The toddler I used to babysit came over with her dad this morning, and my parents were playing with her in the living room. I went out to see her, and she didn't recognize me because of my hair, and was too shy to interact with me much. :( She was very talkative and playful otherwise, though, and it was cute to watch her playing with the stuffed frogs we had lying around.

In other news, I was sort of productive today and did laundry, packed most of my suitcase, and called my HMO about counseling. They gave me a few different numbers of providers to check out, so I contacted those folks and left them messages. I guess I'll see how that goes. I'm supposed to call the HMO again on Tuesday once I've set up an appointment with someone, so they can sort out the cost. It's really inconvenient to try to find therapists when I don't have a car, since most of them are kind of far from me.

I've been writing in my happiness journal for the past few days. Not sure yet what I want to write today... but I can almost always scrounge something up, even if it's something like "I didn't gain any weight today." Sometimes the best you can do is a thing that was not terrible, at least. I wonder if I'll be able to keep this up for five years.

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Talking to someone I have a cautious acquaintanceship with, and he was being obnoxious and offensive. Ugh.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

I listened to "Nine Black Poppies" by The Mountain Goats a lot today after I woke up. I didn't feel like getting up, so I just lay in bed and listened to the song on repeat.

On a whim, I decided to get my hair cut, so I went to the beauty school to see about a walk in appointment, but they didn't have any until a couple hours later, so I reserved that and walked around the mall for awhile. There was a store that had really good discounts on jackets, so I got two-- one long raincoat and a shorter one. I was pretty happy about that. I've needed a real raincoat for awhile, and I got one for like $30! It's cute, too, but I need to fix one of the buttons. They gave me an extra 10% off for the button... and that was on top of the 70% discount + 40% discount they were already doing. I got a $200+ coat for $30!

I was going to walk home after my haircut, but it was cold, and my mom texted me asking if I wanted a ride home, so I said yeah and waited in this... uhh... beauty/drug store nearby. She came by and we shopped a bit, and I got some new face moisturizer and cleanser, then she took me home.

Esther picked me up a bit after that, and we got dinner at a Greek place I like, then went to her apartment and she experimented with styling my hair while we watched some standup. I got to hold her budgie briefly, which was nice, although he doesn't let people pet his tummy, sadly. He's still really cute though, and he likes to fly and sit on her head.

I had a really good time tonight. Yesterday I had dinner with Alice, and hopefully I can hang out with her again before I leave. Maybe Friday...

Also, hopefully I can see Sean before I go. He's having a small New Year's Eve get together, so that's probably the best time. So far it's not looking like anybody else can go to it, though. :S Could be just the two of us! That can be nice in its own way, though. It's a lot more intimate.

I kind of wish that the happiness journal Fro gave me was bigger. I wrote in it today and yesterday, but I feel like I have more to say than will fit in the tiny little section for the day. Then again, I suppose I always have my normal journal, haha. Somehow that seems like more of a chore than the happiness journal, though. Ah well. I'll figure it out.

---

Yesterday and today I was reflecting on how things felt a couple years ago. That feeling of being enveloped in warm amber, and not feeling hungry or sleepy because of how excited I was. I remember getting so cold when it was only in the 70s because I was barely eating, but I had no appetite, and I was so happy when my weight dropped down to 110 lbs. There was a night when we were lying on the grass in the park, looking at the stars, and I felt so good about everything, so confident about myself and the future. Things felt like they were right, and like my life was only going to get better from that point on. I had this indescribable sense of certainty that I had met someone who was made of the same stuff as me-- someone with the same kind of essence, I guess. It made me feel like I wasn't alone anymore. At that point, I had friends already, but there was still a slight feeling of separation, of distance from them. The feeling was scarce that summer, replaced with this sense of "finally, finally, finally." Finally, what I'd been too scared to hope for seemed like it was happening. I had so often smothered my own hopes before, because it hurt less to do that than to hope for something I thought would never come. But that summer... I let myself hope, and I let myself be confident, and I let myself be wide open, and I let myself fully embrace the wonderful thing I thought was happening.

And it backfired that fall, and it broke me down slowly over the next year, and for the year after that, even though it had ended.

I felt myself disintegrating for months, like I was nothing but a dried up leaf, curling in upon itself and crumbling away. I kept myself busy, and I felt good sometimes, but the sense of erosion always lingered underneath.

In the times when I wasn't angry about what had happened, I cried. I cried about the loss, and for the branch of the future that I would never reach. It felt like I had staked my life's savings on a bad bet. I wondered so much about what I could have done differently, what would have changed the course of things. I wished that I had died in the car accident in March, because there was nothing left of me to live. Just this personless body unrecognized by the only observer who mattered.

At my old gym, one of the instructors was fond of telling us to push harder, scrape the bottom of the barrel, burn the last bit in the tank. I feel like I've been doing that for the past year and a half.

---

I told Alice about how I had moved away from home, and she gave me a brief lecture about how she thought I would've known better by now than to do something like that to myself.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

I've been chatting with a lot of people I didn't keep up with during the quarter, and it's really nice. I feel like I was too socially cut off during school and it was making me depressed. I'm enjoying talking to different people and hearing what's going on in their lives.

Have been talking to Kyle a lot more, and I'm even catching up with SD Mike (we don't really talk unless I initiate it, so I almost never talked to him in the past few months). Also getting back into IRC.

I feel so much better now than I have for awhile. I don't think my body can handle extended bouts of sitting as well as it used to, but I feel like it's good for my mental health to keep in touch with a good number of friends. I felt really suffocated up in Seattle when I was mainly focusing my social energies on one person. Felt kinda trapped in the obligation.

But! Things are better. Hopefully they don't suck again as soon as I get back to Seattle. I want to try to see my friends as much as I can before I go back. Maybe I'll see about meeting some new people once I'm up there, too. I haven't decided yet. There seem to be a number of options.

Now that I have comfy water-repellent shoes, I feel more motivated to go out. Maybe I will do things in the morning! Like go to the gym??

I wish that I had brought the happiness journal that Fro gave me up to Tahoe with me. I feel pretty good at the moment.

Christmas has been nice. Got to relax, hang around my family, eat food, chat with my online friends. Ahh. ^__^

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

"The Nights Are Cold" by Camera Obscura.

The fate of man is random so don't look down
The towns and the cities are all burning down
Your road is bitter like the whip of the wind
You want to get to the end but you don't know how to begin

You want to know how we got to where we are now
The nights are cold
The nights are cold
The nights are cold

Let my life and all its storms begin to blow
Take me here and there, I don't care where I go
Ah, but beauty is a dark cloud when you're alone
She says she has the answers but I really just don't know

You want to know how we got to where we are now
The nights are cold
The nights are cold
The nights are cold
The nights are cold

Ah, the only road I walk alone
Where beauty nails me to her cross

"Never Good Enough" by Eerie Summer.

I wish I could talk to you
I wish I was louder
I was I had social skills
I wish I was stronger

Never good enough
Never good enough
Never good enough
Never good enough

I wish I was fearless
To make everyone impressed
I wish that I could make friends
Instead of just failing

Never good enough
Never good enough
Never good enough
Never good enough

It felt like two hands grasping for each other from opposite sides of a canyon, unable to reach, and trying to meet halfway meant throwing oneself off the cliffs.

I wrote this in 2010, but it still feels relevant:

There isn't any hope left
And no reason to try
When there's no such thing as truth
What can we do but lie?

We couldn't cross the distance
So it came and crossed us
There's much that I still want to say
But nothing to discuss

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

I was talking to Dan last night and was reminded of this song:

"No Children" by The Mountain Goats.

I am drowning, there is no sign of land
You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die

He also showed me this one:

"Nine Black Poppies" by The Mountain Goats.

And I tried to remember how nice it had been
A long long time ago
But I couldn't remember
I honestly could not remember

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

I've had a headache for like seven or eight hours.

Sometimes it feels like I've just had a continuous headache for the past few months. The pain increases and decreases, but it's almost always there.

Sometimes I rub my temples or put pressure on the areas around my eyes, and that hurts too, but in a more tolerable way. Pressing hard on my temples makes it feel slightly less unpleasantly painful, but it also makes me feel nauseous.

It's so hard to care about almost anything else when I can't seem to make these headaches stop.

---

Kyle and I have been talking a bit more recently, and it's nice. I miss when we used to talk every day. I guess that was a really long time ago now, though. It used to feel like he knew me better than anybody, for better or worse. I think he still knows me in a different way than most of my other friends. Nobody else has really been around as long as he has.

We talked about potentially taking a trip together at some point, but haven't really gotten many details down. Most of the places I want to go that are easier to plan trips for are places I've already been to, like New York. I do want to go to Europe as well, but it's kind of outside my price range. Kyle said he could cover some travel costs for me, but Europe is a bit too much. Maybe we could do Canada or something, though. Or Hawaii? He's never been to Hawaii with me. I guess maybe he'd rather go somewhere neither of us has been yet. Might be cool to go along the East Coast, since I haven't really seen much of it. There's also Carlsbad Caverns down in New Mexico, which he said he would take me to years ago but never did.

---

This headache is making me feel sick. I just want it to go away. Ibuprofen doesn't really help enough, though, and the only other thing I have is generic Excedrin, and that has caffeine in it. It's too late at night to take something with caffeine... Maybe I'll just try to go to sleep. I'm staying in a big fancy cabin near Tahoe with my extended family though, and I have to share a room with my cousin and this other girl from China that my aunt invited. Makes it a bit of a hassle to get ready for bed, because I have to be really careful to be quiet and not disturb them.

Headache is making it almost impossible to focus on anything and it makes me want to scream and hit my head against something until I lose consciousness and can't feel it anymore. Not that I would ever do that... All my energy is going into trying not to take it out on the people around me. Limiting my interactions with them seems like the easiest way so far.

I don't want to live with these constant headaches. Maybe I need to drink more water.. ugh...

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

"Golden Hour" by Prince Innocence.

The sensualities
A last moment is lost on me

I'm not sure if those are the right lyrics.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!