[Miscellany]

I'm going to level with you;  I'm not doing too well.
I feel like I'm on the precipice of a nervous breakdown though I'm too aware of how unable I am to have one to actually ever let it happen.  Who would be there to pick up the pieces exactly should that happen?  I don't have the luxury of letting myself completely break down and decompose like I want to.  I resent that too, by the way.

The past year has been excruciating.  I'm now at the stage where I don't even look forward to weekends.  I don't even look forward to the long night ahead after work finishes.  What do people do with those hours exactly?  How are they filled?  I see them all before me and just get exhausted by the daunting task of navigating their emptiness.  I drive home, late with my fingers gripping the wheel and my stomach churning with pain the closer I get to my house.  I often take the long way home - sometimes driving close to 2 hours to postpone the inevitable nothingness that follows when I am here.

"What is the point of me?" is a question I ask of myself daily.  More than daily; perhaps closer to hourly.  It's a valid question.  What is the point of me?  I can see that I get up every morning, I pay my taxes, I work in a job that is giving back to the community, I love those around me, I am kind and giving (well, mostly), I am a good friend and a human that aims not to harm others but there is nothing there that actually has a point.  There is nothing there that makes being me actually worthwhile.  I'm not saying that I'm going to disappear any time soon - remember, who would be there to pick up the pieces and all that?  No, it's just - what is the point of all this emptiness?  I'm sick of sailing these seas.  I'm sick of being me.  I'm sick of getting up and paying my taxes and being a productive member of society.  I don't have the things that basic humans need - connection, hugs and love and so what is the point of me?  I keep asking - like as if I expect a disembodied voice to boom back an answer that makes sense.

But there is no disembodied voice.  There is no answer.  There is only that emptiness, stretching out before me tauntingly.

MVOR thinks this is productive of me; to be feeling so raw.  This rawness is new.  It's the repressed me that is now surfacing, that has to surface in order for me to peel it away and expose the new, I suppose.  But maybe not.  Maybe it's just me winding down, coming to terms with my supreme insignificance and a dawning of many more years of chaos and myself spiraling in a downward direction.

I wish I could say that I was having a moment of feeling sorry for myself but I'm honestly not.  I'm grateful for every wretched breath I draw.  I'm amazed by my ability to imagine beautiful things, always.  I'm inspired by the beauty I am able to find in every chaotic moment.  I recognise my unique qualities in seeing things that others don't and in surviving what others couldn't even imagine.  There is nobody I know that could handle the daily circumstances that I do and I wouldn't wish it on anyone either.  I'm amazing and all that.  I know.

But it's not enough for me to see what the point of all that is.  What is the point of me?  It's a question I'll keep asking until my voice grows hoarse and every silent beat that follows after sends me hurtling further and further into space away from everything and everyone.

What is the fucking point of me?

Labels: in treatment, musings, MVOR, pondering, psychos, wonderings

posted by M at 12:18 am 11 comments

When summer break began so did my spiral into delinquency.   I've become a serial graffitist; I graffiti comics on the walls of public restrooms.  I've been posting my scribblings on my IG account and by all accounts it's the first time in a long while that I've felt truly excited and inspired by something I've created.

I told MVOR about my new project after reminiscing about an old book I read as a teenager.   The book; Displaced Person by Lee Harding is the story about a boy who slowly started losing grip with reality to the point where he completely disappears from view and ceases to exist to all the people that once knew him in his life.  At first he finds it hard to get people's attention, then his parents start ignoring him and soon he slips through a crack in reality to find himself in a grey world where he can't engage at all with the life he once knew and wondering whether he was going mad or if this was some cruel joke being played on him by God.

MVOR was interested in the tale I told and immediately drew parallels between by own life of feeling invisible, undervalued and insignificant and the life of this fictional boy who was going through a displacement.

Then I told her about the graffiti.

Surprisingly, MVOR applauded me on this.  I was expecting her to question my reasons for doing so and to caution me against defacing public property but she didn't.  She laughed; of course you are doing this!  You are putting your hand up in the only way you know how.  You are making your mark.  You are asking people to see you, to notice you, to understand you.  You are reaching out and leaving a legacy.  You are validating yourself as a person worthy of being noticed.

Oh... well.  In that case...

Labels: art, displaced, life and art, MVOR, psychos, thinking

posted by M at 3:47 am 5 comments

In my younger years I spent a lot of time obsessively organising genre lists, composer lists and playlists in my iTunes folders.  However over the last 4 or so years my priorities have been only on a seemingly simple task of keeping my head above water.  Simple, yes, but all consuming too.  Things like playlists (and having a life) were low on my list of priorities and it's only now in the last couple of months that I have looked at compiling lists of any kind again.  It's a daunting task.  Music is an important part of my life.  In many ways music is the family I never had, the friend that gives advice and the hero that always comes along to save me when all hope is lost.  When people weren't there to pick up the pieces music always was and when I wasn't there for myself it was music that kept me sane.  Now, due to neglect in many areas of my life, my music is tangled up like a frustrating messy, knotted ball of string... and yes, I've only just noticed.  Since I can rarely find any song I want on command anymore I now tend to put the music on shuffle and pray that the Gods send me the music I need in order to feed those parts of my soul that need nurturing at that time.  I listen to my iPod most days, so I have a lot of music that shuffles in and out of my head through those ear buds.

Now I'm not going to lie, The iPod Oracle does unfortunately tend to think I need to listen a lot of Leo Sayer (downloaded in a moment of weakness folk), not to mention the audio of the trashy novel I downloaded and now can't get away from, but apart from that it's been scarily accurate in providing me the songs I need in order to keep going. Lately this song keeps popping up in random shuffles and randomly came up in conversation the other day too.





I've already written a post about Smashing Pumpkins and so I won't reiterate my sentiments but this song... Landslide, is a special one.  I was saving it for a future post about my all time favourite musical covers but today it must stand alone.  It's a special tune when the cover is better than the original (gasp!)

Thanks for the message oh Gods of the Universe, oh Billy Pumpkin, oh iPod oracle, oh Stevie Nicks and whomever and whatever else is involved.

I don't quite know how to turn the message into positive action but for now I'm listening.

Labels: change, message, music, musical monday, old, oracle, psychos, struggle

posted by M at 12:14 am 6 comments

MVOR and I talked a lot about self-worth in our latest sitting. Clearly it's a reoccurring theme in my life and we bring it up a lot.  I'd spent a good many years (my whole life) tearing myself down and so I wonder if now I have to spend the same amount of time building myself up?  MVOR brought up me needing to enjoy the soup of my existence rather than looking at my life as a series of individual ingredients.  She didn't put it quite like that - being much more eloquent and poetic than I - but this is how I remember it:

Take everything that you are and put it all together, heat, stir, let it simmer - sometimes for hours - and then you have the soup of your life.  The soup is a dossier of the important bits that make up our person(a). If you think about what goes into your soup it can be quite humbling - perhaps it's the loss of a family member, the love you had for your pet dog, the wife who left you, the happiest marriage ever, the love in your heart for your child, the brother who failed to emotionally check in, abuse, love, joy, bullying, family holidays down by the lake, illness that stole people far too early, being heartbroken and those whose hearts you have toyed with recklessly - it's all there.  Whatever they are, good and bad, all the flavours contribute to the whole.  The soup ceases to be simply the sum of its parts once it has been cooked - it is no longer onion, cumin, celery etc, it's something completely different.

MVOR pointed out that I am picking apart ingredients and judging my whole 'soup' on one little bit.  Cumin tastes like absolute shite on its own, but in the soup it probably adds to the flavour.  I'm looking at the cumin and giving the whole soup a bad review based on that singular flavour only.  It's true that sometimes when you take a spoonful of the soup you might get a mouthful of chilli, or cumin or whatever and it causes you to splutter and fail to swallow but still - the soup is more than this mouthful.  We are more than the sum of our parts, even though the parts make the sum.  Does that make sense?

My soup is an series of ingredients which I have thus far refused to enjoy as a cohesive meal.  I've taken this rather negative perspective on my life instead (as best paraphrased by a conversation in the movie Clueless):

Cher: she's a full-on Monet 

Tai: What's a Monet?

Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.

I see myself in the microcosm - the Monet up close and as the list of ingredients rather than the whole soup.   According to MVOR I should start looking at myself as the whole soup rather than the sum of the ingredients and if I find myself spluttering on a mouthful of cumin I need to reposition that as part of the whole rather than as a defining part of me - yes it exists, yes it's bad, yes it's part of my history and therefore part of my now but I am not just cumin.  I need to acknowledge and respect those parts of me that are not that great but in no way should I be judging the whole on the sum of it's parts.

Aaaand now I'm hungry.

*no cumin was harmed in the writing of this post.  Feel that perhaps I was a little too hard on it. It's really quite a nice spice.

Labels: analogy, analysis, art, life, life and art, monet, musings, MVOR, psychos, thoughts

posted by M at 8:04 pm 5 comments

I've never thought of myself as a particularly fearful person.  In fact, I think that as a child I was quite fearless, possibly outspoken, perhaps even obnoxious at times.  I was a leader and probably not all that benevolent either. I was moody and had a temper (have a temper?).  I do remember being shy though, uncertain when it came to friendships (did anybody actually like me?) and even running and hiding behind the couch when strangers came to visit.

I don't remember when the fear as I know it now really crept in.  Maybe it was always there, holding hands with my shyness and playing jump rope with my uncertainty.  Perhaps shyness and uncertainty stem from fears. I don't actually know if that is true but there are many ways in which it affects my life now.

MVOR talks a lot about my fears and where they come from.  There is a family history (hysteria, rather) that runs deep.  I don't think it's genetic but instead something seeded and nurtured.  I remember being a teenager and being so surprised when my friends' mothers would say "have a nice time" when they left the house.  As I exited the front door my mother would say something akin to "someone with a blood filled syringe may stab you with it.  I saw it on Hinch.  Be careful".  This is clearly not an environment that fosters self-confidence, love for your fellow human or being carefree is it?

Fear has stopped me from living my life in a fulfilling way.  That is a big statement to make but it's true.  I live in the sense that I am a functional member of society.  My fear doesn't stop me from having a job or paying the bills (hmph!).  I'm much too responsible to break the law in any kind of significant way and I'm too empathetic and mindful of others to ever really hurt any living thing.  I'm a good friend.  I go out.  I can share a laugh and I can speak to a room full of parents and teachers without losing too much sleep.  It's just that I'm not living my life in a way that is authentic or emotionally satisfying and that's the problem.

I'm afraid..
-to take a chance and apply for other, better jobs just in case the situation is worse than where I'm at.
-to go part time, in case I can't pay my bills.
-to go on a holiday alone.
-to put myself out there, love wise.
-(in fact), to put myself in situations where I can be rejected in any way.
-to go back to my place because I'm afraid my nose will start bleeding again and I'll be on my own.
-to be on my own.
-to make decisions - on some days any decision can become a crippling one.
-to insist on treatment that is right for and worthy of me.
-to speak my truth in case someone disagrees or ridicules me.
-to write.

(just the tip of the ice-berg, believe me).

I hide this fear well.  Most people I know have no idea I live with an anxiety that I can sometimes (most days) feel physically in the pit of my stomach.  Most people wouldn't have a clue how debilitating it is not to be able to acknowledge yourself as the instigator of your own life and make decisions.. and I suppose that is why I don't share this fact with others.

I suppose that's what it comes down to at the end of the day.  I'm the instigator of the fear and of the solution but somehow I ...just can't do it. I know the only person that can change the direction of my life is me but I also don't feel as though I'm in the drivers seat in my own car.

How do I take the wheel?

Labels: emo, fear, jesus christ I'm crazy, musings, psychos, scared, wonderings

posted by M at 7:43 pm 18 comments

Dude, what the fuck?

Everyone has heard this story, right? Psychotic female Astronaut has a crush on Major Nelson. Psychotic Astronaut suspects that another girl (aka: clueless victim) might also be a chance with Major Nelson. Psycho Astronaut drives half way across the country wearing a trench coat disguise and nappies so that she can either kidnap/kill or "have a talk" (according to her statement) to the woman about this "situation". Psycho sprays clueless victim in the face with pepper spray, Clueless Victim gets away and Psycho is found a little while later stuffing black gloves, a folding knife with a 10-centimetre blade, rubber tubing and rubbish bags into the bin. Major Nelson is probably living it up dancing with Jeannie in her bottle or something while all this is going on - none the wiser.

I almost drove off the road laughing when I heard this one. Nappies? Knives? um...NAPPIES?

Is it just me or are girls the masters of making arseholes of themselves when it comes to men? Some will gouge out the eyes of any woman in their way and play dirty if it gets them what they want. I have always found that in a situation where there are two girls vying for the attention of one man it ends up being mostly about the relationship between the two girls rather than the guy. For one of those girls doing the vying, you could probably replace that guy with any slob stumbling out of a pub at 2am and they'd still fight tooth and nail. The other girl however might actually really like the guy and is caught up in the "competition" of it all even though they never intended it to be like that. It can be horrible if you're the girl who actually likes the guy and not really in it for the competition - that much is true.

I know that I can't stomach that kind of 'dirty play' for a guy. I have been known to step back in situations that I thought might develop into a competition because it's just too big a headache to live through just for *certain guy* who gets to sit back and watch it all unfold without doing anything at all (can't stand that) - only to find that the "winner" loses interest within a few days (or a night) because they were only ever in it for the win anyway. Games. Pride. Jealousy. These are the downsides of the male/female dating world. Games.

The way I see it: At some point the game has to stop for someone to win - and after that point the game is over. Finito, Fin, Adios muchachos. Both people can't win in a game. Both can win in a relationship though. There may be game like elements going on when dating but at some point but there comes a point in every relationship like every mature life where you have to cut the shit, grow the hell up and be prepared to stop playing and start bloody well living. I know there are a kazillion people that disagree with me on this one though - god knows I'm friends with most of them!

But this example of Psycho Astronaut is interesting. Obviously a woman driving halfway across the country in a nappy isn't ever going to be appealing to any man who isn't planning on being a guest on The Jerry Springer Show - but how much fight is acceptable and appealing? Or is it that the guy wants to do the chasing when it comes to matters of the heart?

Labels: games, lazy bastards, men, psychos, questions, vicious women, wonderings

posted by M at 11:06 pm 23 comments