The Routines

20 minutes to go

Twenty minutes to go. What can you do in twenty minutes but think of the twenty minutes there is to go? How hard will you work when there are just 20 minutes to go? Hard, or hardly? Maybe both.

Now there is less than twenty minutes to go. All the things are put away, all the pieces of paper have been recycled. All the food has been eaten, the money spent, and the day winds down from dusk. What has been made has been made, what's been done has been done, and twenty minutes are almost done too.

Do you even want the last twenty minutes? The last twenty minutes of a movie are different than the last twenty minutes of a television show, the last 20 minutes of a letter, of a lecture, of a shift at work. The last 20 minutes is something-the time shrinks and expands according to context. It expands, it expands.

There are 15 minutes to go. Sometimes if you go get your coat and your bag it doesn't seem so long. It doesn't seem so long does it?

Now there are 14 minutes to go. Maybe I will play this game. Count down the minutes as they happen upon me. See how long one can write in twenty minutes. Why does this minute seem so long?

13 minutes to go.

I will go home. I can think of the bus ride home, and the people I will see on the bus ride home. Maybe there will be the man who sits on the bus and mumbles only slightly audibly to himself.

Seven minutes to go.

Bad Date Karma

I have believed strange things before.
I believe in strange things.
Asked out on a date.
Plan the date for Monday.
Monday comes and we are both ill.
It happens.

Can't plan the rest of the week.
Days fill up with obligations,
For the both of us.

Plan the date for the following Tuesday.
Tuesday is good.
I live with the idea of it being Tuesday.
Something came up,
And now Tuesday it's not.

Wednesday is too busy for me,
Thursday might be too busy for her,
Friday might be for family,
Then it's Christmas.

I know it's an odd belief, but I believe in date karma.
If we pick a day and something else is wrong with it,
I might just give up.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me,
"Hey, this really isn't a good idea."

Things I have stopped include this

I was sick for awhile. I was sick in a way that isn't cancer, or something physical. In a way that people can say to you, "at least you still have your health".

I have stopped many things, and one of those things was this blog.

I realize, that a lot of the writings were symptomatic of my larger undiagnosed mental illnesses. I can say that, and acknowledge it.

Sometimes writing helped, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it made things worse, sometimes better. It's hard to articulate and differentiate the complexities of past writing.

I think I was worried I would revert to past habits and behaviors. But, the thing is, I never read anything again that I make. I never re-read much, or remake much. So, what's the point? What's the worry?

This is just a note for now.

Capturing fleeing moments early Saturday morning

My notebook is in my backpack. I do not have the energy to trail the pen across the page. It takes remarkably a lot more energy to write out everything as you would like to say it on here. Easier I guess it is to write in this format.

Dear self,

How have we been doing?

Love

self

Gee. That is a hard question to answer. I feel like I am so caught up in the whirring spinning of everything. Home and school and just getting to ride the bus alone is something I haven't yet been able to fully assimilate into my life. It's like it didn't happen, that nothing happened even though the glaringly obvious is "duh, it really did." I think my internal monologue voice might be part valley girl.

My palms smell like oranges, my fingertips smell like oranges even though I've washed my hands a number of times. I have eaten a lot of oranges today. I'm not sure if it's unhealthy to eat a lot of them.

I feel like a plastic tupperware container. No one asks a plastic container how it feels. It just holds a lot of other things. I am a big tupperware container that has been emptied for a very very long time. I don't know how I feel. I feel slightly disconnected from everything inside of me. It is hard to describe fully, but it's not a bad feeling.

I will describe it later.

I kinda do this on a regular basis

Is this blog a marriage, dating, or a long-term relationship? Is this for better or worse, or can I start something new? Do I even want to? I don't know if I can love it as much, or if it will love me as much after what I did to it.

L.K.

I think the drugs are working, and I think you are probably right about the keep on living thing. Can we write a book already? It would be about all of this. About me and about you and about our separate breakdowns and our separate moments when pieces of us died. For you awhile ago, for me a month ago.

You know? Real gritty(you), real pretty(me), real witty(both of us, but we can debate about who's wittier).

Since it was my idea, and since I almost died, I get to draw the front cover, and you can draw the back.

Lines, lines, lines. I am in love with lines, but pen and ink ones not the other kind.

Oh the things we'll have to tell.

A.L.

"Normal" is killing me

At first I thought it was just the stress of everything. Being tired at 11:30pm was just the stress of the past few days and weeks that had collapsed onto themselves and needed to be slept out when one was in a saner mindset. I let myself fall asleep that early and earlier.

A few other days happened, and I noticed that I fell asleep at around 11:00pm, and woke up at 7:00am or earlier. This is what normal is. You are supposed to get 8 hours of sleep, and that is what I was getting.

For someone who counts on the later hours of the evening to get things done, I was falling asleep well before I got anything accomplished. I have re-framed my work ethic to try to get things done earlier in the day before going home so that at least some progress is made.

I am supposed to give this whole medical process about 8-12 months, and it's been not nearly that long. Gotta be hopeful about it of course.

Coping with the coping

It is very hard to rationalize being on this drug. I know so few people who take medication, and are open about it. I feel different. I am smiling, and usually I don't smile. I feel like I didn't earn this sensation, this feeling.

It is something that I only struggle with understanding at night.

During the day I feel fantastic and lucid.

At night, I wonder if I am doing the right thing.

Too good?

Listening to Regina Spektor, sitting cross-legged on my bed. I am a hundred ideas and motivated. I realize I have felt very bad for a very long time. I am on antidepressants, and have been for about a week. Placebo or not, things are changing.

I am preparing myself for the less than glamourous full package deal:

-general side effects

-continued depression

-possible "zombieness"

-possibility of fucking it all up again

-becoming a cultural statistic

-becoming a "victim" of the "pharmaceutical blah blah blah"

-addiction to something new

-withdrawl symptoms when stopping

More or less

They don't make it like you do.

I realized today that there aren't many people who can do the things that I do. People don't think about things like I do, and I don't mean assignments. I have so many talents, and so much development that can happen. This is proving to myself, at least for now, that I deserve to be here.

Everything was calm, cold, and quiet.

Dearest,

I am incredibly tired, for what it's worth. I am still sick, sad, depressed, and very cold. I woke up this morning tired and not wanting to go to work. It took an incredible effort to get out of bed, an even greater effort to get dressed and everything in between and after. I didn't really feel awake until after two pm.

I am exhausted, and there is so much to do that I have put off. Tomorrow there are about a hundred and a half things to do, and I am not entirely prepared for all of them. An appointment at school, two appointments with professors, a group meeting, an audio recording session, and I have to pick up video equipment, and presumably film something, edit that something and finish it for Tuesday. Not to mention reading responses, a food journal, and a paper due Wednesday-none of which I have started. I might possibly spontaneously combust, or spontaneously do something else. Is it worth sleeping if you will only sleep for a few hours?

Art smart, crazy mary

In between the stomach pains and all the too much sleep, I have been having some sporadic, somewhat brilliant ideas. Particularly I want to create physical spaces, invite people to my house, create an entirely new faculty at my university, regulate the world, make zines, and live in public places. This seems about the only part of me that is working right.

Thinner than air.

When I was in high school, I used to read a lot of books about girls with anorexia: fiction and non-fiction. I always draw severely skinny girls. Even when I am drawing from real life, I make people thinner than they actually are. I like to draw girls who look like their bones are wrapped in skin. It's not healthy, and it's disturbed a few people I know.

Make your own artpad doodles:

http://www.abcoloring.com/coloring/96/Art-pad-Drawing.html

Kind of Like a Monoprint

"I'm worried about you"

We inhale and exhale, and nothing changes. Text messages and text messages. There are different kinds of text messages.

From JB: I am worried about you
From JB: Is everything ok?

And you are "ok" in the context that you can wake up every morning, and generally do that which is expected of you.

And you are "ok" because you have projects, and they generally get started, and they generally get done, but not always.

And you are "ok" because you have a hundred things to fill your time, and you are very productive in comparison to other people's productivity. You get something done, usually moderately well, and you don't watch too much television.

But you are not really ok.
You are not really the best example of yourself or who you could be.
And you are terrified if they give you drugs, they won't work, and they will dull you.
Tell the truth.
Write it down, so you can tell the truth.

We're kinda iconic.

You know it's true.

It goes like this.

Life happens, and it all happens at once. It happens when you stop doing the things you are supposed to do. When you are supposed to go to school, supposed to do work. People go to school and people do work even when you aren't there.

You're falling behind. You don't care if you are falling so far behind. You don't really care about anything.

A fell in love with B

C got better

D moved away

E disappeared forever

F barely leaves his apartment.

You got worse.

Isn't that funny?

I have never felt worse.

The external self is pretty much the same as always. Thumbs up, smiles, chit-chat with people you see too often. People I talk to or don't talk to, people I want to talk to and talk to. Gets you to school and from school. External self takes pretty good notes in class, will help other people write essays, and if you say, "Want to meet up, even though you're busy?" External self will say yes, and you'll go. You'll probably have an average time talking about life and its annoyances.

Internal self can barely get out of bed. It feels emotionally, mentally, and physically drained. Headaches, nausea. Details you don't want to know. I have never felt worse in all of my days. Missing class, and I wonder if I can justify it for these reasons? I have never felt worse than this before. All the sad days put together are better than this.

It's frightening. I have never felt so uncaring, apathetic, and turned off from school, friends, and family. I don't want to make zines, I don't want to write letters. I don't want to go to school, I don't want to go home. I don't want to be around people, but nor do I want to be alone. I don't want to go outside, I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to read articles, write assignments. When I force myself into doing any of these things, it doesn't feel right.

If these are supposed to be the most vibrant years of my life, clearly I've burnt out too soon. I wouldn't even call this burning out. I've burnt out before, and I know what that feels like. You feel like you've given everything that you've got, and you can't give anymore.

This feels like dying. Like I am slowly giving up everything I care about, things I would have fought harder for, but just let go. I am creating problems and messes, paperwork and coursework that's simply not getting done. Projects unstarted and unfinished for myself and professors I would follow halfway around the world if that's what they wanted me to do.

I don't know what's wrong this time, or how I can fix it. I have never felt closer to nothingness. I have never felt closer. You know it doesn't take much to really get there.