It has been a particularly uninteresting month so far. I am hoping it stays that way until the end of May.
I bought a new nail polish color, Blinded By the Ring Light, which I've been eyeballing for a year now. I also am in the process of making changes to how accessible I am which my dad seemed to really not like. It's not like we talk much anyway. I learned how to play some songs on my bass guitar all in an attempt to collect new hobbies that I can hermit over--such hobbies include beading, making paper chains, cleaning out my closet, picking at acne and tweezing my mustache, and altering clothes I don't really wear anymore so I start wearing them again. I am reading East of Eden and it's really pretty good. At the same time, I am writing an email with a list of things that I think are cool which I'll never send because it's too desperate. I already seemed desperate enough this past week, we shouldn't make that a habit.
My goal is to go nine weeks hermiting. Until the end of the school year I will wake up, go to work and be "on", come home, take a nap or go to the gym, have some food, practice my hobbies if time permits, get ready for bed, and go to sleep. On weekends, I will read for hours, write, cook, maybe throw in a good adventure every now and then. I figure the progress will be easy to track because I will reward myself according to the grading cycle my students are on. Every three weeks, I can go to Olive Garden and get overpriced pasta which is VERY yummy. I, too, am aiming for a 4.0. I can get this by doing cool tasks every three weeks:
1. Going to the gym consistently every week (not an issue)
2. Eating enough protein every day (an issue right now because I clenched my jaw so hard a few nights ago it now hurts to open it and chew)
3. Respecting boundaries (difficult, but that's what my therapist is for)
4. Keeping my house clean
5. Sticking to my budget every week
6. Doing fun cool things so I can be hot and fun (going to see sad movies and getting popcorn, taking walks, petting cats even though I have to take Benadryl now afterwards, petting dogs, Sunday mani-pedis with the TV on, not working weekends, praying to the Lord Jesus Christ that I get in to grad school, preparing things to destroy in the event I do not get in to grad school, planning my big move back home)
Since I don't have much to talk about or any ideas for creative writing as I used them all up on a big project recently, I'll talk about how I spent my spring break. It was pretty uneventful until Wednesday. Most would be pretty disappointed to hear that I did, in fact, hang out with my old buddy, Big. I am not disappointed. I am upset I got sick before he left, I hate throwing up but I was so overtired and when I'm overtired, all I need to do is go to sleep to beat the vomit. He came over and fell asleep on my couch and I couldn't help but wish we'd move to my bed so I could have some room to sleep too. The key to getting me to avoid nausea when I am that extremely overtired is for me to quickly get into my jammies, brush my teeth and wash my face, and MAYBE take some children's Benadryl because eventually while I lay there trying to sleep, I'll get nauseous because I haven't fallen asleep yet. Instead, I stayed up for a few more hours kissing his cheeks and playing with his hair and laying there with my eyeballs wide open because I knew my time was limited and I almost vomited five times before he left and I cried and begged for him to make the nausea go away. I've been doing that since I was a kid, I wonder if I'll ever grow out of it. It's very awkward for the person on the receiving end. It's not like they can stop the vomit.
I have begun to process the events of this past weekend and I have come to one conclusion so far:
I am pretty cool to be around when I'm not being a weirdo and miming my mother, to continue to be cool, I need to figure out who exactly I am alone.
I’d like to unpack that in therapy because it’s a pretty broad statement, but I was very much a weirdo when Big and I dated towards the end. He and I kind of talked about that while we hung out. We fell in love with who the two of us are morphing back into now, and we agree we got caught up in trying to make the other person happy when in reality that’s impossible. Neither of us are responsible for the other’s happiness. I don’t think things ended on bad terms at all now that I’ve had some space, and I don’t think he’s as evil as I made him out to be in my head. I’m still mad at him though.
Anyway, back to my point:
I moved out of the house and had a really hard time adjusting to the fact that there were no rules anymore, other than I needed to be smart about spending so I wouldn’t go broke. For about three months after moving out, I followed my mother’s kitchen time rules and was scared to use my own kitchen at certain times of the day. I couldn’t sleep unless the whole apartment was clean and I’d flagellate myself for things she used to hate me for. I apologized whenever people came over if the house smelled like food because I was used to being told all my food smelled bad and subsequently, it was bad to eat food. I was rude about how much the kitchen could be used and what things in the kitchen Big was allowed to use. I was aggressively passionate about having no shoes on the carpet and this weekend I wanted Big to follow me around so we could keep talking while I finished getting ready, but he hesitated to because he had shoes on. Once I realized I didn’t have to act that way anymore, I got really unmotivated and dangerously depressed. I needed a lot of help that I was discouraged from getting until recently.
It made me feel pretty bad to think that I was my mom’s level of weirdo evil to him before we broke up. He is angry about it, rightfully so. I am angry too but I don’t think he cares to think about that and I suppose that’s okay. I’d rather he feel like he did nothing wrong than worry about the ways he hurt me before I started to really hurt him.
Either way, I think the nine weeks of hermiting will lead me nicely into a summer of hermiting, which I have not done since my great and fantastical mental breakdown the summer after 10th grade. This time, I don’t have to hide in my room and I can go out and be in public, but I don’t have to talk to anyone. I could spend weeks at a time not talking, which is what I did for a few days over this past week and it was lovely. My jaw would probably never hurt again, I’d be so well rested. I fantasize about going nonverbal for a while and in nine weeks I can. I won’t even text or call, I’ll just listen. I can wake up in the morning and not talk, I could silently turn the TV on. I can go about my day without interacting with anyone, maybe I’ll smile at a cashier or something and write my coffee order down on a slip of paper so I don’t need to talk. And, unlike that summer after 10th grade, I will not be wondering about a boy who doesn’t even know I exist. I will be maybe occasionally wondering or having a terrible dream about a boy who does in fact know I exist, has not forgotten about me, loves and misses me, and who does not want me to talk to him. Pretty cool, and that’s not even sarcasm. I’ll hang out at home on my green couch I dyed all by myself wearing clothes I picked out so I can look fun and cool and hot this summer and I will finally feel more like myself. I already do. I haven’t really had any meaningful interactions with anyone for a month (except this past week), nothing super life altering is what I mean, and I am feeling like I can think clearly for the first time in a very long time. I know exactly what I want in certain areas of my life, and while others are sort of fuzzy, I am okay with that. It’s cool to have some fuzz. I don’t know if I’ll ever love someone again the way I loved Big and I guess that’s okay. I don’t really want to love someone new right now anyway, it seems challenging and I get really nauseous when I think about all the things that come with loving someone new. I had my special guy, my stinky rat man, for a while and in some ways I still do have him, albeit in passing. He’ll acknowledge I’m alive if we run into each other but he won’t stop to talk or anything and that’s alright. He’ll take book recommendations from me now and I can wonder if he reads them. He’ll maybe think of me from time to time when he sees someone with short red hair or something yellow or when he smells something vanilla-y walking by. Who knows?
A very long time ago I came to the conclusion that so long as I had one great love, I’d be okay being alone for a very long time. I figure if I really can’t find anyone and I want kids when I’m in my 30s, I’ll have them on my own or adopt one. It’ll be easier that way I suppose with only one parenting style to consider. I have never had much of a desire to be known by a man until Big. I’ve never found them very attractive, I’ve just wanted attention and when I got bored, I’d let them go easily. This one’s tricky to let go of because I’ve liked him from the start, he was my best friend and maybe he will be again one day when we balance out, and the whole thing is very frustrating to me because I don’t feel I am normally this stuck in anything, which scares me. I can’t help but wonder what that means, or if there’s any deeper meaning. My horoscope and the tarot readers on Instagram say there is but I don’t know if I can handle that potentiality right now. I am honestly pretty sad and hurt and feel weird about trusting anyone.
Again, I don’t like to feel stuck, and the very last thing I can think of to do is hermit real hard until I get un-stuck. It worked last time, I am hoping it’ll work again.
