cindy's world

Diana and I stumbled by default on a GREAT restaurant called The Daily Grill in Irvine last nite. We shared a filet medallion entree and still couldn’t finish the plate. I was also proud that we left a considerable chunk of the chocolate brownie that was sitting underneath a gob of ice cream, which I also left. The dinner was good because it was the first time I’ve seen her in person since she entered her really trying time in her family life, health, career and love life. It breaks my heart when she calls me crying and I can’t be there. But I was really happy to see that she was actually doing pretty well last nite. We were able to laugh and kid, altho of course she was still dealing with lingering sadness. I hope she remembers that to feel down and depressed is normal, and considering all the stuff going on, the fact that she was only at her lowest point for a week or less and is now pulling out slowly, is really great progress. She has her chin up and her faith in that everything has happened for a reason — a good reason — and even tho it hurts and seems fruitless now, everything will fall into place later and she will understand why she had to go thru all this.

I’d brought my laptop and we went thru my cruise photos, and then just for kicks, ended the night with, at her request, a slideshow of our 260 or so Cancun photos. We remarked, as we reminisced on our September vacation, how different things are between now and then, and what we didn’t know then was just around the bend.

*sigh* Hey Diana, remember back in the day when we were really well adjusted and we were bored with our lives and envied the excitement of other girls’ romantic drama? HA.

Someone with whom I can speak candidly who will try to understand me, even if he doesn’t agree.
Someone who, when he says communication is so important in a relationship, actually does his part to keep the communication open.
Someone who hears what I say instead of injects his own presumptions.
Someone I can lean on when I feel bad, who will embrace me instead of push back at me.
Someone to make me feel special.
Someone who doesn’t walk away from me when I’m crumpled.
Someone who cares for me as genuinely as he laughs with me.
Someone who gives me the benefit of the doubt because he believes in me as a person.
Someone who wants me near not only for the ways I can enrich his life, but also for the ways he wants to enrich mine.
Someone I can reach out to who doesn’t look at my outstretched hands then slash my exposed wrists.

I’m tired of being sick. Each day of ailment drags on, exponentially longer than a day of happiness or even a day of blissful nothingness. Each tick of the sad man’s clock thunders and its echos continue to claw at and weigh on his chest and mind, cumulatively, draining him. Unable to eat, sleep, or enjoy the passing of time, he finally drops in exhaustion, overtaken by a fitful and restless sleep, in which demons personified of life’s turmoils continue to threaten his very sanity. Crying is sometimes a relief, but less because of its healing catharsis than because of its distraction. Having sat in this state for an extended period of time — extended not because of its chronological duration but for its toll — I fall too familiarly into this again and again. What does it take for the shell to reharden, for the callouses to form?

I’m gonna go stand in the shower for a bit.

There’s something magical about my jujitsu family. 9 of us went out to Rockin’ Taco, a trendy restaurant/bar, after working out yesterday to celebrate Navy chick’s birthday. When I’m with them, I’m back to my goofy self and people laugh with me and are very warm with me, and I’m happy despite the fact that I (and most of the other girls) got kicked in both boobs repeatedly by idiots who are new to the class and can only have been aiming at them during the kick and retreat drills. (I was pissed at this one guy who was playing stupid and when we switched, I kicked him across the mat back into the wall more firmly than I’d normally kick anyone during just a drill.) Anyway, while we occupied the large table and the drinks started coming around, the camaraderie and conversation had us rolling. For a few hours, any cloud that had been hanging over me completely dissipated. There was no gnawing at the back of my head and in the pits of my stomach. I was even able to eat a little. I found out that Navy chick, when she’s not totally makeupless and natural during jujitsu, is totally into her gothic attire and face paint. I had no idea! I told her that a couple of years ago, I was inspired to go goth for Halloween, but the little black goth dress I had in mind (which was PERFECT, antique-looking corset top, short slightly flare skirt, black lace tie in the back) could not be found. I think my mom tossed it. So Navy chick said, “That’s easy, just go through my closet!” She is the type of goth that is trampy lingerie-on-the-outside, holey patent-leather thigh-high boots, dog collar and chain and long cape goth. How cool is that?

After leaving Rockin’ Taco, I drove to Mr. W’s. I accepted that invitation to go over because there was no packing or trip preparation I could do at that hour anyway. I was still glowing from the fun I had with my fellow classmates, but that faded so fast it surprised both of us. As soon as I was next to him, I felt the clouds descend upon me. The tightness in my chest returned. Reality once again gripped me. I never thought he and I would be like this. I’d thought our chemistry and communication was flawless. The distance I felt last nite between us made me miss him so much. I tried to bridge the gap between us by explaining, ad nauseum (and he WAS so, so irritated with me, especially because of the lateness of the hour), why I felt what I felt about our issue, just trying to get him to step into my head for an instant so he’d understand. He said other things that made me more afraid. But what he was steadfast on throughout, was that our current issue is not a threat to the relationship itself, meaning that he won’t let it break us up. To him, it’s just an obstacle we need to figure out and maybe reach a compromise on, and wait for it to be over. My head was bouncing all over the place, grasping at straws to get it to hurt less, such as making myself more physically unavailable, distancing myself emotionally, finding self-destructive things to maybe make him care about me, it even crossed my mind to occupy my time with people he wouldn’t appreciate I socialize with, just so I’d feel like what he does that bothers me is then deserved as my punishment for the wrong I’ve done so I could accept it better. I know this is all really unhealthy rationale, but they’re just desperate thoughts.

And then the drive home this morning. The setting in of the dull numbness. I don’t want to care anymore. In fact, I find it hard to find a shred of caring internally. I don’t want to deal with this anymore. This whole thing is retarded. I’ve retained my original opinion about the situation, but the emotional connection to it is missing. Actually, this dull apathy and general flat affect is preferable to the previous aggravation, but I don’t know if it’s going to last, or whether I’d relapse. Actually, it first made me wonder whether I’d been overemotional about the whole thing due to hormones (I’m PMSing), or maybe it’s that once you’ve been depressed, you’re more prone to relapse into depression because your mind and body and neurotransmitters have established a pathway into that. But I’m just documenting this because I think it’s an interesting psychological process, probably akin to the brain’s selective forgetting of recurring traumatic events, or the brain’s invention of a separate personality. All of them are the mind’s — for lack of a better description — escapist shut-downs in some way to avoid further psychological pain yet still remain essentially functional.

I’ve told more than one person, most recently college roommie Diana, that she’ll keep mulling over her misery until one day, she just snaps internally and become sick of the whole thing and then she can walk away from it. I don’t think she’s there yet, and her problem certainly began way before mine. Maybe she has more tolerance than me by nature, or maybe, like I said earlier, my tolerance is decreased because of prior experience with these all-too-familiar feelings. But my first bout with crap like this, I fought it miserably for years without my emotions being shut down by my brain override, and that sucked more than this.

There are a lot of sour grapes rationalization going on. There is a panicked search for sense, followed by a mad scrambling to fortify sanity. There’s a lot of bumping into walls and desperate recoils and un-thought-out “solutions”. There are desperate remedies applied that later backfire and are regretted. And finally, there is the sigh of acceptance, but not as much from finding peace with something as from giving up because the mind and the emotions have shut down from frustration and the sickness of impasse. Such is the psychological process during the flailing in the last moments of life. The moment before the perceived death of a valued relationship.

Check out this profundity. It came to me in the shower just now, where most of my profound thoughts find me (then and while I’m doing my makeup). However, because it’s kinda late and I’d been drinking, maybe it’s not as profound as I think it is at this time. I’ll probably read this in the morning and laugh at myself.

Women work hard on finding compromises and fixing impasses in their relationships with men. We don’t like to shrug off a problem, we try to find a way to resolve it and learn from it so that it doesn’t haunt the couple later. Women are inspired to do this because we feel it makes the relationship better for ourselves. Well, that may be true and great in a marriage. However, for a dating or boyfriend/girlfriend situation where there is no established future, chances are that the girl’s just fixing the guy up for the next bitch to come along. Why do this to ourselves? If the guy’s dumb enough to lose us in the first place, let his next victim suffer what we suffered. What do we care if his place is messy if we’re not going to end up with him? Let his next bitch deal with the cockroaches. His problems are only our problems if we married these problems. Then, improving the getting-along is time invested in the future of the relationship. But if you’re only dating and his messiness bothers you to the point where you can’t stand to be with him anymore, dump him! His problems will leave with him!

I compromised — I did go to the gym, but I only did a cheesy 2 mile run. I’m still tired, but I’m not near tears anymore. I hope I have enough energy to do well in jujitsu tonite and go out afterwards to have birthday drinks with Navy chick and other jujitsu folks. I heard that if you’re emotionally upset, alcohol affects you more. I guess we’ll see. Maybe after tonite I’ll be changing that answer on the survey about whether I’d ever been drunk.

There’s nothing quite like having a horrible and wasted evening, followed by sickening nightmares (I was crying in my nightmare, and when I woke up this morning, there were dried tears down my temples, so I guess I was crying in my sleep, too), waking up late from the nightmare, having your clothing not cooperate, then on the way to work, being harassed by an officer from my city’s Police Dept. If he’s going to be enough of an ass to yell at me, he should be enough of an ass to grope me inappropriately and take that as a bribe. That way I can sue the city.

I really should run at lunch today because I didn’t work out at lunch yesterday (went out w/coworkers and retired coworkers for the weekly lunch huddle), AND I had changed my mind last minute yesterday evening and not gone to jujitsu (total mistake; good deeds never go unpunished). But all I want to do, and right now, in fact, is to crawl into a dark place alone and sleep and/or cry.

It’s a proven way to gain control, isn’t it? You make some pleasant item readily available to a subject until the subject has become dependent on it, and then you start taking it away. When the subject then reaches for the item, what is received instead is a punishment. Sharp reprimand, a mild electric shock, a swat. This makes the item somehow more desirable, more of a treat, in its rare accessibility. The subject ends up curled on the far end of the room, hurt and a little desperate, and then you offer the item again. The surprised subject’s gratitude is boundless. You become a god. You grant, in your sparing, meager ways, that tiny morsel of the much-prized item and the subject is at your mercy. You are the salvation, you dictate generosity, you have all control.

This is why children raised by parents who unpredictably give and take away their affections tend to grow up to be the neediest, offering up their bodies in exchange for attention and acceptance. And for love. Ah, the ever-elusive “love.”

Love is the Item. Love enslaves millions. But what is love, really? Just some big, cosmic, chemical joke.

How quickly the tides turn. It rises, and I know it has to come down, but when it does, I’m always strangely surprised. Call me gullible to believe the so-recent promises of the sea. It’s water. It’s fluid. It’s forever changing. Even if the sea hadn’t told me itself of its consistent inconsistence, I should have seen it, known it, felt it.

It just stings, is all. The contrast always rips me, calls me a fool.

Imagine this scenario. A girl’s hanging out with a couple of her friends at a bar, waiting for her boyfriend to meet up with them. Meanwhile, the conversation is about the girl’s concern that the boyfriend’s been driving too fast and too carelessly, and her friends encouraged her to not only bring it up to him, but to put her foot down about it because when he drives like that, not only is he endangering his own life, but he’s endangering hers, too, when she’s in the car with him. Seeing the seriousness of this car-racing behavior, the girl is worried and when the boyfriend comes in, she brings it up to him. He laughs at her, as she had already told her friends that he would. He feels that he drives competently and that driving like this is fine because he has yet to get into a car accident due to his driving. She tells him that it’s better to be safe than sorry; better to be bored that driving dully takes too long to get to the destination, than to be sitting on the shoulder of the freeway waiting for the ambulance to arrive and wishing that he had slowed down. The boyfriend looks to the girl’s friends while ridiculing her and to the girl’s surprise, her friends laugh with him, meet his eyes as if understanding his pain at how paranoid she is, and join in the ridicule. He even looked at the bartender at some point in this, seeking support, and the bartender smiled sympathetically at him (despite the fact that the girl was the customer and it’s in the bartender’s best interest to stay out of it, if not kiss her ass). She’s not too blind to see this, and she’s not too stupid not to recognize it. She doesn’t need her friends to fight her battles for her, but some support such as stating the statistics stated to her earlier would be nice, and if they don’t want to be involved, they should’ve just completely stayed uninvolved in the conversation. The boyfriend did agree to drive more carefully, but not without throwing a last smart-ass comment/joke out about it. Something about would she like them to just stay home from now on so they don’t have to drive anywhere.

Altho one of the friends, at the first opportune time, had privately come up to the girl to apologize, the girl finds herself now resolving to allow her boyfriend to drive like a speed demon, and she finds herself hoping that they are met with some misfortune due to it, just so he knows that he’s wronged her.

The injustice that the above is an analogy for kept my heartrate up more effectively than my weightlifting and biking did at my lunchtime workout.