Shit

The last 24 hours as I recall them:

First 9 hours: while eating 1 million calories worth of sucrose: leaving work, stopping off for coffee, continuing on my way home.
Next 3: Coming home, giving cats their meds and food, editing blog entries I wrote on iPhone, mooning over Frank, chatting on IM and while browsing websites with neat stuff (Inventables, United Nuclear and American Science & Surplus). Some time after midnight (my computer tried to shut itself down automagically at midnight) I went to bed, listened to the cats fight. and fell asleep.
At hour 18 (7 AM): Turning off the alarm ("it's Saturday I can sleep some more before going to the vet, which closes at 1 PM, and the bike store, which closes at 6 PM.")
Less than hour ago: Thinking "I should get up now," wearily sitting up, noticing the cats sleeping butt to butt next to me, picking up the iPad to check the time. WTF, it's 5:30 PM?

According to my confused thermometer (there is a marked difference between ears and tries), I may have a fever of 101.5. Yeah, yeah, so I like to check my vitals.

Candy

I broke down today and ate simple sugars*. It's the first time since Tuesday last week. It all went wrong this morning. I was distracted by shopping on Amazon on the light-rail and got off at the wrong station. Because my face remained five inches from the iPhone as I walked down the platform I didn't notice until after I submitted my order.
I squinted into the distance and realized things were different.

My eyes tried to superimpose a road - my road - where there was green, green grass, and I could still vividly recall my station's name being announced while faced with a completely different one spelled out on the station-sign. It was a surreal wait as my mind reshaped to take in the new reality.

When I finally arrived at work I felt flustered and hungry. In the "cafe", which is a fancy name for a room with a sink and a coffee maker, I found a box with fund-raising chocolate bars. I helped myself to three, which I planned to savor, and went to my desk where I promptly ate them all.

At 4 PM, someone reminded me of a meeting and I got myself some "coffee" and the remaining two bars. I left the box for someone else to recycle. While trying to figure out why I was in the meeting, I ate them both, and left when it become obvious that the other attendees were planning on bickering over abstract concepts of project management - For Fucking Ever.

Just moments ago I finished a delicious, very thick, hot chocolate (free) and a piece of apple tart (paid for) at a cafe.

In a matter of hours I have made up for a week and a half's abstinence. I am impressed by myself.

* I am trying to figure out a way of saying I am a complex carbohydrate that's broken down into simple sugars, but I can't make it work.

Ugh.

Frank - for some reason I miss him more than ever.

Perhaps what I miss most is believing that I mattered to him. I don't think he was indifferent, but for whatever reason he decided not to express his non-indifference in a way that'd make sense to me. It's such a let down. I am tempted to equate my worth with his disinterest, but I'll pass. Don't worry though, the unexpressed self-doubt, self-loathing and judgment is fighting for room in my head with the resentment and anger and hurt I feel toward him. My head-ache and horniness are betting on the outcome.

I stopped following him in Reader. The jolt every time I saw his name was too much.

I should be pleased he took my injunction against communication seriously. He is not insulting me by presuming I didn't mean it. In the light of recent and historical feelings of helplessness and invisibility it would be hypocritical not to...

It's odd that with his absence he gives me something I crave so much, something that is so absolutely unavailable in his presence.

Finally you see me, Frank.

Brilliant spam

I have to admit I am amazed by this technique for spamming that I just discovered. All of the referring sites in my blog's log are fakes. One is a hardcore "amateur" pr0n site, another sells a cure for shyness (natural, I am sure), a third offers information on online degrees. None of these have links to my blog and obviously never did.

This means that there are enough bloggers who check their logs for signs that they are gaining in notoriety (and eagerly visits referring URLs) to make it worth writing a bot to troll the Interwebs while sending false referrer info.

I should do this too. Cheaper than GoogleAds.

Estupido

Dammit, where are my glasses?

So many clever ploys have failed to solve the problem of the missing glasses, keys, wallets. Usually because I forget that I have a clever ploy. While married, I tasked Ted with searching the house for these items every morning. He didn’t like it.

Recently I bought a wallet that attaches to my pants with a retractor, because I have a habit of sticking my wallet in my front pocket and losing it. It's a hassle replacing the cards even when the prospect of calling people doesn't make you shuffle nervously around the house for days or weeks. I also bought a key storage, which attaches to the house wall. In it I intend to keep the door key, which is currently under the doormat. I have used the doormat key so many times. The one time I forgot to put it back, I was able to climb in the kitchen window, which made me realize I should use the safety stop on the windows.

My glasses are usually in one of three places: by the computer, by the bed, or in the bathroom. They're probably there right now, but when you can't see, such unspecific information becomes useless. In my brain, a plan is taking shape involving vividly colored boxes attached to the walls (by the computer, in the bedroom and in the bathroom). Not that my plan is any help now.

Argh. I'll just have to do without.

[Edit 2011-06-24]

Stargirl

I haven't cried like this in ages.

I have been so tired and angry lately. Everyday, as soon as I get home from work I have curled up in the papasan chair with "food" dripping with lard and the cat on my lap. I have battled messily with the ipad and hulu and netflix in search of some TV show not too challenging.

I have stuffed myself until sick, and I have sworn every night to stop. All I can say is that at least it's thousands of calories of something other than candy.

It feels good to cry feel. Even though the urge to cut is now lurking.

I have decided to ween off the Effexor. Yes, on my own. Every day I take the capsule apart and pour out about half of the pearls. I haven't had the energy to write. After the feeding frenzies I have snuck off to bed at 9:30.

I try to hack it but I don't know if I will. Maybe I am not trying hard enough or too hard, or perhaps my expectations are all wrong. All the fighting is wearing me down.

Back on Effexor

I got my refill yesterday, finally. It's unsettling the difference it makes. The tingling is gone, and the nausea and dizziness. I am hungry for solid foods and able to focus on the screen without an unpleasant lurching in my stomach as the world tips over.

Gone is also the enhanced empathy that allowed me to interact in a more relaxed manner with Sergey, that brought tears to my eyes when I read SAA's mission statement, and that left me giggling like an insane person when listening to Friday Night Comedy from BBC (to the consternation of the other people waiting for the train).

Yesterday, thoughts of my failures as a friend and human were circling my mind like vultures. I made several heartfelt attempts at reaching out and starting anew with a number of people that I have let go. Now, well, it seems less pressing.

I liked the person I was yesterday, minus the anxiety and the suspicion that no one really likes me and that I am quite useless. Today I am not useless.

Today, I am back to impatient when faced with people's idiosyncrasies, having to suppress my anger when people underestimate my intellectual capacity.

I can't tell who I really am.

I Will Never Ask

Every time I sign on to IM I look for Frank's handle. I feel rather tragic when it doesn't appear. Tears will come into my eyes if I let them.

I can hear how it sounds and it makes me wonder: how do people process this stuff? How do they process loss that doesn't have death to justify the sufferer's pain?

It's my observation that we treat people rather impatiently, dismissively even, when they grieve lost friendships or loves. I roll my eyes myself when some acquaintance simply won't shut up about this person who clearly doesn't give a damn, As if showing some empathy would make me equally pathetic, as if it would make me a reject too.

What do other people do? The ones with enough pride to not want to seem so banal? Do they just suck in their stomachs, square their shoulders and soldier on? Do they lonelily listen to Damien Rice when no one can see their weakness? Do they punch walls when it still hurts when they wake up the next morning?

Or?

Can they somehow push it away into some dusty corner of their minds as if they never felt anything at all? Is that why we're taught that dwelling on unrequited love is for teenagers and women with a propensity for Harlequin only, and that romance and feelings are for losers, an unworthy pursuit of adults with jobs and children? Is it that for the majority of people, myself excluded, that's what love is: a childish distraction, something to grow out of?

Years ago, in my psychiatrist office, I told the doctor that I simply couldn't let Frank go. As the words left my mouth I winced. If there is something that's been endlessly repeated and I have accepted as true, it's that we control our feelings, and that's it's never really a matter of "can't", it's always "won't". The psychiatrist scoffed at me, and told me I had to grow up, I was married, I had to accept there were things I couldn't have, there is no such thing as can't.

It seems to me now that my divorce is final more than a year ago, because I screwed Frank, and he is still a frequent guest in my mind, that my psychiatrist and Wayne D Dyer are either wrong, or I am an exceptionally weak and immature person, who probably likes feeling rejected and humiliated and unhappy.

Or maybe it's true that some of us, when we fall for someone, tend to get fixated, and that for us letting go is like weening off a drug. Yeah, we can tell it's bad for us, that the very strength of our feelings, reality based or not, stands in the way of interactions on an equal footing with the object of desire. Yet, because it's so intense we tell ourselves that unequal is better than nothing.

Why is it that we acknowledge other types of behavior as compulsive and deceased: a need to check that the coffee maker is off that's so strong that the sufferer puts it in her backpack and brings it to work, but when it comes to infatuation suddenly we're in control? Why is love a choice even when that emotion leads you down a path of bad choices and self-destructiveness?

A couple of years into our marriage Ted felt driven to seek out prostitutes. The therapist he saw to help him sort that out, and I, accepted that he was compelled, that he was driven by sexual addiction that was spiraling out of control.

To deal with my fear and distrust, and in order to suppress my fixation with Ted and the suspicions that had caused me to discover what he was up to in the first place, I changed my mail password to "I will never ask." It was to remind myself not to ask where he'd been, what he'd been up to, to not check his email, or our bank accounts for unjustified withdrawals of $200.

Because clearly, and my therapist at the time, my psychiatrist, and Ted agreed, that I was the one who wasn't controlling controllable emotions.

Fuck you, you fucking assholes. And fuck you, Frank for being such a pathetic excuse of a friend.

What? I am not thin enough for you, not extroverted enough (with loads of cool friends for you to claim as your own), not smart enough to let you bully me into silence with your brilliance, not black enough for your racist relatives?

Yeah, I'm sorry if you thought there were no vitriol coming your way. Cue: joke about women scorned.

Note to self: I will never ask why I am not good enough. Low self-esteem is for losers.

And then it was Late Saturday

I still haven't refilled my Effexor. I feel awful, physically speaking that is. I might as well clarify that since my complaints are usually of mental anguish. I feel feverish, but my extremities are frozen. I have to run to the bathroom, clenching, at regular intervals. I am shivering. If I move too fast, like just now when I shook my head at my own silliness, I get goosebumps. Still the electric sensations in my body and head, but now I feel dizzy too; earlier when trying to read my monitor I got a really unsettling sense of vertigo as the text seemed to wobble and bulge.

It's like I am having the worst hang-over.

Makes me wonder what the hell it is I have been taking.

Along with the brain zaps, a thought has kept re-occurring to me the last couple of days. In his last email to me Frank wrote that he looked forward to reading about how my life was so much better without him in this blog.

And I say to you Sir: "If only!"

Like my therapist I am convinced that in the long run my life will be better, once I have gotten through the weepies and stopped riffling though the Interwebs to catch a glimpse of life. What brought me to the point of requesting reciprocity was his lack of interest in me (Hello!! Do you see me?) He'll never be back to this blog - just like he was not interested enough to follow me on Google reader (out of politeness to avoid hurting my feelings even).

Coming back to my blog would be an improvement. It would suggest I mean something to him. It would be an unprecedented invitation to friendship-negotiations, almost like saying "Ok, I really can't do the Facebook thing because you seem insane and unstable, but what could I do instead?"

Pants Pooping Friday

My stomach it really upset. I don't know if it's from eating an entire loaf of high fiber mana bread last night, but my farts are not safe.

Withdrawal from Effexor could also account for my stomach problems. I have yet to figure out a good and efficient way to do refills. Anything that depends on me taking action tends to be procrastinated upon until a state of emergency is a fact.

I am a few days without Effexor now. The symptoms are pronounced: every time I move the involved muscles tingle. When I get startled I get intense fear-tingles throughout my body. It literally feels like I got away with my life when the cat unexpectedly pokes me with its paw.

There are many anecdotes about the withdrawal effects of Effexor on the Interwebs and they are all true. In addition to electric sensations in the body and head, impaired cognitive ability, chills, and other neat stuff people have reported, I get these amazingly vivid dreams which cling to memory in a totally undreamish way.

They're mostly semi nightmares, meaning they're not outright terrifying, but there is a sense of discomfort and unease, however; there have also been some awesome sex dreams. This morning I was trying to deep throat a two foot long cock, attached to some hybrid of Kanye West and an anonymous dream personality. It was hot, except for the base of the penis which was covered in some nasty looking white goo.

Another unusual thing about these dreams is that they are serial. They continue with the same cast and crew when I go back to sleep - even 18 hours later. That's seriously messed up. No, the dream is not repeating, I continued the dream I have yesterday morning when I got to sleep last night.

Yeah, I'll need to get to the pharmacy today, or all future sexual encounters will be dwarfed by Anonymous Dream Personality.

Update on Frank
No, change with regards to Frank. Although I am finally beginning to define the role he played in my life. It turns out I spoke to him about things I generally didn't with anyone else. They were often not things of great emotional importance per se, it's just that we had a rapport. We had continuous interactions over IM 24 hour/day. He was, as it turns out, my life partner, the presence I always counted on, even when not fulfilling, or encouraging, or appreciative... Yeah, he was my family. It is so tempting to go back to that.

It's not trivial or binary. I love Frank, even his foibles, perhaps those especially, because there is nothing that makes someone seem so vulnerable as vanity and insecurity. I have to keep reminding myself that's it's my insecurities, and the lack of reciprocity on his part, that makes it intolerable to have any kind of relationship with him. I am not able to love unconditionally.

A Dirge* of Friendship

And, an Ode** to Love

It was silly of me to think it would be easy to let go of fights over definitions, connotations and what is real and what is, in fact, constructed.

And, to think that the ebb and flow of anger and happiness, giggles and exasperation would be replaced by coffee and cats seems silly too.

It appears true that ambiguity is the best I can hope for, and that when I toss it away I won't be indifferent. Missing the sadness will be a sad affair, no longer an actor but simply remembering.

What are old emails to being outraged over IM?

* dirge is a kind of boat.
** ode is a kind of sad poem.

I'm No Superman

Two episodes into season nine [Med School] of Scrubs, I finally managed to tear myself out of my reverie. At first I told myself that staying home from work sleeping, had nothing to do with Frank disappearing off of IM, because I really felt nothing (other than a growing anxiety that I'd loose my job, fixed by hurriedly going back to sleep.) I certainly didn't think about him, but after inexplicably crying in big, hulking sobs when someone who resembled him walked by on my screen I had to admit that I am not as in touch with my feelings as I'd like to think, and that I have no idea how to handle them. Neither indulging heavily nor complete denial seem to work.

I'd also prefer to think that my inability to handle negative emotions is innately about me and not about the object of those emotions. That is, if I were less crazy I wouldn't react like this. I'd hate to think someone had the power to put me out of commission.

Escalating my lies to my boss - by Friday I did not only have a fever that wouldn't go away but I'd been to the doctor and received antibiotics - I managed to alternately sleep and watch Scrubs from Tuesday evening until noon Saturday.

No, actually, the Provigil did nothing for this. It's possible to sleep even when taking it.

But I am moving forward, I think, that desperate need to reconcile at any cost is not there anymore. Let's hope it stays that way. The worst part of living is that every moment of clarity inevitable dissipates, and leaves not only befuddlement but incredible disappointment.