introspective intuitive motherfucker.

I've met two people in the last two days who told me that they were happy with their lives and thus ready and unafraid to die. Makes me feel like a coward, but what sort of omen is this?

One of the same people asked me what my MBTI is, which is INFJ, which suits me so much it kind of freaks me out. He pointed out that less than 1% of the population shared the same personality type, and thus less than half of a percent of women, which made me feel a bit odd. The point being, that in a clinical or statistical sense, great swaths of the population will never be as introspective as I have to endure being every day. He pointed out something about online dating and dating in general, that most people will end up settling with dating the best person they find after a set period of searching. Which is so true for most people, yet so not true for nearly everyone I know personally, that it kind of shocked me. And left me thinking about what other habits I'm burdened with that others might find themselves completely free of. Empathizing with everyone all the time, even people I don't like. Giving my incredibly meager monies to Greenpeace and Children International (the latter, I won't be able to stop until that kid fucking turns 18, or I'll have to loathe myself forever). And especially, especially, seeking out and idealizing the sad and damaged people around me, seeing myself in them, wanting to comfort them and thus comfort myself of our collective existential dread.

What am I supposed to do with this weird package of traits?

Getting rid of the sweet things.

A lot of nonsense has been happening with my brainspace and bodyspace. I have a new psych and a new therapist, as well as some new medicine, which I just started taking two days ago. It's kind of a trip, starting over. I am in search of my brain's reset button, I feel like, as I am getting worse and worse at making myself do things that need doing. For awhile I have been sort of secretly convinced that I will fail out of grad school, for instance, and in a way have been conducting myself as though that were already a foregone conclusion. The new therapist etc is a step in the opposite direction, trying to direct my energies towards staying. Trying to rally my poor little broken brainspace.
In a weird move, while I am trying to do all this, I have focused in a lot on my weight and physical health. Three years of SSRIs have made me a plusher person than I was before, let's say. Maybe more than 20 lbs plusher. I'd like to reverse this trend, but it will be difficult...I've started counting the ol' calories though, and I bought a scale for the first time in many years. Oh what a wretched thing, to own a scale!
My biggest goal here is to stop sweetening my coffees and teas, drinking alcohol as much as I love to drink alcohol, and avoiding any kind of carbonation situation. This is terrible, because I am passionately in love with sugary sweet things...almost as much as I am in love with salty things. But, one step at a time. I want very much to feel like I can grab onto some part of my life that seems uncontrollable and establish some order to it. So this is where I am starting.

Correspondance.

I really miss knowing and talking to people, and I always wish that more people were around for me to know and talk to and befriend, but for some reason in general the people I've liked best in my life are unavailable to me. I feel as if I only know maybe 5 people left in the entire world, which is sort of hurtful and sad, like my existence is being erased. Many times, I've written emails to one friend or another who I cared a lot about and who happened to be particularly poor at responding to emails, begging for details about their life, to have those emails go unanswered. I understand why, but I don't understand why. It's as if I've spent my entire childhood, adolescence, and nascent adulthood trying to convince myself I have friends.

I am particularly lonesome for a lot of things I can't describe. If I were a better, more organized person, I would be reading school books instead of writing this letter to no one. Much, I guess, as my friends read their books or do their work instead of writing letters to me. I am drinking an alcoholic drink from France that is called "pastis". It is a pale delicious yellow color like cloudy lemon juice, but tastes of black licorice.

Silly little things.

Logged into amazon to track a shipment, and found the same 4 things being recommended to me over and over again: Mad Men, diabetic compression socks (bought once as a christmas gift for my aunt), books about Shinto, books about Alain Badiou. Nothing else, just those four things, over and over again. This is what I am, according to consumerism!

Right at this moment in time, I am trying to make myself do the work to complete my MA. This should not be very hard; I have to refine/rewrite three papers, then give these three papers to three professors who seem kindly disposed towards me. Not bad, but I do not seem to want to do it. Instead, I seem to want to sit at my computer all day, laughing at funny things on the internet, taking time out to play videogames on the Wii that a friend has lent me. My startling lack of productivity makes me feel as though I need to live with a real adult, a parental type, who can give me instructions (or orders, really) on when to do things, and how to do them correctly.

Whoops, now I have the hiccups. Anyway.
I think I really miss, on a subconscious level, that feeling of living with someone in a collaborative environment. One in which you do the dishes regardless of who dirtied what, in which you eat meals together, in which you have conversations about how your life is going that last longer than five minutes. That would be nice, yes? Then the person you share your space with would also be someone who looks out for you, and vice versa. Living in the normal roommate situation is not nearly as homelike.
This definitely struck me as I was having trouble falling asleep last night (I have trouble falling asleep every night, as it turns out), and I was looking at the walls in my room and feeling a sort of disgust for them. As though it was so disheartening to still be within those walls. But, after a year and a half living in this apartment, shouldn't that bedroom and those walls feel homelike to me? Shouldn't I be comforted by them? I certainly don't have any ideas about where I'd rather be sleeping.

Maybe it's just that the walls are still a very hideous beige, that I dream of repainting. And that the room is a mess, with my clean clothes still heaped up in either a laundry basket or within/on top of the suitcase I brought home with me from my trip to Florida, nearly a month and half ago. Whoops, again!

Another humorous thing is that within the last month or so, more than one person has told me that I have labored/weird breathing, either while asleep or awake. Now I get to try to go to the doctor and figure out what all that is about, because I don't have any real idea, although it is true that I am easily winded and often sleepy. I already take pills to make my brain chemicals work, to fall asleep at night, to supplement my body with the vitamins I am worried it is not getting from my food, and I even take a pill that is supposed to keep my skin from breaking out so badly that I have to refuse to leave the house. Oh and I spent years in painful orthodontia, have worse vision than a bat and no sonar to augment it, had surgery on my right eye last year and need to have some kind of laser treatment on the left, have kind of a fucked-up spine that needs a chiropractor's touch, and my hair has some unfortunately-placed cowlicks. What else could possibly be wrong with my body! Apparently, even more things.

The sun isn't out today either. Boo to that! Maybe quarter to two is a good time to start drinking?

ice floes.

Only three days after (confusing, intense) breakup, my body feels useless, pockmarked, stubbly. I feel entirely unwilling to haul this body out into the world. My stomach is also acting up, which I suppose adds to the feeling.
I am both sad and grumpy, an excellent combination of course. It is always a great idea to sit around and be self-pitying, right?

I have more to say but I feel too stupid to say any of it just now.

It turns out I can focus on things if I make myself read them out loud to myself! This is progress, for sure. I feel all satisfied and shit right now.

Heaven knows I'm miserable now.

But I do not know why. The short days and the fact that I sleep til noon? That probably has a hand in it.
Tonight I definitely have spent a lot of time feeling like it was time to cry, even though it was not. Then it would go away for a little, and then come back. I do not have any concrete reason to be unhappy at right this minute, and yet!
Maybe I'm less happy when I'm cold? Right now I am definitely also cold, even though I am inside, wearing a sweatshirt, and sitting on my feet.
I'm not sure what's going on, because I spent two hours today talking with a friend over coffee, and then had a surprise phone call from another friend who spent some time laughing at funny things I said. I thought more social interaction is what I needed to keep the sads away, but that does not appear to be the case.

So today, I did some sit-ups, and then I read most of the wikipedia entry on major depressive disorder. To see if there were some things in there that I hadn't already heard about. Now, I am thinking about T3 (a drug for those with hypothyroidism that also helps with depression, as well as part of the Terminator franchise of movies), atypical anti-psychotics, and light therapy. All things I can bring up with my doctor this week I suppose! Or maybe we can just sit down and talk about the Terminator franchise instead, for a refreshing change of pace.

Maybe my doctor will give me one of those little headsets that shines light into your eyes. I saw someone wearing one of those on an episode of "Northern Exposure", during my childhood.

Anyway, I'm pretty depressed right now! It's too bad, because I'd really prefer to be a whole range of other emotions. So, now you know that.