cindy's world

In an ongoing email conversation, I asked a jujitsu friend today whether he thinks I think too much. He replied, “if you didnt think as much, do you think you would end up getting in trouble?”

Me: “Huh. I never thought about that before. (See, I DON’T think too much!)
I wonder if my thinking is mostly after-the-fact, justificational thinking, or whether it’s consideration-thinking where I think out a situation before acting and therefore avoid poor decisions. I daresay it’s mostly the former and occasionally the latter. Well, maybe not, cuz I think a lot about random things in an attempt to compulsively explain things to myself. Like, how the hell are Dippin’ Dots made? Cuz if they’re ice cream droplets on a surface that are then frozen, they wouldn’t be as round. If they’re that round, that’d imply they were mid-air when they were frozen, but they couldn’t have been too impacted by gravity because they’re not droplet-shaped, they’re spherical. So how are they being so quickly frozen before they’re even allowed to fall? What were we talking about again?”

Him: “what? sorry… i wasn’t paying attention…. “

I woke up this morning from a disturbing dream in which college roommie and I were talking and she revealed she’d been in email contact for quite some time with a guy from my high school past. In the dream I was surprised and somewhat disappointed that he’d bothered to stay in touch with her but not with me. I told Dream Roommie, “Back then, he would make or break my entire summer on a daily basis.” And that was true.

Since waking way too early from that dream and being unable to fall back asleep, I’d been in this sticky web of emotional nostalgia, and not in a good way. It’s dark and murky, what I feel. Secrecy and real trouble surround this guy, and yet he always sneaks into my dreams just often enough for me to keep looking for him, to make sure he’s still alive. I’d house-cleaned him a hundred times, he’d disappointed me at least that often, but every time he emerges in a dream I return to the same disturbed state.

I sought for old contact from him on Friendster. He’d found me in 2003 on that site, left a vague email about wondering how I’d greet him after all these years, with a hug? With a slap? He wrote that he’d been to hell and didn’t think he had actually ever come back. Said now that he’s finally found me, he hopes I haven’t forgotten him. I wrote back that sometimes people I care about have to take the walk to hell for their own reasons and altho I recognize that, it doesn’t make watching it any easier. I let him know my hand is outstretched to help and whether he takes it or not is a matter of choice. Some disturbing response from him about how he’s been shot at, bribed, arrested, homeless, and that he’s learned in his adventures walking the world and getting into adventures, like Cain (from “Kung Fu”), that life is cold and uncaring, that all people have ulterior selfish motives for any kind acts they do, and that self-serving unjustness rules the world. He said even his contacting me is selfish although sincere — he is lost and wishes to be found; he hopes to rekindle a friendship that was regrettably neglected. I wrote back that I have the same phone numbers he’d last had. Without hearing more from him, he promptly and mysteriously disappeared again.

I contacted him through the same means some 2 years after this (after another disturbing dream that I’d traveled up north to find him, and I could not, and he wasn’t where he said he’d be, he never picked up his phone, and no matter what I tried I came to dead ends) he responded 20 days later apologizing for losing contact, said that he’d been trying to sort out issues for some time and haven’t kept in touch with many people. Said I have always been “too good” to him and therefore apologizes for not keeping in touch with me. Wrote that he trusts I’m doing well except for my overthinking which he’s sure I’m still doing; that I’m too smart for my own good and that ignorance is bliss. Ended on “hope to hear from you soon.” And disappeared again. That was 2 year ago.

He is and had always been vaporous to me, elusive to grab but simultaneously everywhere in a cold thin veil of mist. You could never feel secure around him. You could never really penetrate his vibes, get a good read on what and why he does or says what he did or said to me. At least, I couldn’t.

I think his recent appearance in my dream wasn’t about him, it was about what he represented. Yesterday, I ran into someone who I thought I was worth more to than how he was treating me. It bothered me to the point where it bothered me how much it bothered me, that I was treated like any common acquaintance from the street, as if we didn’t once share a closeness that permitted (no, embraced) the rare entry by a non-significant-other into our most private fears and thoughts. Yesterday, I felt as insignificant to this person as I had felt a hundred times with the guy from my past. Like, I had given you so much of me and you drank it all because you needed me, and you could not be bothered to stand by me on my most important day when I needed you in return, and you didn’t come, and you didn’t call, and I didn’t matter, and I don’t know why.

The entire time I’ve been writing this post, this has been playing in the background of my mind:
You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

So I thought I’d look up the rest of the lyrics. And it was me, ages 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

“My Immortal” – Evanescence

I’m so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
‘Cause your presence still lingers here
And it won’t leave me alone

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus:]
When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you’d screamed I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me

You used to captivate me
By your resonating light
Now I’m bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

These wounds won’t seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There’s just too much that time cannot erase

[Chorus]

I’ve tried so hard to tell myself that you’re gone
But though you’re still with me
I’ve been alone all along

[Chorus]

I keep looking to my medical provider’s “award-winning” website to see if my lab results are updated. I want more info on the (abnormal) pap smear. But nope, nothing new. Everything currently posted shows me as the posterchild for health. For example…

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has these guidelines for cholesterol scores.
Total Cholesterol
* High: 240 milligrams per deciliter of blood or above
* Borderline High: 200-239
* Desirable: under 200
ME: 181 mg/dL
LDL (l0w-density, or “bad” cholesterol)
* Very High: 190 and above
* High: 160-189
* Borderline High: 130-159
* Near Optimal: 100-129
* Optimal: less than 100; less than 70 if you have heart disease
ME: 99 calculated, no history of heart disease in the family
HDL (high-density, or “good” cholesterol)
* Major Risk Factor for Heart Disease: under 50 for women; under 40 for men
* Higher Would Be Better: 41 to 59
* Protects Against Heart Disease: 60 or above
ME: 75
Triglyercides
* Very High: 500 or above
* High: 200-499
* Borderline High: 150-199
* Normal: less than 150
ME: 33

My cholesterol/HDL ratio: 2.4 (according to my mom, 3 is normal, and your risk for heart disease increases the higher your number). And I blame my high LDL on the fact that I had Nutella crepes with lots of whipped cream late the night before.

*** Afternoon addendum ***
K reminded me in her comment about the US citizenship exam, so here’s a question from the exam that I remember from my childhood (from my parents studying for the exam):
Q: What are the colors of the American Flag and what do the colors represent?
A: Red is for courage; white is for peace; blue is for justice.

This is lame, but because I’m still laughing at it, I’m gonna post it.

Mass email to all courtrooms from my supervisor this morning:

Please let me know with the hour whether or not you have an “imperative” case set in your Courtroom tomorrow.

P.S. I arrived late this morning. Sorry for the short notice. I will use mare common sense the next time.

My email response back to him (yes, within the hour, as requested):

Wow, mare common sense? Neigh, you have the common sense of a stud!
Sorry, couldn’t resist. No imperative cases set tomorrow unless we get a trial from F today.

I saw him in the elevator after lunch and he was too emphatic in his hello to me, so I knew he’d read the email. I asked if he was offended, and he said that he’s “unoffendable” by now and admitted he did enjoy my email because I didn’t just write “You wrote ‘mare’ when you meant ‘more,’ you idiot” like most people would’ve done if they wanted to call someone out on something. Hee hee!

The Brian McKnight/Boyz II Men concert last Tuesday was great. It was an intimate setting out in a park with only about 500 seats under the stars. Boyz II Men opened with a 50-minute set, with one or two songs from their new album and the rest from their classic albums from the 90s. I did miss the fourth member of the band who, according to my gym trainee, had left the group to pursue a solo singing career. I didn’t know which one was missing until the older songs that I’m very familiar with were performed, then I realized it’s the guy with the deep sexy bass voice who had gone. So all the speaking parts of the songs were missing. The remaining 3 members more than made up for it as far as I was concerned by the obvious fun they were having onstage, playing “guess the song” games with the audience, telling us to take out our cell phones and wave them in the air like lighters after calling our mothers on them, as they sang the song “Mama,” having us sing along with their classics and fill in the lyrics, making us laugh with their jokes and spirited performance. Oh yes, like Vanessa said, they each took out a dozen long-stemmed roses and threw them out one by one to the groveling women in the audience as they sang “I’ll Make Love to You.” Then there was a 15 minute intermission that ended up being more like 35 minutes as we waited for Brian McKnight to come on.

I took advantage of intermission time to go to the concession booths and buy my gym trainee a Brian McKnight t-shirt. She had told me that Brian McKnight is looking “real fine” since his divorce, so I got her a black T with a photo in the front of him lounging on a chair with a smoldering “come hither” expression. While I was selecting the t-shirt, two women to my left asked the guy behind the booth about the backstage passes you can get with purchase of an overpriced “limited edition” shirt, and he informed them, as he handed two passes attached to lanyards to two lucky guests to my right, that he had just sold the very last two to these people, sorry. The two women looked enviously at the couple forking over inordinate amounts of cash in exchange for the lanyards, then walked away. I waited patiently for the guy behind the booth to get to me, and made my shirt purchase. By this time, all other customers had left so it was just him and me. As I paid him, he paused then asked, “Did you want to see Brian?”
I said, “Oh, no, it’s okay, I overheard that you’d sold the last passes.”
He pulled a small stack of paper passes out his front shirt pocket, and said, “I have these — I was saving them for some friends, but now I don’t think they’re coming.”
Instantly in my head I pictured having to stay behind and fight the crowd instead of getting out of the parking lot early and beating the traffic. I pictured meeting someone who’s waaaay iconic and I had no idea what I would say or do, it was easier simply to not be in the situation. I said, “I have a tendency to be starstruck and I’d rather not make a fool of myself in front of a celebrity,” and laughed.
He actually looked a little rejected, and said, “Oh, it’s pretty quick, he just signs an autograph for you. I don’t have any uses for these anyway, like I said, my friends didn’t show.”
I smiled gratefully at him (or I’d hoped it was gratefully altho in retrospect it was probably retardedly) and said, “Nah, it’s okay, but thank you very much.” The passes disappeared back into his pocket.

I told Mr. W about this encounter after he came out of the port-a-potty, and he looked at me a little bit in surprise, and said something complimentary about me being alone and looking pretty. But he was probably wondering why I’m such an idiot.

Brian McKnight came out, gave one hell of a performance, showed his charismatic and very humorous, very sexy personality and I was just kicking myself. I sooo wanted to be his friend. He would be a blast to hang out with, this man making goofy faces at the audience, making fun of his own romantic failures and pathetic phone-stalking weepy moments in between songs. He announced that he’s doing something special this year, he’s been bringing his sons along with him on tour, and introduced his 14 year old and 19(?) year old, who proved they are as talented and well-sculpted as their father is as they performed a few songs they wrote with their dad. The 14 year old is kick-ass on the electric guitar, and blasted out my ear drums playing a Prince song while their dad rested backstage for a few minutes. I’d never heard the song before, but Mr. W has and said it was extremely well-played. The entire experience was fun and actually, very romantic.

After the concert, a small line formed at the back of the staging area as the rest of the crowd shuffled out the front entrance where we’d entered. Mr. W and I milled about with the short back line at first, hoping it was a way out that avoided the main crowd, but then realized it was the line to see Brian McKnight and Boyz II Men on backstage passes. “We would’ve been one of the first in line here,” he made sure to note as we walked forward and joined the large exiting herd.

Saturday morning, a bunch of coworkers and I attended the funeral service of the father of our presiding judge. It was at a Baptist church, and so far I think I like Baptist services better than Catholic ones. I’ve been to two Catholic funeral services in the past several months and found this Baptist priest’s words to lay more smoothly against my personal soul. I found his words soothing and they touched a nerve of truth within my own heart. He reminded us that death is not something to fear but something to celebrate as a return to the place from whence we had come. It is not so much an end of life, as the beginning of eternal life. I especially liked a poem (I think it’s a poem) he read, and I’m not sure if it came from the Bible like a psalm, or was written by a God-loving poet, or maybe he wrote it himself for the occasion. Anyway, it went something like this, although I’m sure I am not doing it justice:

To reach up and grab a hand, and find that it is God’s;
To breathe the air and find it celestial;
To awake healthy and happy and find immortality;
To see endless beauty and find that you are home;
To leave the maelstrom of hopeless end and find endless hope;
Such is our fate, and our hope, as we come from and return to God.

Amen.

I was doing my usual dry delivery of a quirky silly train of thought yesterday when someone in my trusted circle made a sarcastic remark to the effect that it was a good thing I don’t find myself in that situation a lot. Okay, that made no sense unless I actually explain that I was talking about a paternity case we handled in the family law court I was put into yesterday. The case where the court established that a divorcing woman’s child is the offspring of the guy she was having the affair with, and not the husband, which was proven up with a DNA test. I said about that, “Why do people want to make their lives so complicated, so that I have to go through all this strange stupid paperwork because of them?” She chuckled. It was my first paternity case, and I had struggled through all the unfamiliar paperwork and computer entries involved. I continued, “And these people always make us do their work for free cuz they get fee waivers [claiming they’re indigent and can’t pay for legal proceedings]. I pay my taxes, and I don’t use any government services for free cuz I don’t qualify for them. These people don’t even pay taxes and get all this free stuff. I should go and do something stupid with my life so that I can take advantage of welfare-type services, like have a kid out of wedlock. But no, I wouldn’t get welfare cuz I’d be employed. So maybe I should commit a CRIME, get into the criminal law system, cuz everything THERE’s provided for free and then I could really make my taxes benefit myself. But then with my income, I’d probably be required to pay back the services of the public defender, so that wouldn’t work, either.” I mean, it was a non-serious, goofy stream-of-consciousness I was saying aloud because I recognize the ridiculousless of the nature of the thoughts and therefore shared them for the possible entertainment value. It was a joke. I wasn’t really upset about not having and wanting indigency services. She said sarcastically, “It’s a good thing you aren’t in family law much.”

It’s not that she made a comment, it’s that it’s the third or fourth such comment she’d made fairly recently that implied I thought and/or talked too much about nothing. And it’s not that I DON’T overthink things, cuz apparently I do, as this post itself proves. It’s just that I feel she misunderstood me and the point of my words when she made that comment, and for some reason that’s still bothering me. It’s either because I think so highly of her that I don’t want her thinking badly of me, so that right now I feel like I exposed myself trustingly and got made fun of to my surprise in return; or maybe it’s because since early childhood, I’ve had a sensitivity to being misinterpreted, misunderstood, wronged in a sense. When someone I don’t care about doesn’t “get” me and misunderstands something, I just roll my eyes irritably and move on. But in someone I do care about, it just really bothers me when someone’s got a wrong impression of me or something I said.

I said to Mr. W after the trusted person had left, that I need to remember to stop thinking out loud around her because I don’t think she gets me so she thinks I’m being overdramatic over nothing. He laughed and said that he got me, and that he did think the absurdity of what I was saying was amusing. It reminds me of his proposal, how he said most people don’t get me but that he’s one of the lucky ones who do and he gets to laugh. I guess that’s what’s really important, anyway. I just wish I didn’t have to watch my step so carefully around someone I want to comfortably be my off-colored self around.

Today is day 3 since the scary phone call from my doctor’s office. I’m pretty much back to normal, which is a good thing because they pulled me out for my courtroom to handle a (blech!) Family Law courtroom where the supervisors failed to arrange for a relief clerk for the regular clerk’s vacation. The cases were horrible. Restraining orders against former lovers, paternity tests establishing biological parenthood between a divorcing woman and her affair guy, anger, tears, lies, accusations. Criminal Law courtrooms are so much more peaceful.

My mother, however, is just wigging out more and more. The day after finding out, she emailed me all day asking how I am and telling me not to worry. Then that night, she freaked out cuz she called my cell and I didn’t get it and didn’t call her back. She called me at home early this morning before work, upset that I “went missing” the night before, and claiming also that her mother “went missing” as she didn’t return my mom’s calls either. I told her to stop worrying about nothing. And then 45 minutes ago, my house phone ringing woke me up from my TV nap and I tried to ignore it, but on the 16th ring I finally skulked upstairs and picked it up. My mom was in a flurry because she had apparently found my grandmother, told her about my current health “crisis”, and they both agree that October 1 is too far away and they want to know what’s going on sooner than that, so they want to pay for a private doctor to get the procedure done earlier before my appointment. I told her I wasn’t going to go thru a colposcopy/biopsy twice and my appointment is only 3 weeks away, I’m not going to pay extra money for curiosity, and a week’s difference isn’t going to make the difference between life and death. (She also wanted to know whether the lab results are posted online yet, I told her they’re not, and she told me to call my medical provider and see if they could arrange for a printout that I could go pick up myself. I told her they’re not going to do that.) She finally relented, sounding defeated. I told her if she’s going to worry like this I’m not telling her about this stuff next time. She said quickly, “You can’t do that!”

Now I feel worse. The fact that my mom’s now getting clingier is cramping my lifestyle because I don’t want to explain where I am at all hours of the day and night, and I already feel guilty enough about not wanting to. On top of that knowing that she’s feeling worried and helpless, and that she hadn’t slept well the past few nights and was up imagining all sorts of horrid scenarios and panicking about her only child, I’m feeling some of the worry vicariously and I don’t need to stress over something I have no control over. This worry at this time is totally unproductive and pointless, because assuming the worst case scenario and I have terminal cervical cancer or something, I’m gonna feel pretty crappy upon finding that out. And I will feel crappy at that future time no matter WHAT I feel like right now, so I may as well enjoy the 3 weeks of activities I have until the colposcopy. I have a week in Hawaii for Wilco’s wedding at the end of the month, I have a coworker’s house party right after that, and I have the Marine Corps 5K obstacle course run a few days after the colposcopy (presumably before I get lab results back for any biopsy). And I have a funeral to attend tomorrow, for gosh sakes. Heh.

All through childhood, I stood in confusion and upset watching my mom’s strong emotional reactions to things, teaching me by sight that I’m SUPPOSED to freak out when my dad’s a little late, when my dad doesn’t call, when some small family gossip trickles through the grapevines, when there’s a hair on the ground, when I don’t flip down the visor to shield the sun from my mom’s eyes when she’s driving, when my dad makes my mom the butt of some goofy joke. All through adolescence I rolled my eyes in irritation when watching my mom overreact at what I thought were things she should’ve just chilled at, and hoped that I wouldn’t turn out like her. And then as time wore on, she did chill. She opened her mind, she acquired an incredible tolerance for things that went beyond my ability to follow suit but envied. But when it comes to her baby, it appears she’s still reactive despite her attempts to not be overbearing.

It’ll all be nothing soon.

It’s funny how the power of the mind permeates things physical. For the past 2 days I’ve felt like such a patient, just cuz I was handed the patient hat. I went home yesterday, oozed onto the living room couch and took a nap. The air had cooled to a nice 75 with a breeze that wafted through my living room. I had also called my m.d. friend, pharm.d. friend, and mother. My m.d. friend will talk to her gyno coworkers and get some information for me. My pharm.d. friend had some personal experience and thoughts to share, but also didn’t have much expertise in my particular situation. In speaking with my mother, I tried to be nonchalant about the situation, but she was worried nonetheless while trying to convince me that I had nothing to worry about. And it is true; my family does not have a genetic predisposition to cervical cancer from either side.

I drove to Mr. W’s later in the evening when traffic died down, and told him at dinner that I was just giving myself the day to mope and feel sorry for myself, but that I’d be back to normal the next day. Today, first thing in the morning, my body bled. It’s playing the patient too, right along with my mind. Today I have a general “down” mood with low energy and cramps, but I behaved more normally than I did yesterday, which was sort of an alternatingly angry/tearful/anxious/defeated emotional carousel. Today, I cracked some jokes, was able to interact with strangers normally again (which is good since we started a court trial today), and went to the gym at lunchtime for a pretty crappy workout. But the important thing was that it was crappy because of the other people there, not because I didn’t do my best. It just seemed like people were following me around to jump on the exact machines I was using in my circuit, and then taking it over to sit and flirt with other people standing and milling about.

One bright spot in yesterday: I came home to find my garage door replaced to the rolling metal door; they did not replace my garage door motor against my will (as they insisted on replacing some of my neighbors’ motors), but left my old one up which worked very efficiently with my new door. AND, they’d swept my entire garage. I can’t say much for the company’s office staff, but the work crew seems very good.