It's time to kick off your shoes, learn how to choose sadness.
If I were you (and I wish that I were you), all the things I'd do to make myself turn blue,
I suppose I'd start by removing all my clothes, tie my pantyhose around my neck.
Ill be that girl -- and you would be right over
If I were a field, you would be in clover
If I were the sun, you would be in shadow
And if I had a gun, there'd be no tomorrow
- Stephen Page, bnl
I am eating salmon berries.
I picked them on Tuesday when I was on a walk in the woods in Preston while Naomi was at ballet. They've been white and salmon-colored for what seems like weeks. Finally they're springing up all over like soft plump rubies.
I filled my purse with them. My purse has little red juice spots inside now, but there were so many I couldn't eat them all just walking, and no one walks that path- I passed clumps and heaps of rotting berries and couldn't bear it.
They are delicious.
I got my shoes all muddy from straying off the path and reached into the woods rather blindly just to get at those berries. Once I pulled my arm back and felt a subtle burning sensation all over. Then I stepped back and saw that I'd reached right through a thick clump of stinging nettle just to get that one berry.
I forgot about that.
I forgot stinging nettle.
Stinging nettle doesn't crop up like that in Utah.
So I forgot that it even exists.
And that it blossoms and fruits at the same time salmon berries ripen and redden.
Thankfully I'm so nature-savvy that it didn't even get to the stinging bit. It started itching a little and I found one of those ferns with the brown bobbles on the underside and applied liberally. It looked pink and painful, but I didn't feel a thing.
I stayed up late last night finishing off a short Sherlock Holmes story. I got home midnight-ish and went to bed three-ish. My head aches and I forgot to eat breakfast this morning. The sky is a bright, irritating grey that makes you squint even though there is no sun.
It was that way yesterday at the game. I went to a baseball game.
There was a surprising lack of people-watching during that game. The same ridiculous characters have cropped up all over the place, I guess I've just lost interest in redefining old idiosyncrasies. Emo green-jacket butt-waggler walking up the steps to get a coke, blonde tan-in-a-can talking at her non-attentive boyfriend nursing a beer three rows down, uninformed political chatters making wide insulting blanket statements (Democrats are ridiculous, blacks, Jews, blardeblar) sitting just behind us, awkward turn-around-and-stare at you kid playing with a plastic green tractor... the normal people that don't seem as fascinating as they maybe should.
I got up to hit the starbucks for a tazo tea and found myself standing by one of the stadium windows looking down out over the city. It was a little rainy out and I could hear the wet speckly sound of tires peeling around on the pavement. The faint black silhouettes of sea-birds flitted in and out between the clouds. I could see men and women talking on cell phones on the street and in their cars. You don't expect those moments. Everyone is going somewhere and no one is really looking at each other. Everyone thinks inside their head about the things they have to do and the people they're looking for in their cell phone. The rain is coming down in thin misty clouds leaving everything damp and fresh. The windshield wipers on the cars swish and thump across wet glass in a soft chorus of synchopated swish-thump, swish-thump, swish-thumps. A boy in a black sweatshirt steers his bike with one hand and pulls his beanie down with the other to keep the rain off his ears. A woman nurses an espresso at the corner as she waits to cross the street. No one has umbrellas.
Silly, stupid moments where you see how beautiful the city is without even trying.
I love being here.
I went out again with Myke last night. We met Ben at Cedars for dinner. It was quite good. Then we went to Eric's for a little bit, but his house would shortly be filled with drinking college students we don't know. We left and went to Forrest's house, picking him up on the way. He ate an apple in the car - a pink lady with a sticker he stuck on my face. We stayed at his house long enough for me to draw one comic and remind myself why I'm glad I don't have a TV or subscribe to French porn. Myke had to work this morning so we came home midnightish.
Thursday was Ben's birthday... and he'll be leaving for Israel very soon. I hadn't seen him in what feels like years, I don't know if it really was years. We've known each other for years and that seems weird for some reason. Maybe it makes me feel old.
I have left-over Indian food that should be eaten soon by me.
I had a good day yesterday.
I set up a doctor's appointment for next Tuesday. I don't know if you remember but I was diagnosed with episodic depression. It hasn't gone away like I hoped it would and I decided, along with heavy medical persuasion, to give the medication a try (with a compotent doctor this time).
I don't feel entirely comfortable about the whole thing - I wish someone would talk to me for a while but I guess I haven't been on the best social terms lately. It's frustrating that this thing inside me causes me to get sad and moody and not feel good enough to talk to people. Then because of the way I act my friends and family are led to believe I don't care about them. It's not true, I just don't want to 'be like that' when they're around. I want them to be happy to be around me. It's internally frustrating to feel responsible for turning people away from you when you really need to be around them more than anything.
Maybe I'm on some sort of masochistic crusade to preserve the illusion of 'fineness' among the people I know. I have a lot of sadness and a lot of anger that I don't want people to see - I think it's ugly.
So I guess I'll talk about it here and it'll be fine.
I'm going to the doctor on Tuesday and I'm anxious. I don't like the thought of taking medicine every day, I don't like thinking that normal me isn't working out. I don't like that other people don't have to take medicine. I don't like the stigma of clinical depression. It's weird and kind of scary.
I had a good day yesterday and I want it to stay normal and pleasant.
But now I guess I feel like I'm pulling my hand out of the bushes and it's starting to sting.
I hurt people. I don't mean to, but I do. I hate myself for it and I never meant to hurt anybody.
So now I don't want to start all that again - to make up excuses why I didn't answer the phone or why I'm never online anymore. I don't want to exhaust myself by over-compensation - give extra extra attention just so people know it wasn't their fault I didn't see them, it was me.
Can't I just say "I'm sad sometimes and I don't want you to see"?
I want it to be normal again like before I was sick. I want you to pretend like the in-between parts just didn't happen and everything has been fine all along. Maybe that's deluding myself, but I just want it to be normal.
I feel very little and silly writing everything in a journal here. I know I will feel better after I write it all out, so that's why I do it. I know that at least you know - you - the one who is reading. I wish I had the guts to talk to people about me. I wish I felt safe and felt ok talking about me - not about the time I got stitches in my finger, not about the boyfriend I had in high school, not about my tshirt designs, not about my art or all the books I've read... but about my feelings, my thoughts. I can parade my accomplishments and talents around me like a twenty-foot bridal train but it can be so hard to say, "you make me sad when you do that" or "It makes me angry to be treated this way" or "I'm so happy when I'm around you" or "I feel small and foolish. Am I?"
So here. I will tuck it inside of computer emo-kid paradise - an Internet journal entry that bears the comfortable stamp of anonymity and no one looking at me except through all the nerdy words.
I like the song I posted lyrics to. I guess I grew up with these guys played on the stereo around the house and in the car. Most of my friends don't like Barenaked ladies, but that is ok anyway because I like them. They remind me of Rachel, too, and I like that.
I'm a happy person.
Just not all the time.
If you will not have me as myself,
Perhaps as someone else
Perhaps as you I'll be worth noticing
Then even a eunuch won't resist
The magic of a kiss from such as me
It's time to kick off your shoes,
Learn how to choose sadness
It's time to throw off those chains,
Addle our brains with madness
cause weve got plenty of time
To grow old and die
But when at last your beautys faded
Youll be glad that I have waited for you
When youre done
With being beautiful and young
When that course is run, then come to me
I'll be that girl