Starting the HB Tab

So I'm trying to get preggers. My doctor said I should take prenatal vitamins beforehand. You know, to help baby's new home. So cue VitaFusion Prenatal Gummy Vitamins. My normal multivitamins are gummies and baby's not going to ruin this for me.

They're essentially like candy. It's great. Prob more sugar than I need, but I suppose if that's what it takes to mask the fish smell/taste, so be it.

I've been able to snag a 90-count bottle (two a day, so good for 45 days) for about $10, which is a steal.

I had the bright idea of starting a HB tab -- that is, how much Hypothetical Baby is costing me.

3 bottles of these has cost me $29.63 so far. Thanks Hypothetical Baby.

$18.99 for a set of 25 ovulation pee test strips that have, frankly, caused me more stress than anything else. don't think I'll be buying more, but I'm adding these to HB's tab too.

$18.47 for a set of five pregnancy tests. I got the kind that flat out says "pregnant" or "not pregnant" because the lines I've had to deal with on the ovulation test strips are irritating. Just tell me what I want to know in plain English, thanks.

Current HB tab: $67.09

Chopping Writers' Block

When words refuse to come to me --
the nightmare of a writer --I come to them; I read.

I will coax them to me, tease them and flatter them.
   "I can show you a good time."

I will watch you weave worlds
with letters and spaces and punctuation.
And if the words still refuse to come to me?--

I'll fucking kidnap them.

IKEA doesn't sell bracelets

You've done it again, IKEA -- brought me happiness from Sweden, this time in the form of my duvet cover set. I sleep among script -- the design is composed of letters in random order and imperfect font that reminds me of that little girl in preschool who thought decorating with letters was more pleasing to the eye than with pictures. I wake each morning and scribble down words in my notebook to capture the leftover dreams before they slip away with the dusk and the new thoughts coming up with my eyelids and the sun.

But if that silly sun won't come out to play, I'll write by a lamp I bought from IKEA. Kinda like that Mockingbird song my mom always used to sing to me. "If that mockingbird don't sing, mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring..." What the fuck is up with that, anyway? Trying to hush a little baby with bribery and some other material bullshit? At the end of the song, though, the lyric is "you're still the greatest little baby in town," so I suppose I can understand a parent wanting to give her child everything, particularly if the child is upset. But for all the material things my parents gave me as a kid, the things I remember most are my mom singing me to sleep and my daddy pushing me on the swing set at the park.

I got a new bracelet once when my dad was working overtime all week and it left me feeling empty instead of consoled. I wanted to cling to his arm (as Aaron did the same on the other side of him, pinning this wonderful man with love and adoration of children) and listen to him tell stories and make us giggle with silly jokes -- not wear a little charm bracelet, silver pieces echoing and banging against a wrist not wrapped around a beloved father. Did it remind me that I'd already been abandoned by one father and one more would shatter my fragile self-esteem? Or lack thereof?

But as I pass by in him the kitchen as an adult two decades later, I am reminded that he is still there for me after all this time. He shyly asks about my new boyfriend. I wonder if he hopes that this will be the guy that I will spend the rest of my life with -- who will let me cling to his arm (pinning him with love and adoration of a partner) and love me the way a father always wants someone to love his only daughter. I smile and tell him everything he wants to know -- stories and silly jokes on a Sunday afternoon.

It's all dirty

It’s a different animal: cleaning for an event (the correct term is “accident,” but let’s not talk about that) versus cleaning as a regular activity. Your focus is more directed, targeting a tangible moment (or moments) rather than cleaning to carve away at the grime that life leaves behind – the film that coats every little thing – the windowsill, the tops of shelves left bare, the tops of books on shelves attempting to hide their bareness with volumes of pretty words. And isn’t that what I do? Hide behind pretty words I write? So isn’t that what I’m really seeking? A vulnerability that is clean – sterile, purified? It takes so much routine cleaning to maintain a level of “normal” in a home, and yet the task is so thankless, so behind-the-scenes that it feels futile. And yet we carry—I carry—on this burden, this cross in silence.

Ah, Catholicism. There you are again! The need to atone, the original sin that makes me a bad person, the need for penance and suffering. Are these ideas what eat away at my self-esteem? Or is it because I already had these feelings of worthlessness that I so willingly took these teachings to heart?

It’s a downward spiral nonetheless. And I still have to vacuum.

Found in an old notebook buried beneath magazines

She blinked her eyes. Once. Twice. There was a moment of comprehension, a moment in which she knew exactly where she was and where she belonged in the world. She blinked a third time and it was gone.

Blank Walls

The walls of my apartment are bare so I want to decorate them with some sort of nice art. Unfortunately, the conversation I have in my head when considering what should accent the walls goes something like, "What would be good to hang here? What would I like to see in this spot every day? What would represent me? Who am I? What I stand for?" Then I over-analyze each possibility, eventually dismissing it for one reason or another. My walls continue to remain bare year after year.

I want something people can see when they come over to visit that shows what the kind of people who live here are like, but instead all they get to view is blank, white walls. Perhaps that is a good representation, then? Paralyzed by the inability to decide, I go with the most plain, unassuming wall color as well.

It's silly that I hang so much (Get it? Hang. Because it's wall decor!...) on art that's just going to sit there on the wall, something I can even take down if I don't like it anymore. But I do. I absolutely do. And every time I look up at these blank walls I am reminded at how incapable I am of making even the simplest decisions. I think the only way I will get any decorations on our walls are if we get a gift from someone or if, god forbid, I make an impulse purchase one day.

So it occurred to me that that same solution can be applied to any other situation. Stagnation is best defeated with immediate action without regard to consequences and is always easier with a friend. I'm going to get something to decorate my walls this weekend. It may suck, but it'll be a good start.

(750 stats)

Let's just call it "Apartness."

For some reason I am still surprised at how much my mood improves with social interaction. Since I've been working at home, I don't get much face-to-face time with anyone other than Tom who is not really much of a talker. Today, I had breakfast with a friend and lunch + coffee with my parents. I actually had to turn down a last-minute invite from someone else for lunch (side note: when did I become so popular?) and felt a little bad.

It's tough for me to be in a bad mood when I hang out with people. There's just something about the human interaction energizes me -- hell, even sitting outside people-watching can be fun as well. The latter can easily become depressing, however, if viewed with a perception of... apartness? Is that a word? Let's go with that. I mean just feeling separated and not a part of the world you are watching.

This "apartness," which I'm guessing isn't a real word since Chrome is underlining it with a red squiggly line, is something that tends to creep up on me often. It's so easy for people to get wrapped up in their own lives and not keep in touch with others'. Privacy is nice though, isn't it? Nobody knows the silly things I do in my little room.

But god, it's so deadly.

Apartness keeps me from enjoying my life. It keeps me pressing my nose against the glass, smudging the window with my dirty fingerprints while I watch the world pass me by. It makes me feel alone and unloved and unwanted and undeserving of happiness. Apartness robs you of the right of every human to feel deserving.

Don't give in. Make efforts to connect to another human being even in the smallest way. Kick Apartness's ass. I sure as hell will be fighting it.

(750 stats)

"I Hate Poetry"

I took a Teaching & Tutoring Writing course in college, and one day our professor brought in a bunch of sample writing projects students had turned in. All the names had been blacked out, but the students had given permission for the use of their work. I picked one up and the cover was simply the hand-written word "Poetry" in a wobbly circle and a line through it. Intrigued, I read the article detailing "Why I Hate Poetry."

Since any good college student knows an academic paper must include legitimate references. So this charming student decided, most likely due to the lack of academic literature detailing hate for an entire art form, to quote a poem. It was TS Elliot's "The Wasteland" which, I admit, I don't care for either.

What really stood out to me was the student's second quote -- lyrics from a U2 song. He or she praised the lyrics, rhetorically asking why poetry couldn't be more straightforward like that. I literally laughed out loud.

If you like music with lyrics, you like poetry. When you hate a particular song or a band or even a genre of music, you don't say "I hate music."

If you give store-bought greeting cards, reading each to find one that accurately depicts the sentiment you feel towards a person, you like poetry. The cards you dismiss don't make you say "I hate greeting cards."

If you're fond of quotes that capture a complex idea or universal truth in but a few words, you like poetry. Disagreeing or simply not appreciating a specific quote, the person who is quoted, or even the person who is quoting doesn't make you say "I hate quotes."

The logic behind the essay title "Why I Hate Poetry," applied to anything else, seems ridiculous. "Why I Hate Food" might detail "I hate vegetables, but I like meat. Why can't vegetables be more like meat?"

TL;DR?
Fuck all haters.

(750 stats)

I do not wish to add any more.

Let me start by stealing the intro to a piece by Kenneth Goldsmith in The Chronicle.

In 1969 the conceptual artist Douglas Huebler wrote, "The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more." I've come to embrace Huebler's idea, though it might be retooled as: "The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more."

I came across this in a writing course I took in college and it really hit home for me. I often think, "what makes you so special? Why would anyone want to hear what you have to say? You don't matter. Nobody cares. Don't bother." So I obey these thoughts of inadequacy in my head and sit in a miserable silence. And of course there's a double standard -- I convince myself that the negative thoughts are what other people think, and the positive ones are just me trying to make myself feel better so couldn't possibly hold any truth.

I suppose part of it is the trend of "sharing" media on the internet. There's a part of me that doesn't care for even this "reuse" of media. My Twitter, Pinterest walls, Facebook page, Tumblr -- I'm probably missing some more of these, but you get the picture -- are sparse.

But even with the abundance of pins and tweets and memes, there are hundreds if not thousands of opinion articles published every day. Plenty of people think their opinions are worth hearing (or reading) and plenty of people even read those opinions. Hell, I read them too. And I think to myself how clever, witty or insightful the author is. This inevitably leads to "why can't I be so clever, witty or insightful?" And because I just love extrapolation and hyperbole, I end up at "why am I such a piece of shit?"

This individual blog post has been "in progress" for literally months. If not for the ease of saving drafts, I'd have scrapped it long ago and never returned to it. But here I am. Time to be clever, witty or insightful. Come on, Chel. Come on. Hey. What's wrong with you? Everyone else and their mothers can blog. What's wrong with you?

The truth, which causes a hurt I feel deep in my gut, is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me. Just like there's absolutely nothing wrong with you, dear reader. Why does this hurt? Because it's counter to everything I've told myself my entire life. It goes against my deepest beliefs and the way I have always seen the world. It makes me uncomfortable to face the truth, and I'm sure it's uncomfortable for you as well. If you've been swimming in a well of self-confidence and conceit, well you can just go fuck yourself. The rest of us need help facing this truth.

So let me say it again. This is as much for you as it is for me:

There is nothing wrong with you. Millions of people feel the way you do. I promise you that. You are not alone.

The ceiling really isn't that exciting

but I can't stop staring at it and actually fall asleep like a normal fucking person. My boyfriend's asleep at my side, my cat is sleeping by my feet, and all I want to do is join them and dream about not lying awake for hours with nothing but my own obsessive thoughts.

I can't tell without my contacts in, but I think I see a little crack in the ceiling. Maybe, just maybe, if I wait long enough some sort of liquid calm will seep out of it and land on my skin and when I close my eyes it won't just be futile again. Maybe then I can get some rest.

Hey, Monday

There are so many mornings I couldn't get through without you.

I promise -- taking you for granted is something I will never do.

Black Friday

Since starting my job in September, I haven't spent any of my money on anything other than groceries and paying down debts. I've been watching Black Friday deals -- not like I can avoid them, since some places literally started advertising them in October -- to catch some good deals on clothes and stuff for my new apartment. But when Friday finally rolled around, I found myself
lacking in any real want for material possessions. I don't have everything, but I'm happy with what I have.

My family is unfortunately very indecisive when it comes to their Christmas wish lists, so I didn't have them to shop for either. (Protip: don't go Black Friday shopping to browse casually. You will get trampled and wait in long lines for what will ultimately not be worth your time, in terms of money.)

So here I am, a quarter century old, not remembering a time when the day after Thanksgiving was spent just being happy with what I have. I can't decide whether that's wonderful because of the overwhelming sense if peace or depressing because the feeling is unfamiliar and I seem to be one of far too few in this mood.

Here's to more days of giving thanks.

Free time (or lack thereof)

It occurred to me the other day that we, especially as Americans, have less and less "free time." Never mind the fact that we have less vacation time than other first-world countries and our society's addiction to caffeine -- whenever we have spare time, the tendency is to pack it full of "productive" activities. I was just listening to a podcast earlier today about how various medications people have created in an effort to get rid of the need for sleep entirely. Why? Presumably, at least to employers, to work more, but hopefully to have more free time as well.

Sure, people say "TGIF!" at the end of a long work week. But after vacuuming, dishes, laundry and grocery shopping, suddenly an entire weekend is gone. Even breaks and lunch hours are spent on the phone scheduling oil changes or doctor appointments, sorting out bank account issues, paying bills online.

I feel guilty when I spend a day for myself -- curled up in a chair reading a novel, for instance. I wonder if I should be reading a self-help book instead, maybe learn a thing or two about cooking or improving myself otherwise. I think about how many calories I could be burning if I were reading on the treadmill at the gym instead. Suddenly I feel very lazy. The extra time it takes me to get out of my worries and actually into the book makes me feel even more guilty when I reflect later on how long I spent sitting around reading.

I've actually been listening to less music and cramming in more informational podcasts and audiobooks -- there's a prime example of giving up things I enjoy in the name of productivity.

So why do I always feel like I don't have enough time? With life expectancy higher than ever and a wealth of technological conveniences, you would think there would be time to rest. But there's this little nagging feeling in me -- maybe in all Americans, maybe in the human spirit -- that keeps saying "you can do more." Surely it's what fueled great inventors and artists, given motivation and goals for people all over the world.

But is there a point where it becomes a little detrimental? I think I'm trying to find a balance between "reach for the stars" and "don't worry, be happy." I typed "the balance" a second ago and backspaced -- I don't know that there's a perfect balance. I imagine it's different for different people, anyway. Most things seem to be.

I want to be just

--what's the word, motivated? striving? aggressive? no. overachieving? no. I want to be just...

fired up(?)

enough to keep improving, I guess.

Enough to not feel lazy, maybe. Enough to feel like I'm not being left behind, like I'm not wasting potential. It's a tough wire to walk.

(750 stats)

Highly Conceited

Tonight the United States of America elected its first black president for a second term. Gay marriage and recreational marijuana use have been legalized in some states. The first openly-gay US Senator was elected. Facebook, Twitter, every television channel, all erupted and have been covering this election all day.

So it boggles my mind when I see someone complain about hearing any of it while proceeding to talk about their own petty issues.

I get that your kid's having trouble sleeping and it upsets you. I get that you think it's important to post pictures of your baby just sitting there. I understand that you do this every day because your child is your world.

But to berate the people who care about other things? To get irritated at people excited about the results of an event that happens once every four years? To scorn the passion with which people express their reaction to these historic events?

Get over yourself.

You're not the most important person in the world. You're not the only one that matters. You live in a world where you interact with other people.

Learn to do it right.

The Best Intentions

One of my friends, a kind-hearted school teacher, was speaking highly of a book he had just read about homosexuality. A devout Christian married to a lovely woman, he wanted to share what he'd read with people who were "struggling with their sexuality." The book was written by a pastor and was essentially telling people they could become heterosexual through will and faith. It claimed to show the way to "recovery" in an "authoritative" and "academic" way, with stories of people he knew personally.

I was appalled.

Both my friend and this author were completely sincere. They knew and loved people who "struggle with temptation." I wonder, though, if I should put "love" in quotes -- I understand that they are concerned for the souls of their gay brothers and sisters, but it seems to me that real love doesn't involve wanting to change a person. I think about drunkards and the people who love them wanting them to get sober. For some reason that idea makes sense to me. But to insist a homosexual person be able to "cure" themselves of their "sin" seems so wrong and I couldn't and still can't quite articulate why to my friend.

He's a good person -- the first to offer to help and the last to leave when the work is done. I can't find fault in him, and could hardly believe he was even looking into this sort of material. He was genuinely concerned about his homosexual friends and wanted to find a way to fit their lifestyles into his belief system.

I can't be mad... but I just can't understand.

Breathing

Took my happy pills early, along with an Advil. Still felt like shit for a while til the drugs kicked in, but I reached out to some friends to keep me distracted.

I've been listening to the Radiolab podcast all day (okay, more like for several months now) but it was hard to focus, so I switched to The Mental Illness Happy Hour: a podcast that, as host Paul Gilmartin puts it, is "an hour of honesty about the battles in our heads. From medically diagnosed conditions to everyday compulsive negative thinking -- feelings of dissatisfaction, disconnection, and that vague, sinking feeling that the world is passing us by." The best part is that it doesn't pretend to be treatment or anything -- he used to say "I'm a jackass that tells dick jokes." So it doesn't set me up to have expectations of "fixing" my situation and makes me laugh too.

"You are not alone," is the overall message of the show, and it is incredibly comforting. It helped me get out of my head and kept me from feeling sorry for myself, which is really what I need when I'm falling apart and feel like I'm losing my mind.

I'll probably sleep soon. Hopefully peacefully this time.

Happy Pills

I am on two different antidepressants. I have been on drugs like these since I was eleven years old.

Last night, I forgot to take my pills. I had a nightmare in which a man was trying to kill me. Normally I wake up during these fairly quickly, but a side effect of being on SSRIs (or any drug, really) for an extended period of time is your body's dependence on them. Withdrawals are a horrible experience. I sleep well while on my medication but even a single night without them, I am vulnerable to the side effects -- poor quality of sleep, intensely vivid nightmares, extreme difficulty waking and a powerful grogginess that the brain struggles to recover from.

My dear cat luckily saved me by shoving his nose into my face repeatedly, because only physical movement can cause me to stir when my brain is lacking serotonin (in addition to mood, it also regulates appetite and sleep). But when I finally got out of bed at 3 in the afternoon, I recognized that it was too late to take my missed dosage without ruining my routine -- I normally take it at about 11 in the evening. So I decided I would wait it out a few more hours til it made more sense to take it again.

While I have been able to tolerate the migraine I've had all day, I feel physically weak. I forced myself to eat a sandwich and have a glass of green tea. It tasted like nothing. I spent some time surfing the internet but my headaches cut it short. I called my mom and focused on normal things. I cleaned a little. I even tried to exercise, but with my lack of any real calorie intake today, I literally collapsed.

It is currently 7 at night and I am lying on the floor, clutching a pillow to my chest. Light makes my head hurt more so it is dark in my entire apartment. I am crying and trembling. I am scared because I hurt so bad all over. It is unbearable. I am even more afraid of the realization that this is, and will be, the rest of my life. I need those stupid pills or I am reduced to this feeble little body on a dirty carpet, choking on her own stupid tears.

God, help me.

August

The last days of summer wind down and I find myself wound up something fierce. Huh.

Uploaded some poems to make up for my lack of blogging.

Apartment Cleaning

I hold back the sun again
 as I soap up the windows.
The daylight kept at bay.

Each Sunday brings reprise of
this most mundane ritual:
a regular exercise,
but one in futility.

Yet if not for my efforts
we'd be tsunami victims,
drowned in glossy magazines
and new credit card offers.

Everything was clean once.
Now, I am down on my knees,
sweeping up loose hair and crumbs.

Statistics

Today, 150,000 people died of natural causes

                        because starvation is natural when there isn't enough food to eat

                        and the immune system's natural response to abnormalities is to beat

                                    whatever it is to death, despite damage to the self

                        and fire was discovered, not invented

                        and jealousy is a natural response to wealth.