August 19, 2001

Yesterday was my birthday and it rocked!

Gemma was really nice to me all day, and just let me relax at home. I read all of the weekend newspapers, feet up, enjoyed a couple of beers, and played with the dogs.

Then in the evening hit #everything and had my birthday party online! As I have a severe headcold at the mo' the last thing I wanted was a house full of people, so the #e crew were just so cool. It really felt like a party (especially that I was pumped full of pseudoephedrine and Becks Bier, heh.) Footprints even called me on my mobile from Israel, and alex.tan came to the jam via an easyEverything (how apt) in London.

Thanks everyone, I had a great day.

Happy Birthday, SimonC!

onto the daylog...

"Well you can buy me a drink and I'll tell ya what I've seen.." Tom Waits

List of essentials for a 564 mile roadtrip in 24 hours:

Music: John Hammond Wicked Grin a collection of Tom Waits covers sung by John Hammond with Tom Waits as well, Tom also produced this CD. Rather incrediable. Beck Odelay self explanatory.

Other Stuff: Clothes, 2 cases of cold canned beer, a bag of chips, a bag of northern lights, and a co-worker.

We headed out Friday night, to go to a festival west of Albany. (see august 16th, 2001). After sitting in much traffic, we finially pulled into the lot at Indian Lookout Ranch in Mariaville, NY. It was 12:14 AM, and the lot was full. We could hear Govt. Mule playing over the hill. I hopped out and immediately walked around to get the scoop on the super long line of irate hippies in their cars. It seems that, oh, 20,000 people showed up for an venue that could maybe handle 8-10000 comfortably. Luckily, we missed out on the super traffic snarls that occured ealier in the day. Seems that a few weekends before, at Camp Creek (another festival at the same spot) the kids brought in alot of hard drugs to what is normally a low-key scene, where stuff is tolerated as long as it isn't seen. Unfourtantly, one kid was caught will over hundred rolls (Extasy) and 60k in cash. So needless to say, security was tight and pissed off. To boot, tickets were $120, not the $90 as advertised. So we chilled in the holding lot, and had the best night of sleep I've had in three years, the cool upperstate mountain air carressing all the stress of Long Island away. I wasn't even upset at missing the show.

So for Saturday, we decided to check out Woodstock, NY. The town is very near the site of Woodstock '69 (and two later MTV sponsored events we won't even mention). Besides a little touristy, and the lack of kind people.. translation, dirty hippies to you tech/mods), it was a very mellow and relaxing place. Bought a crystal, some hand made Nag Champa incense, and a cd. Also found Foxfire 2, an out-of-print book that records mountain lore and stories. A hard to find and appreciated steal at $4.

So Woodstock was a blast, we decided to return to Long Island rather than the 4 hours west to a party somewhere in the woods we may or may not find..wasn't equipped for the whole roadtrip deal. I used the time (since my co-pilot was asleep most of the way) to organize my thoughts a bit. I realized I hate Long Island, with a passion, but that I am stuck here for the winter at least. I realized I am going to miss Digo more than I care to admit..but hey guys, good luck. I'll see you soon in Florida. I realized that I have a good oppurtunity with the girl from CT, if I want to reach out and take it. Or maybe I should just chill and enjoy the sporadic weekend visits and not even go into the mental vomit area of my heart with her. Yeah...

So a saturday night, home, and clean, sitting naked at the computer, listening to Tom Petty's Echoes and drinking a Busch (roomate is in Arizona until tomorrow. Can't wait to sleep. Good dreams, fellow slaves of technology (wink)

I see my reflection in the mirrors at work, my image growing steadily as I walk closer. Wider, taller. Mostly wider. My hips expand to a disgusting circumference, my arms inflated to the size of fatness I fear every day. My stomach protruding, thighs bulging, chin sagging and neck thickening. I have to get away from the mirrors, go sit in the bathroom alone and free from hideous reflections.

I think about throwing up.

I’ve never done it before, though not from a lack of trying. It scares me to death. But being fat scares me even more. I sit very still, feeling the Wendy’s I had for lunch digesting loudly in my stomach. It would be so easy to just regurgitate it all, pretend it never happened. I never really ate all that food. It was just a dream.

I close my eyes, think back to the months in the hospital. The months of being led to a room at five thirty every morning, naked beneath a paper gown, turned around to face backwards and step up onto the scale. I hear the weights sliding, clicking, the number dropping each time. I feel the pride of sickness, the finality of suicide.

I long to be free of it. To go a single day without hating my body, without criticizing every curve and despising every limb my thumb and pinky cannot encircle. The hours I waste worrying about what other people think, what other people see when they look at me. To face the mirror without fighting tears of frustration and failure. To be able to eat without contemplating every single calorie and gram of fat and exactly where it will end up on my body as soon as I swallow it. To stop thinking of the calories I burn by twitching my leg, a habit learned from fellow patients down in Iowa. To not constantly hold in my stomach to make it a concave mockery of health, topped by ribs easily counted at a casual glance.

Three years, one month, five days.. That is how long I’ve been on my own, hospital-free, “recovered.” And yet I can’t get rid of the thoughts in my head. People tell me I should be a model, a stripper, a mannequin. I thank them politely and scream on the inside, ”You don’t know what you’re saying!” Guilt, horrible guilt. Did I just accept a compliment? Heaven forbid.

Alex, the guy who called me after seeing pictures my cousin had, offering me the phone numbers of modeling agencies, offering to help me, saying I was beautiful. The contradictions between the world’s reality and my own makes for some confusing interactions. I laughed off his compliments, said I was nothing special, had my picture taken with him and then left. My cousin, a mother of two who wears a size zero, tells me of the great fun she had while modeling for Victoria Secret a few years ago. I want to get away. Too much attention, too much of everything. I only want to disappear, quietly and permanently. Leave me alone.

The Day of Blah

Today, I felt quite...well...blah. All I can think to describe it was... *shrug* blah.

I woke up this morning in a very strange state.
I tried to play a video game, but it only seemed to annoy me.
I tried to read a book, but I was restless.
I didn't want to move, yet I couldn't sit still.

I have no idea what is imposing itself upon my psyche today, but I really wish it would let me be.
I seem to be in a state of limbo that I cannot put my finger on.

Perhaps, perhaps...I shall....No, I shouldn't....But... *sigh* I'm feeling quite insane. So unlike me not to know what I am thinking. I want nothing, yet I want everything.

I suppose I will wander back into Anarchy Online and find my way to Tir County for another mindless mission to lose myself in.

This node has been brought to you by indecision and confusion.

Maybe you, too, have been there and this will serve to make you feel a little more sane. At the very least, it may give you comfort that there are others just as mad.

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I was watching Disney's The Kid today. It's one of those movies that never goes on sale, so I finally bought it. It really annoys me that the studio feels the need to include their name in the title. Just ask them; it's not The Kid; it's Disney's The Kid

For those who don't know, it's a story about a 40-year-old man who is rich and successful in his career, but whom everyone thinks is a jerk. Enter this 8-year-old boy who comes out of nowhere and starts annoying him, and who voila turns out to be himself as a child, magically transported through time to (unbeknownst to either of them) help him change his life and re-become the wonderful person he was as a child. Or maybe he was a hallucination. Doesn't matter. Blah, blah, blah, happy ending.
It's a nice movie.

After they both come to the realization that they are the same person, the kid gets disappointed in how he turned out as a grownup.

You're 40 years old, you're not married, you don't fly jets, you don't even have a dog! I grew up to be a loser.

That really hit home.

• I'm 40 years old. That, in and of itself, isn't a tragedy. Happens to everyone, if they're lucky.
• I'm not married. I hate that.
• I don't fly jets. Again, no biggie, but I was an airplane buff as a kid and for awhile dreamed of flying -- no, not 747s, not even the time one of the first ones came to San Jose -- private jets for bigwigs.
• I don't have a dog. I wish I had a dog. I had three dogs while I was growing up. I would have a dog now, but due to the fact that I live alone, I hate the idea of buying (or even renting) a house, and I wouldn't have a dog in an apartment, even if I lived in one that allowed it, because that's not fair to a dog.

I do often feel like a loser. In the movie, the man decides to change his life. (It helps that, near the end of the movie, he happens to see himself from 30 years hence, and sees that he was in fact successful in it.) I'm about 9 months into my similar journey, minus the benefits of visits from the future and the magic of Hollywood.

One thing I'm doing is seeing a psychotherapist, to find out why I've been pretty unhappy for most of my life, why I am 95% asocial, why I only love people that I have no hope of sharing my entire life with (I don't believe the only part, but it has happened more than once.) We've spent much time talking about things in my childhood, and a couple of books that she's given me pretty much come right out and blame everything bad in a person's life on things that happen in their childhoods. The books usually only talk about severe, horrible things like being beaten by your parents, or having an alcoholic, drug-dealing parent leave when you're ten years old and not seeing them for twenty years, and seem to imply that this has happened to pretty much everyone. Joanna doesn't buy that, nor do I, but she does say that much smaller things that you couldn't necessarily point to and say "That's why I'm screwed up", but which happened over and over again when you were a child, all leave their scars and do affect how you turn out. A bit of this is seen later in the movie, when the man and The Kid are back in The Kid's time, and we see his father tell him that it's his fault that his mother is dying.

The man in the movie does go to a psychiatrist, which is a small part of the story, but it does raise the point of childhood trauma, and this busy, busy, Type A personality man later takes time off from work and just has The Kid tell him anything and everything about his childhood that he doesn't remember. Well, that might be a help. I've remembered many random things during the last several months, sometimes via self-hypnosis, sometimes they just pop up during the day. Unfortunately, none of it seems particularly important, and like the man listening to The Kid, I don't know what I'm looking for.

This year, I have done some things which represent amazing progress; sometimes it's more obvious to my friends than to me, because I have so far to go and it's easy to think more of that than the small start that I've made. I feel I've been backsliding a bit the last few weeks. It is so hard, when I find myself fantasizing about a life with Nolan, to tell myself to put that aside and keep my eye on the ball.

Seeing this movie was a good reminder that my life is far from over, and the life I'm just starting now -- but can't see the ending of in two hours -- may yet be happy and fulfilling. I just have to do it.

So far this morning I have been really bored. I've got alot of stress on me because in 8 hours I have to introduce a "Back To School" speaker to my church against my will. I just love how my mother volunteers me to do these things... In my boredom and frustration and a bit of insomnia I decided to do the most logical thing: go porn surfing.

Thankfully up until this point I have had a pretty satisfying sexual life so I had a little trouble wading through the flash animations and gratuitous pop-up windows. I eventually lost hope and decided to just go with the old newsgroup method. Downloading pornographic binaries in the wee hours of the night is the perfect way to relieve the stress caused by an upcoming religious obligation. I'm sure most men of the cloth would agree with me.

Well everything was fine until the end. The period when I had time to just sit and think about what I had just done. Masturbation in itself is pretty depressing. I mean I am not a bad looking guy. I could have been with a woman at that time. not myself... I was satisfied in the deed but not in the emotions it caused. oh well, hopefully a wall of sleep with wash those away.

The past few days have been ... painful. Mostly from over-exposure to self-analysis rays. That kind of radiation can get you every time, you know. Continuing with that metaphor, I think I've contracted radiation sickness. The inner-skin of my heart feels blistered and raw.

My fault, I suppose. Constant exposure would've bred endurace, so I guess I've been remiss in my duties. There that saying of "My body is my temple" , but there doesn't exist an equivilent proverb for the mind. The only provebs about the mind are about its strength against others (mind and body) or its weaknesses. That's a bit peculiar, in our society. I mean, we are approaching the mid-point of the brain race (which was started by the Manhattan Project, and ended the arms race).

But that's another worry. That last era of thinking was ended by a war that involved very nearly a third of the geo-political globe. The dark ages were ended in lots of small areas (only a couple of continents). If you continue this progression into the past, you plot a near-linear shrink in size of the effect of every (r)evolution. Plot it into the future, and you end up with a rise that quickly encompases every living being on the planet. No neutrality. Many bystanders (innocent, disintristed or other.)

Arg! I keep doing this to myself. I cannot carry the wieght of the world because I should not. And I should not because I have no ability to affect all of it. That's where the idea of "If you can't do anything about it, don't worry about it" comes to rescue my sanity. Or what tatters that remain of it.

Waiting. That's the thing. I'm going to wait until I can sneak myself over to a lever on a fulcrum that would let me move the world. And if I'm smart I'll leave an opening so I can get back to it, to do it right after I messed up the first time. (Failure is something you can count on. It's success that can catch you unawares. But one must plan even for those remote possibilties, no matter how unlikely they are.)