A Whole New Brand New You

Conversations with Fourteen

2012-02-03T22:02:00.001-06:00

"For real, you didn't think he was good looking?"
"He looks like Jasper from Twilight."
"No he does...actually yeah, I can see that."
"You deserve somebody better than that. You deserve somebody with Jacob-level hotness, only older and better looking."

"A junior? That's exciting. And I must admit I feel much more comfortable about this than the senior thing, although good work on that one."
"Yeah, my senior crush is done. He took a bite of my donut, and I was like, 'We're over.'"

"I'm going to eat this batter until I'm so sick of batter I can't stand to look at the cake."
"Me, too."
"Crap. I got batter on my nipple."
"Me, too."

PTSD

2012-01-16T08:09:00.000-06:00

One of the city's top marketing agencies--2011's Agency of the Year, in fact--contacted me about a copywriting position. A bit of research indicates that this same position was once held by the current creative director. He ascended the ranks in four years. In other words, I'm being recruited for a whopper of a dream job.

The opening went live on their site on the 10th; I was emailed on the 12th. And did I mention that the opening doesn't yet appear on any major job boards? That's including the industry-specific/creative talent sites. In other words, I'm on a list so short it barely exists.

Plus, I've got a couple of mutual contacts whose good word may be highly esteemed. They are also big fans of mine. In other words, this could be mine for the taking. (Not that I think I'm the only first-round candidate they're talking to, but let's face it: I'm a charmer.)

In other words, I'm flattered, bewildered, and scared out of my wits.

Anne Murray, Updated

2011-12-20T15:02:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe and a spot of therapy...

Little Adele

2011-12-17T19:46:00.001-06:00

Odd that it should happen in the midst of a very good day--a day when I've done laundry and a bunch of organizing, a day when I've ordered medication refills and packed to move in with my brother, a day when I've gotten all dolled up for an evening of family togetherness at Santa's Wonderland. In short, a day when life is rolling right along.

Come to think of it, this is the first time it's even hit, the missing. It's not so odd after all, then, that I'd miss someone I loved to share good things with on a day when I have lots of good things to share.

Our relationship was unique (for me) in that it thrived on mutual independent growth. That was a lovely thing, but I'd stagnated, and that put a strain on the relationship. Understandable. Pity that a frank conversation might've done much to right the course, but given the way it played out (again), there may as well have been no righting it at all. You can't have love where there is no leeway.

Sharing joy is the happiest part of love, so maybe it's the part I'll miss the longest.

My mother recently called me her Little Adele. She's so cute.

It's Been Seven Hours and Fifteen Days

2011-08-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

The first last time we saw each other was 10 years ago.

According to us, we were together all the years we were apart, though neither of us knew.

The last last time we saw each other was Sunday.

According to us, we were together 20 months and 9 years.

For 598 days, we knew it the whole time.

598 is the saddest number I know.

A Solemn Vow

2011-08-23T19:57:00.000-05:00

It happens to everyone in some form or fashion: A capability once so effortless and instinctual as to be taken for granted becomes a monumental, seemingly impossible task. And by the time you realize what you've lost, you can no longer say whether its disappearance came suddenly or slowly over time. You wake up one day to discover it missing, and all you know is that it has been gone a long, long time.

So you try to live this new life. You say you will learn to navigate this new weakness. You will set up systems and fail safes to compensate for what is lacking. But over and over again you fail, and with each failure comes a vivid reminder of all you have lost.

But I stand before you today, brothers and sisters, to declare in the face of all opposition and fate that I shall again see the day when I can raise a glass to my lips and not spill its contents down my shirt.

This I proclaim in the name of His Most Holy Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Even so, Amen.

ETT Indeed

2011-08-22T19:09:00.000-05:00

The type of therapy I use is a relatively new technique called Emotional Transformation Therapy. It brings together the latest research in cognitive therapy, including lightwaves and their effect on the brain vis-a-vis thought patterns and emotional reactions. It's an incredibly effective technique--miraculous, really, considering what I've been able to accomplish in just 12 or so sessions--and these past few days, I've had a unique opportunity to see just how far-reaching its effects can be.

In previous break ups, I've been flooded with the deeply painful sensations of desperation and helplessness. I've done a lot of begging and bargaining and driven myself crazy with all manner of rumination. I've dragged things out as long as possible in the hope that, with just a little bit more time, I could convince someone intent on leaving that they really want to stay. But even an eternal optimist like me knows that, for all its virtues, hope can sometimes be corrosive.

I see now that the most exquisite pain of heartbreak is largely self-inflicted, and I have no desire to put myself through any of that ever again. Not even for the most abrupt and unforeseen departures of my most treasured relationships. As I told my brother, I've met my lifetime quota of being an active participant in my own misery. Moreover, as I told my father, I think my therapy has rendered me largely incapable of the kind of rumination that truly puts the "ache" in heartache. Being bipolar, I have a lot of practice letting go of emotions over which I have little control, so when it comes to those that are largely within my control, it's almost child's play.

Almost.

In one of our earliest sessions this year, my therapist directed me to Byron Katie's website, wherein she explains the principles of a technique she calls The Work. Katie's philosophy is that our painful emotions are a direct result of our thoughts and that by examining and reversing those thoughts, we free ourselves of the emotions they elicit. One of the main principles behind The Work is the idea that fighting against reality (rather than accepting it) keeps us locked in suffering. This thought is neither new nor unique, but her presentation of it is the one that has stuck with me.

So I have no desire to argue with reality, nor do I want to entertain any hope that the situation will resolve itself in a state other than its current one. I don't want to cause myself additional pain by trying to exert control over circumstances that aren't mine to control. All I want to do is make peace with the loss, let go of whatever pain it might cause me, and put it behind me as quickly as possible. I've put too much work into letting the past be the past to turn around and bring it with me into the present.

I get sad lying in bed at night, and I wake up sadder in the morning, but I treat it and wait for it to pass just as I would any other morning emotion. I confess I have a sneaking suspicion that the ease with which I move through the daytime could be because the hurt runs so deep I've shut down the feeling in some way, but it could just as easily be due to all I've learned in therapy. After all, why would I want to be with someone who no longer wants to be with me? (This sentiment all by itself marks a tremendous difference between Krystl of Old and Krystl of Today.)

Mostly I think that if this is over, then it just wasn't the path I was meant to be on. And if it wasn't the right path, then being forced off of it is no cause for sorrow; it just means that there's something else out there for me, some other path that's better for me.

I'm reminded of something Abel Garcia told me two years ago: "Every dream I have ever dreamed has come true." I look back over my life and I see how true that's been for me. I wanted something larger than editing, and I got it. I wanted to be a freelancer, and I was. I wanted to get better, and I did. I wanted to go back to work, and I have. I had a dream guy, and I got to spend 20 months in a wonderful, loving relationship with him.

In the Mormon singles circuit, you hear a lot of girls fretting over how you know whether a guy is the right one to marry, and their sage mothers say that the right one is the one you choose. I always liked that idea--that there isn't some more perfect match out there waiting to be discovered. Instead, you choose the person you love, and you decide to commit not only to him but also to the relationship between the two of you. I liked knowing, in this relationship, that I had made my choice and that I was committed to it. But it takes more than one party's commitment, and that's just life.

Am I opposed to the possibility of reconciliation? No. But right now it's not my decision to make, and I refuse to invite despair by believing otherwise.

For Posterity

2011-08-11T01:24:00.000-05:00

Just now I sent an official contract to a new client, which means today was officially a great day.

Re-reading my standard contract language made me feel pretty impressed with myself. It gave me a confidence and validation I didn't expect. Like, "Oh, that's right, I forgot--I'm a badass." I feel all official again.

Reminds me of how I felt the night I held my first signed contract in my hot little hands. It was at the client's ribbon cutting. I'd already written two flyers, but I hadn't met any of them in person. I was introduced to one of the founders, and the first thing he said as he shook my hand was, "I love your work." At the end of the party, the CFO signed the contract and gave me my check.

It was getting late, but I was so excited I couldn't wait--I raced to Office Max and walked in just before they closed. I went right up to the copy center and handed over my check. "I need one color copy, please!" My exuberance must have charmed the guy because he smiled and said, "Just one, huh?" "Yes!" I said. "It's my first check as a freelance writer, and I'm going to frame it!" He handed over my copy and offered his congratulations. Then I hurried over to the cashier to pay for my prize with two dollars I could barely afford. I've never been so joyful in my life. The cashier looked at me with the kindest, most gentle smile. "Are you happy?" he asked. I spoke in a sublime rush of breath. "Yes," I said, "I am." "You look happy."

I think about that sometimes, the way he said, "You look happy."

I never did frame that check. It ended up rumpled and waterlogged among all the other detritus on my living room floor. But I kept it, and I still have it here with me. I think I will frame it after all. With all that's happened between that night and this, those creases and water stains mean more to me than a pristine check ever could. They're my battle scars. And I've never been more proud of them than I am right now.

Skipping a Step

2011-08-10T01:06:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in therapy I worked on my occasional reluctance to take my medication. I wasn't sure what my deal was since I have no philosophical objection to a lifelong medication regimen and I'm acutely aware of my medication's role in my recovery. And yet, I skipped three days last week. On the days I did take it, I put it off until late afternoon, too late to take my Vyvanse and far too late to fend off the mounting depression.

It started because I hadn't unpacked my suitcase and my pills were still inside. (One of the hardest things to explain to others is how a tiny thing like that can possibly be a legitimate obstacle. The fact is that even the slightest disruption in routine can require enormous work to course-correct.) So I skipped Monday, didn't bother to unpack my pills, and ended up skipping Tuesday as well. Two days is all it takes to lose a whole week. The medication is not optional. And I know that, so what on Earth was up with me?

As I described this to my therapist, she stopped me: "That first day when you missed your medication, what prevented you from unpacking your medication so you'd have it the next day? What were you feeling when you chose not to do that?" The answer bubbled out of me, both surprising and expected. Equilibrium is fragile, and I resented that fragility. I almost despised it. I have to work so hard to be well, and I do work hard and I want to work hard, but no matter how hard I work, that fragility does not go away.

Any unchecked mood disturbance can easily snowball, so every waking hour requires constant monitoring: How's my mood? Is my blood sugar low? Do I need a snack? Do I need protein or do I need carbs? Am I tired? Do I need to take a nap? Is it safe to nap right now or will that throw off my sleep schedule? Am I feeling anxious? Is this the type I can work through or do I need to take something before I get paralyzed? Am I feeling sluggish? Is it the type of sluggish that caffeine could help or will caffeine make me anxious? Am I getting enough direct sunlight? Do I need to go outside? What time is it--is the late-afternoon daylight destabilizing today? Do I need to go inside? Is there enough light in the room? Am I feeling agitated? Do I need more stimulus or less? Do I need white noise or talking or music or silence? Which would settle my mind and which would agitate me more?

This litany of questions is no exaggeration. It's absolutely necessary, though it looks more frenetic in print than it feels in practice. Anyway, my point is that stability is a lot of work, and I harbored a latent anger over how much work it takes. According to the Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grief, being stuck in the anger phase can make it difficult for a person to take proper care of themselves. In my case, directing anger at something I couldn't change kept me focused on what I perceived as my fundamental powerlessness over its unchangeable nature, and never acknowledging that anger prevented me from letting go of it. I'd framed the struggle as trying to outrun something that would always catch up to me at the slightest stumble. With thinking like that, it's no wonder I sometimes thought, "Fuck it. I'm tired of running."

Going into my therapy session, I figured I'd come out with some sort of boost in my medication-taking resolve. What I got instead was a whole different paradigm for moving forward. I no longer feel like I'm trying to outrun an opponent--the disorder is just a fact, not an adversary. Working through that resentment redirected my attention from the object of my anger to the strength and resilience I possess.

In other words, it doesn't matter that I can't change the nature of the beast. That's not my job. My job is to kiss my muscles in the mirror because I am the Beastmaster.

Woo-Hoo!

2011-07-21T15:20:00.000-05:00

I intended this post to be a catalogue of my recent recurring dreams and their obvious anxiety-laden symbolism (e.g., ye olde "Wait, I haven't been to this class all semester and now it's finals! How did I forget about it?! It's too late to drop! I'M GOING TO GET AN F!"), and I wanted to start with my most frequent dream motif of late: trying to drive from the back seat.

The dream begins in medias res with me in the back seat of a car already traveling down a road or highway. As it dawns on me that there is no driver, I wonder how on earth this managed to happen again. There's no time to try to scramble into the driver's seat, so I reach forward to take the wheel and stretch my legs so that my feet (just barely) reach the pedals. The whole time I'm hoping nobody sees me, both because I don't want to get in trouble and because I don't want to alarm anyone, but I'm also struggling to remember whether this isn't a semi-normal and acceptable traffic occurrence.

I viewed the dream as a commentary on all the obstacles preventing me from being control of my life and making a future for myself. I found this mildly depressing. Discouraging, even.

Before I logged on to write about it, I decided to look up possible interpretations--expecting, of course, to find nothing about such a specific scenario. However, my old friend DreamMoods.com came through with this:

If you are driving from the passenger side of a car, then it suggests that you are trying to gain control of the path that your life is taking. You are beginning to make your own decisions.

What excellent news! I much prefer this interpretation, as it brings to light aspects of the dream I hadn't considered. Namely that, despite the fact that I can't quite maintain a normal speed or brake very well, I manage to drive ok. I also like how it ties into my sense that this predicament isn't necessarily foreign to other drivers. Mostly, though, I like it because THAT'S EXACLY WHAT'S HAPPENING TO ME RIGHT NOW. I am beginning to make my own decisions!

Suddenly this dream feels very encouraging. When I first started having it, I was in the passenger seat, and I thought that the shift to the back seat meant I was further away from having any control, that the odds were all the more against me. O, how I pitied poor me! But now I see it as me attempting to overcome greater obstacles than before (the passenger-side dreams happened when I was still semi-functional), and in spite of the difficulty involved, actually managing to do it.

I am not "not in control," I am taking control! I am resourceful! I might be going slower than usual, but I'm still driving. And from the back seat, too! Top that, suckas!

Another -iversary

2011-06-29T15:02:00.000-05:00

Today is the second anniversary of my firing. On this day last year, I was thrilled because it meant I'd been self-employed and self-sufficient for 12 whole months. Today I am thrilled because I made three phone calls that, just three months ago, would've caused me a mountain of anxiety.

That sounds like a "I used to be able to do this; now I can only do this" statement, but if anything, I find the latter a much prouder and more promising accomplishment than the former. It's a much more potent signifier of how far I've come in one year than I was able to comprehend about my progress in the year before. Possibly because I'm less concerned about "progress" in the sense that I used to meant it. It used to mean proving something to other people, it used to mean an outward show of success. Now it's just a measure of today--the pride I can take from it or the peace I can make with it.

I have no job and no income. I haven't yet formulated a plan for my future. I'm not sure what my next steps will be or where they'll take me. I've gained back all the weight I lost. And yet I feel happier and more confident than I ever have before. It's because I survived.

Last year, I celebrated being successful on my own terms--or at least I thought so. I made my own way in the world, yes, but the definitions I was using still weren't really mine. Today I have only the vaguest notion of what my own terms are, but that gives me confidence that whatever they turn out to be, they'll have come from me.

I want to be a genuinely and actively caring, compassionate person. I want the people I come in contact with to feel good about themselves, to feel valued and worthy of love and help and respect. I want to find fulfilling work. I want to earn enough income to allow my partner to feel comfortable pursuing his dreams as well. I want to write. I want to make things. I want to have a strong relationship with my Heavenly Father. I want to be able to repay the extraordinary kindnesses I've been shown. I want to build a loving home filled with appreciation and support.

Those are the things that will matter in the end: that I made the most of my talents, that I gave freely of myself, that I did what I could to help others feel loved and valued.

By the end of this year, I want to be making a decent living wage--enough to pay my own expenses and have a little left over for some modest wants. Where or how I make that wage doesn't much matter to me because what I've learned between last year and this is that I am not defined by the state of my career.

Whoah. I think I just had a breakthrough.

Tuesday

2011-06-28T16:12:00.000-05:00

Reading over the last few entries, I must say I'm more than a little impressed with myself over the writing I was able to turn out despite being in the thick of such a prolonged, mind-muddling funk.

Ok, to be fair, detailing the grip of depression has always been easier and more compelling for me than documenting the daily pleasantries of ok-ness. Still, I'm proud that the things I wrote rise above what I feel are the usual spirals of stylized moaning.

When last I wrote, shit (vis-a-vis my panic disorder) was just starting to hit the fan, and it spent about two months getting worse before it started getting better. I see now that I can choose to interpret this as fortunate--if it hadn't been so obvious to me that I was floundering out of control, I never would have consented to therapy. Not because I didn't believe I needed it, but because I would've castigated myself for becoming an even greater expense.

Happily, though, May and June have felt akin to the Second Coming of Krystl. After one of my sessions, I told my therapist I felt like I'd just remembered my own name. It does feel very much like coming back into the world, recognizing parts of myself that had been dormant so long I'd forgotten they existed. Or not dormant, really, just stretched so thin they'd become invisible to me. Now I can see them again, and, unsurprisingly, they're rich, vibrant colors.

Orange is the color of strength.
Magenta is the color of confidence.
Turquoise is the color of love.

What it comes down to, really, is belief. These are the colors of belief--in myself, in what's possible, in joy. I'm a person who believes in God and astrology, in personality tests and serendipity, in the hardships being worth it and the happiness unimaginable.

Sunday

2011-03-06T18:46:00.000-06:00

I finished dinner and started crying because I was awake. I cried because I don't want to feel sad all the time, but I don't know how to stop it. I cried because I'd just taken a nap and wasn't tired anymore and so I'd have to keep living through this feeling. Unbearable. So I started looking for the sleeping pills I hadn't thrown out when I moved.

***
Sorting bathroom stuff, tossing what I didn't need. I grabbed the box of pills, ready to sweep their dark purpose into the trash. But I hesitated. And then I kept my secret. Packed it up and brought it here.
***

I started crying harder when I couldn't find them. Wailing like the heartbroken. One last box checked in desperation and there they were. I sat down and cried some more. Relief, I could make myself sleep. Worry, I wanted to so badly.

The package said take one. I took two so I'd be out for a while. I thought about three but decided I'd better not in case I wanted to do something later.

That glimmer of interest at the end? That's what passes for hope these days.

Getting

2011-02-28T16:10:00.000-06:00

Bad days come on slowly. First comes the gradual accumulation of negligible days, then the self-assurance that a spate of negligible days don't mean anything other than a quiet period, and finally, after many many days of the same negligible passage of time, the admission that this day, like the several upon several preceding it, is a bad day.

February was a destabilizing month. Why, I can't say. I could take out my forensic tool box to sift through the signs and symptoms to root out a cause, but I do that so often that I just don't feel like it now. In one part of my mind, I know that this can be a beneficial exercise, even a necessary one. In the other part, I feel like it hardly matters.

In February, I felt like I was getting worse. My panic ratcheted up to make some unprecedented appearances. I started feeling stagnated in a way I've actively tried to ignore. These past several days, I've slept as much as I possibly could. It wasn't the heavy lethargy of listless depression; it was the kind of sleep that feels like work. The frantic burrowing back into unconsciousness that makes your body ache. Last night I wished that I could die for a week or so. Not permanently, just enough to fast forward through this terrible feeling of having to experience one day after another.

Good days come out of nowhere. They can reveal themselves suddenly, like today when an article about Google sticking it to those abhorrent content mills made me shout with joy, or they can quietly make themselves known halfway through or even just before bed.

A good day means I felt good that day. A bad day means I didn't.

So technically speaking, today is a good day. I felt great for a few hours after reading that article. I felt desire to exercise the unexpected me-ness that showed up. That's why I'm writing now. I'm sitting outside for the first time in a week, and there's a very pleasant breeze. I put in a load of laundry. These are all positive things, yet I'm having a hard time taking joy from them. I need to eat something, and maybe that will help.

The problem with me and feeling good, at least in the environment I'm in now, is that it isn't self-sustaining. I take so little joy in life lately. A good feeling, an alert day, they feel just as transient and pointless as showering.

I'm tired of waiting for my life to start again. But waiting is all I can do. It takes all the strength I have to wait without letting the wait feel like a struggle.

Today my dad asked what my days are like, and I listed my bits of nothing. He said, "Remember, we have to do things to help ourselves, too."

Nobody stuck in the ocean treads water when they still have strength to swim.

4.14

2011-02-15T23:45:00.000-06:00

I thought tonight I might write a short word or two about this boyfriend of mine, but every time I try to think what to say, I get all lost in thought. That sentence, for example, took 20 minutes. 20 minutes well spent.

This, Too

2011-02-14T23:52:00.000-06:00

My Internet connection is down indefinitely. Durn, I say! I even had a picture to share today, but I'm not sure whether I can upload from my mobile. That is a puzzle for another day, but I won't keep you in suspense...

I found two candy hearts with penises on them.

Advice for Thirteen

2011-02-13T01:45:00.001-06:00

You'll love three kinds of people in your life: the ones with flaws you don't see, the ones with flaws you choose to ignore, and the one with flaws you can accept and forgive. They'll happen in that order, too. You'll love the first kind first, the second kind longer, and your heart will be covered in scars by the time you're through. But that's ok because with every last one of those wounds, you learned a little bit more about how to love and be loved unconditionally. Then you're ready to love the last kind, and the last kind you love forever.

The thing about love, though, is that it teaches all its lessons the hard way. It can only ever spare you one heartache by causing another.

Fuck.

2011-02-12T22:33:00.001-06:00

Apparently I have a full-blown panic disorder.

For the past two years I've been having episodes I refer to as panic attacks, but, as with the depression, hypomania, ADD, and suicide risk classifications before it, I wasn't sure I was using the proper terminology...which is to say I worried I was exaggerating. After hours of research, it turns out that, as with the depression, hypomania, ADD, and suicide risk classifications before it, panic disorder is not only present, but severe. And it's been around a lot longer than I suspected.

This sucks.

Being diagnosed with depression was a relief; bipolar, a revelation. I was happy about depression because it meant that I could get better. I was dumbfounded by the bipolar diagnosis, both because it happened almost by accident (not uncommon for bipolar II) and because it made so much sense of my experience. The knowledge was welcomed, since it meant better and more effective treatment, but the fact was disheartening. It brought home something I hadn't wanted to accept about a "normal" disorder like depression--I might get better, but I'd never be free of it. I'd have it and have to manage it for the rest of my life.

Once my mood stabilizers started to kick in, I realized that some functional impairments were unrelated to my emotional state. My therapist suspected inattentive ADD. I didn't see how that was possible, but I took it to my psychiatrist, and a diagnostic rundown confirmed it.

Despite how well the pieces fit together, I had trouble accepting that there was truly anything wrong with me. Not because I didn't feel that there was, but because I'd been raised to believe that I was just a melodramatic attention-seeker. I took it for granted that I was the worst possible authority on my own experience, so with each new diagnosis, I read the list of symptoms to my oldest and best friend. Her reaction to the depression was a comforting "Duh"; her only surprise about the others was that we hadn't figured it out sooner. They were so obvious in retrospect.

I have early memories of major panic attacks and of smaller things like being afraid to stand up and walk across the room. The first time I noticed an aversion to going out in public (i.e., leaving the house), I was in my preteens. The feeling is stronger at some times than others, but I never lose the vague sense that home is a "safe" place. I have no irrational fear of public places or being around people or coming to harm once I'm out, so safe from what, I don't know. Still, I dread leaving.

In last 12 months, my panic attacks have become more severe and triggered with increasingly small provocation. What used to happen only in the face of major deadlines now happens at the mere hint of obligation. Most times it's only a struggle with strong dread, but every now and then it becomes terror.

Bipolar sounds like crazy, but it feels like a chronic condition. It's only in the grip of panic that I look and feel genuinely insane.

The good news is that I know in my case it's a problem of cognitive conditioning. The bad news is that I can't afford a therapist.

Again, it sucks ass, but oh well. If this life has taught me nothing else, it's taught me hope.

Even the Sun

2011-02-11T23:32:00.007-06:00

I read a quote recently--four short sentences by Anonymous--meant to be inspirational. "Meant to be," because it oversells its message.

The first sentence sounds like Lee Iacocca, a football coach, or the first half of a Farmer's Almanac proverb; the last, Deepak Chopra. Both would've worked on their own, but this particular Anonymous just couldn't help himself. If the third sentence is any clue, he also explains his own jokes.

What's frustrating about the quote is that all the self-indulgent dross obscures the radiance buried two sentences in. The concept isn't new, but its beauty is made fresh. When we search for inspiration, we hope the same will happen to us: A newness lost will be revived.

Even the sun has a sinking spell each evening.

-Anon.

A Breach of Privacy

2011-02-10T01:09:00.001-06:00

Wrote this for somebody named Texas. Sharing it with you.

My cousin is visiting her family in Wharton. She's going back to Dallas Sunday. I imagine those long stretches of road and what they will look like in all that cold. I remember scenes from my drives up there. The concrete congestion of 610 North, the sandier color of the Beltway interchange. Then somewhere around Conroe it's a bunch of dirt in all the construction. A reddish clay. Once you make it out of that, you're surrounded by tall green trees and everybody starts speeding up just in time to break out onto the interstate proper. Then fields. Green and sunny for a long time. After a while, bushes, round and low and dark green. This starts a bit before Buffalo, where that kindly officer pulled me over and treated me nicely. It was late afternoon then, the sun giving the bushes a soft orange glow. Round about Corsicana it gets gray and small town. I'd hoped that Corsicana would be charming, it has such a pretty name. The road gets flat and wide the closer you get, then from around a bend the Dallas skyline appears out of nowhere. The first time I saw it on my way to you, it was night. I gasped and my heart leapt. Very close, but the speed limit drops just when I want to rush. I like when it becomes 75. Walled in by that concrete you can go faster without fear of being pulled over. Not too much faster, but fast enough to feel you really are almost there. I check in and then it's time to wait again. It seems like you'll never get there, but then you do. And right then it's almost like we haven't been apart at all.

There. I led myself right up to the scent of your shirt. To the first time you smelled like lilies. You were wearing a light blue button down and a zippered sweatshirt. I'll never forget. I'll never forget anything about you.

PSA

2011-02-09T18:19:00.001-06:00

HALT

Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

This is your first line of defense in mood management. When you start to destabilize, run down the list of usual suspects. Even though we tend to know our small triggers (mine is low blood sugar), before I started remembering the acronym, it could still take me hours to realize I was just hungry. Once a quick hungryangrylonelytired becomes a cognitive reflex, the hour-by-hour maintenance gets easier--notice a mood shift, run the system check, choose a coping mechanism, then see what's left.

If there's nothing left, it doesn't mean you've been manufacturing a disorder out of insufficient nap-taking; it means your early warning system prevented an avalanche, so good for you. If there is something left, well, that's just the nature of the beast. Keep doing like you do.

What I said before? About knowing triggers but still managing to forget them? Despite the fact that I know and have known and have recently discussed the contributing effects of prolonged muscle tension on unhealthy moods, it still took over a week for me to remember to take a fucking Aleve. (Three. Three Aleve. I always take three.)

Aaaaand, what do you know, I don't feel completely miserable anymore. I'm adding a T for "Tense, you retard." I encourage you to add as necessary.

The Intercourse Log

2011-02-07T23:59:00.001-06:00

My menstrual calendar also tracks instances of sex-having. I mention this to my boyfriend, and he inquires whether it's some sort of point scale. I tell him it's only interested in protected versus un-.

However, were it a point scale, he'd be logging it up to 11.

What Up, Fool?

2011-02-06T23:57:00.000-06:00

I've got nothing today, so here's a list of 5 things I recently enjoyed:

1. Stomping back and forth across the frozen grass in my slippers
2. Deciding to buy some Bubble Yum
3. Being the perfect amount of bundled up for a cold day
4. Finding every episode ever of Law & Order: SVU online
5. Just like always always always, talking to my Pitter Pat on the phone

Decomp

2011-02-05T21:11:00.001-06:00

Over the last three years, I've been in a steadily declining state of what's known in mental health (mental illness) circles as "decompensation." You can think of it as the decomposition of functional capacity. All your skills and talents are still there, but the depression shuts down your mind and body until you lose the ability to make any use of them.

I desperately wanted to keep working despite my sputtering and stalling engine, but eventually everything inside me gave out. For three months, I barely left my couch. I took all the strength I had just to wake up and lie there waiting for the day to end, all the while dreading sleep for the new day it would bring. I frequently woke to find myself already paralyzed by fear. On those days, I would lie still for hours, mustering the courage to open my eyes.

By November I'd assembled a very detailed suicide plan, not because I intended to do it, but because I knew it wouldn't be long before I wanted to, and I like to be prepared. There were many nights I cried because I couldn't convince myself that I wouldn't regret it. Even so, I honestly didn't expect to live another six months.

On November 10, I felt the ground shift and it scared me to see how easily the bottom could drop out, how the end might come suddenly and I might put my plan into action without stopping to think about it first. The next day, I turned 30 and spent my birthday dinner explaining to my family that I wanted to go to a mental hospital and stay there for a long, long time. I told them I needed a safe place to rest for a while.

A few days later, I was hurled into the air by a bout of hypomania, and I took advantage of my four-day functional window to sign up with a Social Security Disability representation agency. The relief I felt after that first phone call gave me the same feeling of rest I'd wanted from the mental hospital, and the peace of mind I've felt since then has thus far precluded the need.

Being unable to work is heartbreaking. I'm still just as sharp and creative, but it's as if I'm no longer in command of my abilities. They don't come when I call. I would love to have even a basic hourly job, but even the smallest degree of time-sensitivity prompts a panic attack. I've had to take anti-anxiety medicine just to leave the house for doctor's appointments. Two weeks ago I spent an hour and a half sobbing and shaking uncontrollably because I had to be showered and dressed by 5. My mother was coming to take me to dinner.

"Take your meds!" you say. I do take my meds. I take them regularly. "But if you take your meds, you should be fixed!" you say. My meds work wonders. I'm very happy with my cocktail. There's just more to recovery than medication.

Now I spend my days trying to keep myself occupied, trying to give myself some structure. I am entirely supported by my mother's small income from her job at a drugstore. I have $30 cash, a mountain of delinquent debt, and $1.12 in the bank. These are difficult facts to know. They are devastating if I linger on them too long.

I try not to feel guilty about it. My mother goes out of her way to make sure I know that she doesn't consider me a burden. She doesn't see me as a screw up; she sees herself as the mother of a child who needs help. She makes it ok for me to be a daughter who needs taking care of, regardless of my age. She says she doesn't mind having to support me because it makes her feel better to know that I am safe.

And my job right now, in this safe place my mother made for me, is to decompress. To breathe in, and breathe out. To stabilize, and to heal. To nurse myself back to health so I can embrace a full life again someday. To learn how to live to keep myself alive.

Houston, Texas

2011-02-04T23:48:00.000-06:00

Of Winter

2011-02-03T23:48:00.001-06:00

Today was not a good day. Yesterday wasn't, either. It occurs to me now that it's a luxury to have two bad days in a row that are nothing more than two bad days in a row. But that's a luxury I don't have. My days are full of nothing, but they require constant vigilance. I have to keep myself occupied and comfortable and contented every minute. Sometimes I have to scramble to come up with something engaging before the window of opportunity closes and a sadness descends.

Bad days are dangerous because of where they can lead. Enough of them string together, and I'm back down in the bottom of a hole.

First Sight

- by Philip Larkin

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

And I Can't Breave

2011-02-02T23:26:00.000-06:00

My first thought for an opening sentence: I've been open-mouthing it all day.

Dry sinuses, that's what. It hurts to inhale through my nostrils, even makes my eyes water, so I've had them plugged up with tissue to force me to breathe through my mouth. Too much body interference to form coherent thoughts today...

So I ate potato chips instead.

Fortitude

2011-02-01T23:46:00.001-06:00

I spent hours drafting a post for today, writing and paring and writing and paring again. The topic was not at all significant or momentous, but I'd made it my work for the day and I took it seriously. By the time I left for dinner, I was back down to just a paragraph--and a rough one at that.

I am where I am right now--just 30, once very successful, now living at my mom's and applying for disability--because I crumble under the slightest pressure, even when the stakes are nonexistent. And here I had a blank page and a deadline: Twin Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Oddly, this time I looked at that letterlessness and saw a mark of integrity. I'd erased chunks of text, not because they weren't good enough, but because they were debris. Well-crafted thoughts and paragraphs in their own right, but in this case, just obstructions. Indulgent meanderings I didn't regret writing and didn't hesitate to throw out.

That sounds so fearless. Look at me--today I wrote, and I wrote fearlessly.

All Over Again

2011-01-31T18:11:00.000-06:00

We make fresh starts thinking things are going to be different this time, that a new attitude, a new optimism, a new determination are going to make the difference. We say this time we're really going to do it. "Really" means we're serious in a way we weren't before, we want it more than we did before. With "really," we declare previous failures to be natural consequences of our un-best efforts. In other words, the only legitimate attempt is the one that succeeds.

Calling something a fresh start creates from the beginning a zero-sum game, one I would wager ends in frustration and self-castigation more often than not. A stumble, a slip, a straight-up down-for-the-count, and the questions begin: Did we not reject the weaknesses of our past selves and vow to do it right this time? Did we not say that this time was supposed to be real? If the same old setbacks set us back, then we're still not trying hard enough. Not really.

Starts are only fresh for people who do not need them to be so, people who don't see success as the lack of failure. Their slates are always clean because they never perceived them as dirty. No matter how scattershot or incremental their progress, they don't make themselves start over. They get mired in mud, too, but they don't need clean clothes to keep going. The grime isn't there because they fell in a hole; it's there because they crawled back out.

All this sounds like a quality inherent in people far more admirable and enlightened than ourselves. It can easily be taken as a condemnation, as an explanation of the difference between winners and losers. All too often, that's exactly the message it's intended to send. To be a success, you must think like this; if you don't think like this, that is why you fail.

But believing there are right and wrong ways to think is just giving ourselves one more thing to try and fail to do. And that right there is the key--Themness isn't the presence of ability; Themness is the lack of judgment.

Self-compassion is a difficult, difficult thing to understand, then to learn, then to practice. Self-punishment is a difficult, difficult thing to identify, then to catch, then to resist, and even then to refute. So in case no one has told you lately, you're doing just fine. You are.

Racking Up Good Days

2010-06-30T01:29:00.000-05:00

...she said, tempting fate.

Today my client's client got a request to submit a quote for a feature article in a major online news outlet. We had about four hours to interview our client, synthesize her expertise, write a (devastatingly excellent) 350-word response to the four-part prompt, get approval for the final draft, and forward it to the reporter by deadline. The whole process was thrilling and a great example of why I love what I do: Smart writing! Compelling angle! Excellent excellence, STAT!

I've been self-employed for a year now, and I'm so glad I stuck it out. I'm not making what I used to, but I also work just three days a week and have never felt more fulfilled. I'm a bona fide success story, and it's still just the beginning.

I'm gonna be somebody!

I am somebody, but I'm gonna be somebody bigger!

Excellent Things from Today

2010-06-28T23:54:00.000-05:00

1. My Karen is coming at the end of the month!
2. I worked less than 11 hours!
3. I booked my trip to see my No. 1 guy!
4. Said No. 1 guy wasn't going to call but then called anyway!

Not bad for a Monday.

Also, I showered.

Nothing Doing

2010-06-27T23:39:00.000-05:00

Today I woke at a decent hour, dozed until a semi-decent hour, then spent most of the day watching TV on the couch. Blah, but not necessarily in a bad way.

If the Heat Don't Get You, the Hotness Will

2010-06-27T02:57:00.000-05:00

Oh, electricity bill, why bother taunting me with exact numbers? I am already resigned to my fate. In this, as in all my endeavors, I will pay any price to be cool.

One Day, I Hope I Can Forgive

2010-06-26T03:48:00.000-05:00

I loved Lost. I loved it, and I still do. But it's just...well...

Even though it's been a whole month, I still get really irritated to the point of pissed about the loss of Skate.

I'll leave aside for a moment my writerly outrage over what I feel is a violation of five years of story structure--a twist is one thing, an unearned outcome is another--and my basic fangirling (because, yeah, Team Somebody was going to go home heartbroken, but it wasn't supposed to be my Team Somebody), and for now just say that my favorite love stories are those in which people love one another, not because they overlook weakness, but because they understand it.

Those kind of love stories are uncommon and, to my mind, much more beautiful. That's why I was so excited that I thought I was watching one.*

I'll come to terms with it eventually, I know. And I hope it's soon because I really do want to watch all the reruns I'm still recording.

Until then, RIP, OTP.

*Also because Jack was a dick for eleven-twelfths of the series. You won me over in the end, Jack.

You did not, however, win Kate. That was bunk.

It's Theme Week Here at A Whole New Brand New You!

2010-06-25T00:20:00.005-05:00

"Um, it's theme week every week, isn't it?"

Yes! But this week's theme is different! Instead of me, it's things I just talked about.

"But aren't you always just talking about you?"

Yes! But this is different! Every day we'll talk about something related to what we talked about the day before!

" ... "

About What I Said Yesterday

Guy Kawasaki shared some personal branding tips in a BNET article today. One was "make a mantra." Tell what you're all about, in three words max.

I've heard this before, but I've only tried it when I was high on inspiration, and you can't go distilling essences when you're still radiating beatific light. No way can you give a three-word description of that kind of euphoria. And rightly so, because making a mantra out of your excitement is confusing the light with the source.

Anyway, the FedEx mantra is "peace of mind." I let that sink in, and then I thought Ok, so what's mi-- Before I could even finish the question, I was already answering myself in the lazy, distracted voice of someone who doesn't even have to take their eyes off the TV to tell you that the glasses you've been searching for are right on top of your head: It's ok.

How this translates to interpersonal relationships and a general life approach is obvious; how it relates to business and work is less so. The best I can explain it is to use the most awesome interviewee-to-interviewer question I have ever heard (thanks to Abel Garcia):

"You need a racehorse. You're going to get Secretariat. So do you have a track for me to run in or not?"

It's ok means that if the answer to that question is anything other than "Absolutely," I politely excuse myself and walk right out. Because we're never going to make each other happy, and it's ok not to waste time trying.

If by "Absolutely," they meant "No, but we want one," it's ok because I'm willing to trample new ground.

But once I sketch the path, if it turns out that they're not willing to do what it takes to win the Triple Crown, then I politely excuse myself and walk right out. Because it's ok for them to stay where they're comfortable, but I have no interest in being a show pony.

And if by "Absolutely," they meant "Absolutely"? Then we're about to kick a bunch of ass and take a bunch of names and run some thrilling races. There will be times that we train for weeks just to lose in a day, but it's ok. Because we'll both know the Crown is already as good as ours.

This is pretty much going to be my cover letter from now on.

Just Two

2010-06-24T01:55:00.001-05:00

For Day 2, the following Fun Fact:

I once hired a boy, not just because he was the best among three dismal options, but also because he reminded me a bit of the Pitter Pat.

From this experience, I learned two things. First, if HR gives you crappy candidates, make them find better ones because pride of workmanship is not a trainable skill. Second, green eyes and an English degree would never be enough to bring me any closer, or to pull me further away.

Also, A Few Words in Appreciation of Me*:

(*Unlike every other word I've ever spoken in my entire life)

I gave really excellent advice today. At once compassionate and unflinching, firm and forgiving, and all the while true true true. And I knew as I was giving it that I was revealing the heart of all matters, speaking in language that doubt could accept, planting the kind of seed someone could begin to believe would grow.

Know yourself. Accept yourself. Love yourself. Trust yourself.

It's ok to be you.

That's the only advice I ever give, but it comes in many translations. When issues involve other people, I add only this: Look to understand, then try to find a way to live your life with love.

Just One

2010-06-23T00:47:00.001-05:00

Thanks to The Happiness Project, I've found a daily writing habit I'm confident I can commit to--the One-Sentence Journal. Whether I write it here or on some random scrap of paper makes no difference; I can write one sentence a day.

I thought of a couple prompts I can use when my mind draws a blank:

The Best and Worst Things I Can Say About Today
What I Want to Remember About Today
Something I Read and Liked
A Thought I Had
Something Someone Said to Me

In true Krystl fashion, this first entry is already two paragraphs long. I think this bodes well for my prospects.

For my first official sentence(s), I give you:

Something I Want to Remember Forever

On Saturday, after we saw Hubble 3D at the Museum of Natural Science and stood behind the green line to watch the Astros play the Rangers at Minute Maid Park, we sat together on my bed and assembled the night sky projection kit he bought for me at the museum gift shop. I punched holes for the constellations in the southern hemisphere while he assembled the base, then he punched the northern hemisphere while I started folding. We put together our halves to make the whole, and then got ready to make our beach.

We put on our pjs and turned off the lights, then we played our ocean sounds and turned on our stars. It was the best place I'd ever been, me with my head on his shoulder and him with his arm wrapped tightly around me, a soft breeze from the ceiling fan, and both of us listening to the waves, looking up at our tiny pinpricks of light.

A Reason

2010-05-18T20:53:00.002-05:00

Haven't posted in forever--things have been as they usually are lately, by turns wonderful, profound, exciting, despairing, hopeless, and sad. And frequently funny. I've been meaning to get back on this horse for a while, but I could never retain enthusiasm for the thought long enough to log in. But something happened today: The world was asked to give up a person worth commemorating.

So here it is, as best as I'm able:

A good man died today, the father my dearest friend. I met him only once, but he gave me the most important blessing of my life, one that helped me feel the love my Heavenly Father was trying to show me all along. His compassion changed my life. Mr. N, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you.

Unexpected

2009-11-10T09:20:00.002-06:00

For a while I've been considering starting a Facebook meme called "From the One Least Likely to Know." In it, I'd list the things I've learned about myself and about life that are the furthest away from anything I'd ever imagined myself to be capable of.

It's been a common thing with me and NaBloPoMo that I plunge into a depression almost as soon as the month starts. This is typically a seasonal feature of my bipolar II, and I usually feel completely deadened inside. This year, there was actually a precipitating event, and even though it was just as (if not more) demotivating as the usual brand, I didn't have any of the sadness I usually do. I knew that it was temporary, and sure enough, I'm here on the other side already. Typically I don't see daylight until sometime in January.

Even so, it's not easy to claw one's way out of these things. This morning I've veered from despondant to optimistic to despairing. My "warning" thoughts started (signals I'm sinking): I'mgoingtodieI'mgoingtodieI'mgoingtodie. But I knew I was already on the other side and it would be so sad not to find a way to swim. So I took out a piece of paper and wrote the following:

I am not going to die.
What's going to happen is that I'm going to live.

Because things got absolutely terrible just after my first triumphs, but I made it through. So maybe there was some dying left to do, maybe during this down time I shed something else I didn't realize I'd been clinging to. Maybe it was the last thing I needed to do to prepare myself to live. Maybe this was the fresh start I needed--because I'm going for disruptive change. I want to make that cognitive break that makes the complete relapse impossible. Setbacks, sure, but return never again.

I started making my lists of what to do and when, and I think I felt a little falter again, so I decided to write something else down, too:

What is more true about me than anything else?

And here was my answer, the last thing I would have expected, the only thing that came to mind, and what I know to be the everlasting truth:

I am strong.

Still Sleeping

2009-11-09T22:46:00.000-06:00

I won't lie; I'm scared. But even in this fog, I know I just have to wait for it to pass, and once it starts to lift, I have to let it.

Nobody ever knows when this happens to me or what it's like because I pull so far in and go completely radio silent. If someone should happen to catch me in conversation and ask how I am, I say I'm fine and then change the subject. Always back to them.

The last time I remember sleeping like this was the week in college that I spent in bed. I didn't know anything about my depression then; I thought I was just being lazy, and was therefore appropriately hard on myself about it. When I went in for my first intake session at the UT Mental Health Services hospital here in Houston (because I wanted a diagnosis as official as possible), that week was the first thing that came to mind when they asked if I'd ever experienced major depressive symptoms before. I had been about to say no. (If you can believe that.)

Slowly, a bunch of things I'd always attributed to personal weakness and laziness came trickling out and I sat there in shock, for the first time seeing things as they were--this had been happening my whole life, as long as I could remember.

It's better on this side, on the side of knowing. Don't listen to the narrative that anyone's written about you. They're full of shit--they wrote that because that's what they need to believe about you. You know what your own voice sounds like. It's the one that sounds like everything you just know you could be.

Life's Fast Forward Button

2009-11-08T21:47:00.000-06:00

Is called sleep. I have been sleeping since Friday and will continue to sleep through Monday because Tuesday is when this holding pattern I'm in is due to end. Catch you laters.

No Joke

2009-11-07T23:40:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time, Fergie created the theme song for a good year of my life.

A few months ago, my dear friend SQUARE PICTURE GUY and I were discussing the Black-Eyed Peas' "I Got a Feeling," and I shared my opinion that this song was impossible for anyone outside of college to relate to. Who, once acquainted with the real world, could possibly find within themselves such unbridled optimism?

I have since discovered that my ability to relate to said optimism is a direct reflection of my mental state. "I Got a Feeling" is my leading indicator.

Who knew. I think it's something to do with the fact that I was all about Kids Incorporated when I was little.

#6

2009-11-06T23:20:00.001-06:00

Nothing to report! Just chillin' with my good friend SQUARE PICTURE GUY.

Illustrative

2009-11-05T23:42:00.005-06:00

July 2, 2008

And the picture heard 'round my Facebook world:
July 30, 2009

Well, Poop

2009-11-04T12:12:00.002-06:00

So, it doesn't look like this is going to be my next several days. Here's another thing I've learned: Sometimes, just lay low and let the feelings pass on through.

Little Bitty

2009-11-03T21:35:00.002-06:00

It's been a rough day. Tomorrow may not be much better, all depending on a single factor.

Anyway, I am going to take a nap, so I'm just checking in in case today becomes tomorrow while I'm out.

Just Start Again

2009-11-02T20:15:00.003-06:00

Over the course of this month, I'm going to try to capture all the important lessons I've learned this year. In truth, I feel like this has been the first year of my life, my first year as Krystl, because I finally learned who that is.

Some background: Four years ago, I was diagnosed with major depression. In August of last year, I was re-diagnosed with bipolar II disorder; this diagnosis, and the addition of a mood stabilizer to my anti-depressant, changed my life. In February of this year, I was also diagnosed with inattentive ADD. In May, my doctor and I finally found the right combination of medications, and, after 28 years of struggling to be the me I could sense inside, I woke up.

There was also a lot of therapy involved, the importance of which cannot be overstated.

As to be expected, I've made many, many attempts to find a whole new brand new me. Equally to be expected, I took every failure as evidence that I'd never get there. So here's the first thing I have to share with you:

There's no such thing as failure. You try a lot of things before you find the one that works. Anybody who causes you to doubt your ability to succeed, no matter how much you love them or respect their opinion, is toxic. Deep down, you know the truth: You'll find the right thing at the right time in your life, and you'll be fine. So be kind to yourself, have compassion for yourself in the struggle, be proud of yourself for trying, and just start over.

You'll get there. I know it.

Lorem ipsum + dolor set amet

2009-11-01T20:20:00.003-06:00

In this whole new brand new me, I am 11 days shy of 29, and the newness of my reflection would have been unimaginable to the newly 25-year-old me who began this blog almost four years ago.

Just after I was fired at the end of June, someone in a LinkedIn group asked everyone to write a letter to our younger selves at the beginning of our careers. Here is mine:

Krystl, I'm going to give it to you straight--these next seven years are going to get tough, in more ways than five. But I want you to know that you've already made it through, and by the time you sit down to write your own name at the beginning of this letter, you're going to know exactly who you are, exactly what that's worth, and exactly where you want to go from here.

And lest you despair that you've somehow screwed up the timeline and created an alternate, suckier future for yourself (and I know you will), it will be about six-and-a-half years before you start to see the results of all the hard work you're not giving yourself credit for. But oh, the harvest, the harvest!

It's going to be so worth it. I promise.

Love,
You

P.S. May 2009, when the flirty guy from the conference asks you to dinner? Do me a favor: Just say yes.

Of 100 Things to Do, Some Are Did

2009-08-24T01:02:00.002-05:00

How's about an update on this list I made then totally forgot about. Some of these things I really don't care about anymore, so I'll need to make revisions. Until then, here's the news:

1. Write a little bit every day.
2. Interview my parents and write down their life stories.
3. Talk to everyone in my family once a week.
4. Ask my mom about her conversion and her favorite scriptures.
5. Go on a date at a parking lot carnival.
6. Freely and fearlessly use up all my craft supplies.
~~7. Keep my house completely clean for one month.~~
8. Visit Easter Island.
9. Go to grad school.
10. Get married.
~~11. Buy a large piece of art for my home.~~
12. Write a book.
13. Buy myself fresh-cut flowers every week.
14. Go to the temple.
~~15. Figure out how to love my brother in jail.~~
16. Send my sister to Italy for vacation.
17. Buy my mom a chandelier.
18. Regularly volunteer on my own.
~~19. Use my worst experiences to give someone comfort.~~
20. Have children.
21. Visit Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.
22. See the Great Pyramids.
~~23. Save the day.~~
24. Take care of my father and mother when they get old.
~~25. See the redwoods and giant sequoias.~~
26. Travel through Mexico.
~~27. Take my whole family to the Renaissance Festival again.~~
28. Take Pickles to the dog park.
29. Go on a hot air balloon ride.
30. Learn the paso doble. (I would be SO TOTALLY AWESOME.)
31. Take a nap in a hammock on a tropical beach.
32. See the Northern Lights.
33. Learn a ballet folklorico dance.
34. Be in another play.
35. Visit Graceland.
36. See Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.
37. Take piano lessons.
38. And singing lessons.
39. Have occasion to wear an evening gown.
40. Sing karaoke.
41. Speak conversational Spanish.
42. Get by on my French in France.
43. Live in a foreign country for a month.
44. Keep a daily journal.
45. Skydive.
46. Get good and kissed out of the blue.
47. Give a speech at a public event.
48. Find the perfect red lipstick.
49. Safari in Africa.
50. Madagascar with Karen.
51. Plant a garden.
~~52. Go berry picking.~~
~~53. Lose 10 lbs on purpose.~~
54. Walk a half-marathon.
55. Do a cartwheel.
56. Give a solo performance (any kind).
57. Make all As one semester of grad school.
58. Buy a dining room table.
59. Completely decorate my home.
60. Buy myself new scriptures--quad compact, leather bound.
61. Paint my rooms pretty colors.
62. Learn to make my mom's tortillas and fruit salad.
63. Wake up at 6 a.m. every day.
64. Do something I'm afraid (or embarrassed) to do right in the moment I'm afraid to do it.
65. Dance with my dad at my wedding reception.
66. Be in the temple with my whole family.
67. Have my own Summer of Shannon!
68. Finish writing the story about the dollar dance.
69. Finish writing the story about Ana who loses things.
70. Give a talk in church.
71. Teach Sunday School (adults).
72. Teach Primary (children).
73. Write down my impressions from General Conference.
74. Become the kind of person who takes lots of pictures.
75. Visit my Grandpa Pete and get his life story.
75. Read Ulysses and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
76. Try hot yoga.
77. Send Christmas cards.
~~78. Take a road trip with Shannon.~~
79. Learn to arrange flowers.
80. Learn to decorate cakes.
81. Live in a 1920s bungalow.
82. Spend a good number of summer weekends at the beach.
83. Go to a safari park with roaming lions.
84. Attend the baptism of someone I introduced to the church.
85. Read all four standard works.
~~86. Stop being a child and stop telling myself I'm being a child.~~
~~87. Spearhead a project I'm proud of.~~
~~88. Take a month-long vacation.~~
89. Visit a flower garden in full bloom.
90. Have a great New Year's Eve and midnight kiss.
91. Read my Garner's Modern American Usage.
92. Win a contest.
~~93. Get Pickles' nails trimmed.~~
94. Have a hot stone massage.
95. Start the Ill-Skilled Adventure League.
96. Fly first class.
97. Give up my seat on a bus or plane for someone else.
98. Make fasting a key part of exercising my faith.
99. Learn to rollerskate and ice skate.
100. Have an experience I never even imagined putting on this list.

What Would Slate Do?

2009-07-07T16:05:00.000-05:00

I was reading the job description copied below and thinking I could totally kick ass at that, requisite experience or no, when I got to the "enough about you" part and realized that it's Crispin Porter--the ultimate advertising abomination, according to Slate's Ad Report Card! Oh noooooo! (Leaving aside, for a moment, that the job's in Boulder,) I just can't do it! Because I agreeeeee. They're a pointless, misogynistic advertising abomination! But I super dig the way they wrote the poooooost! And they seem to want meeeeee!

Then again, it makes sense. It's sort of like a Hitler thing--buttering me up about my own greatness before turning me into an agent of evil.

Fun-sounding evil. Bolded text is, like, my dream career environment.

"CP+B is a factory. A factory that makes advertising and branded creative content. But there is no assembly line. All the work is custom designed and assembled by hand. We don’t have the luxury of knowing the product we build today will be exactly like the product we built yesterday. To be successful, we have to approach every single day like it will be our defining moment. Because that’s the reality.

If you’re interested in our company’s philosophy and have what it takes, please read on.

Job Responsibilities and Requirements:

The GMD provides media-rooted perspective to greater brand teams, insuring all elements harmonize in service of the clients overarching business and advertising goals.

· Communications Skills: Written, verbal, listening, presentation, persuasion.

· Sticks Neck Out: Pushes for unconventional solutions to business problems. Recognizes opportunities and modulates accordingly.

· Strategic Media Leader: Leads strategic media approach across all brands and businesses, insuring media strategy consistency works in conjunction with brand strategy/creative.

· Strategic Brand Leader: Valued member of the core brand team. Helps set strategic direction for brand and business (i.e. beyond media).

· Business Acumen: Two fold - identifying and pursuing growth opportunities for CP+B (ie, incremental fee-based projects) as well as participating in the P&L of your accounts.

· High Standards: Sets AND enforces a high quality bar.

· Idea Invention: Invents, facilitates, and sells, brilliant and custom-client ideas.

· Media Team Leadership: Continues to harness the power of a team to produce more than though possible while representing the team’s output to the greater agency team and vice versa. Keeps media team engaged and involved in the greater team’s process.

· Client Relationships: Leads client thinking.

· Initiative: Takes on department / agency initiatives beyond account work.

· Mentoring Skills: Continues to optimize team talent. Organizes teams based on individual strengths and weaknesses. Has people’s long term career growth in mind.

· Uses / Sells Analytics and COGs: Identifies and creates opportunities for the discipline(s).

· Respected / In Demand: Creates demand for media involvement.

Enough about you, we’ve got some explaining to do now: best known for our work reinventing the Burger King brand..." Etc., etc., etc.

For the Record

2009-05-16T11:42:00.002-05:00

I hardly ever post anything when I'm happy. Probably because when I'm happy I don't waste time thinking about why and to what degree I'm happy and from whence came this propensity for happiness, lol. When I'm happy, I'm actually living in the moment, no meta-levels of existence or thought, even when the moment is just me sitting on my bed in my bikini psyching myself up to debut it at the pool.

So for the record, I'm very happy. I'm still me, overly worried, overly emotional sometimes, but I feel well and stable and healthy. Happy.

Where I Went Wrong with Ruth

2009-04-19T20:52:00.004-05:00

Tell me what you think,

And I will think it, too.

Tell me the way you see it,

And I'll believe it's true.

I must not feel what I think I feel

Because you don't feel I do.

And I'm the last person to know what's real,

So I'll defer to you.

When you say I'm wrong and weak and lazy,

That's when I know you're right.

Because it feeds the blackest part of me,

The part you think I don't fight.

It has a cold, cold smile

And a dark, dark den

To keep a hundred lights out

And its one drop of acid in.

Same Story, Different Place

2009-03-24T09:21:00.005-05:00

I spend a good deal of time wondering whether there is really anything wrong with me or whether I'm making the whole thing up. The bipolar II, I've accepted as incontrovertible. From one day to the next, though, the little depressions or bouts of anxiety, worry me.

Like now, on vacation in a lovely place, when things go still, I find myself wanting to cry. It's probably natural to feel cut off or muted when you can't talk to people you might not have talked to that day anyway. It's not unusual for a phone not to ring or an inbox to be empty, but here it makes me so sad. Especially the phone calls and text messages that can't happen. Makes me feel like my mouth is taped shut.

But not knowing what's me and what's normal worries me. Is it homesickness after four days of vacation? Or is it that moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts lifting and replacing its foot? That moth that sits on the part of me that needs medication.

I remember from my childhood, and still sometimes experience, the feeling of sitting somewhere and realizing that I am terrified to move. I am scared to get up and do what my mother just told me because I am scared to leave the space my shape has created. Curled up in a chair, I'm afraid to even put my legs down, to let any part of me outside the shape that is safe. Or sitting on the edge of one side of the couch in my apartment, trembling and crying because I don't know what to do next and I can't get up until I figure it out. I can't leave this shape until I figure out what the next one will be.

That's not what's happening right now, and the latter is an extreme example. But I'm trying to show myself that it is and has been a problem, that it's ok to have a medicine for that.

It's 3:45 and I haven't left Karen's apartment yet, to wander around like I said I thought I'd like to. It's not that terror I described just now, it's just the feeling of being in a closed place versus going out into an open place with no destination. Also, it is cold, and once I leave, I have no way back in.

Ok, not enough to keep me in. It would be a waste I'd regret, and I won't regret even a 4 o'clock start. Socks and shoes, a bit of makeup (I am, afterall, still me), and out to find a sandwich shop for pizza, Coke, and gelato. Gelato, even though it's mostly cloudy and 46 F and my light jacket is way too light. I'll find a place with indoor seating.

Not every part of me needs medication. Some parts just need practice.

Hypomania is my radioactive spider.

2009-02-07T01:44:00.001-06:00

Let's call superhero me Charm-ander because I got confused once (http://thisiskrys.blogspot.com/2008/05/so-close.html). My abilities are preternatural charm, infectious enthusiasm, and sustained feelings of utter euphoria. I totally get to turn into superhero me about once a quarter.

Dear Hypomania,

I love you.

TTYL,

Krystl

Mandela didn't say that, but Marianne Williamson wasn't kidding

2009-02-07T00:57:00.001-06:00

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. --MW

Apparently I have a thing for contractions.

2009-02-07T00:39:00.001-06:00

You don't have to pay me anything. Let's do this.

Should've Known Better by Richard Marx

Listen to it again. No, really listen to it. It is undeniably an excellent song. Go ahead, admit it to your hipster heart. Nobody has to know.

Some Guys Have All the Luck by Rod Stewart

This has been one of my favorite songs since I was old enough to recognize songs on the radio. Nowadays I like to break it down and sing all slow and sad in my car. With enough liquor, I'll do so on stage as well.

Could've Been Me by Billy Ray Cyrus

Ok dudes, Billy Ray is another one who got a bum rap. Forget Achy Breaky Heart--listen to the rest of the album. Anyway, I will be singing this at my wedding, dedicating it to myself from all my ex-boyfriends.

May Be the Last Letter

2009-01-24T20:14:00.003-06:00

Dear Stephen,

Do you remember when I told you that I thought that my eight-month-long depression was my punishment for having left the church to be with you? I told you that just a few months ago. You said you never knew, and I was surprised and saddened that I'd never told you, because that tells me just how deeply I believed it.

I saw something today that reminded me of us. It was a man holding a woman and gently rocking her from side to side while she cried. I remembered one time we were about to go out somewhere--I think I had just gotten home and we were about to leave again--I remember standing in the study, feeling scared and crying into my hands. I was telling you that I didn't know what was wrong. This was before you came to believe in depression, I think, because I expected you to get mad at me, but instead you put your arms around me and held me. After a while, you started rocking me, too. You just held me until I finished crying.

On some level, I must have still believed that that first major depression really was punishment because as I thought about that moment, it suddenly struck me that I'd been sick. It got so bad because, without medication, the symptoms get worse as you get older. I hurt so bad because I was getting worse, not because I was being punished. I thought about how incredibly painful that whole time was--how I felt like my soul was dying, how I cried almost every day, how I'd become nonfunctional on the weekends--and I realized that if you hadn't been there, I would've had to have gone through it alone. I would've gotten sick anyway, but I'd have been alone.

So I saw that the thing I thought was the reason for my punishment was really a blessing to help me make it through. I think about that time, despair I can't even describe, and I don't know how I could have gotten through on my own. It would have crushed me. I'd have stopped functioning completely. I thought God was punishing me for being with you, but really He put us together because He loved me. And I get it now.

It was wonderful, and it served its purpose. And it's over now. And that's ok.

Self-medication ain't self-destruction

2009-01-24T17:30:00.001-06:00

For me, broken heart=cigarettes + booze. Given my Mormon background (and overactive guilt complex), I used to think of this as self-destructive, which would add a whole other layer of self-loathing despair. When I mentioned this to my therapist, she said, "You're not being self-destructive, you're self-medicating." I thought that was such a kind way to look at it, and I realized I personally have no moral objection to smoking and drinking. So after my first good cry, I drink a couple of girly wine coolers, smoke for a couple weeks, then quit. Guilt free.

Nobody buys Baby's drinks anymore

2009-01-24T17:06:00.001-06:00

Just over a year ago I was walking to my apartment, sifting through mail to find the utility bills, and suddenly it struck me--I'd been paying my own way for years. As the baby of the family, that was quite a revelation. (I'm 28, btw.)

Things I Remember Pt. 2

2008-12-08T19:12:00.002-06:00

I am lying on my side with my head at the foot of the bed. It is a Saturday or Sunday afternoon; I am still in my nightgown, still in bed, and I have been crying. My tears have plastered my hair to my cheeks, and I am staring at the comforter a few inches in front of me, trying to keep very still and breathe as little as possible.

Later, I have changed positions. Back at the head of the bed, still on my side. Stephen comes in to check on me. He asks what's wrong, but I still don't know. He comes to the side of the bed and says, "How about you just get up to take a shower? Can you do that?" I start crying, sobbing. I can't do even that. "Here, I'll help you, ok? Just take a shower. You'll feel better." He pulls the covers off of me while I lie there crying. He asks if I can sit up. I stop crying and try to think about sitting up. After a few seconds, I can move. I sit up very slowly, moving my legs over the side of the bed. He puts his hand on my shoulder while I steady myself, then he leans down and takes my hand. "Come on," he says. "Let's go take a shower."

I stand up and he leads me around the side of the bed, holding my hand and walking slowly toward the master bath, no more than a few feet away. Once in the bathroom, he lets go and starts to run the bath water for me. At the sound of the rushing water, I start to panic and start crying again. He makes sure that the water is warm, starts the shower, then turns back to me.

He lifts up my nightgown and pulls it over my head while I'm still crying. He says, "There. You can take a shower now, ok?" I tell him that I'm scared. He says, "Don't be scared. There's nothing to be scared of. I'm going to go outside now and I'm going to shut the door. You can just sit in here until you're ready to get in, ok? It will make you feel better." I nod, barely moving my head.

After he leaves, I sit on the edge of the toilet and cry a little more. Then slowly I get up, pull back the curtain, and step into the shower.

Coda

2008-12-08T18:29:00.003-06:00

For all his faults, Stephen Silver loved me very much.

And I loved him, too. Very much.

NaBloPoMo Redux

2008-11-01T00:19:00.004-05:00

The first theme: Buried in E-mails

Almost all the writing I've done lately has been in e-mails--including the previous post's True Tale of Not-Elvis. I'm posting some that I'm particularly fond of.

May 29, 2008

When I took Pickles for a walk on Tuesday, everything in our path had been given a dark vibrance by the recent downpour. Emerald leaves that had languished and dimmed in the sun now spread open, slick and provocative. Cranberry doors and railings, so cheerful when dry, had turned a sober, watchful crimson. The earth became blackened and mysterious; the grass, a distracted, otherworldly neon. And the normally unassuming, apologetically ash-colored concrete now sneered upward with a slate-gray fuck you. After getting pummeled by watery, bullying fists, everything was ready to be itself with colors thick and deep. That this was the stillness of aftermath was as palpable as the air's relief that the humidity had finally spent itself, as its cautious, celebratory sigh.

But the darkness on the ground didn't come from the sky. Overhead, the pastels of water lilies were already looking toward the future: the lavender calmly hopeful, spots of pink bright and expectant. Together they cast a violet light that might eventually soothe the seething ground, teach it that the darkness of sorrow is not the same as truth, that a different kind of stillness is waiting, soft and healing.

I had just finished crying over having realized too late that something I'd always wanted had been mine and that it didn't change my decision to walk away. I have never been in an outside so reflective of my mood. This plane, saturated with sorrow, thought it recognized its true self in the brightness of its pain. Moving through the air was like walking through water, a cool embrace of kinship, a comforting thickness connecting me to the colors of loss disguised as gain. There was a time when I would never have known to look up, to see with certainty that the day was still changing, that there was peace on the horizon and it would be mine before the daylight was through.

Today I had to do the walking away all over again, and it was incredibly bittersweet, more than before, because the sweet was so much sweeter.

The True Tale of Not-Elvis

2008-10-17T10:29:00.004-05:00

My lazy friend and lazy I were waiting in our car in the parking lot outside of the HEB on Riverside while our not lazy friend ran in to get something. It is possible we were mildly drunk. There was a brown, weather-beaten old-school Cadillac to our right, and as we chatted, we heard a cart rattle up to it and someone pop the trunk. We turned to look, and there standing next to the cavernous trunk, in all his glory, was not Elvis. He still wore his pompadour and sideburns, but they both had a relaxed, wind-blown quality as if, now that the throngs of dangerously adoring fans believed him dead, not-Elvis could finally enjoy the simple delight of a slow drive on a cool night with the windows down and the radio softly playing not his songs. But not-Elvis was still not Elvis, and so still wore his signature gold shades though the sun had been set for hours. We watched as Elvis did not unload the plastic grocery bags from the cart and place them in the trunk, and we saw how Elvis had not become a wide, thick man with a defiantly cool beer belly underneath a faded black t-shirt. It was a serendipitous moment, to be unexpectedly so not close to the King, and after we recovered from those first awestruck seconds, we scrambled to find our camera to mark the occasion and prove to our friends that we had not seen Elvis.

We found the camera and, being too shy to ask for a picture, we decided to take one from inside the car. My lazy friend waited until not-Elvis was not looking and snapped the picture. The flash was bright, and, knowing we'd been discovered, we tried to crouch below the window, giggling wildly out of embarrassment. But not-Elvis was standing right next to our car, and when I peeked to see his reaction, he was smiling down at us, laughing to himself. He seemed pleased and flattered that even in this quieter life, young fans were excited to see him but too timid to approach him.

Just then, a redhead I can only assume was not Ann Margaret joined not-Elvis at the Cadillac. Her fiery hair had been made dull and brittle by one too many perms, but she had the same happily plump and unkempt look as not-Elvis. He turned his full attention to her, smiled, and spoke to her in the gentle manner of a couple long in love; she laughed and shook her head. As she turned to look at us, I hid my face again. A few seconds later, my lazy friend and lazy I sat up to get one last look at not-Elvis, but he, not-Ann Margaret, and the old brown Cadillac had already vanished.

I read once that Ann Margaret was Elvis' one true love, but some circumstance I've forgotten kept them apart. The ghostly poignancy of seeing the quiet, happy life that he and Ann Margaret had not shared made me wish that some small part of the King himself had been able to channel not-Elvis' life, too.

When my lazy friend got her pictures back, we saw that the car window had reflected the flash, filling the frame with white haze. At the bottom of the picture, we could just make out not-Elvis' hands and the side of the old brown Cadillac. But where his face should have been, there was only the brightness of the sun.

I saw not-Elvis again during my last trip to Austin. As I was leaving a restaurant, he was sitting alone in the corner on a wall-length bench. Same black t-shirt, same gold shades. I wondered whether something had happened to not-Ann Margaret. I imagine he was waiting for her. I hope she showed up soon.

Advertising

2008-08-28T15:43:00.001-05:00

Damn. That boy baby looks pretty fucking cool.

Pitter Pat, Five Years Ago

2008-05-28T21:18:00.002-05:00

Old notebook. Sometime in 2003.

I used his name here, so if you know his name, read that instead.

Pitter Pat, I am haunted by the ghost of you. You've become a symbol for something about me, something about love, something about loss. Something about never was and never meant to be.

I listen to the distant murmurs; I try to decipher the meaning behind these memories like runes. I know they try to speak to me, but the words are swallowed by the wide gulf between symbol and meaning, hurting and learning.

Did you teach me to hope or did you warn me against blindness? Are you telling me to be happy with the present, to temper my impatience (greed, need, hunger) or are you teaching me about you, about the men I choose?

Pitter Pat, I am always under the shadow of the mistake, but was it mine or yours?

Things I Remember Pt. 1

2008-05-24T22:40:00.003-05:00

My first year in college, I stayed in bed for a whole week. My second year I started scratching the insides of my arms until they were red and swollen. My third year I started cutting myself with scissors and the razor blades I'd stolen from work.

The summer before my senior year, I went to live with my dad and his girlfriend (erstwhile mistress) Martina while I worked a summer job in the office where they'd met. One day my dad and I had a fight about something over the phone. I don't remember what, but when I got off the phone, I felt the tearing in my brain that I've come to recognize as a sign I've lost control. I threw my shoes at the wall; I started screaming. I began ripping my clothes out of the closet in the room I shared with Stephanie, Martina's niece, and stuffing them into bags, all the while crying hysterically. I stripped the sheets off my bed. At some point, everyone came home. I remember backing into a corner, clutching a bundle of sheets and clothes, crying as Stephanie and Martina tried to calm me down, screaming when they stepped toward me.

At some point I must have been left alone to cry it out because the next thing I remember, I was lying on my side on the bare mattress, feeling very small and wanting nothing more than to be still. They asked if I wanted food and I said I didn't, but my father came in later with something he'd bought for me anyway. He sat in a chair by the bed and showed me the hamburger and fries from Whataburger. He tried to show me how good they were by eating some fries and taking a bite of the hamburger. He asked me to eat, so I sat up and he handed me the burger. I took a small bite and chewed it slowly. Finally, he left me alone again.

Later that day he held my hand and took me to get my car washed. I remember how much effort it took to grab my seatbelt and buckle it, how slowly I moved, how small I felt, how I could barely speak above a whisper.

So Close

2008-05-13T22:26:00.003-05:00

Someone sent me a Pokemon on Facebook. A guy with whom I am fairly well acquainted, but not necessarily friends. Anyway, it's called Charmander. At first I was pleased, thinking it a compliment. I was considering adding to my profile when I noticed a flame on its tail.

Oh. Char-mander. Not Charm-ander.

Oh well. Thanks anyway, buddy.

100 Things to Do Pt. 4

2008-04-28T13:00:00.003-05:00

Yes, smartypants, I did consider putting "finish this list" on the list.

100 Things to Do Before I Die, 75-100

75. Read Ulysses and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

76. Try hot yoga.

77. Send Christmas cards.

78. Take a road trip with Shannon.

79. Learn to arrange flowers.

80. Learn to decorate cakes.

81. Live in a 1920s bungalow.

82. Spend a good number of summer weekends at the beach.

83. Go to a safari park with roaming lions.

84. Attend the baptism of someone I introduced to the church.

85. Read all four standard works.

86. Stop being a child and stop telling myself I'm being a child.

87. Spearhead a project I'm proud of.

88. Take a month-long vacation.

89. Visit a flower garden in full bloom.

90. Have a great New Year's Eve and midnight kiss.

91. Read my Garner's Modern American Usage.

92. Win a contest.

93. Get Pickles' nails trimmed.

94. Have a hot stone massage.

95. Start the Ill-Skilled Adventure League.

96. Fly first class.

97. Give up my seat on a bus or plane for someone else.

98. Make fasting a key part of exercising my faith.

99. Learn to rollerskate and ice skate.

100. Have an experience I never even imagined putting on this list.

Perhaps I Had a Wicked Childhood, Perhaps I Had a Miserable Youth

2008-04-23T12:52:00.003-05:00

My lunch date was cancelled (by virtue of my not having better planned it), so for the past two hours, I've been sitting here hungry while I tried to decide a) what I wanted, b) where I wanted to go to get it, and c) whether I should take my work with me wherever I went. I will spare you the endless permutations I considered while I read about Staples' best practices in identifying, developing, and assessing world-class leadership, but suffice it to say I knew early on that the thing I wanted most was a grilled chicken pita from a little place around the corner called Island Grill. I also knew early on that I did not feel like spending 7 bucks on lunch, no matter how well-seasoned the chicken.

Unable to make up my mind, I considered doing the following: 1) making a new work friend on the quick so we could decide together, 2) skipping lunch altogether so I wouldn't even have to deal, and 3) updating my Facebook status to "is hungry, but indecisive." Then I heard some chatter over by the coffee bar/leftovers repository, near which it is my good fortune to sit. And what do you think just so happened to be there, waiting as if just for me?

Hooray! My dilemma resolved on all fronts! Grilled chicken pita! Stay in! Keep working!

(And by "keep working" I mean "stop working and write a post about how you got what you wanted for lunch.")

Not Hole-Heartedly

2008-04-16T15:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a rough day. But all in all, I'm glad it happened and I'm glad everything happened at once.

It's good to know where your weaknesses still are, what's still bothering you, and what you have to work on. Like with this bad thing I did, I've told plenty of people, but because they know me and what was going on in my life at the time, they say it's not who I really am and it's not unforgivable. But those are all people that love me, so I guess I think their opinions are skewed. So who is best qualified to judge you? The person who knows you well or the person who doesn't know you at all? Christianity would suggest that it's the person that knows you best, the one who knows your heart. But why can't we bear, sometimes, to be forgiven?

The unfortunate (embarrassing) part is that these weaknesses are so visible. But I admit to them and don't try to cover them up. No matter how retarded that makes me look sometimes, the fact of the matter is that's the way I choose to be. And I admit to these things because I believe that somewhere along the way, me admitting to these supposedly shameful actions and feelings will help someone be more forgiving about their own.

It's just that sometimes I try to get it to work in reverse, too.

The job stuff, well I just don't know what to think. I don't think the things said to me yesterday were entirely fair because the person saying them is just as influenced by his self-concept as I am by mine. But it is true that I haven't cared about much in a while, just as it's true that I don't know what I want.

What I want is someone to help me figure out what I want.

Anyway, that was all yesterday. The one-two punch. I feel beat up and exposed, but I'm doing my best to regroup. Right now that just means keeping my head above water. I made it to work, looking pretty, and that's something. Happiness is hard to come by and harder to keep. I wish it weren't that way.

Super Churchy Krystl:

The first spot of negativity in my brain was like a little hole that ripped wide open as soon as it appeared. The sheer speed of it belied the relish it took in finding a chink in my armor. I'm supposed to be able to take the sacrament again this coming Sunday, as long as I feel worthy to do so. I was already worried that I wouldn't be able to feel the confirmation I'm seeking, so this would be a particularly opportune moment for Satan to strike and make me feel incredibly discouraged. It's time for his last, best effort, as a matter of fact, because once I'm in this time, I'm in, to go no more out.

So, you know, I have to be all, "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the goblin city..."

Oh man, I crack me up. That's exactly what I needed.

And He Will Flee from Thee

2008-04-15T17:36:00.003-05:00

Yeah, or he'll just find another way to bite you in the ass.

When I woke up this morning and thought about yesterday's post, I cringed. How embarrassing to be so steeped in your own sap.

And now it gets even worse.

Today I got a one-two punch from my biggest flaws. Psychological neediness and at-work childishness. Really, they both come down to the same thing, something I was just telling someone about today: pathetic obviousness.

Obvious: Proving yourself a headcase by using someone you hardly know to fulfill your simultaneous need for absolution and condemnation through negative self-disclosure.

Obvious: Being moody, negative, and childish at work because you're feeling underutilized, overlooked, and ineffectual when actually the reason nobody can give you praise is because you're not doing anything praiseworthy. Nobody can help you get there because you don't know where you want to go. So this mess everywhere? You made it yourself. All this unhappiness? Your own fault.

Obvious: Thinking you had some kind of breakthrough just because you kept your stupid house clean for a week.

I probably should not blog in emotional real time. Maybe this is passing, but right now I'm TKO.

At any rate, now you can see how vicious that voice is.

Obvious: Throwing yourself a damn pity party courtesy of Blogger.

Another Whole New Brand New You

2008-04-14T23:23:00.004-05:00

It's amazing how much love will fill your heart as soon as you open it up.

For the first time in my life, there's enough of me to go around. I've had isolated days like this before, but never anything sustained. I'm enough. There's enough. And there's enough to share.

I had a Wormwood, but I've got his number now.

I helped Mary move today. Afterward I was telling her and Erin about my grocery shopping routine and Erin said, "Oh, I wish I was like you." I waved her off, saying, "I'm barely like me." But under the settled dust of all the things I thought I couldn't do or wouldn't be, I am someone I didn't expect. Or I'm me, only vibrant and alive.

This seems sudden, but it was building and then it reached the tipping point. It's these little things, it's writing again, it's a deeper understanding of the gospel, it's Maggie's list, it's realizing where the resistance came from, it's a singular and special validation of a singular and special connection I felt a long time ago. That last one brought me to the threshold and the penultimate pushed me through. And now here I am, without a doubt in my mind, starting to live my life the way I was meant to. That I might have joy.

I finally jumped

out of my skin.

Now I'll shake the sky

like a thousand violins.

(Apologies to Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street.)

100 Things to Do Pt. 3

2008-04-11T22:10:00.002-05:00

I have some good ones this time. Well, at least I think they're good.

100 Things to Do Before I Go, 51-75

51. Plant a garden.

52. Go berry picking with Shannon, Gretchen, and Suzanne.

53. Lose 10 lbs on purpose.*

54. Walk a half-marathon.

55. Do a cartwheel.

56. Give a solo performance (any kind).

57. Make all As one semester of grad school.

58. Buy a dining room table.

59. Completely decorate my home.

60. Buy myself new scriptures--quad compact, leather bound.

61. Paint my rooms pretty colors.

62. Learn to make my mom's tortillas and fruit salad.

63. Wake up at 6 a.m. every day.

64. Do something I'm afraid (or embarrassed) to do right in the moment I'm afraid to do it.

65. Dance with my dad at my wedding reception.

66. Be in the temple with my whole family.

67. Have my own Summer of Shannon!

68. Finish writing the story about the dollar dance.

69. Finish writing the story about Ana who loses things.

70. Give a talk in church.

71. Teach Sunday School (adults).

72. Teach Primary (children).

73. Write down my impressions from General Conference.

74. Become the kind of person who takes lots of pictures.

75. Visit my Grandpa Pete and get his life story.

*I don't like coming across as someone uncomfortable with her body because I'm not, nor do I want to further the unfortunately female mentality that 10 fewer pounds would make me happier; I think it would be a rewarding exertion of mind over matter.

100 Things to Do Pt. 2

2008-04-08T19:41:00.000-05:00

I'm just making these up as I go along. It's difficult to remember things I've always wanted to do; I guess I don't tend to do a lot of specific wishing. Vague whining, yes; articulated desires, not so much.

100 Things to Do Before I Go, 26-50

26. Travel through Mexico.

27. Take my whole family to the Renaissance Festival again.*

28. Take Pickles to the dog park.

29. Go on a hot air balloon ride.

30. Learn the paso doble. (I would be SO TOTALLY AWESOME.)

31. Take a nap in a hammock on a tropical beach.

32. See the Northern Lights.

33. Learn a ballet folklorico dance.

34. Be in another play.

35. Visit Graceland.

36. See Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.

37. Take piano lessons.

38. And singing lessons.

39. Have occasion to wear an evening gown.

40. Sing karaoke.

41. Speak conversational Spanish.

42. Get by on my French in France.

43. Live in a foreign country for a month.

44. Keep a daily journal.

45. Skydive.

46. Get good and kissed out of the blue.

47. Give a speech at a public event.

48. Find the perfect red lipstick.

49. Safari in Africa.

50. Madagascar with Karen.

*I feel hesitant to admit to the dorkier things. I like Ren Fest and I don't care what you think!

I Am Quite Obviously an Idiot

2008-04-07T14:04:00.000-05:00

Despite having lived the first 27 years of my life understanding how stoves work (yes, excepting the first four or five), I have suddenly become unable to keep the dials straight. I keep mixing up which control the front and which the back burners, an infirmity that has resulted in several mind-boggling stupidities, one of which seared into the back of my cookbook an unmistakable, humiliating black spiral.

And that's not even the one that happened just now.

100 Things to Do

2008-04-07T00:02:00.000-05:00

My two best friends each have or have had a list of things they want to do before they die. It's never really occurred to me to write my own, but Mighty Girl recently wrote a couple of 100-things lists, so it suddenly seemed like a good idea.

100 Things to Do Before I Go, 1-25

1. Write a little bit every day.

2. Interview my parents and write down their life stories.

3. Talk to everyone in my family once a week.

4. Ask my mom about her conversion and her favorite scriptures.

5. Go on a date at a parking lot carnival.

6. Freely and fearlessly use up all my craft supplies.

7. Keep my house completely clean for one month.

8. Visit Easter Island.

9. Go to grad school.

10. Get married.

11. Buy a large piece of art for my home.

12. Write a book.

13. Buy myself fresh-cut flowers every week.

14. Go to the temple.

15. Figure out how to love my brother in jail.

16. Send my sister to Italy for vacation.

17. Buy my mom a chandelier.

18. Regularly volunteer on my own.

19. Use my worst experiences to give someone comfort.

20. Have children.

21. Visit Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji.

22. See the Great Pyramids.

23. Save the day.

24. Take care of my father and mother when they get old.

25. See the redwoods and giant sequoias.

Politesse

2008-04-06T20:36:00.000-05:00

She's the wife of a friend of one of us. She's taller, thinner, and better dressed than we are, and her hair is a glossy, buttery blonde. We're sitting around a table playing a game whose one rule is simple but hard to keep straight. There's a learning curve, but everyone scales it pretty quickly. Everyone except her.

We haven't bothered to wash our hair and have it pulled back in couldn't-care-less ponytails because we're on our own turf and have no one to impress. In secret, we're a posse. A closed group accepting no new applications at this time, thanks. If she were single and this were a party, we would diminish in her presence. If there were fish to be caught, her cap sleeves would remind us of the shapelessness of our own t-shirts, her fresh makeup would make us wish we'd at least put powder on or some blush or something, and later we'd reassure one another No, no. You don't look bad at all. I look awful, but you look just fine.

But because there's no one we want here, when she plays another card that shows she's still confused a few rounds after everyone else has caught on, there's no relish in it. Silently and separately, we assess. She played the card with confidence, so to correct her now--after having corrected her just a few turns before--might embarrass her. It might highlight the fact that no one else has made a mistake in quite a while. We keep quiet, and we keep going.

On her next turn, she does it again. I immediately imagine a justification for the play so that if someone challenges it, I can jump to her rescue. Next to me, I hear Shannon's voice go high and tight with a lie of encouragement, "Good!" A few beats follow because we're starting to realize we're doing her no favors. If she realizes that she's been playing wrong, she'll also realize that we've been allowing her to do so, that we decided not to correct her again, because we didn't think it would help. Suzanne comes clean, "Um, didn't you mean..." and repositions the card. She laughs a little and says, "Oh yeah." We all lamely and falsely agree that it could go either way.

In another setting, we would have told one another that we're just like her. You're always dressed really nicely. I like your hair. And you're just as pretty as she is--no, prettier. But in this one, we conspire to make her feel accepted. Because she's nothing like us, but we don't want to hurt her feelings by letting her know it.

It's This Compulsion I Have

2008-04-03T23:06:00.000-05:00

I have to be as clear and thorough as possible, even when it really isn't important or doesn't make a difference. So out of fairness to the situation, even though I have left it unexplained, I must say this:

Though I can't go so far as to say I've learned to separate my feelings about a situation from the situation itself, I have at least learned to distinguish feelings from facts. So in my post before last, I was letting myself explore the feeling, but I don't think that what I felt about what happened is actually what happened. (Oh, the vagueries are getting labyrinthine...)

What the facts are, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure they have nothing to do with me. Where the feelings came from, I can tell you for certain. Perhaps my most fundamental shame issue has to do with somehow being in error, wrongness in both state and quality. This is most obviously manifest in perfectionism, but my first reaction to any kind of non-positive stimulus is often an assumption of my own incorrectness in some form or another. The reaction and the feelings themselves have little specificity to the triggering event.

All of this is just to say that though I did indeed feel hurt, it was a feeling and it was passing and I'm not awarding external credit for its intensity.

True Story

2008-04-03T15:04:00.000-05:00

I walk over to the candy bowl at the receptionist's desk to peruse the chocolate selection and I think to myself, "Now what's going to make me feel like I just had sex?"

Where It Hurts

2008-03-30T21:53:00.000-05:00

I'm going to peel this like an onion:

Feeling disappointment makes me feel ungrateful for all the good things I've been given lately. I wanted to not be sad as a sign of faith, that I meant it when I said I believed He wanted me to be happy.

Feeling disappointed makes me feel emotionally unhealthy, like I'd been fooling myself about how careful I've been, like I'm back just where I started.

The disappointment itself is feeling foolish for getting excited, for placing too much weight on the weightless, for being drawn in by something someone else would have known was nothing.

The disappointment itself is feeling un-looked-forward-to, not significant, merely convenient and only diversionary.

The disappointment itself is feeling mistaken.

***

Shannon was right: Now it doesn't hurt as much.

***

P.S. Dear Passive Aggressor, I have decided what to do about you, and that is not a damn thing. I am not going to be closed just because you would attack my openness; I am not going to be selfish just because you would take advantage of my sharing. I am not going to be any less me just because your envy has made you spiteful. You look at me and see something you aren't, but you should know that I, too, see qualities in you that I wish I saw in myself. You have your own strengths; you need to let me have mine. I'm going to figure out how to love you again because the solution here is to give you more love, not less. Don't fight me; I'm your friend, not your enemy, ok?

I Love Mr. Pickles

2008-03-07T08:11:00.000-06:00

Would it surprise anyone to know that I was depressed for a while? I don't know why it takes me so long to figure these things out.

Anyway, about Pickles...

It was raining yesterday when I came home and took Pickles out for a walk. I had an umbrella, and Pickles, of course, had nothing. About halfway through our walk, Pickles ran under an awning and refused to budge. I tugged on the leash, and he just looked at me, forlorn. I tugged again; he sat down.

I have a dog named Mr. Pickles, who has to be carried home in the rain.

Nope, Not Yet

2007-11-21T12:48:00.000-06:00

I just realized that Thanksgiving is tomorrow, not today. Reprieve!

I'm Even Getting Tired of Just This Little

2007-11-20T14:15:00.000-06:00

How's about I just shoot for a decent Thanksgiving post, hmm?

I Hope I Hope

2007-11-20T00:55:00.000-06:00

One could say that we're entering the home stretch, right?

The Assistant Manager

2007-11-19T00:04:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I found out I live just a couple blocks from a Little Caesar's. It's definitely what you'd call "across the tracks," but not in scary way. Just enough that a $5 pizza is a blessing, just enough that the majority of its clientele don't speak English, and just enough that the young gringo cashier (who had the demeanor of an assistant manager though his pasty face and mouse-brown hair couldn't have been more than 17) has long since established a way of working with the people that no hablo ingles.

"Can I help you?"

"Wan chiz pisa"

"One cheese pizza?"

*nods* "Plis."

"Ok, anything else?"

*shakes head*

"Ok, and what's your name?"

When the name comes out, it's heavily accented. If it's something familiar like Miguel, he repeats it and writes it on the ticket. If it's something he can't understand right away, like Cristobal or Guadalupe, he pauses a second to replay the sound in his mind just to be sure. But just as quickly, he exhales and slides his pen and ticket pad across the counter so the customer can write his own name.

The cashier's mouth draws tight as he silently watches the name appear. This is part assistant-manager frustration--it's still two hours until closing, it's just him and a couple workers in the back. He's got a line, and they're behind. Over his shoulder, on a side wall in the kitchen, there are two signs: one large and plastic, big enough for all the lineworkers to see, and one color printout on on copy paper. Both cheerily display the corporate promise--fresh, hot pizza and a smile, in 30 seconds or less--and both are covered in a thin layer of resignation.

"Ok, That'll be $5.41."

Sometimes it's exact change, sometimes not. He carefully counts out the coins handed to him; I recognize this as the mark of someone who is used to trying to explain how much is missing, used to picking what he needs out of upturned palms offering handfuls of warm pennies.

I watch his face during the transactions, wondering where his frustration has led him, where it might lead him still. I'm looking for the creeping vine of spite that wends through most minimum wage jobs, but which, in this case, could easily be misidentified, fed the wrong food, and plant a poison: These goddamn Mexicans.

But in this kid, there's nothing more than keeping up with the line of customers, than making sure the orders are right, than the counting and cleaning that's waiting in two hours, than locking up and heading home, still powdered with the soft scent of dough.

2007-11-19T00:04:00.000-06:00

At Seventeen

2007-11-18T00:57:00.000-06:00

We'll try again on Sunday...

Just Checkin' In

2007-11-17T00:20:00.001-06:00

That's pretty much it for today.

Bonus Days

2007-11-15T22:19:00.000-06:00

Tuesday night I could barely stomach the idea of making it to the end of the week. I'd already planned on taking Friday off, but even Wednesday and Thursday seemed impossible.

Around just before noon on Wednesday I decided to take Thursday off, too.

Then my boss and I had a quick chat about something, and just as we were about to finish, I said, "I have a problem." Then I told him about all the concerns I'd been having with my job. How I feel like I'm missing out on the fun stuff because I'm chained to the day-in-day-out running of the department. How I feel like I have a lot to offer and I want to have a piece of the new exciting stuff to be mine.

I had some stuff left to do before I left, but I suddenly felt energized and decided to go into work today. I decided to go in late(r than usual) because, technically, this was just a bonus day for APQC.

And today more exciting stuff happened. All strategic visiony, and I said you know, I'm coming in tomorrow, too.

It's the best thing when you're all out, you're completely drained and you feel like you've got nothing left to give, and then one thing turns it all around. Sets you soaring again.

Back, and Forth

2007-11-14T21:35:00.000-06:00

"Is this making love? Is that what you would call this? Are you making love to me?"

"Yes."

"Are you just saying that because you want me to keep going?"

"No, I'm not."

I believe him.

We keep going because we both know that this is one thing that always pulls me out of the depths. And I really was deep, scary deep, and I didn't know why.

Earlier
We talk about it because we both know it works. I say that it's a big gamble because I could end up feeling much worse. There have been some close calls, but we haven't actually had sex in months. I don't want to start all over again, but I'm also in a lot of pain and I just want to feel better. I know he won't do anything I don't want to do. It's the only way he knows to make me feel better. We start getting into it. I get sad and want to stop, so we stop. We talk some more about how things might have turned out differently for us if only things had been different. I'm glad I stopped. I even have the thought that if I just don't go any further, Heavenly Father will take care of me tomorrow.

And then I go on and do it anyway.

It starts out nicely. Very tender between the two of us, because it was only after our relationship was over that I realized that he had been emotionally invested in sex. I'd always thought he wasn't, so I tried not to look for what I thought wouldn't be there.

Later
But a few minutes in, I'm already somewhere else. He asks if I'm ok and I tell him that I'm not feeling anything anymore. He starts apologizing because he knows that it's all about to come crashing down on me. He says he didn't want to hurt me, that he wanted it to be good for me. I tell him that I know, and I do. I know what it would look like to someone else, but I know that he was trying to help me.

I turn onto my side, away from him, and he pulls me close. He asks if I'm ok and for a second I think I am, but then my stomach catches and I start sobbing. I think that I've come all this way, but now it doesn't mean anything. He was there with me trying to help me, but now I'm alone. And now I know it.

I hear his voice crack.

"This wasn't a failure, ok? You need to know that. You didn't fail. You don't have to start all over, ok? You're going through something right now, and you just tried to feel better. That's all."

"If I were normal, it wouldn't be this difficult, right? It's harder for me than it is for a lot of other people, right? It's just because there's something wrong."

"Yes."

But it doesn't help, and I cry so much my eyelids are swollen and aching. He's still there with me and he keeps apologizing, but I don't blame him at all. He keeps telling me he didn't want to hurt me, but I already know that.

It's the one time I ever really start to weigh the pros and cons--I wouldn't sin anymore. I couldn't make things any worse. It would just be over. But then I'd never be able to set things right. Then I'd never get married and I'd never have children. I hang on to that because I do want to be happy someday.

In my heart I'm crying to Heavenly Father. That I really am sorry and I just hurt so much, but I'll keep trying. I promise to keep trying and please just help me. Then I think that that's all He's ever asked of me. Not that I get it right on the first try or the fiftieth try, but that I just keep trying. I remember that I have my mini Book of Mormon with me and I get up to go pray and read in my old bedroom.

I pray for all the strength I need because I realize that I can't pray for strength from Heavenly Father if part of me still plans to be able to do it myself. I pray for forgiveness. I feel a lot better. I felt as bad as bad could be, it was black black black, but now it all seems so simple. I read my scriptures.

Mosiah 28:4
And thus did the Spirit of the Lord work upon them, for they were the very vilest of sinners. And the Lord saw fit in his infinite mercy to spare them; nevertheless they suffered much anguish of the soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.

That's about the sons of Mosiah, who had been persecuting members of the church until an angel appeared to them. Then they repented of their sins and became very righteous missionaries--the stories of their great faith are my favorite in all the scriptures. Nevertheless. And so I think that maybe I'm already forgiven, if I just keep trying, and I might feel sad still, but that doesn't mean that I'm not doing better.

Then this morning, I tell it to the Lord straight: Please help me not to feel too bad about this. My M.O. is that I feel very bad about something, so I go and do it again so I can shove the guilty feelings further away. I can't rely on myself at all to be strong enough to resist that; I need all my strength from Him. I had always assumed that it was easy for Jesus to live a sinless life, but I'm starting to think that it was just as hard for Him as it is for the rest of us, but he struggled through so that we woudn't have to. I pray for some of that strength, to cover me with that, too. And He did.

And it really is that simple: Look, and live. I looked, and I lived.

Not Sure About the Point

2007-11-13T19:02:00.000-06:00

I promised content for today, but I'm not really feeling it. I'm not really feeling much these days. I'm not sure what happened--at first I thought it was just some work stress, then my impending period, then the time change. Today at lunch I realized it's been pretty much a solid month. I really don't know what's going on.

And I think that's part of why I'm having trouble with this NaBloPoMo business. Last year I was all about it, and this year I'm still waiting to get started. The only thing I can't quite figure out is why I'm still going. I guess because it's an easy win. Even if I'm just doing one-sentence posts, it's something to accomplish.

The good thing is that it's not constant. I've felt happy and normal, too, it's just that I keep coming back to this low state. I guess I wish--well I was just going to say that I wish I could be feeling closer to Heavenly Father and doing better with the church, but I think that part of the reason that's not really working is because this depression prevents a lot of those happy feelings.

Other good things are that I can recognize what's happening and that I've realized that I don't actually like feeling this way. It's kind of comforting like an old friend, but ultimately, I just want to come back out. Once upon a time, I was kind of afraid of not being depressed because, one, it was all I could really remember, and two, I thought that depression let me see the way things really were.

But sadness isn't the truth just because it's sad. It's a weight tied to your chest when you're thrown overboard, and the water just gets colder and darker the faster you sink.

12

2007-11-12T15:36:00.000-06:00

This counts. More tomorrow!

Mom to the Rescue

2007-11-12T00:11:00.000-06:00

My mom bought me a chocolate cake! And my brother wrote my name in the icing with his finger.

All in all, I got lots of love today, and I think that's all anybody wants out of a birthday. That and a cake. And flowers.

Ten

2007-11-10T23:01:00.000-06:00

For some reason, I had a really rough day today. At one point, I thought that it's really unfair that a person should be sent to this earth so completely incapable of dealing with normal life. But that feeling passes. Now Stephen's taking me to a movie and buying me a birthday pie. (He also brought me deep purple, pale purple, and white flowers.) And my mom is throwing me a little party tomorrow night.

I think Pickles was a good idea, though. Just when I thought I was going to be paralyzed the whole day, he came and sat next to me and we played tug-of-war and fetch. It's hard to be sad with a shmushy face staring up at you.

Dang, WoWed Again!

2007-11-10T00:36:00.000-06:00

But get this, yo. I saw a warrior running around with a gorilla as a pet! Also, I finally found goldthorn AND I can get purple lotus now!

Translation: Nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd. Nerd nerd nerd! Nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd NERD nerd nerd nerd!

Means Something Special

2007-11-08T22:43:00.000-06:00

Stephen called me when I was on my way home.

"What are you doing Saturday?"

"Couple things, why?"

"What are you doing Saturday night?"

"Nothing really, why?"
(I'm hedging because I think he's going to ask me to babysit Kayla.)

"Well, I talked to Patrice and asked if she can watch Kayla, so I thought I could take you out for your birthday."
(I've mentioned that Stephen hates asking for help, right? And Patrice will only babysit if she can go over to the house, which means he also has to clean.)

"Oh wow, that's really nice, thank you."

"Yeah, I knew your birthday was coming up, but I couldn't send flowers because it's over the weekend and I figured I'd take you out on Saturday because your birthday's Sunday." (He knows I'm not spending money on Sundays anymore, not even if it's someone else's money.) "Patrice still has to check with her mom, but I wanted to let you know that I was working on it."

While we were together, he gave me flowers on my birthday and at Valentine's. He always held my hand in public, and we always kissed when we said goodbye, whether it was at home or in the middle of a parking lot after having lunch together. One of the last times I spent the night over there, he kept his hand on my back all night. Even if he tossed a bit in his sleep, he always put his hand back. He was never one to do any of that before--in the beginning he'd say that all his girlfriends had always complained but that was just the way he was. But he changed all of that, for me.

Ten Things About Pickles

2007-11-07T22:48:00.000-06:00

1. Right now he is blue, though he looks more greenish, and stinky, though I like him that way, and sitting right next to me going to town on his rawhide chew.

2. You can tell that he belongs to me because the sound of my alarm and subsequent dozen snoozes no longer wakes him. Nope, he stays asleep until he feels me move to get up.

3. For Halloween, we went around my brother's neighborhood with him and his two oldest girls. (We were Lilo and Stitch--which is why he's bluish.) Just before we decided to turn around, Pickles sat down on a lawn he'd been sniffing and refused to budge. I said, "Oh, are you done now? Ok, I'll carry you." Normally when I pick him up, he'll let me carry him for a bit, but you can tell he's mostly waiting to be put back down. This time, though, every muscle in his body was completely relaxed. That dog got tired and wanted to be carried.

4. When he gets tired in the evening, he'll come over to me and rest his head on my arm. Even if I'm typing on the laptop or changing channels, he'll rest his head there.

5. The exterior walls of my apartment complex are off-white, but all the doors are cranberry. When Pickles and I come back from a walk, we pass the door of my next-door neighbor's apartment. Up until a couple of weeks ago, Pickles would run ahead of me a bit, and stand right in front of that door waiting to be let in. I'd say, "Wrong one, Pickles" as I walked up, then he'd run over to our door and wait again.

6. He is afraid of stairs. Won't go up or down unless I carry him. The only time he did it on his own was when he was playing with Frank the Tank, a little pug puppy in our complex. Frank lives in a second floor apartment, so he was running up and down the stairs while they played. Pickles ran up about four steps, and I thought This must be what it's like when kids do something to make their parents proud.

7. It took him a while to get up the courage to jump onto my bed. Once, he walked to the other side of the room to get a running start. He ran almost right up to the bed before chickening out and turning around again. Sometimes he'll still be right next to the bed, then go the other side of the room for his running start.

8. Once when I was sick, I was laying on the couch thinking I could go for a nap right about now, then Pickles jumped up on the couch, laid down on my chest and fell asleep, too.

9. My brother and his girls came over for the premiere of High School Musical 2 and ended up staying for most of the weekend. In the middle of one day, we were all in my living room and my brother said, "Where's Pickles?" I said, "I think he went to go take a nap." Sure enough, about 15 minutes later, Pickles comes trotting out of my bedroom, and Derrick said, "A nap. That's cute."

10. Sometimes I think it's odd that it's Pickles and not Bono that I'll be growing older with. Sometimes I wonder whether it's ok to love Pickles as much as or more than I loved Bono. Sometimes I feel guilty that Pickles is having a better life with me than I gave Bono. I think about how things might have been different if I'd been on antidepressants back then. That I might still have Bono. When he got lost the second time, I remember I was just so heartbroken and so sure that I wouldn't find him again. I didn't even put up fliers because I couldn't bear the thought of extending that heartbreak and mourning. And, too, Bono was such a sweet and loving and charming dog that I was sure that whoever found him would be thrilled to have him and would take good care of him. Better care than I had. Sometimes the guilt is so exquisite that it hurts and I have to pray to Heavenly Father to please help me forgive myself and let go of that awful guilt. And it works, but it comes back if I think about it too much.

11. (P.S.) He loves to crawl into my pop-up hamper and run around like it's a hamster ball.

Further Defeating the Purpose of NaBloPoMo

2007-11-06T10:30:00.000-06:00

But some content for real for the 7th.

Snoozefest

2007-11-05T22:00:00.000-06:00

This is going to be one boring month.

As far as the blog is concerned, obviously.