wow. lots of memes lately and not so much writing. I've been (hush) doing things again. it's the oddest thing, and it's interfering with my solitary, in-the-apartment activities. the nano I'm not writing suffered. this journal continues to suffer. (the nano actually, honest-to-quentin, pulled ahead last night. as in, I broke 30k, and what's more I was ahead in my 1667-a-day word count. for the first time ever. I will, most likely, balance this by falling days behind again. but I am, nevertheless, giddy with pride. nevermind that the book I'm not writing sucks ass. no, seriously. this is not false modesty. this is not blind perfectionism. this is the presence of talking mailboxes and the complete lack of anything related to literature - other than what are mainly real words. so bad. so terribly, terribly fun.) but yes, the nano was suffering. my reading (oh, my poor, unattended library books - that are due on the 30th) suffered because of my nano, and now my nano has suffered, too. I'm running out of back burners. I'm getting so much practice at metaphoric juggling, I can't understand why I'm still incapable of doing it literally. last night, I even watched an end-bit of The Miracle Worker - which, being on ABC Family, was not either of the Patty Duke ones, but the one from the late 90s with the girl from the Pepsi commericals... but anyway, the end came, and Helen understood! Helen understood Water and Mother and Papa and Teacher. It all clicked and light flooded into Helen's world; everything began to make sense ... and so, you know, I tried and I still couldn't juggle. Life imitates tv, my toe.
ah, but - 'adventures.' "little victories." all due respect to Matt Nathanson, they have not been so little. they've been gigantamous! splendticular! overtowering! (deserving of new words.) indeed. granted, I can't remember any of them. maybe they haven't been as plentiful as I'm thinking. I'm trying desperately to come up with what on earth I did Tuesday, but now I'm vaguely remembering that Tuesday was a not-so-good day, that involved not taking any phone calls, including one from Silje (and who wants to miss a phone call from Silje?) ... mainly, I suppose, all those grief emotions haven't gone too far away. it's a pretty open wound right now, for whatever reason. being past November 10th. approaching the holidays. rocking so seriously in my personal world. I don't really know. I started a letter to Katia that I need to finish, and I need to write Brea another. letters are happy, happy things in residential. even moreso than the usual, I mean. mmm, mail. anyway. I did go out Wednesday. I was still tired and sick, but the day was uncharacteristically nice - off and on at least - and my hair was crying out in pain. it doesn't like the idea of being white and green. and I understand that, but I also really didn't want to go and deal with it. until I went out to deal with it, and then I finished way too quickly. t'was very cool, actually. I caught a bus to campus where I caught a bus (familiar pattern, that) - taking the second bus to a stop I'd (breath) - never gotten off at... and which I thought would be more difficult because I thought we'd be going in the other direction, and that would mean having to get off in a weird spot and crossing the street, and I wasn't sure I knew exactly where it was... but we were going the other way (I'm not entirely clueless for not knowing the direction; I picked the second bus up at what basically acts as the 'terminal'... so I didn't have the "it's going in this direction" that one would at a stop on the street) so we drove right into the plaza I needed. rock. and then I walked over to the (this is just wrong) Beauty Supply Store (am I right? I said, am I right? it's just wrong) and I only stopped one time, for a couple of seconds, to make sure my wallet really was still in my purse, before walking in. the people working there were probably within a decade of me, and they did greet me (eep!) - but it wasn't so bad. I remembered where the dye was, which made things easy - but I also needed gloves, which I had more trouble finding. however, when I did find them, I found cheap black ones that only went to my wrists and looked all hard-core (mad-scientist-ish), despite smelling like a dentist. and that led to visions of a goth dentist which amused me tremendously even before I had blue-tinted chemicals seeping through my scalp into my brainage. but anyway. the store experience was fine. I was a little nervous when they asked if I needed help, and I said I was good, and then I couldn't find gloves and was going, "fuck, now I'm going to have to ask" (which would have been impossible in my past life... but purchasing anything, anywhere, alone - most especially in a place I'd only entered once before was also impossible before) but I found them, and I went to pay, and it was... gasp... not horrible. No explosions. No puddles of Mary on the floor. No writhing and begging for mercy. Actually fairly uneventful. Unless you count the spiky-haired girl who asked me if NRage was what I had in my hair then also, with whom I ended up sighing at the (for me, only legendary) disappointment of Manic Panic, and to whom I praised NRage - so long, of course, as her hair was very much like mine. And who knows? But yes, I carried on small talk that threw me off initially. (Someone. Talking. To me.) I carried it rather effectively. And then I was done with my errands and that pissed me off because I didn't want to go 'home', but there's not much else to do there, and I didn't feel like going somewhere else to do something. still. I thought of this moment during my session a week ago when the doctor said I could purchase things now, and I said, basically, "no, no. that's not something I can do. that's something I've done. once. -twice." (he's supposed to know by now that you don't tell me I'm able to do anything frightening. I do much better when nothing is explicitly expected of me. *cough*nano*cough*) but after I bought the dye-ing supplies, I sort of realized that I might actually be learning how to do this. the whole "I just did something that used to be impossible...again" wave hit me, and I started smiling excessively again. plus that... oh, what's it called... chin-up, bright-side, glass-half-full... optimism! - that optimism shituff kicked in again, and I realized that if I'd just gone into a place, alone, that I'd only entered once before - then I will probably be able to go into a place I've *never* been before, alone, and you know, interact with employees there or buy something or who-knows-what. soon, even. (I will not sing Aladdin songs; I will not sing Aladdin songs.)
it's scary and wonderful and I don't believe it. I'm doing things that are so against the rules of my anxiety disorder, and bad things are not happening, and what's more I see the dots connecting. there's foreshadowing afoot. (and freedom ahead. ::bad joke seizure::) so then I sat on the sidewalk waiting for the shuttle to return and writing my letter to Katia, while a Salvation Army bell played persistently next door. another girl came out of the grocery store while I was there, and sat on the sidewalk in such a manner that I figured she, too, was waiting for the shuttle. a hypothesis that was confirmed when I realized a third girl was calling to me. interacting girl alert. (please let me remember how to interpret her words and please let me actually respond to them.) she asked if I was a WU student, and I said something like, "yes- well, I'm waiting for the shuttle" and she asked if I'd like a ride back. the other girl was taking her up on it, and I was like, holy shit, this is so cool... but I couldn't process any of it, and my default answer was, as usual, "no, I'm good, thanks" - so she smiled and off they went. I tried for a little while to understand that someone had just spoken to me, had offered to pick me up off the sidewalk and take me back to where I needed to be, but it didn't really sink in. and I didn't mind waiting; I wanted to stretch the errand out anyway. (too bad I'm now fairly efficient at taking the least reliable bus line or this would have taken hours.) plus, I felt strange as campus wasn't really where I was going, just a stop on the way... I felt strange since I wasn't actually a student and all that. and then there's The Promise I made to myself that says I do not get into cars with strangers. the one that years of Red Riding Hood horror stories failed to instill in me, but one bad night etched in stone. the bus came soon afterward, and waiting for the bus 'home', I thought about whether or not I would want to take someone like that up on an offer like that in the future. wouldn't it break The Promise to do so? I decided it wouldn't, really, because I promised never to be in a car with someone I didn't know (well) alone. and this other girl, who didn't know her either, was going - and it really did look like a totally nice offer. and even though what things look like on the surface is not my defining factor after that one bad night... I do have some intuition.
and some gender-bias. I'm almost positive I'd automatically say no in the exact same situation if it involved two guys. but maybe that's just about safety, about precaution, about the fact that a guy could easily overpower me. and I feel stupid and sorry (because I of all people should know girls abuse, too) - but that doesn't change the fact that I'd feel way more uncomfortable (and therefore be way less likely to accept the offer) if it were from a guy. sadness.
in better news, while waiting for the second bus, I was turned in the direction it would eventually come from, and because of that ended up basically staring at this other girl as she walked toward me from the parking lot. (for some reason, the idea of turning or moving, did not occur to me. oh, well.) I was actually looking at her (as opposed to just in her direction) a few times, and I did a shy-smile-oh-hi type thing each time... and then she was right by me, and I had no idea if she'd already seen me make eye contact, so I basically did it again, and she smiled at me all sincerely, all confidently, and I was like - you're wearing glasses and a hoodie; you smiled at me, and I think you're totally wonderful. (I'm really not a tough nut to crack.) Infatuation comes easily to me. I'm a little more careful with concentrated relational energy, but giddy oh-wow-talk-to-me! comes really, really easily. Don't be creepy, don't have an ulterior motive, smile... it's pretty much that simple. Although I did notice that the girl I sat next to on the bus did not instantly gain my affection, which I considered a good sign. I'm glad to know there is some screening system, that I don't instantly like anyone in a decent proximity. soon, I will have friends. in my time zone/ state/ city. soon, I will have friends who will laugh when they discover how easy it is to turn me into a ball of goop just by being there and being them. soon I will have friends, and I will say, "look! I can buy hair dye!" and they'll... grin and clap... or push me or something. I don't know what they'll do; I don't have them yet. but it will be fun.
I had plans to go out again yesterday (which is good because it means I'm starting to grow back into my "I can't go a day without getting out" mode, but I didn't because I was tired and felt sick and eventually realized I didn't really want to.) I keep forgetting I have a doctor's appointment today. I need to tell him whether I want to check in over the weekend. I don't think I need to, but I don't have to need to. I can't decide. I can't decide if I'm going to my cousin's wedding reception tomorrow either. it will mean seeing family - some of whom have behaved horribly, most of whom I miss - and dodging an invitation from my dad to come visit him for the weekend. unless I actually want to go visit. and I don't know that either. if I do, I'll need another weekend afterward, but it's not like next week's booked full for me or anything. bah, decisions. bah!
in my dream this morning, Mr. Rogers was cuddling me and singing a song I didn't know. and I was sad I didn't know that song because other people seemed to, but I was happy because dude, Mr. Rogers was holding me. that was rather lovely, given the bus crash, and the people hating me, and all the other awful things that were going on at the time. Mr. Rogers is so good at making everything better.
actually, so is blue hair.
(I can't believe all I did was buy hair dye and plan to do more. it seems like so much more than that happened. oh, well. my mom was impressed. and for good reason, damnit! I was proud!)
~me
^please don't tell my English teacher I quoted that. the pride really might overwhelm her.