i obsess.

Something About Something

I wrote this for my creative writing course yesterday.  The assignment was to create a scene based on talking around the theme.  You know.  Elephants.  Rooms.  All that.

Anyway, I liked what I came up with (although I'm terribly aware of the overlong initial sentence and of my age-old addiction to indulgent overlong sentences and that I should've cut it).  You don't have to.  Like it.  Conversely, you're welcome to like it.  I DON'T CARE.  MEH.  (Except we both know I'm full of bull pucky, and that I am henceforth only to be known as "butt tube TM (pending)."  A butt tube TM (pending), if you must know, and you must, is my replacement word for pussy, because I don't like the association of weakness/lameness with a woman's vag.  I simply don't care for it.  Butt tube, meantime, forces association of weakness with the sack o' crap that everyone, regardless of gender, must bear.  You're allowed to use it, so long as you give me full credit.  LOTS OF CREDIT.  FOR BUTT TUBE. TM. PENDING.

What is wrong with me?

Ahh, yes.  I know what is wrong with me.  I am stalling.  So.  Fine.  Here's the damn story already.  READ IT.   OR DON'T.  FEH.  OR MEH.  WHATEVER.

(I'm having some trubs addressing the whole "critique" portion of the creative writing course menu.)

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She lay with her face pressed into the bed and she tried to cry, she tried to get it over with, the way you try to get done when you’re on the toilet and you don’t really want to be there, and nothing, no tears, which is exactly what she expected but was also really hoping she could push past and into tears anyway.  She wrinkled her face up and tried again, and still nothing.  The blanket smelled.   She inhaled deeply to discern the subtle elements lashed together within its fibers, settling on the prominent ones: cat and dirty socks.  The key turned in the lock on the front door and she lay and listened to the crumbly sounds, wondering if she should get up.

“You okay?”  He was obviously standing in the hallway, the way his voice came out over the sound of a coat being removed and hung on the hook.

“What?  Yeah.  I’m fine.”  The blanket was still pressed against her face so her words were muffled.

“Sure?”  He came in and sat beside her, resting his hand on her right shoulder blade.  Hesitant to move now that he was there, because she didn’t want him to get up, she held her breath for a second.  She had to flip over a little though when she ran almost completely out of breath.  It made him shift away from her.

“Eh.  I’m fine.  I don’t know.”  Grabbing a pillow, she pulled it toward her and lifted her head up with its bulk so she could be minutely closer to him.

“I talked to Richard about Heather today at work.”  He shook his head.  It looked uncomfortable, his sitting like that, she worried.  She leaned up so she could push him onto the other pillow.  She couldn’t look at him sitting all upright and awkward that way.

“Oh.  Did he say anything about Joanna?”

“Nope.  But guess what?  New baby.  They just found out last week.”

“Oh!  That’s hilarious.  Good for them.”

“Yeah.  I know.”  He stuck his hand on top of her hand.  The weight burned into the skeleton and the tendons and the veins, she could feel her veins throbbing.  She could feel them doing a dance.  It was a Katy Perry booby-shaking dance, no.  No it wasn’t.  It was Beyonce with the ring song dance.  Where you shake your hand and maneuver up and down.  Just like when she was dancing with John last weekend at the club with all of the gay boys and everyone was whooping and hollering because it was their favorite song, and they were all shaking their hands and moving up and down like they were on broken escalators and she was too drunk and she fell over, she fell off of her escalator, and she embarrassed John and she couldn’t stop talking to the drag queen who was that night’s DJ, she kept telling him how fierce he was.  He wasn’t even that fierce. 

“Hey.  Listen.  You already said you were gonna call and make an appointment with Amanda’s acupuncturist.  You’re still gonna do that, right?”  He picked up the wet piece of hair on her cheek and gently pressed it into the rest of her hair.  She nodded a yes.  She nodded a really small yes.

“Good.  I’m glad.  I think it’s a good idea.  Definitely worth a shot.” 

“Okay.”

“I love you, you know.”  He smiled down at her head. 

“I have to go make dinner.”  She stood up quick so he couldn’t see the lines from the blanket all squished on the other side of her face that made her ugly.

“I said I love you, you know.”  He pulled her hands toward him and she stumbled into him and kept her face turned a little away.  She cried.  She nodded again.  Small yes.

“Yeah.  I know.  I love you too.”  Her voice was shaky.  She laughed at how she sounded, she thought it was funny that she was being a little hysterical.  She sounded phlegmy.  She got up to leave.

“You sure you’re okay now?”

“Yeah.  I’m fine.  I gotta get dinner going if we’re ever gonna eat tonight, babe.”

“Okay.”

“Chicken okay?”  She said it over her shoulder as she walked down the hall into the kitchen.  The light in the kitchen was too white.  It felt too sharp.  She didn’t want it in her eyes.  She turned it off with a quick jab at the switch.

Flipping it back on, her hand resting on the button, she squinted around the room.   She had missed the light when it was off.

What Happens When Your Mantra of "No Regrets" Collides with All of Your Regrets?

I live with a heavy load of paranoia as part of my daily existence.  I take, and have been taking, medication for paranoid schizophrenia/bipolar disorder for many months, and it works.  Some.  Which equates to the following: the nagging sensation that everyone hates me has diminished.  It doesn't mean it's *poof* disappeared.  And even while it's true that paranoia plays a far smaller role in my current mindset, I'm still constantly encountering places from where my past bumps into my present and the paranoia that imbued itself in those places somehow evinces itself and frightens me once again with its strength and its cruelty.

(Does this make it sound as though I'm not taking responsibility for myself - for where I am, for how I've behaved, because of being routinely terrifically paranoid?  I hope not - I'm trying so hard to own my behavior, past-present-future.  But it worries me.  What if I'm handing off the blame?  And on and on.)

One of the recurring elements of my particular brand of paranoia is preventing people from having the opportunity to turn on me, or that is, preventing what is my perception of people turning on me, by disengaging from them before the opportunity arises for them to do so.  Let's say you're one of my sane friends: that must seem odd, that moment where I suddenly disappear and refuse all contact for a nonspecific length of time, only to once again reappear.  This is, of course, when the paranoia dies down and all I see is that I miss you. 

I'm ashamed of it, but what's worse?  I suppose it's being ignorant still of the behavior itself, of simply going through the routine of shunning people once I've worked out in my paranoia that they have taken a dislike to me, find me unworthy for all the reasons, grand and stupid, that I've determined throughout the years would make me loathsome and unlovable. 

So does that make me crazy?  I guess so.  I suppose?

What am I to do?

And the medication helps.  I've been able to be undeterred by paranoia to the point that I have gone back to college and am finishing my degree.  I'll be done by December of 2011.  I was thinking I might try for finishing at the end of summer, but it's too much, I would have to take five classes per term for the next three terms, and it would be harmful to the homeostasis of the family environment, such as it is.  (It's not perfect, that's for sure.)  I keep trying to predict my future, post-graduation, but I think it's best to simply keep my sights on finishing school.  At least I know I can do that.  Itself a huge marker of success.

I'm taking a creative writing class this term.  Our first session was today.  I locked up when it was time to produce something based on a short piece of writing the instructor had passed around, something she concluded was themed on the lines of regret.  I ran with it, and wrote a thing I was entirely dissatisfied with afterward.  Of course.  How could I be otherwise?  I can't get outside of anything I've written for at least a few weeks.  I can't hear it as anything other than a bunch of rattly-beans-in-a-shaker set of sounds until after a set amount of time has passed.  But I volunteered to read it aloud anyway.  Just to dare myself.  Just to see if I could.  My voice shook and I nearly choked, but I did it.

It was really scary.

When I got home I wanted to write something more, but something concrete, something uncreative.  Blogging isn't supposed to be that, at least not these days, these days of flash and shine and ads and humor and entertainment.  I'm daring myself to write in incredibly monotous tones in a public forum, unedited to reflect how dull I can truly be.  So that I can prove to myself that it's okay.

It's really okay.

And writing with a pen is hard.  Much harder than with a keyboard.  Ow.