NOSTALGIA IS A WEAPON

To my right, sitting on the bed with me, a rotating cast of items: Czerny and Chopin music folios, Chris Adrian’s book The Children’s Hospital, a burned mix cd. Among these are the usual suspects, the ever-present: my external hard drive, headphones, and laptop. These things are only displaced from their home every other week to change the sheets, and on the rare occasion when I have guests.  I get strange looks when people hear that I sleep with all this stuff on my bed. “But they take up so much room!” No, not really. I don’t need that much space, and I’ve got more than half my bed all to myself. “It’s convenient,” I tell them, “to be able to reach over and check my email or jot down a note when I first wake up, or to listen to music when I can’t sleep.” This is true, but I suspect it’s not the whole truth. It seems like it’s easier to feel lonely when you’ve got a big bed to yourself. Lying there in the dark, you extend your arm under the sheets and find only cold, empty space along your entire reach. The feeling of isolation that comes along with that is not generally conducive to helping me fall asleep with a clear mind.

These objects are a poor substitute for a warm body to snuggle up to. But for now they are a collective placeholder for what I’ve not yet found. So it goes.

Besides, the hug pillow just creeps me out for some reason.

I’ve been experiencing some strange physical issues lately. Complete exhaustion despite a full night’s rest, a substantially reduced appetite (and therefore loss of weight- nearly ten pounds in two weeks), an occasional “buzzing” feeling in my head, increased heart rate during periods of no physical exertion, etc. It’s been going on steadily for a few weeks now, so in a moment of caution I dropped by the walk-in clinic the other day and had them do a quick blood test. No mono, thank god. Physically I checked out okay. “Probably just a bug,” they said. “Drink lots of fluid and get some sleep.” Both of which I was doing in excess anyway.

But then I was talking to my mother this evening, and she brought up a very interesting point:
“You know better than most that emotional stress can display itself physically. Even if you don’t think there’s something going on, there might be something going on.”

Um, well, yeah. There *has* been something going on (though she’s fairly unaware of it, at my discretion), so this makes a lot of sense. Since it’s been situationally-based turmoil rather than a meaningless depression I haven’t thought of doing anything about it. She suggested I pay my therapist, who I haven’t talked to since September, a visit. The woman worked pretty closely with me for well over a year, after all.

Yeah, I think I’ll do that.

Of course, today is Saturday. Office isn’t open till Monday. Drat.

(Completely unrelated: I’m more than mildly embarrassed by the last entry. It worked in my head, but the way it came out is not at all how I intended. I’ll end up doing a massive rewrite on it at some point. It’s a good thing I’m not a professional writer; that entry, like many others, was published before it was finished. I’ve become so infrequent with my updates that I’ve now put self-enforced time constraints on the writing process. The result is entries that I know aren’t ready to be released, and ones that I’m extremely unsatisfied with/mortified by the next day. Sorry for subjecting you guys to crap.)

I’ve gone another month without posting. How the hell did that happen? More importantly, where the hell did my thirty days go?

Lots of actual “stuff” has happened/is happening, so I’m working on a real entry now. Hopefully it’ll be up within the next 24 hours. It’ll most assuredly be private, so apologies to those who read from RSS feeds. I think you’ve all got actual accounts here, but if you’re reading and don’t (and want to know what’s been up), you know where to find me.

Also a quick apology for the theme change (again). I discovered the last one had some imbedded porn-related crap in it. Google my online pseudonym and go about five pages in- I can promise I had nothing to do with an older lesbian sex party, nor the preteen sex (ew). I actually like this theme better anyway. Anyone know how to rid myself of those search results?