Foggy brain

I dreamed of Maple Lake and popsicles and Isuzu Troopers. And my grandpa.

You stopped.

Why'd you stop?

"...over the borderline..."

I want to write about this while it's still fresh in my mind, even though I have 1,000 things to accomplish.

There are days when I feel fragile enough that it seems like if I were to say what's really on my mind without censoring it--to really put it out there in the open--I might shatter into hundreds of tiny pieces on the floor. Today started out as one of those days, likely because I had an appointment with my psychiatrist and I haven't had one in a few weeks. It was overdue.

I love my doctor for many reasons, but one is because she is really putting effort into a finer-grained diagnosis than my others in the past have done. She agrees with my bipolar diagnosis. But she was the first person to put a name to some of the problems I was having that never occurred to me to share as symptoms of PTSD. And today she was the first person to mention that there might be shades of something else tied up in all those layers.

Before I get into that, let me describe part of how she summarized me today. I've never had someone describe me so completely before in their assessment of me, and it brought tears of recognition to my eyes...

fuck. i don't have the courage to do this. i thought i did. maybe later.

Naked

Oh the clever
things I should say to you
They got stuck somewhere
Stuck between me and you
Oh I'm nervous
I don't know what to do...

Message in binary code

01001001 00100000 01101100
01101111 01110110 01100101
00100000 01111001 01101111
01110101 00001101 00001010

(I love you)

When you're around I don't know how to hide my feelings. I count in binary in my head: zero, one, one, zero, one, one. And you count clouds.

Progress

I used to take pride in oceans as if they were mine for pockets of coats/shirts. We wanted a kitchen with checkerboard floors when we were small enough not to know better. Now: I distance myself from visual depression. I only care about feeling overwhelmed. The sea means nothing more than boredom. I prefer gas stations. I prefer the freeway bridge. Butterflies left a long time ago. Now I just flap my wings. I only like linoleum. Progress. Using time up. You took me to the barbeque place with the bad lighting. I preferred it
to dining by the water.

- Molly Prentiss

Today I feel nostalgic for things like this.

I can haz repetition?

I can be kind of all or nothing about things. I'm either all about it or could care less. When I find something I like, I LOVE it passionately, dearly. If it's a song I discover, I need to hear it 1,000 times on repeat (S.T. suggests this is symptomatic of the aforementioned need for medication). If it's a meal I enjoyed, I want to have it every day for two weeks straight. A movie I love? I need to watch it over and over, read about it, get the soundtrack, watch the trailer on YouTube.

I recognize that this extends to larger issues in my life, too. Taking this one step further (but stopping short of laying down ALL of my neuroses for you), I am attracted to similar intensity in others. I have been criticized for this, but is it something I can really change?

I don't know how to find the middle ground. It feels so...mundane.

First day of my life

This is the first day of my life,
I swear I was born right in the door way.
I went out in the rain,
suddenly everything changed,
they're spreading blankets on the beach.

Yours was the first face that I saw.
I swear I was blind before I met you.
I don't know where I am,
I don't know where I've been, but I,
Know where I want to go.

And so I thought I'd let you know,
these things take forever,
I especially am slow.
But I realized that I need you,
and I wondered if I could come home.

Edit the sad parts

Sometimes all I really wanna feel is love
Sometimes I'm angry that I feel so angry
Sometimes my feelings get in the way
Of what I really feel I needed to say.

Lack of color

Naomi

Alternative title: What I crave right now

Your prettiness is seeping through
Out from the dress I took from you, so pretty
My emptiness is swollen shut
Always a wretch i have become
So empty
Please, Please don't leave me.

I'm watching Naomi, full bloom
I hope that she will soon explode
Into one billion tastes and tunes
One billion angels come and hold her down
They could hold her down until she cries

I'm tasting Naomi's perfume
It tastes like shit and I must say
She comes and goes most afternoons
One billion lovers wave and love her now
They could love her now and so could I

There is no Naomi in view
She walks through Cambridge stocks and strolls
And if she only really knew
One billion angels could come and save her soul
They could save her soul until she shines.

Until she Shines
Until she shines
Until she shines
Until she shines

So pretty
So pretty
So pretty
So pretty

Please, Please don't leave me.

Nobody knows I have delicate toes...

(...but please don't watch me dancing...)

I won't tell, I won't tell, I won't tell.
I can hide it sufficiently under self-deprecation and colorful banter
No one in my life wants to know these things
And the part of me that needs medication
Goes on and on and on
And the hysteria rises
And no one can (or will)
Say anything to make it stop.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.

Monday morning quarterback

AKA: Texting with Scott

ST: [quoting Modest Mouse] This is the part of me that needs medication this is the part of me that believes in heaven this is the part of me that thinks outer space is all dead

AA: The part of me that needs medication is beating the other part of me's ass.

ST: That's a pretty big part of you, second only to the boobs part.

AA: You eat boogers.

ST: Well, evidently I just got served. If I were six.

Post #700

Alternative title to this blog entry: You should probably not ask for the cucumbers in your salad...

"O" is for the only one I see.

I'm talking to you now.

I'm resisting.

I'm being good.

I know this much is true.

I take requests.

I'm kind of excited.

My blog has been getting HUNDREDS of hits per day--more than ever--and I'd like to celebrate. I want to write something for you.

Let me know what you'd like. It can be a writing on a topic of your choice, something written for your eyes only, or anything else that your pretty little head can dream up. Let me know what you want in a comment or in a personal email (amieashcraft@hotmail.com) and I'll make it happen.

You. All of you.

Thanks for reading.

"Let me hold it close and keep it here..."

If only I lived in or around Massachusettes, I could go see a performance of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" on ukelele.

How wonderful!

50 things you can control

“Why worry about things you can’t control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?” ~Unknown

I am a worrier. I fret and pace and ruminate and wonder "what if?" I worry about things that haven't happened in order to keep them at bay. I worry about things that have happened to keep them from getting any worse or happening again.

This week I have been in overdrive.

So when I found this list of "50 things you can control" I was intrigued. Some of them kind of make me want to barf (i.e., #1 feels a little too much like blowing sunshine up one's arse). Others really resonate with me (see the ones with the asterisks), because I have been bad at them of late. Take #13, for example. At least 3 times in the last week I have exited a conversation prematurely because I felt hurt or rejected, and I didn't know how to continue. At least once it led to confusion on the part of the other person, and then I agonized over what an idiot I was.

Then there is #3 and #29 which--for me--go together like peas in a pod. I tend to run on the "too honest" side--telling people things they don't even want to know. Telling people things that they may, in fact, be better not knowing. This week I have been struggling with that, too. My tongue has twisted; my thoughts got choked in my mouth; I have kept silent. It hasn't felt good.

I have faltered on giving the benefit of a doubt (#8). I interpreted every situation in the most negative way possible (#9). I have been hideous to myself in my head (#14). I stopped saying "I love you," because it felt unwelcome (#49).

Wow. I'm not very good at all this.

1. How many times you smile today.
2. How much effort you exert at work.
*3. Your level of honesty.
4. How well you prepare.
5. How you act on your feelings.
6. How often you say “thank you.”
7. When you pull out your wallet for luxuries.
*8. Whether or not you give someone the benefit of the doubt.
*9. How you interpret situations.
10. Whether or not you compete with people around you.
11. How often you notice and appreciate small acts of kindness—they’re everywhere!
12. Whether you listen or wait to talk.
*13. When you walk away from a conversation.
*14. How nice you are to yourself in your head.
15. Whether you think positive or negative thoughts.
16. Whether or not you form expectations of people.
17. The type of food you eat.
18. When you answer someone’s question—or email or call.
19. How much time you spend worrying.
*20. How many new things you try.
21. How much exercise you get.
22. How many times you swear in traffic.
23. Whether or not you plan for the weather.
24. How much time you spend trying to convince people you’re right.
*25. How often you think about your past.
26. How many negative articles you read.
27. The attention you give to your loved ones when you see them.
28. How much you enjoy the things you have right now.
*29. Whether or not you communicate something that’s on your mind.
30. How clean or uncluttered you keep your space.
31. What books you read.
32. How well you network at social events.
33. How deeply you breathe when you experience stress.
34. How many times you admit you don’t know something—and then learn something new.
35. How often you use your influence to help people instead of focusing on building your influence.
36. When you ask for help.
37. Which commitments you keep and cancel.
38. How many risks you take.
39. How creative/innovative you are in your thinking.
*40. How clear you are when you explain your thoughts.
41. Whether you formulate a new plan or act on your existing one.
42. How much information you get before you make a decision.
43. How much information you share with people.
44. Whether you smoke or drink (unless you’re an alcoholic, in which case I am not qualified to offer you advice.)
45. Whether or not you judge other people.
46. Whether you smell good or bad (unless you have some strange resistance to soap and deodorant).
47. How much of what other people say you believe.
48. How quickly you try again after you fall.
*49. How many times you say “I love you.”
50. How much rest you get at night.

Future-oriented

I keep telling myself: one day we'll look back on this period--at the things I did and thought out of insecurity--and laugh.

How could I?

Shyness is nice and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to

So, if there's something you'd like to try
If there's something you'd like to try
Ask me I wont say no, how could I?

Do you like fire? Are you free Saturday night?

So last night, my friend Roberta and I were talking before going to bed and were making plans to do something this weekend. She likes dance clubs (I hate them); I like bars (not really her deal). So I was throwing out ideas for activities on which we might be able to agree:

Bowling!
Roller skating!
Ice skating!
Bonfire!

At the mention of "bonfire," she said, "Oooh!" From the time I first learned of people having bonfires at Ocean Beach I have wanted to do this. We're each inviting friends. She's taking care of s'mores supplies, and I'm working on the fire bit. (A little bit daunting!)

I don't actually care who shows up--nothing sounds nicer than a fire on the beach under the stars.

It will also help occupy my restless, wandering brain that is my curse these days.

A reason to visit Portland

My beloved friend Dave with whom I went to grad school in Richmond is moving west, and it's the best news I've heard all fucking week. I told him I mention him more often than he realizes to my friends here and it's true. I love that crazy boy to pieces. Here's him passing along the news of his move:

I realized I've slept with everyone in Richmond, so it's time to head out west. Fugitive or refugee, I can't decide. That's what the court is for. I'm going to move to Portland, Oregon, in the next month or two. We must catch up. I get the sense that your life has changed dramatically since the last time we talked in person. I would love to get to know you again. It was loads of fun the first time. How are the birdies? (Does that date me with you?)

My tongue you're tearing out

Your teeth believe
That teeth are for tearing
Tear into me
The scent of you sweating
Smells good to me
As long as we keep in our clothes

Where is my mind?

"Thank you for calling Nerves R Us. For generalized anxieties, press 1. For suspenseful waiting, press 2. For skeptical analyses, press 3. For futilities, press 11."

We were made of gold

When I woke I took the back door to my mind
And then I spoke
I counted all the good things you are
And that list of charms was longer
Thank my chain of broken hearts
And when the days was done
I figured I had already lost
From the start, from the start

I was gonna love you til the end of all daytime
And I was gonna keep all our secrets and our lullabies
I was made to believe that our love would grow old
We were gonna live in a tree house and make babies
And we were gonna bury our ex-lovers and their ghosts
Baby we were made of gold...

They are not the same.

"It's different," he assured her. "Nothing at all like that other situation you had." She sniffed tearfully, hopefully.

Busting out of this joint

I have started a habit I hope to continue. I have been applying for at least one job a day first thing in the morning after arriving at work. It helps me stay hopeful, helps to make more bearable the rest of the day at a place that makes me so incredibly unhappy.

R. and I promised each other. We're getting out.

Message from a friend tonight

don't let anxiety sabotage your love! i'm trying hard not to freak out too. two days after he tells me he loves me to pieces, i find out he can't come back to this country anytime soon.i'm in pieces allright. and he's gone completely off the air...not answering phone, text, email. i feel marooned, left for dead. i want him to know how i feel. i send letters into a void. why do i trust, i wonder? why do i love? THEY don't care. what is the point?
i feel your pain. i'm sorry. i love much too quickly and with too pure a heart. i never learn that the world is hard and dangerous. it is still trying to kill me and i will not learn. i want to believe that people are good, that life is beautiful, that love is the answer, that happy marriage is not an oxymoron. i am a fool apparently.

On anxiety

Three years ago I fell for someone I met online after talking for a few months. He visited once. I never saw him again. Then we planned to move to Barcelona together, and soon I stopped hearing from him again, too.

I got burned badly. I was devastated. I cried for nearly two years. My anxiety over a repeat situation is almost unbearable.

So that is what is going on with me. I should have told you sooner. And perhaps not in this forum.

Vocabulary

fear - a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

trepidation - tremulous fear, alarm, or agitation; perturbation.

anxiety - distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune

Cuidate (reimagined)

For years she’d listened to them--those who would have her believe that her way of loving was naïve and that her head was in the clouds. Those who warned that she would end up alone because of her unrealistic expectations. She listened and nodded quietly, but stubbornly refused to give up. She refused to come ‘round to more realistic ways of thinking. She often gave up, and regularly fell to utter despair, but she continued to carefully cultivate her dream.

Vindication comes in the strangest forms.

There was the night she sat blindfolded and tentatively touched him—learned the shapes, tastes, and textures with which she wanted to be so intimately familiar. She was a good girl. She didn’t even give it all away—didn’t let it all go. But she privately lived a thousand lives in the quiet moments of those few days.

She drank greedily from his well and filled up all of her spare reservoirs for the long days of drought that surely lay ahead. She languished at the source of the river, putting out of her mind the questions that could so quickly make her terror rise. She waited and gave and received and listened and spoke and loved and—God! Oh, God!—had never been so well-loved and probably never would again. In the quiet moments she found her voice: in those where he kissed her hands, brushed back her hair, or parted her legs. Those were everything that there had never been but that she’d always known existed.

How had people kept these things secrets? How had they never let on that it could be this way? All this time she had been taking care and biding her time when—really—she should have been running headlong into these moments. For it was these that made it all worthwhile; it was these that had begun to be impossible to imagine living without.

And the lights from the TV running parallel to you...

I am trying to think of just the right words. I tried to think of them at the airport, too. It appears I don't have them. All I can think of are other people's words.

I can say that I feel like I'm coming down of a multi-day heroin binge.

I can also say that I keep sniffing myself for hints of you, of me, of we. My lotion reminds me of walking home with you in the dark.

Right now

You are sleeping in my bed.

I am so happy.

Today, today.

I will remember today for the rest of my life.

One day

Alternative titles to this blog:
On anticipation
The hands that wrote this letter sweep the pillow clean
I'm so tired of playing with this bow and arrow

A thousand flowers could bloom
Move over, and give us some room...
Give me a reason to love you...
For this is the beginning of forever and ever
Its time to move over...

Confidential message to D.

I am writing you letters.

I know you'll never get them in time, but I am overflowing with words to you, for you, and about you.

It has begun.

I am officially a wreck. Two. Days. How am I supposed to get through this?

You're just too good to be true
Can't take my eyes off you...
Now that I've found you stay
And let me love you, baby,
Let me love you...

Someone to throw the waffle back

I related this story to Dave earlier today in trying to convey to him some of the reasons I loved him, and it seemed worth mentioning here.

I know. All of my posts are about love these days, right? Deal with it. There's plenty of angst from the last four years to tie you over.

Anyway: I caught onto the show "Friends" several years later than everyone else. I thought it was a pretty cute show once I got into it. There was one episode that always stayed with me.

Monica decided to break off her relationship with a guy to whom she was engaged, and her friends were incredulous about why she would take such a drastic action. In trying to explain her reasoning, she relayed a story from a recent morning at breakfast. She was making waffles, and her fiancé was reading the paper. In a moment of playfulness she threw a waffle at him. He wasn't particularly pleased with her childishness, and went back to reading the paper. Monica pointed to that incident as an analogy for their relationship: "I want someone who would throw the waffle back," she said.

That struck a chord in me and stayed with me for years.

I want someone who would throw the waffle back. I want someone who would dance in the kitchen. I want someone who will sing off key and make silly faces and impersonate animals. I want someone joyfully and unabashedly ridiculous and comfortable being such. I want a fool who can turn around and make me feel naughty and sexy one minute later.

Hell yeah.

Holy blog hits, Batman!

So my interview about this blog is posted here, and my blog hits have shot way up. How exciting! Maybe soon I'll reach SPACE. Although I'm not exactly sure how that would work.

It should be noted that they messed up a comment I made at the bottom. It should say "a little wit" instead of "a lit." This is really bugging me, as my words will be messed up for posterity.

Better get my autograph while you still can...

Totally punk rock

On Wednesday, Amber is coming from Richmond, VA to visit. For three fun-filled days. NEXT Wednesday, Dave is coming from Dallas, TX to visit. For four luxurious and blissful days.

I can barely think of anything else, which is unfortunate, since I have a grant to write and a class to teach and an apartment to clean.

He knows about my history. He knows about my bipolar. And yet he doesn't seem phased. When shall I tell him about my serial killer past?

I am happier than I have been in many years. If I could just get my professional life up to speed with my personal life, things would be nearly perfect.

"I laugh along but inside I know: being in love is totally punk rock."

Everything I've got

I feel like I am in a state of suspended animation--perched on the brink of big things, holding my breath and waiting. The wait is killing me.

I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind...

A face with a view

We are well into our third week together, and it feels like I have loved you forever.

Today can only get better.

My boss is on the rampage again. And today I am her whipping boy (girl). Kill me now. Please. Thank you.

Two week anniversary

How can your life change so much in two weeks? How wonderful to celebrate each week--each day, for that matter. I can't remember what I was like before.