cindy's world

My judge’s wife called while we were in session (the attorneys were giving the jury their closing arguments) and I took down a message for him on one of those pre-printed message pad forms. On the line that asks for who called, I wrote his wife’s name, and the line underneath prompts the caller’s identity with “OF _______”, on which I wrote “your Kingdom.” I then passed the message up to the bench to him. After a few minutes, he passed it back down to me. He’d added to “your Kingdom” with “and Outlying Realms of Spiritual and/or Metaphysical Dimensions, including but not limited to, various parallel universes.” Just like that. He took up 3 lines to write that. He later said to me, as he was getting off the bench, that he had to make sure I refer to his rightful realms properly.

What are we gonna do with ourselves, being so politically correct and eggshell-walking as a country so as not to offend anyone by using the old honorary day name of “Secretary’s Day”? What’s an “Administrative Professional,” anyway? I just refer to myself as “courtroom slave.”

I was just in the jury room giving our 14 jurors the orientation and rules for being in the jury room, explaining the buzzer system to them, etc. I asked if anyone had any questions about what I’ve told them. One man raised his hand and said, “Happy Secretary’s Day.” I paused. He had unknowingly belittled my position but with good intent. It’s like when a naive person with no racism in his heart refers to me as an “oriental.” If it were anyone else, it may have been ugly as the well-intended speaker got taught a politically correct awareness lesson he didn’t expect. I said to him cheerily and politely, “I’m not a secretary, but thank you; I’ll let the judge’s secretary know.” He blundered, “Oh, clerk or whatever.”

I can see college roommie Diana (an attorney) wincing at this. If it were certain other clerks, this juror would’ve been thrown out of the building after his blood and various body tissue were smeared all over the jury room walls.

Ah, politically correct America. What’s an oriental to do? Guess I’ll ponder that later whilst eating my fortune cookie, unless my mom calls to give me crap about why I’m not a doctor, engineer or an accountant, which are professions which someone would never mistake for a secretary.

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.

Sometimes her eyes are wide not from surprise, but from sadness. The face is fallen, and she looks up to keep the tear from dropping. She remembers how things were, and she knows the difference all too well between then and now. She remembers the way he couldn’t keep his hands off her. She remembers the way his eyes used to appreciate her. She remembers when she used to be the sunlight on his day. Now, she makes no difference. He pulls away and leaves her, distracted by a cornucopia of other things. She knows her touch is ineffectual, her pleading look is left unread. She sits alone in darkness, feeling the cold air swirl to replace the warmth he left behind. To anyone else, him included, nothing is wrong. No one remembers like her to notice the slip, the slide downwards. She’s sorry that she notices, but she’s scared to let the memories go. It’s not about living in the past, back when she felt important and meaningful. It’s about the fear of acquiescing to mediocrity when she knows better how it could be, how it once was. Love always seems to be the quest to find what was lost.

Sometimes what people are so quick to call insecurity isn’t being needlessly paranoid of losing someone because you fear you aren’t good enough to keep that person. Sometimes what it really is, is knowing that you’ve lost your favor with someone who hasn’t lost his hold on you.