do I stop hating myself?  Medications: check.  Therapy: check.  But I am positive that I will be fed some bullshit line about “loving yourself comes from within.  It comes from your heart.”  Well guess what?  I can’t fucking do that.  I do not know how to.  I am going to have to fake it for a while.  I need to feel what it is like to exercise a healthy ego so that I can develop that muscle memory.  I am aware that are no standards for “normal,” although, there are standards for having a healthy ego.

I never thought that I was that different from a normal function person.  I suppose after all of these years and all of these realizations, I can say that I am not normal.  However, I internalize lies until they become the truth.  “Everyone hates themselves.  Everyone cuts their arms and legs and enjoys watching the blood pool.  Everyone lingers in suicidal thoughts all day.  Right?  Right?!”  Even as I write this, I have to believe that I am not representing only a minority of people.  Perhaps I do not want to admit that I really am that fucked in the brain.  Does anyone feel this way?  Or does anyone feel the exact opposite of this?  Do you resonate with my words or do you find them to be a load of malarkey?  Please tell me.

See why I lured you in with a futuristic bread machine?  This shit is depressing.  It forces me down some dark alleys in my mind where my emotions mug me at machete point.  I need to know that it is possible to love yourself.  I need to know that after my pharmaceutical restraints have worn off and after the post-therapy buzz has faded, that there is hope to like myself.  How do I do this?

I do not know.

Time, Mud, and Money…and Craziness

In my history of horses and failed boyfriends, the horses have always won.  “If you didn’t have your horse, you would have more money!”  I can’t count the number of times that I have had that sentence thrown at me.  My response: “la, la, la, la!  You don’t understand!  My horse is literally my life.  Without him, I would be dead…in a gutter…face down…covered in my own vomit.”  No, I’m not a drinker but you can’t be found dead, face down in a gutter without being covered in your own vomit.  That’s just not right.

The relationship between horse and rider is something that cannot be understood if you don’t have one.  Horse people are very, very aware that our horses are big, adorable, strong, spirited money pits.  But we would rather go weeks eating only mac and cheese, PB&J, cereal, and more cereal rather than not feed our horses the very best grain and supplements that we can afford.  I religiously pay my vet bills but I have collection agencies hounding me for my personal health care bills.  Unfortunately, I am a sickly little creature so the bills are vast.  I have been wearing the same two-week disposable contacts for over one year now because I refuse to spend my money on such a silly thing when I need to be able to pay for Edge’s board.  My glasses are broken and weakly held together by duct tape.

This relationship goes beyond just monetary sacrifices.  My damn Fibromyalgia makes riding a rather painful activity but I do not give one flying fuck.  I ride through the back spasms and ignore the piercing pains in my upper back.  Fuck ‘em.  I am working on an uphill frame today!  Needless to say, when I am home and relaxing, I am always attached to my heating pad.  I ride for the love.

I feel as though I am in the healthiest relationship that I have had thus far.  So I was comfortable asking Travis what the biggest cons are to dating a horse person.  His response actually shocked me a bit.  I thought for certain that money would be the very first complaint, but no!  He said that the time constraints are the worst for him.  Soooo…that means that he misses me while I am out at the barn for hours upon hours everyday?!  What the hell?  I am not used to that.  I was extremely relieved that this was his primary complaint.  He is always welcome to join me out at the barn and he will come out with me once or twice a week which means the world to me!  I have yet to get him on a horse though.  He is convinced that riding a horse is dangerous…far more dangerous that racing his race truck…which goes 0-200mph in 7 seconds.  Yes, it is fast, loud,  powerful, and dangerous.  I do love it though.  But if the crazy, pyromaniac, speed junkie, nitro loving, race car driving boyfriend of mine feels that riding a horse is dangerous, maybe I should listen….ooorrr not.

His next complaint: “Mud.  Lots and lots of mud everywhere, all of the time.  I can’t rid of it.”  This is true.  When I drive his truck, he always gets his boxer briefs in a twist because I inevitably go to the barn and track half of the mud on the property into his truck.  I gave up on keeping my little piece of shit Ford Ranger clean years and years ago.  I do try and clean up most of the mud in his truck, however.  The floor mats in my pickup are caked in mud, dirt, and gravel.  Loose hay is littered throughout the cab.  For a long time there was a pile of dried horse manure in the bed but Travis was repulsed by this and attacked it with a power washer.  It does feel good to have that part clean.  I have an entire suitcase in the back of the cab bursting with excess horse supplies.  Horse blankets clink and clatter as I drive around.  My  halter sits on the passenger seat in its place of honor.   Travis would probably throw me out of a window if I ever let his beloved Chevy Silverado get to be such a mess.

The landing in our house is also a mecca for barn mud.  I find myself sweeping it almost every day.  That might be a lie..but I probably sweep it once a week…or so.  I do lay down the law with the barn shoes though.  If there is one thing that I cannot tolerate, it is a dirty carpet.  I would rather rig up a booby trap a la Indian Jones at the front door that just cut peoples’ legs off at the ankles instead of them tracking mud on my clean carpet.  Of course, the booby trap would have to apply bandages as well so my guests don’t bleed out all over my clean, mud free carpet.  Details, details.

I was so very happy when Travis stated that the money pit of owning a horse was the last complaint that came to his mind.  He must understand money sucking hobbies.  At one point, he owned 11 cars all in varying states of functioning.  He is down to four now!  And two of those are readily and easily functioning.  As I stated above, I have had the money constraints of owning a horse thrown in my face more times that I could ever possibly count.  My mom had a horse growing up so she can begin to understand the love.  She once told me that owning a horse is relatively similar to being the parent of a “giant, fuzzy, special-needs child.”  Dog owners consider their dogs their children and my horse is my child.  As are my cats.  But my cats aren’t as needy.  I also can’t ride them over three foot jumps.  Don’t worry horse friends, I have only jumped Edge over a 3 foot fence once.  2’6″ is our limit…he is getting to be an old man.  I digress.  To know that Travis doesn’t harbor ill feelings about my financial situation with my horse is amazing.  He has more of a problem with the mud than he does with the money.  Good man, good man.

The last thing Travis pointed out that could be inconvenient for someone dating a horse woman is that many of us horse women tend to be a bit crazy.  He was smart and made sure to exclude me from this category.  I am crazy but not the kind of crazy he is talking about.  In his experience, many horse-crazed women can be bossy…”my way or the highway.”  I have to admit, I have seen this.  I don’t know if it just because the majority of barns are populated by women but drama is always lurking in every stall, tack room, and arena at every barn…ever.  We can bring this drama home because it is hard to shit talk people when we are all in the same arena or all have our horses tied in the same aisle.  So who do we complain to?  Our family at home.  The boyfriends and husbands.  “That bitch didn’t call ‘inside or outside’ and she almost ran into my horse!”  “That slut face didn’t clean up the aisle after she finished riding.”  “That bastard didn’t call ‘door’ when he walked into the arena and he freaked my horse out!  I hate him!”  Yes, we can get our panties in a twist.  But you can’t understand unless you live this life.

Time, mud, money, and crazy bitches.  Can I reduce my amount of time at the barn?  Not really.  Can I reduce the amount of mud that I track everywhere?  I can try but no promises.  Can I lay off of the crazy-talk?  Pffff…no.  It takes a special man to love a horsewoman.  But I suppose it takes a special woman to love a gear head.  I will ride my “dangerous” horse and he will race his dangerous truck.  I will be there to clean up all of the oil and grease stains and he will there to clean up the mud and help me hobble around after I get thrown off.  Sounds like a plan to me!

Chicken noodle soup for the animal lover’s soul…Bitch, that better not be real chicken!

Lately, I have been shocked by myself.  Shocked and on the verge of disgust.  I am developing an aversion to eating meat.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I am experiencing moral qualms about eating meat.  Here is the problem though, I love, love, love meat.  The idea of tofu makes my stomach turn inside out, shake it all about, do the hokey pokey, and scream “that’s NOT what’s it’s all about…give me a HOTDOG!”  Where has this aversion come from?  That answer is simple…Temple Grandin.

I love her, love her work, love her brain, love her heart, just love everything about her but now I feel like I am kicking a puppy every time I eat meat.  Of course this was not at all the intentions of her work.  She revolutionized the slaughter and meat packing industries.  Without her work, the majority of cattle, pigs, chickens, and any other animals sent off to slaughter would still gruesomely suffer from the hands of cruel handlers and outdated slaughter equipment.  I have never read “The Jungle” but I feel like reading Temple’s books provide me with an adequate and realistic view of the meat industry.  Honestly, it is one that I feel guilty taking part in.

I do believe that humans have evolved to be omnivorous which includes eating meat.  However, I also believe that humans have evolved to be assholes…assholes who have a hard time valuing a life outside of their own.  This is a verifiable fact (it probably has been scientifically proven but don’t quote me on that).  All it takes is one psychopath with a silver tongue to fuck everything up.  Thankfully, we have Temple Grandin to battle such psychotic, silver-tongued assholes.  I realize that my sentiments towards her would probably make her feel awkward but so be it.

Many people ask, “is it even right in the first place to kill animals for food?”  Yes, of course!  Do you think the first carnivores stopped and tapped their little claws on their chins and said, “is it right of me to kill this animal?”  NO!  What gets us humans into trouble is our brains.  We have the ability and the consciousness to question such basic needs.  Plus, to tie my Existential-theme into this piece, who are we, as humans, to judge what is right and what is wrong?   We experience mixed emotions, something that animals do not do.  Animals have needs, they fulfill them.  No questions asked.  Humans ask far too many questions.  Even feeling this way, I am still running up against inner conflicts over eating meat.

I have always favored animals more than humans because animals did not evolve to be assholes.  Some have evolved to be aggressive and territorial which can be “asshole-ish” but only when human sentiments are applied to such actions.  Animals are inherently innocent.  I remember driving down the road and seeing a poor squirrel get hit by a car.  My face flushed with grief as I watched tufts of fur fly out from under the tire.  I was appalled when I pulled up next to the guilty driver and saw that she was continuing on with her life as if nothing had happened at all.  I can still feel the adrenaline rush to my feet in sympathy for the squirrel.  I have worked in human healthcare for four years and have experienced death.  Yes, the first time I dealt with death, I was upset but I have become accustomed to the feelings, smells, sounds, and ambiance of death.  However, I can hardly handle the death of a squirrel.  I don’t even allow my mind to hover over the idea of one of my animals dying.  This is a contributing factor to my guilt.

If I could find and eat meat that was packaged only in facilities that have been designed and personally approved by Temple Grandin, my guilt would begin to dissipate.  Until then, I will continue to mournfully eat meat.  Especially pork.  Pigs are smarter than your average livestock and this allows for them to experience more complex emotions.  I have a difficult time eating such smart creatures.  I happily embrace my 6.25% Jewish heritage when it comes to pork products.  It is unfortunate that my boyfriend’s mom loves to cook pork…and she cooks it so deliciously.

People like Temple and my good and wonderful friend Ali help me to keep my faith in humanity.  It is obvious why I adore Temple Grandin and her teachings, she is an advocate and a voice for animals.  Ali is a gifted horse trainer.  She has taught me so much invaluable information about horses in less than one year.  Without her, my horse and I would be perpetually stuck in a rut.  Riding the exact same ineffective way.  She is a true horsewoman and a business woman.  I could never work with a horse and then sell it.  But her, as she calls it, “mushy” sentiment is that when she takes on a horse, her goal is to train it well enough so that when she sells it, it will effectively be able to go to an even better home.  She isn’t just about making a buck.  She is about giving a horse the best home and the best training that she can.  Without her, I would be lost and miserable.

Through hearts, minds, and techniques like Temple and Ali’s I am able to grasp onto happiness, horses…and meat.  What would I do without them?  Walk everywhere while I eat my tofu?  Pffff…I think not.

 

 

Geeeese!

This is one of the pieces that I wrote for submission in a contest for the Denver Post:  it is really clean and sweet.  Not a single “fuck” in it.  Oh and I talk about my heart smiling or some crap like that…but I am proud of it!

 

A gaggle of geese is a wonderful thing.  Here in Fort Collins, we are no strangers to geese and everything that comes with having such loyal birds inhabiting our town all year.  Many people complain about the droppings that are left all over every inch of the town but I could not care less.  There is a beauty to geese that is mainly unappreciated.

This secret beauty?  Their ability to bring all lanes of traffic to a halt to allow them to cross the street.  We  are a busy people with jobs to get to and school to attend.  I can attest to the fact that not all of us are as fond of geese as I, which makes the fact that people are willing to make way for geese all the more amazing.

As a Colorado native, never before have I seen so many geese frequent one town all year long with such comfort.  These days, life is dominated by kilobytes, megabytes, terabytes, bars of reception, battery usage, 3 G and 4 G, and don’t forget the dollar bills.  So the touching action of people stopping all activity for a gaggle of geese to cross a busy road is a genuinely humane notion.

Could I be led to believe that the drivers of New York or LA would graciously yield to a single-file line of geese struggling to travel from one side of the road to the other?  I suppose seeing would be believing.  However, my dear friend whose life is divided between Manhattan and Fort Collins assured me that if geese did dare to cross such a city thoroughfare, drivers most likely would not stop at the sight of the first goose hesitantly waddling out on to the street.  The gaggle would be stranded on one side of the road.  I am fully aware of the fact that a flock of geese would be highly unlikely to travel by foot in a city as busy as Manhattan or LA but the vast difference in comparison serves my purpose of highlighting the excellence of my beloved town.

The commuters of my town patiently wait with no visible irritation as the geese waddle across the street.  There is no fist-shaking or horns honking or yells of frustration out of car windows.  I have even seen a man get out of his car to more effectively stop all traffic and facilitate the gaggle-crossing.  A miracle?  No, just another day in Colorado.

I will be the first to admit that I can be a bit of a cynic but even moments such as making-way-for-geese, have the ability to turn me into a babbling, gooey, child-like woman.  And I have the superb people of Fort Collins, Colorado to thank for providing me with such sensational moments of time throughout my daily rush.  I am also able to thank these fine people for slowly rebuilding my faith in humans everywhere, goose by goose.

Combine the migrating behaviors of geese with the ever-present drive for humans to act humanely, and perhaps the next time you happen to see this display of humane humanity you, too, will feel moved to reconnect to the greater picture of life.  Every time I experience the joy of humans voluntarily helping my geese, I am reminded of a favorite childhood book, Make Way for Ducklings, by Robert McCloskey (1941).

In his book of “humane humanity,” the busy citizens of Boston willingly yield to a mamma duck and her ducklings as they cross busy city streets.  Even in the 1940s, a time devoid of the many technological ties of today, people had the inherent need to help relatively helpless creatures.  This altruism is what spans time and helps humans remain humane.  I am privileged to experience this altruism on an almost daily basis here in Fort Collins.  My cynicism softens and I smile from the heart.

 

Meta-blog

I was in the shower and was mulling over the burden that I haven’t blogged in a while.  Why?  Why haven’t I blogged recently?  Well for one, I have been working on two different, more professional pieces that I am going to submit for publication (go me!).  Secondly, I have been nothing but a Debbie Downer lately.  There is only so long people will continue to read my blogs about depression and bipolar disorder before they say “enough already, you crazy, whiny, bitch!”  I can’t say that I would blame them.  Thinking about being a Debbie Downer gave me an idea to blog about being a Debbie Downer.  However, as I scrubbed my face with autoclave efficiency, I realized that that would be just as crazy, whiny, and bitchy as writing about the tar pit of depression.  So I guess I settled for writing a blog about writing a blog about being a Debbie Downer…meta-blogging.

I realize that people like to commiserate about the downs in life and we all know that I am a wonderful commiserating companion but I have the ability to run away with this type of conversation.  A friend would say “I had a great day!  My boyfriend came to visit and took me out to dinner!”  I would then respond “Good for you…my boyfriend couldn’t come visit me because he is DEAD!”  That doesn’t make for a welcoming conversation at all.  That commandeers every single word and steals it onto the U.S.S. Heckmann-Drama-Llama.  The sails are set full speed ahead for the Pathetic Ocean.  Again, no one wants to read or take part in that…that’s what I pay my therapist for.

You would think that there are only so many ways to write about being depressed  but you would be surprised, it is an endless pit of despair and a continual bank of melancholy analogies.  It goes on, and on, and on, and on…you get it.  This proves hard for me to keep my writing fresh and new when the topic continues to piddle in circles.  Even now I am struggling to keep it chipper and quirky.  Woe is little ol’ me.

As my paragraphs exponentially shrink, I find that I am running out of ideas for my meta-blog.  In short, don’t be a Debbie Downer allll of the time because that will just end up pushing people away.  Try not to dominate the conversation with depressing stories about your dead boyfriend, or dog, or cat, or pet rock.  That shit ain’t cool.  Take a step back and listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth…do you enjoy listening to them?  No.  Then shut your cake-hole.  “How are you?” is generally a rhetorical question.  If your answer spans past “I’m fine.  You?”  then find someone who is comfortable listening to you bitch.

No one likes a Debbie Downer.

 

 

 

Sustenance Survival

As I curl up on the couch with my pillow and the heating pad ratcheted to my back, I pause for a moment to exhale.  I need to exhale the frustration and utter hopelessness of the day.  I am wearing the free Pabst-Blue Ribbon T-shirt that, one night, I acquired from Tony’s…one of the local scummy, seedy bars.  The shirt is acting as more than just a pajama top.  It is a reminder of the events of the evening.  Wrangling and babysitting two very drunk grown men is an event that is cause for frustration.  These men happened to be pounding back PBR’s as if they were the very air that they were breathing.  After three bars and countless beers, I found myself annoyingly sober, drowning in a crowd of drunkards.  However, this makes for some excellent people watching and also allows plenty of time to reflect on the absolute mystery of drinking.

Of course, when you are drunk, there is no mystery as to why drinking is so appealing.  Although, as I am sure we have all noticed, being the only sober person in a group is a beast of a burden.  I can’t help but cast an unapologetic gaze of disgust when I look at people using pool tables, walls, friends, significant others, and any other sturdy object to hold them up on their swaying legs.  The look in their eye’s is one of complete oblivion.  Naturally, this is the appeal.  Oblivion.  Nothingness.  There is an infancy to drinking…an abandonment of adulthood into a stroke of life void of anything complex.

How can we achieve this simplicity without drinking or using any other substances?  For some people, drinking is an escape into nothing while for others, it is an escape from nothing.  Drink to smother the feelings or drink to feel.  Both are dangerous.  When it gets to the point where someone needs alcohol to comfortably function, the dangers for bodily and emotional harm increase.  But I have been prescribed happiness with side effects so I feel as though I am not in the right to judge too harshly.  I do know when I should not drive because of how dizzy and tired/euphoric my medications have made me…we all know an alcohol enthusiast who “drives better when [I'm] drunk!”  Sure, and I could be perfectly happy without my medications.  Lies.  People drink to evoke or revoke feelings and I am medicated mainly to revoke feelings.  My therapist has validated the fact that I tend to be all too self aware.  The medications lessen this obsessive awareness.

What the hell am I trying to convey here?  I honestly do not know.  I originally started writing this blog after the night described in the first paragraph and I was very angry.  Here I am one week later and I am feeling ambivalent towards the situation.  I still feel that the excessive drinking is unnecessary especially when combined with driving (thankfully there was no driving that night).  I also feel that excessive prescription medications are unnecessary.  Both are harmful.  They deprive the body of its ability to facilitate emotions without the influence of the outside substances.  If you lived completely isolated from everything, could you survive without your medications, booze, drugs, or sex?  It is a sobering thought.

I have always prided myself on being tougher than the average girl.  Although, if I were to be cast out into the nothingness, I would most likely go absolutely insane and end up killing myself.  Right now, I need my medications to survive.  It is a weakness and it is ugly.  When I told my Psychiatrist about this, he was somewhat shocked and told me that such thoughts are a bit obsessive…hence medicating them out of me.  But the issue still remains…I would not survive.  What is the use of having strength if you cannot access it?  It is there, deep down under the mess of misfiring synapses, a strength that is uncompromising.  Now days, the only way that I can tap into this energy is usually through anger.  No liquid courage for me.  It is rage induced courage.

Again, what am I trying to say?  Booze is bad, medicating the self into oblivion is bad.  But oblivion is so euphoric.  Are there not dogmas that strive for a nirvana through the absence of everything?  Denying everything from material goods to the very thoughts that always swarm in your mind.  To me, this seems like an oblivion.  Can alcohol and medications help achieve a nirvana (in the strictest most literal sense, of course)?

People crave substances.  Moderation is the key.  People crave feelings, either more or less of them.  Moderation is the key.  Through a balance of alcohol or medication, or whatever floats your boat, bakes your potato, or slices your apples, people can harness the cravings.  This harnessing can lead to an opening of deep portals in the mind that are otherwise unknown.  Yes, I suppose this sounds like an endorsement for drinking and using prescription medications.  That’s not what I intend it to be.  It is more of a reflection on the peculiarities and stigmas surrounding the oblivion that substances can help you achieve.

Who am I to judge?  As long as people aren’t driving or actively killing their livers, kidneys, and brains through excessive use, I cannot rightfully *tisk-tisk* people.  They can reach a nirvana-like state of being that is so highly sought after, simply by ingesting a substance.  This sounds like cheating…another topic that will have to be a whole other blog of existential musings.  Like Jimmy Eat World says “Cheating gets it faster.”  Morals, shmorals.  Right?  Oh but I am too self aware to act on such tendencies.

Fear of meaning

My psychologist sat across from me in his office and he stated, “I don’t know what scares you more…the thought that life has no meaning or that everything in life has a meaning?”  The icy realization flooded into my brain as if I had been submerged into a frozen lake.  He is right (he is always right).  For so long, I fought with myself to find the meaning in every aspect of life.  I was convinced that even the most mundane of events happened for a reason.  Although, I did not (and still do not) believe in a God so it was difficult for me to truly believe that without a divine interference, something as meaningless as finding a penny on the ground could, for example, lead to the death of your mother.  However, for years I tried to cram my life and every event into this type of belief system.

As I grew older and experienced more cruelty from the world, I began to loose faith in my faithless lack of coincidences.  The jading set in.  I refused to believe that something as horrific as a woman being raped would have any positive purpose.  “Oh but maybe she will become an advocate for women’s safety!”  Regardless of how much positivity she has been able to contrive out of the trauma, I am willing to venture that any woman who has suffered such a thing would not hesitate to completely erase that incident from her life.  To believe that the decimation of her very being happened for a reason, is a heinous thought.  A thought that makes the world an even more heartless place.

As I wrote in an earlier post (An existential new year), stripping life of any and all predetermined purpose, creates a world void of divine and intentional cruelty.  It helps the jaded shadows in my heart to come back to reality with less hatred.  So yes, I am more terrified by the idea that everything happens for a purpose and has a meaning.  Meaningless hate should not have meaning but the same standard would have to apply to love.  Hard to stomach.  Believe it or not, I would like to once again have faith in people.  But I have learned that I cannot trust that much without hurting exponentially more.  I select my friends wisely and slowly.

It has been difficult for me to abandon the idea of everything happening for a reason.  For example, a friend’s father is an ardent pilot who frequently attends airshows with a few of his fellow pilot friends.  One weekend when another obligation kept him and his friends away from the show, a plane crashed directly into their usual seats.  Of course had they been there, they would have been obliterated.  A part of me screams, that of course…the fluke of an obligation happened so that he would miss that show and not die!  But I cannot pick and choose which events happen for a specific reason and which ones do not.  Other people died that day.  Perhaps some of them had never been to an airshow before.  For me, it causes less inner turbulence and turmoil to leave life blank of meaning and seek it out from a clean canvas.

I have to make sense of the random.  Unless otherwise clearly evident, I strive to create meaning out of mundane, instead of the mundane imposing meaning on me.  This is a sentiment that I also discuss in the post I have linked above.  I realize that I continue to come back to the topic of Existentialism but it is such a fascinating and fulfilling philosophy.  Dr. Daine explained that because Existentialists believe in self-responsibility, if ever they find themselves unhappy, it is their responsibility to change the situation.  Laying blame is not an option.  Of course when I believed that everything happened for a reason, it was far more easy to say “oh, well I am unhappy now because of blah, blah, blah but if I wait for the Universe to unveil my destiny, I should be happy again.”  “The Universe got me into this, it has to get me out.”  It is a terribly lazy way of being!  I wish someone would have slapped me out of such nonsense much sooner.

So why am I so unhappy now and how can I change it?  I am unhappy because I work a job that does not satisfy me.  How can I change that?  Throw myself into my writing.  And that’s what I am doing.  Or at least attempting to do.  I would absolutely love getting paid to write.  Part of writing for the masses is providing hope.  I have a difficult time providing hope since I am a rather hopeless creature and writing heart-felt sentiments about the “light at the end of the tunnel”  feels forced.  How, then, can I give people hope?  How can I positively influence people?

Perhaps I can start by saying that I am not the only one who has these internal wars.  I am aware that some may not want to publicly discuss these issues or are not comfortable confronting them.  I still have a horrid time when I venture to that avenue of my brain.  But the further I venture and the more honest that I am with myself and everyone I interact with, the better.  I am the Queen of the tw0-faced but am trying to relinquish my crown.

Hope, hope, hope.  How to give hope.  There are wonderful mental health professionals out there!  Never, ever be timid to seek out help.  Be open to the reality that therapy might first tear you apart.  Then, be ready to heal.  Avoid complacency.  Do not allow yourself to become stagnant.  Even those few sentences feel fake when I re-read them.  I suppose I am not done being torn apart.

I will continue my writing in the hopes that I can make a career out of it.  Anyone want to hire a great writer?

Pile O’ wood

When I asked Travis what I should write about, he paused.  He then said “why don’t you write about this giant pile of wood?”  No, he wasn’t referring to the wood in his pants…keep it clean, people (pfff…yeah right, like I can do that).  He was talking about the literal pile of wood that is currently stacked up in our dinning room.  It is not fire wood, it is hundreds of pounds of wood flooring.  “That’s close to $12,000 of wood!”  He shrieked when he learned that his parents were going to redo their wood floors.  He excitedly loaded up half of the Amazon forest in the back of his pickup after his parents were finished pulling it up from their house.  Now, here it sits…in our dining room.  Looking like drift wood clogging up the feng shui of the damn house!

Travis is in between jobs so naturally, being the busy little North Dakotan beaver that he is, he has to have projects going to occupy his days.  So this opportunity to rip up our nice, soft, warm, cushy carpeting is perfect for him!  Except for the fact that he has about 10,500 other projects in the works.  He will start his new job soon.  The Christmas tree hasn’t even been taken down because Mount Wood is overflowing into the necessary work space to take fragile ornaments down.  Our dinning room table has been dashed aside and now sits at an awkward angle up against a wall so only one person at a time can sit.  Oh, but we have $12,000 of wood.  Mind you, that word is warped and will need to be sanded and refinished.  Did I mention that he will start his new job soon?  Yeah, I’m feeling like a sour patch kid right now…bitter.  But if by some miracle, he does finish this monstrous project, I will be sweet.  Except for the fact that wood floors hurt my knees and I hate having to sweep every single fucking day.  Soooo…just bitter.

I’m sure it will look lovely when he does manage to finish said project.  But until then, there is a pile of wood in the dinning room…I can’t even vacuum over there.  It is killing all my will power to keep the house clean.  It is making it impossible to take the tree down, so there are pine needles everywhere because the cats still like to play with the tree, but I can’t maneuver the vacuum in that area of timber-fallout so why even bother vacuuming the rest of the house?!  And then I can’t justify sweeping because the debris from the carpet will just be tracked into the kitchen where it will get stuck in my socks and poke my toes.  And then when I go to try and remove the debris from my toe, Spartacus will want to rub up against my leg while I am perched like a Flammingo on one foot, which will throw my balance completely off, causing me to execute a running-in-place-on-top-of-a-pile-of-loose-marbles-type-thing while Spartacus gets sucked into the vortex of my whirling legs, throwing me even more off balance.  I step on his tail, then his face, this his abdomen, then I fall backwards at the perfect angle to break my neck on the counter.  I would then probably become comatose.  And WHY?  Because there is a pile of wood in the dinning room.

So after you have written out your “get better” cards to me and are reading them to my corpse of a body being operated by life-support, make sure you point your fingers of shame at Travis and then give him a business card for a guy you know who installs wood floors.

Yes, I am being a princess.  Yes, I am bitter that my motivation to keep house has been killed by a stack of wood.  Yes, I am being dramatic.  But goddamn…I needed to vent.  Yes, I love Travis.  The floor will look beautiful…it will, it will, it will.  Until then, I will continue to be bitter and curse that pile of wood.  It is literally going to kill me.  You heard it here first.

P.S. That bit about Spartacus getting caught up in between my legs and nearly killing me actually happened…I did almost fall on my face.  It was traumatizing.

Misheard lyrics

Here is something that everyone can identify with!  You are driving down the road listening to your stereo, bopping along, “singing” all the words to the song like you own that bitch when all of a sudden, you hit a patch of words that you just can’t hear so you mumble through that line…coming out strong on the other side.  “Bye, bye Miss American Pie…Now, for ten years we’ve been on our own, and moss grows, fat on a rolling stone, but, that’s not how it used to be.  Ohhhh ba the jester lala da ma ta for the King and queen in a blah, rah, pah, from James Dean, and a voice that came from you and me.”  Something like that.  Here is a list of my favorite misheard lyrics.

1.)  Weezer’s “Sweater Song:” in high school, my friends and I were driving around listening to the radio when this song came on.  We all started singing along and once we hit the chorus, we were going strong!  And then…Megan sang “I don’t care what you say about my sister!”    We all fell silent and our quizzical looks most have been enough to turn poor Megan a shade of red not yet identified by man.  Really, the lyrics are “If you want to destroy my sweater…”  I’m not positive that she will ever live that one down.  She also provides the next funny on my list.

2.) No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak:”  also in high school.  I think maybe even right after the sister and sweater mix up.  Megan admits that she always thought the lyrics to the chorus were “Don’t tugs and hugs it hurts!”  In actuality, they lyrics are “Don’t tell me ’cause it hurts!”  Just take a second and replace the lyrics…let it sink it.  Sometimes I wish I could take credit.

3.) I am not very familiar with this song but the monumental fuck up of the lyrics is pretty good.  The song…”Love Comes in Spurts” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids.  It is a suggestive title.  Here is my interpretation of the above lyrics: “Blow jobs in space.”  Yes, that’s right, you actually heard me correctly…I, however, did not hear that song correctly.  How one manages to hear “Blow jobs in space” versus “Love comes in spurts,” is far beyond me.  I blame it on the background noise of the round battling for my attention when I listen to music in the car.

4.) This one just makes no sense either.  It is funny how one little misunderstanding can change the entire context of the song.  Especially when said song is death metal.  The song: “Inflikted” by Cavalera Conspiracy.  The actual lyric: “Muthafuckin’ wicked.”  My understanding (or rather misunderstanding): “Muthafuckin’ weekend.”  Because every death metal band just loves to sing about the weekend in the middle of their angry song.  “Unleash the wicked/this hate is self-inflikted/deliver this torment/upon your final judgement/follow the storm/in the land of no return/it’s you, the scum/we’ll kill until it’s done/inflikted/show no mercy/muthafuckin’ wicked.”  Voila!  It goes from a song about self-loathing and torment to a party anthem about the weekend.  Not so much.

5.) After doing some research on the good old Google, I found out that next misheard lyric is a very common one!  The song: “The Stranger” by A Perfect Circle.  The actual line: “Fuck your tornado.”  90% of the population hears: “Fuck your tomato.”  That’s right, Maynard!  Fuck those pretentious people and their fucking tomatoes!  Always drying them out in the sun and sprinkling them in with your spaghetti sauce.  Pfffhhh.  I don’t need your damn toma….oh wait, tornado.  You mean tornado.  Well that changes things.  But with Maynard, you never really know.  Hell, he sings about shitting the bed.  What’s to stop him from fucking your tomatoes?

6.) My last beautiful gem of misunderstanding comes not from a song but from a movie.  The movie, a cult classic: Evil Dead.  The actual line (muttered out by a haggish old demon-lady):  “Someone’s in my fruit cellar!”  This is what my friends and I heard: “Someone’s in my fruit salad!”  But with that movie, fucking anything is possible.  Maybe Bruce Campbell actually was in the old living-dead lady’s fruit salad?  Well that would have to have been Evil Dead 2, when Ash was cursed and manifested multiple tiny little evil clones of himself.  Now those itsy bitsy bastards could fit in a fruit salad.  I would be vexed, too.

If you have any fabulously misheard lyrics, do share!  I have millions more but the number is so large that it would take far too long to list and describe them all.  Keep on listening and don’t let that road noise cloud your ears.