aksiokersa

So, inexplicably, "The Blogger" has it really bad for me. Unfortunately, as I've gotten to know her, I've completely lost interest in her as anything other than a great friend. So every other time she slips something in about us "one day maybe ending up together", I try to counter by sliding a "See, that's why we'd never date - we're such great friends!" into the conversation.

She asked me not to say things like that because it's too hard on her ego.

Wait, I'm not allowed to turn you down because that's hard for you? Your self-esteem is your problem, honey. And don't fucking crowd me. If there's anything I hate more than someone who wants me to tiptoe around their ego, it's someone who wants me to prop them up and then tries to make me feel guilty for not being their prop.
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"No matter what I was doing, I wanted it to come off quickly, without too much trouble. Before that point, I had wanted things to look labored, as if hard work would be a reflection of good character. You don't have to worry about where you place the first eye. You just put it down somewhere below a brow. But when you come to the second eye, you have to make calculations about how wide apart the eyes are. There's no way of putting in the second eye, making it realistic, without close judgment that slows you down, and makes your hand work from the knuckles instead of an arm movement."
-Artist Larry Rivers

I like the above quote because it points out that dilligence isn't necessarily a postive trait. The most amazing, prophetic works of art often come from a place of joyous and natural playfulness. Something about the American experience (I suppose our roots in Puritanism? Industrialist capitalism? Slavery?) plants the idea in our heads that being a "hard worker" is a redeemable quality in itself, when it most certainly is not. Jeffrey Dahmer worked extremely hard - should we put him on the dollar bill?

I just saw a guy on the boards complaining that he had spent all night working on a letter to a girl and that when she read it, she called it bullshit. ...As if she should have valued what he did just because he had "tried so hard"? There are no "As for effort" in life. It doesn't matter how hard you try - if you're not able to give people what they want, it's of no use. Having a tendency to push yourself too hard makes you vulnerable to being used. I'm all for "smarter not harder", "working to live, not living to work". My best, most valued work has always been the easiest to create.

I'm not saying that I don't appreciate the efforts that people go to or that we shouldn't be sensitive to each other. I'm not saying that it isn't touching that some guy would spend all night working on a letter. I'm just saying maybe he should've spent more time observing this girl and finding out what she wanted, rather than sacrificing a whole night for nothing and then resenting her for "not appreciating it". And maybe he spent all night creating what was really a piece of bullshit. That's not the girl's fault, you know?
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I haven't written here about my stupid disease ( an ulcerated bladder lining in a long time. At first I really wanted this journal to be a place where I could vent about being a sick person. Then I started meeting SG folks and I got kind of shy about "complaining" here. I just hate talking about my illness with people I know. Because I hate to let people in, hate to give them the chance to see me as weak or self-pitying. But I gotta get over that. This health problem is not going away any time soon and it's affect on my day-to-day existence (even on my better days) is pretty significant. And I shouldn't be ashamed of something I have so little control over.

So.

God, it's such a long, stupid story. How to summarize?

Many anti-depressants have a secondary application: helping to alleviate chronic pain. I guess it has something to do with their effect on dopamine levels, but no one really knows quite why they work the way they do. So, one of my doctors decided to put me on a new anti-depressant. However, he didn't do his research about the history of an adrenal-gland disorder in my family. He gave me an antidepressant that is infamous for over-stimulating the adrenal gland. God, this is so fucking hard to write. I'm just such a lemon in so many ways. How can one person have so many things wrong with their body? I wish natural selection could have had a higher standard than "survives until successful reproduction." The fact that it doesn't is what convinces me that there's no God, no "higher purpose", no "benign energy of the universe". Anyway, after starting this antidepressant, I started feeling waaaaaaay too amped-up and jittery. I connected the dots and went to my doc, reminding him about my family history. He suggested I get off the anti-depressant cold turkey and ASAP. That was his second bad move, and it was unfortunately compounded by the fact that Doc #2, at that very moment, gave me something to counteract the quarts of adrenalin being pumped into my system. The combined effect of stopping one med and starting another basically put me to sleep for three weeks.

I enjoyed that three weeks very much though. I got on the same schedule as my dog and we spent 20 hours a day napping together. Dog's have the life, let me tell ya. Good times, good times.

Surprisingly, my professors weren't really impressed by my disappearing for almost a month. Apparently, you have to show up for class to get credits at this institution. Who knew?