You are a saint if you read it all.
Well I am only really saying anything because I haven't in so long and I know at least one person cares. Let me try to drum up the past few months of fluctuating horribleness and okayness without getting too melodramatic.
After the drama llama visited our Gamestop, it all ended with a bit of employee shuffling and me getting a promotion. I still have the retail regret, of being almost thirty (almost twenty-five, so what) and still working a service job. But I make over a dollar an hour more and on the average week work up to six times as many hours as I was getting as a sales associate. I have actual responsibilities now, I love my store, and my management team (my boss and the BOSS boss) are the chillest coolest dudes. And even though we lost the awesome manager who made us phenomenal to another store, the new management has the good sense (and the experience of having worked with the old manager) to try to keep it up. Therefore, pretty much all I do is work and play teh WoW, but I don't mind so much because I'm usually too tired to do much else anyway.
The lease on the townhouse in Van Nuys ended in February. I loved the apartment and the hugeness of it, but without sounding like I'm racially intolerant I could not live in that neighborhood. We were literally the only white people on the street, the only group of "kids" living there (the rest were noisy, inconsiderate families or very creepy obvious drug houses). Roach coaches (sleazy Mexican catering trucks with "La Cucaracha" horns, for non-southern Californians) would drive by every fifteen minutes starting at 7 am, and end around 11, when a handheld ice cream cart would go down the street making this creepy "boooooong" noise. We later found out it was actually a drug cart disguised with the ice cream, like in that movie The Wackness. Kids would bounce their balls off our cars and tag our door and front steps. Our neighbors would throw inexcusably loud mariachi parties until 3 or 4 in the morning, and then glare and act all menacing the next day if we called the cops. All of this, combined with the fact that Yvette was moving to DC at the end of the lease, meant Christine and I had to find a new place, and with all the holiday craziness we didn't get on it until January, when our lease was up February 12. Luckily it all worked out for the best. Our new home is smaller but cozy and well-situated. The neighborhood is fantastic, it's 50% closer to both of our work, and it has really improved my relationship with Christine, who I hadn't spent a lot of time with over the past year even though we lived together. We technically live in Valley Village, which is part of the Toluca Lake/North Hollywood amalgam, which again for non-Californians is where many of the celebrities actually live and play. As a result there are wonderfully high-end grocery stores, gourmet bakeries, four-star restaurants, and filming going on on virtually any given day. It is all so glamorous and yet incidental. It's humbling and fascinating. I think everyone should work in or around the film industry at least once so they can get over it. Going into it starstruck is the worst injustice you can do yourself.
Now for the sad stuff that has happened (if I can remember it all). My childhood cat Precious died. It was in her sleep, during the day, with her sister sitting by her side. She didn't suffer for a moment and though I always wanted to be there with her when she went, I figured we'd end up having to put her down and I'd have a choice in the matter. I guess it's better this way but somedays I still just break down. Every time I go visit mum and pops I call out for her and every time my eyes start to burn. Moving on now because it's happening again. My grandpa has Alzheimer's and has been steadily declining over the past year. My mom went to visit him and came back with pictures and that made me cry too. He has a complex and turbulent relationship with his kids, but since he had the distance of grandpa to me I always really admired him, even appreciating his faults in a charming way. But now that he is almost assuredly dying his kids are working overtime to fix what they can, with my mom pulling the brunt of the weight, as she always does when something bad happens to one of her family members. I only hope some day I can do the same thing for her. Moving on again because that makes me want to cry too. My cousin tried to kill herself over a boy, which I won't judge but it got me thinking about suicide again. It made me sad that she felt that empty. It made me feel like shit when I couldn't console her and tell her it gets better. When I couldn't say you can handle it. When I couldn't say it's not ever the right choice. My horse Jasper suffered a fractured pastern and then two of the horses at his stable died unexpectedly, so I am a little tense on that front too, every day expecting another message of loss. In January it was a year since James died. I don't have anything more to say about that. I found out my ex of exes is having a kid, and it made me upset and I'm not sure why. It makes me angry to feel inconsequential. To feel that I could or could not have happened and people would still end up where they are. It is also a little insulting that exes still come to me and say the lines, play the games, and expect me to fall for it (like the boy who wouldn't date me in high school because I was too young, told me he loved me and dated other girls, came to me nine years after the fact and said, "I know you still think about me." Actually, until just then, I hadn't). They are married, fathers, career men, and they come back to this messed-up wreck of a little girl for ... whatever reason. I don't know what I do for people, because I am so negative that I can never see what they see. I don't know if it's just the sex, which is one thing I am sure people enjoy about me, which also makes me sick. Everyone I've ever been with is better off without me. Everyone I've ever been with carries around horror stories of my jealousy, insecurity, temper, anger, violence, and instability. That is so mortifying and demeaning. I want to be someone better but how do you change how you feel, how you respond? You can coach yourself but then I always feel I'm not being true to myself. When I just act I am foul and debased and evil and hypocritical. If that is me I'd rather not be at all. That is the prevailing thought these days and really only habit of keeping danger away from me has kept it from happening. I realized the other day with sickening certainty that I could buy a gun. I don't want to say this to be cloying or begging for attention. I don't necessarily want it to alarm anyone either, because it's been happening the whole time you've known me and I guess I just lack the whatever (courage, cowardice, conviction) to get'ir done.
Speaking of which, I have a feeling that my old diagnosis of bipolar is not correct, which is funny because when I went to a therapist last year and he said that I thought he was full of shit. Let me correct: I thought it was irresponsible of him as a doctor to say that to me after thirty minutes of very superficial discussion, when the diagnosis had been given to me by a family doctor I've seen since prepubesence and a therapist I saw for a few years after I tried to kill myself. Regardless I think he may be right, either that or I have recently developed severe anxiety issues. A big part of my never going out and not socializing is because I simply cannot handle it. I remember telling Rem years ago that before I went to clubs I got nervous, twisted guts, for absolutely no reason. A club that I went to regularly, where there was no special event and no prevailing dramas. It was the responsibility, the preparation needed. The getting dressed, having money, filling up the gas tank, getting cigarettes, finding parking, talking to people, ordering drinks, driving home more drunk than you should be, etc. etc. It doesn't sound like much but each thing was this huge obstacle to be tackled. Especially anything with human interaction. I feel SO offbase almost ALL of the time. This can't be right. I struggle through conversations, I dumb down what I say, I rely on cliche responses, I desperately look for an out because I feel so fucking awkward and unreal. I am quiet and brooding, I pull my hood up and I speak in a very timid, high pitched voice when I do need to say something. I am overly polite so no one has cause to chastise me, yet I draw attention because of how I look and because of how self-aware I am. I know that I walk funny, I talk audibly to myself to keep myself on track, I hold my hands weird, I THINK about everything I do. Sometimes I begin to hyperventilate because I am thinking too hard about breathing and I start to do it wrong and then I can't get it back to right. Every morning I wake up at least an hour before my actual wake-up and vomit. If there's nothing in my stomach, which there often isn't because my appetite has disappeared, it's just acid and bile. Pleasant I know. But I will do this for any and no reason. My first day opening the store by myself was a total wreck. I got about three hours of sleep and was feeding myself just to have something to throw back up. If I have any kind of obligation that day, any at all, it will happen. I am not pregnant, as this has been happening for about eight months and I AM NOT PREGNANT. It will happen at other times of the day too but the morning is especially bad. I still have my same stomach and digestion issues that I've always had, which is also part of why my appetite is gone (who wants to eat when everything makes you instantly puke or shit?) that ultrasounds and bacteria tests and ulcer scans have returned absolutely no reason for. Yet there is clearly something wrong. I am so sad and afraid, I don't know what to do. I would trade everything about me to be normal.
I have to end this with something happy because I am such a downer all the time. (That's another thing, I haven't posted because I hate looking back and seeing that the last few entries are all QQ, even though that's the point of LJ I guess.) I just got back from Anime Boston 2010 which, although plagued by my nervous stomach (which in turn led to me eating about ten bites in total the whole trip), was a totally killer time. I want to preface this next part by saying that I don't think it's fair to knock relationships or friendships that began online. That being said, I went with some fellows I met on WoW initially, but that was five years ago, and in the intervening time we've visited more than once and I HATE that I have to defend our friendship (though I think you should bear in mind, Rem in particular, where WE met). On Thursday night we stayed in their hometown (they are all friends from growing up together, so really I am the only loser) which had the most beautiful view of the stars and a crisp, clean, invigorating, and inspirating New England night air. I am so in love with the east coast. We trekked back to Boston on the train the next day, and I came to the realization that I love metropolitan public transportation, subways in particular. I think it's part of my love affair with European and New England cities. We stayed at the Sheraton at the Hynes Convention Center. I kept thinking I was going to see James. It was a blast looking out across the way at the other branch of the hotel and seeing Sailor Jupiter and Rurouni Kenshin dancing to "Yatta!" in the window. People had taped up messages, a plethora of ^_^ ;_; T_T. Our window said POOP. The passion for cosplay in these people is incredible. I was so awed by the dedication and love they put into their costumes. Some highlights were chibi stormtroopers, Kiba and a full-sized Akamaru from Naruto (complete with belly scratching!), a sleeping black baby Link, the Sound Four from Naruto, Aeris/Aerith from Final Fantasy VII with a sword sticking through her chest, Speed Racer in a wheelchair, the fat male Misty from Pokemon, and I even saw a Re-l Meyer from Ergo Proxy. It gave me so many ideas and made me want to go next year. I didn't see a single character from Berserk or Speed Grapher so I am all pissed and primed. Even the people who weren't strictly cosplaying where usually wearing some variation or representation of their favorite character or anime. There were way more panels than I could process and I feel like I hardly went to any: Totally Lame Anime (featuring The Dog That Went Blargh, Attack of the Super Monsters, and Titanic: The Legend Continues), Fandubbing, a War of the Worlds reading, a WoW panel, art gallery and dealers' halls, wow I can't remember it all. I feel like I didn't take enough pictures but I'll try to get them here whenever. It was the youngest guy in our group's 21st birthday, but you have to understand how bizarre and geeky this guy is to understand how much fun it was to buy him his first shot. I bought everyone french fries and alcohol and we watched Stormship Troopers in HD so I think that makes a pretty good trip. I had issues with my flight both ways and actually got sick on the flight back which has never never never happened to me, but I am so grateful for the wonderful weekend between them. P.S. I got a stuffed squid.