cindy's world

Is it some sort of sick coincidence, or is there a connection and a reason to why, just after you’ve expressed aloud how great someone is being, or how great things are, that they do something to completely offend you? I always think I’m jinxing myself so I hold back from thanking someone for being good to me, or remarking to others about how great someone has been. Cuz as soon as that’s done, the person you’re grateful to will pull some jackass move and make you feel completely betrayed and make you eat your words. Why can’t it work in the opposite way? Why can’t I commiserate to someone that so-and-so never does such-and-such for me despite knowing how much it’d mean to me, and then walk out and see that so-and-so has indeed just done such-and-such because of how much it means to me? I have a weak theory, tho. I think that a lot of people, once you’ve shown them gratitude about something, get so cocky about it that they feel like they can do whatever they want despite the fact that it may be breaking a promise or hurting you. These are the people who get spoiled and take you for granted. You give them an inch and they take a foot. You can’t give these people brownie points because you want to make them feel good and give them credit where credit is due; if you do, they all of a sudden feel entitled to some things and their heads get blown up.

I’m so sad.

Diana and I are deep into an email conversation in which I’m probing her about the mystery dude who was making eye contact at her from across the room at her recent work-related dinner, as written about in her recent post. I guessed that he must’ve been cute since she uncharacteristically made repeated eye contact with him and smiled back at him. Her description of him was, in part, “…he was cute and had a very nice smile, although i am sure he is older.” I asked whether she’s found that more older men have been interested in her lately, and she thought about it and responded that she’s pretty much always had her share of “very young and very old.” Then she asked about me. Now that we’re forced to evaluate and summarize the ages of people who have been interested, she concluded that her range of admiring fans have been from 22 to 38. She laughingly noted that it’s a huge range. Then she thought of me and my history, of which she’s well aware. And laughed at my 22? to 50s. Ick.

That of course begs the question, which she opened up in a statement: “you must have different qualities that make you desirable to the young and the old. ;)” I wrote back half-jokingly, “Asian fetish and groundedness for the young; brains, youth and humor for the old.” Her response to that came back nearly instantaneously and reads, “or hot, sexy girl for the young; and the mature, witty, hot, sexy young woman for the old.”

That brought a big smile to my face as I wrote back, “I like that better, haha”, and just as I was thinking, Hmm, how do I blog this without looking conceited?, she responded that this conversation warrants a place in the blog. “Yours or mine?” I asked her. She said both, since we have different writing styles. So here we go. I got an email from her like 10 minutes ago saying she’s done with hers already. I said that apparently, my post is longer than hers.

That brings another interesting point between she and I. She noted how “brevity is [her] middle name”, such that when she writes an long post, people know something’s up and that it’s an important post. I, on the other hand, ramble on — aimlessly at times — saturating my posts with detail (show it, not just tell it, my 5th grade writing teacher used to chant), such that when I have an unusually short post, people know something’s wrong because I’m withholding information. Haha.

Okay, I’m gonna go read her post now and probably feel stupid about mine.

***
Addendum –
Diana’s most recent email as I was writing this post:
“ramble faster. i am dying to read urs.” HAHAHA!

So I’m driving to work this morning, bopping around in my car listening to 80s rock at full blast, eating a banana. And then the thought arbitrarily entered my brain that I should lick or eat the banana suggestively when some of these guys who are driving around me look into my car at me. After I had that mental image in my head (which made me laugh), I so wanted to do it! My brain was trying to talk me into it with, “It’s a bigger deal to me than to anyone who sees. They’d just laugh and tell their friends about it. It’s not like I know any of these people. I’ll probably never see them again.” It’s a good thing I don’t get intoxicated before my morning drives, or I may have.

But I’m a good, respectable little girl. Who’s just a little delirious from lack of sleep.

I didn’t finish the Raytheon roughs until midnight, and Sandy was still working next to me on her own laptop. This girl works till about 7p, and then goes to some group meetings at work, and then comes home at 8p, gets on her laptop, and continues working remotely while IMing and telephoning with her project teammates. She says she normally goes to bed about 1a. Anyway, we chatted for a little bit, I showed her some random photos that were taken since I’d last seen her in December (which I wrote about here and here). Then I left at about 1a. After the parking garage gouged me $65 for parking (it was automated, there was no one to argue with, and the $10/hour rate was not posted ANYWHERE, I checked), I drove toward what I thought was the 710 fwy entrance. Turned out it’s changed somewhat in the last 2 years or the sign’s fallen off on the street, cuz I ended up crossing bridges and going to the ports. I was following these big tanker trucks at 1:15 a.m., getting really nervous, cuz there’s nowhere to turn around, and I’m over water. Finally, I managed to get off onto a side bridge and went back up on a street that had a name I remembered passing while going down the 710 South to her house. And I was right. There was an entrance to the 710 North on that street. So happily, I got on… and got detoured off on the very next exit, Pacific Coast Highway. Apparently the freeway was doing some construction or something, and everyone on the freeway (there were amazingly quite a few of us at 1:30 in the morning) got herded off onto PCH. Soon, the “freeway detour” signs disappeared. I found myself driving God knows where passing factories, run-down storefronts, questionable staggering men, and strip clubs. Lots of strip clubs, offering full nudity on their Girls!Girls!Girls! as proudly emblazoned on their neon signs. I finally called Sandy and wailed. She had just come out of the shower so she was still up, and she at first didn’t recognize the streets I was on and told me to pull into a gas station to ask for directions. I refused at that hour at that time of night. Eventually I got to an intersection she was familiar with and she guided me to a different freeway entrance and saved me. I didn’t get home until past 2 a.m..

I am so wired.

It didn’t take much at all for Vanessa to convince me to skip jujitsu and go with her to the gym to hit the steam room and the jacuzzi. So after a dinner of specialty rolls at a nearby sushi restaurant, we did. I had sore muscles from my Monday workout (altho my trainee claims to have no soreness anywhere from it) which I think has been alleviated from all the heated water and epsom salt we rubbed on ourselves in the steam room. Epsom salt, by the way, is not salty. I licked a grain in the steam room. It’s cool in temperature, doesn’t dissolve as fast as table salt, and has a bitter taste. The ingredients say that epsom salt is magnesium sulfate. Whatever that is. I barely passed chemistry by the skin of my teeth. It lost me at nomenclature.

I was driving with Vanessa next to me turning right from the street into the driveway of the gym, and I was aware, to the extent that normal drivers are aware, of a Corolla waiting to pull out of the driveway I was going into. I know there was a young male behind the wheel with no passengers, and that was as much as I picked up. Vanessa said suddenly, “Hey, he’s totally checking you out!” I had already driven past him, so I couldn’t verify. “Isn’t he young? Why would he be checking me out? He was probably just looking as I pulled in.” She said that yes, he seemed young, in his early 20s. He seemed like a basketball jock, and she knew he was checking me out because he didn’t just look up as I pulled in, he turned his head and kept looking as I drove past him. “Maybe he was looking at you,” I suggested to her. “No, his eyes were not looking in my direction,” she said, “And I was looking at him. I had the whole internal dialogue of, ‘He’s cute. Oh, he looks young. Hey, he’s totally checking out Cindy!” Any day that someone in their early 20s seems to find me attractive is a good day.

I now have my load of whites going in the dryer and candles lit, redistributed with the pieces of wax from Grace’s candle. I like having her around. It makes me productive and distracted. And the laughing and social therapy helps, too. I can’t believe she’s been here 3 weeks already. She’ll be moving out soon. 🙁 Dodo’s gonna miss her.

Yesterday after work, I stopped by home, ate a big bowl of my mom’s homemade stir-fried rice noodles while watching a couple episodes of “Friends” on satellite TV, vacuumed during the commercials. Then I washed my face, got changed for jujitsu, and took off.

Jujitsu was not overcrowded for that class for once. Instead of the regular 30 or so students, we only had 15, so there was room on the mat to do stuff. A student jokingly asked me whether a red mark on my neck was a hickey. Of course it wasn’t, but now it drew some attention. A few minutes later, the young instructor pointed out a hickey on the accuser’s neck and said, “What’s THIS? And you’re making fun of Cindy!” She laughed and said, “Oh, I forgot about that! Damn.” We finished off the class with some free sparring, which I’ve always enjoyed. I got some good pointers from another student and got quite a few hits in against my opponents.

After we (Vanessa and I) got home, I changed the cat litter and started laundry. Then we took a shower (no, not together), got comfy and turned the big screen on the KABC show “What About Brian” at 10pm at college roommie Diana’s recommendation. I was disappointed to see the actor who played “Kevin” (I think that’s the character’s name) on “7th Heaven” on that show instead of a cute guy that Diana promised me. I hope that’s not who she was referring to. We then changed the channel to the WE! network and watched “Honey, We’re Killing the Kids,” which is a reality-based show where a nutritionist evaluates a household’s lifestyle and puts the data into a computerized program which shows the parents simulated time-lapse photography of the kids from their present age to age 40 if they continue living as they do. In 3 weeks, the family makes lifetyle, diet and exercise changes and they are re-evaluated and the program does the sequence of photos again to see how the kids would be different in the future if they keep up with the improvements. This we watched with the lights out and a bunch of lit votive candles in colored glass cups that I placed on the TV and around the living room. We also lit aromatherapy scented candles and gels heated over a tea light. The place was very girl-ized and very pretty. Then we called it a night and I took the clothes out of the dryer and brought them upstairs to fold and put away while watching the 11:30p episode of “Friends.” I fell asleep with the TV on and a sugared vanilla scented candle lit that Grace gave me some birthdays ago, and when I woke up this morning, the wax had melted and resolidified on my dresser. I plucked the wax off and resolved to burn it in a half-empty tealight cup or something so it doesn’t go to waste.

I methodically kept my brain devoid of analytical thought in my productive evening. I probably appear manic, but short of taking psychotropic drugs that dull my affect so that I just don’t care anymore, controlling the roots of the thoughts is all I can do. I suppose I could can the thought ability as well, but I don’t want to dope myself up. I don’t want to cushion myself with chemicals to keep from feeling the lows because I won’t feel the highs, either. I wonder how long I need to keep this up before it’s adopted and I’ve rewired myself back to normalcy, or if it’s even possible to recover from this miswiring. The problem with caring is that you’re gonna feel so you’re gonna hurt. The problem with not caring is that you don’t feel anything and you detach from everyone. I wish I could figure out how to keep the highs but cushion myself against the lows.

Today I felt so good at not feeling depressed that I probably went a little too high and got delirious. But just for a brief moment. And then I slowly sank back down a bit. I’m probably somewhere in the middle, or just a bit below the middle right now. Maybe I am manic-depressive. I’m just a wildly swinging person trying to figure out how to get logic to dictate my emotions, and hoping that by controlling the stimuli coming in, that the exposed oversensitive nerves will heal over and give normal levels of sensation again.

We are now on our 10th consecutive week of trial (many different trials, civil and criminal, all back-to-back). The new trial we’re doing which came in yesterday brought in a DA whom I’m on friendly terms with. Today, he asked during break, “So how’s Cindy’s World?” “It’s all right,” I said. He said he’s told a few people about this blog and referred them to it because he thinks it’s so cool that I do this; to have it set up online and to put myself out there daily. He said he’d want to do something like this, but he doesn’t have the balls (his words). I said it’s not a matter of having the guts to write publicly as much as needing it for therapy. He said still, it’s all honest and candid, and he admires that I can expose myself like this.

The compliments made me feel good, because even tho he didn’t compliment my writing (haha), he complimented my character. A small portion of it, at least. He hasn’t seen the blog in the past few months so he has no idea how much more candid and soul-baring and lick-my-bleeding-heart it’s been. And I don’t have the heart to tell him the dark turn this site has taken as of late.

Sometimes I’m so focused on people who are thorns in my life that I don’t see the ones who are the roses. There are a couple of thorns, sure. But there are dozens and dozens of roses of all different colors and sizes in all aspects of my life. Even a furry black and white one at home who greets me by the door when I come home.

At jujitsu yesterday, Vanessa asked, “Did you hear Dodo this morning?” I sure did. He wasn’t doing his polite greeting “meow.” He was doing his loud, deep echoing “WAUL! WAAAAAAAUUUULLL!!” I had a hard time getting up yesterday morning and laid in bed 45 minutes after my alarm went off. Dodo walked in and out of my room caterwauling at me every so often. I know he was telling me to get out of bed. Turned out he was doing the same to Vanessa, who was also later than usual. We laughed when we exchanged stories and figured out that my cat was really saying, “What the hell! Where is everybody! Get up already!” He now waits in the middle of the upstairs hallway between my room and Vanessa’s room as we get ready in the mornings, just so he’s fair. He used to wait in my bathroom as I put on my face, or just outside my bathroom and bedroom doors, and walk me downstairs and he’ll have breakfast as I pat him goodbye and leave. Now, he waits for both of us and walks us both down and sends us off separately. What a sweetie.

I keep seeing Navy Girl Vanessa’s Cheesecake Factory take-home clear pastic container in the fridge with a small chunk of cheesecake in it. It’s from our take-home Cheesecake Factory dinner the first night Vanessa moved in. She bought us each a slice of Godiva chocolate cheesecake, each in its own plastic container. The first week and a half or so, every time I opened the fridge I thought, “For someone who asked me how I could possibly only eat half of it and stop when it’s sooo good, she sure couldn’t bring herself to finish this.” Then the following week and a half, I just got used to seeing it there. Today in jujitsu, I brought it up to her and asked, “That cheesecake in the fridge isn’t from the first night, is it?” I know she’d taken her boyfriend to Cheesecake Factory after she’d gone with me and introduced him to the restaurant and to the Godiva chocolate cheesecake, so maybe it’s a slice from a later time. She looked at me and said, “That’s yours!” Huh?! “Yeah,” she continued, “I brought mine to work and finished it the next day at lunch!” I suddenly vaguely recalled eating the cheesecake the day after the dinner, and somehow finding the self-control to not finish the whole thing. And then it was my turn to carry Vanessa across the mat on my back, bounce her on my back and throw her.

When we got back home, she was hanging out in her room petting my cat and talking on the phone with her boyfriend. I walked in with the container in one hand and a fork in the other, and said with my mouth full, “It’s chewier, but still pretty good.”

So the moral of this story is, go to the Cheesecake Factory and get yourself a slice of Godiva chocolate cheesecake already! It’ll make you happy AND get you over your depression. I know I’ve written about this before.

You wanna know why people fall into depression? Or rather, let themselves get depressed instead of pulling out? Because it’s easier. There’s something that clicks in the mind where you just want to feel sorry for yourself and you want to curl up and be defeated, because you’re tired from the fighting and it’s too hard to resist. You don’t see the point of fighting it, and the thought of faking a smile or acting social when you don’t feel social just takes too much energy and effort. The face is too heavy to lift. The drooped mouth, heavy cheeks, tired eyes.

And if you’ve been depressed before, you’re already tired from the last fight, so it’s easier to fall into it again since you’ve been there before. It’s familiar. The last time you just curled up and leaned over in the dark by yourself, so this time when you get that same hopeless feeling where everything just seems so large and overwhelming and you feel powerless, you automatically draw into emotional fetal position again, getting ready for the lean and for the drowning.

Okay, that’s the best way I can describe it right now. So for those of you who think depression is a weakness, it is. But not in the way you assume.

P.S. A photographer friend is emailing me and made a joke about how I can buy his book. I wrote back, “What’s your book about? How to take pictures?” He wrote, “Yeah right, something like that. ‘How to take pictures of your inner feelings.’ ” My response, which he didn’t understand, was, “Gee. Are there any bubbling murky slimy tar pits I can take a picture of right now?”

Why am I documenting this? Like it’d help with the field of psychology or something? Who wants to read THIS shit?!

When I was in high school, this guy I was friends with (and whom I had a big crush on who ended up breaking my heart for a friend, but that’s a whole other Oprah) said to me that he wished some big emotional disaster would befall him so that he could get depressed. I asked why he would want to go through that. He said, “Because. Being depressed is so artistic.” I thought it was an asinine thing to say back then. But I know that he’s right in theory. Sometimes to drown in emotion is the muse people need to write amazing poetry or music, or to draw passionate images. Creativity (or creation, rather) is often the only outlet that keeps me sane.

The irony, of course, is that when I was really young, I would watch soap operas or TV shows like “Beverly Hills, 90210” and wish my life were more interesting like that. I would watch boy/girl drama unfold with my friends and I’d follow the events and all the he-said, she-saids, sometimes even participate in someone else’s issues, with fascination and envy. I would read about characters in books or watch actors on TV being so stressed when they had to choose between multiple suitors. And I remember actually thinking, “That’s so cool! I wish I had a bunch of boys who liked me. I wouldn’t be stressed, I’d be excited!” But that was before the days of actually dating someone and having other men knocking on my door to give lavish arguments about why I should date them instead. That was before the choices of men got complicated beyond a simple and obvious “this one’s better because he’s a nice guy, and that other guy’s a big jerk.” Somehow, in my youthful, naive wishes for excitement and drama, I got just what I wished for and then I couldn’t stop the flood. And now, I’m flood-damaged and am conditioned to react to drama even tho the drama isn’t like it was.
Hell, sometimes I’m not even sure the drama is existent. But it all feels acutely real, now. My brain has been rewired. Call it post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Oh, those sweet, sweet naive days when I had no idea what a blessing it was that boys were too shallow to like me. My mom had told me, when I was a junior in high school, not to worry about the boys in school who don’t like me back. She said that there ARE guys who like girls like me, I’ll meet them eventually, and that these high school boys just aren’t suitable. She said to just be patient. I cried to Grace on the phone after finding out another one of my crushes that I had thought was going somewhere, met my friend and decided to pursue her instead. Same old story back then. She told me that boys can’t appreciate me yet, and that one day, they will. They just need to grow up first.

I think that’s why I’ve always enjoyed going up north to visit college roommie Diana and her friends so much. It’s a mixed-gender group that is just happy-go-lucky and not incestuous. We hang out, goof off, have silly battles of wits, do active stuff, and I think we really do trust each other. We trust that we’re all good people who’ve proven to be good shoulders to cry on or good sounding boards to troubleshoot with. Gosh, and I’ve only known some of them for 11 months so far. But it reminds me of high school. I’ve had a back-stabbing friend, too, but when the group hung out in high school, the chemistry was fun and simple, just like hanging out with the Northern Cal people.

I do miss high school. Wow, it’s been 12 years. Maybe in another 2 years, I’ll miss college in the same way.

Yeah, I’m okay, thanks for asking.

Sometimes being writing-oriented means that I notice a particular feeling, psychological process or event, and a mental narration starts reeling. Sometimes I write this narration down in a poem to capture the moment. It’s a snapshot of an extreme time of awareness. Since I started blogging, I write poetry less (it takes longer) and post in prose instead. I’m sure a lot of people have these moments, but most shake it off and let it pass and be forgotten. I surrender to it and let it overtake me. And then I want to describe it and document it.

This time the seed was to describe a moment, presumably the latest of many such moments when one person in a couple is made aware that the honeymoon is over for the other person, for not for the first person. When he doesn’t bother to call or show up on time because he’s hanging out with his friends; when he rolls his eyes at you while you’re in tears; when he yells at you during a discussion even though you’re calm; when you’ve asked him to do something several times to alleviate some discomfort on your part and he doesn’t do it and doesn’t acknowledge your discomfort; when he has gone from not getting enough of you to not caring whether you’re around and making plans that exclude you; when you touch him suggestively and he suddenly remembers he needs to return a phone call and gets up to do it; when he’s given 2 tickets to some event and invites a friend instead of you. Somehow you haven’t moved and yet everything has changed around you.

Nothing has happened, he didn’t turn into an ass, and yet you’re left hurt and bewildered, and other people don’t understand why. You’re not crazy. You’re likely just a romantic who’s with someone who’s, well, not.