i obsess.

why i started blogging.

Thanks for the (much-needed) reminder, Mrs. C.

what it's like living with constant, nagging anxiety.

It's funny, because, until recently, I didn't even realize how scandalous anxious I am, on a regular basis, ABOUT EVERYTHING.  But, no, really.  Everything.  (Normally, for instance, I would attach a "-ly" to the end of scandalous, but I've chosen not to, here, because it reminds me of how people spoke in the early part of the 1900s.  Which I dig, and sort of don't mind evoking on a miniature scale right now.  Even though there's zero context, it makes no sense to do so because I'm not telling a story remotely related to something from that era.  I just -- have a fondness for old things, I guess.  And the anxiety prays on me and says, but you can't just PUT something like that out there and not explain your reasons.  Although, generally, I do just that, at least in my blog, but sometimes also IRL, and I don't explain myself at all, but then I writhe and rage inwardly.)

Along those same lines of explanation-owing, though that's not necessarily true, I just feel too anxious otherwise to deny the urge to explain everything to very minutest detail, I couldn't sleep just now because I feel so anxious about getting back to sleep -- allow me to give you a minor amount of backstory, er, preface, to get the picture:  My son is still having accidents, at night, approximately once a week.  Sometimes oftener, sometimes less often, but it turns out, math-wise, to kind of be a once-a-week deal.  Thereabouts.

So this morning's accident came at 5:13 a.m., and I was already restless because my bedroom was too warm, but if I'd got up to open the other window, or even just to turn on the fan, I would've woken up too much, so I was doing my best to avoid waking, but then I heard Jack start to whine and realized it was too late.  After he'd gotten changed and I remade his bed (a thing I don't usually do without a lot of help from him, as I'm trying to help him learn that, even with accidents, he's got to assist in remedying the situation), I crawled back into bed (but not before I'd gotten my share of grousing in and had my husband point out that I was getting yelly, which didn't aid in making me feel exactly calm), and knew I was done for.  So I lay there for a minute and wrote never-to-be-written blog posts in my head, as per usual, until I remembered, HELL.  I could just go and write one.  So I got up and began the thing.  (And proceeded to get distracted by headlines and celeb-couple photos and other shit I don't usually look at, but DUDE, it's 5 in the fricking a.m.  "Usually" goes out the window, I'd say, at such a stupid hour.)

It occurs to me, while writing, that one of the many reasons I can include in my explanation to self of why I quit blogging for awhile, why I always try to quit, not just blogging, but writing altogether, is that it no longer soothes the anxiety.  It once did, just as everything does initially, but it no longer does.  Rather, it incites it.  The very thought of writing anything beyond a laundry list is a menacing one.  I quake in its lion-eye'd gaze.  And so goes my blog, down the crapper, because I do anything I can to avert the gaze of that which makes me anxious.  I do, really and truly, hate to pine, and it is seemingly what I do best.

Another thing that gives me no end of anxiety-worthy trouble?  Friendship.  I'm lousy at it.  So I do the very best thing I can:  I avoid it.  I quit it.  I get out before I can get quit on.  I would like to take this opportunity, then, to apologize to any and all who I've done it to in the past, as well to those whom I may do the same discourtesy in future.  I really don't fucking mean to.  I just inadvertently shut people out so they can't beat me to it.  Isn't that sad?  It's fucking sad.  I'd rather, though, than sit around after every horrid encounter, no matter how lovely in the moment, wondering what decibel of offensive I managed to hit for that particular friend/foe.  It's much more soothing to the inner core of anxiety that is my rotten, fetid, seedy middle to simply circumvent the entire exchange to begin with.  And so - I miss out.  On friendships.  Rich, beatific friendships.  And my son suffers, because he doesn't see me interact with friends, he is disallowed the side-benefit of being adopted-nephew to my not-friends. 

The thought of which, needless to say, gives me endless anxious turmoil to bat about at the awful, dark hours of bedtime. 

Insomnia sucks, but especially so when the time isn't even put to some other good use.  Instead of using it to allow the self-loathing to take deeper hold.  Which is where I excel. 

I am, in fact, so gifted in the realm of anxiety, I have to wonder:  is that a skill I can apply to a job?  Because if it were, I'd be aces.

(This entry has not, by the way, soothed the anxiety, as I'd hoped, thinly, but knew, more thickly, that it would not.)

(Also, I am so busy resenting myself about the friendship thing that I can't think of anything else anxiety-related to say.  Though I realize this blog is, once again, missing its right name, which should really be:  I confess.  As confession seems to be the one avenue to mild relief from the all-consuming anxiety beast in my belly.  It only lasts a short while, but it's better than taking the anti-anxiety medication I no longer have any of, because I'm too nervous to contact the doctor about the whole thing because that would require explanation and sorting-out of shit, an anxiety-intensifier if there ever was.  Plus I'm lazy.  A right capital sloth.  And the only other relief from anxiety is feeling sleepy, but even not sleeping well doesn't gift me with that always-too-quick-to-evaporate yawning glory of fuzzy-headed bliss the way it used to.  

And I like ending my blog posts on a hopeless note, as self-derision does seem to provide a slight salve for the angst, however momentary.

So, basically, I'm fucked.)

i think i'll begin by calling everyone "ducks." like i'm madonna-style-british. how sensible of me.

There's this link up at the top of the page I'm on.  It says, "Need exciting new blog topics?  Get a dose of inspiration with our 10 TIPS FOR FINDING NEW BLOG TOPICS."  (That last part isn't actually in all caps; it's where the link is embedded.  I just - oh, bloody fucking fuckity fuck.  I was trying to illustrate the link without having to actually include it.  But this explaining is feeling way more like overkill than it was supposed to.  OH MY GOD WHY CAN'T I DO ANYTHING WITHOUT GETTING DISTRACTED.)  So the link.  It's pretty funny because it's not why I can't blog, because I lack topics.  No --- my problem is much more, "when?"  And, "which of the hundreds of them?"  And then I get overwhelmed and have a goddam aneurism and try to quit for the seventieth time and about -4 people notice and I fight with my husband and yell at my son and kick the dog and wish I could get rip-roaring drunk and lose myself for a few minutes and then I attempt drinking and either fall asleep on round two or get drunk enough that the next day is pure, unadulterated shit through a straw and I don't do it again for a long time.  And I'm still not writing in the interim and I'm still wallowing in my own bloody stew of whatever-the-fuck-my-problem-is-today and I -- oh.  Well.  I have, at least, conquered the audience of my peers who stare at my fingers as I type blog posts; they're but outlines of their former sunless selves in their deep, glowering, grimace-laden stacked-to-the-rafters horrificalities.  And the outlines are made of sugar.  Sugar that reminds me of coke.  Coke would be fun.  Haven't done it in so long, now.  I've a much too depthful taste for it.  So it's good that I haven't access to such things.  No; I'm only allowed access to shams, imitators of the powdery stuff; i.e., pharmaceuticals.  I have reams of untouched bottles of various stuffs that are supposed to knock the a.d.d. square in the proverbial kisser, but they don't do anything but make me insaner.  Plus, these days, I get panic attacks when I drive, and that's its own plateau of ridiculous that I can't even begin to tear open, much as I'd like, since what I most need to do is go to bed, even though it's old-lady-bedtime-hour and my ancient, still-longing-to-be-badass part is fairly hair-on-end about breaking down this last OLD, old habit of mine to stay up too late and think thinky thoughts far into the night.  I've chosen, recently, to see sleep as my new stimulant, my new intoxicant.  I want it like I once wanted to fuck certain gorgeous, weird people.  I want to sleep until I wake up and don't feel tired anymore.  If that means going to bed at old-lady-time, then SO FUCKING BE IT.  Got that, brain?  I defy thee.  I'm gonna go to bed at 9 motherfucking p.m.  OH, YEAHHHH (Kool-Aid wallbreaker style).

I've decided I'm beyond all hope in the weirdo dept.  I'm just trying to sit tight and get through this part of the program where I repair my lack-of-sleep dilemma and then somehow magically find a box of extra time and use it and write and write and write and my soul grows back together and then, oh, THEN.  Food will taste like rainbows and sunshine and sunshine will grow inside my skin and people will stand near me, once that part of my life unfolds, so they can capture some of the effervescent golden light that my body creates, like a weather pattern, with a rainy season and even some snow but always with a cup of hot cocoa handed out to anyone who requires one.

So that's it.  That's what I want to be when I grow up.

Magic.

modesty and semi-nudity, reconstructed poorly.

I forgot about how interesting it is to witness the behavior of the unprofessionally half-naked. It is, first and foremost, decidedly amateurish. Also, I got nothin'. I'm suddenly too desperate to be gambling, an activity I have avoided deliberately since my arrival in Vegas. Probably because I was a.) initially too hungover from drinking on the plane and b.) trying to recuperate. Um, I'm gonna go gamble. Blogging from my phone is super, but it takes perseverance due to lacking the ability to re-read my nonsense at a glance. Adieu. p.s. I've missed you. And this. Shhhhhhhhhh.

stagnate. no, make that stagnatey.

Parenting is forcing patience, forcing modulated tone and even pace and planning and forethought (yes, and not the sexy kind, either, you kinky-azz bitches) on my sorry, stubborn frame. I'll let you know whether that's a good, grand thing later. Also, I'll inform you as to whether I am newly worshipful of blogging again because I can do it on my phone (okay, now that one sounded dirty to me, too) or whether I am forced to finally shoot my blog in the face, Cheney-style (so, pepper-spray of buckshot). The sole dilemma I envision with this option is that my blog isn't old enough (mid-eighties, that is) to necessarily understand the importance of respecting me after said shooting by taking full responsibility for the whole event. Like a good blog should.