December 2008 Archives

I'm having a really hard time expressing myself lately. I keep trying to talk to people about things and losing the words, finding that there isn't really language to describe what I feel. I have this sensation, like a fist in my chest, that I need to tell people things, but the fingers won't open and reveal what's being held. It's just a tightness, a hovering anxiety, a heavy thick mist, and it's chilling.

(Parenthetically, Virginia Woolf once observed that a great limitation of the English language is the lack of authentic description for illness and emotion or the interior state: most attempts fall into a cliché of Romanticism or melodramatic despair because we've worn out what used to be meaningful words, and those which are accurate resonate as clinical abstractions pillaged from psychology. I've paraphrased, of course.)

When you're not able to speak your mind, all those little thoughts gain significance well beyond what they should. The longer they rattle around unformed and stymied, the more they reverberate into an echoing, deafening din. When you've spent as much time as I have lately closing yourself off to feelings as well, it starts to feel like choking. The bits that get through are nonsensical, sputtering gasps made in desperation, trying to cut off a flood of words and feelings that carry no meaning on their own anymore.

So, what I'm trying to say is there's been stuff. And I'm struggling to organize my thoughts into coherency on the things that have happened. A dear friend and I spoke about these things once, and years ago he said, "Just spit things out. Once you get enough out, it'll have meaning." I took that idea to painting and have found it pretty immeasurably helpful over the years. It probably can't hurt now.

One of my father's cousins died just before Christmas, of complications from lung cancer. I'm finding this inordinately distressing because so many of my friends still smoke. I am no longer able to be kind about it or pretend it doesn't bother me as much as it does.

I'm also distressed because even though we lived one town over, I barely knew that side of the family, due to a ridiculous feud between two now long-dead brothers. There are many similar not-speaking situations all around my extended family on both sides. In high school I met second cousins who were children of the youngest of 8 siblings, all of whom I had never met because their grandfather and my grandmother had a fight over an apartment more than 50 years ago. There are now four generations of people with whom I share DNA who I will probably never know. Family is really important to me, but most of my "family" feels like complete strangers, or they are. Maybe that shouldn't bother me, but it really does.

Another person I know tried to kill herself. She's really unwell, and this isn't the first time, and it seems like she is in a kind of downward spiral that she's not going to come out of. I can't make sense of her life and how it got this way. I'm disgusted with myself because I keep thinking maybe it would have been better if she succeeded, maybe she could find peace.

My father fell on ice outside our house and tore his shoulder muscles in four places. He needs surgery, and though he's going about life as if he's fine, he's in tremendous pain. I hate seeing my parents suffer, I hate seeing them sick or injured. I know they're human beings and governed by mortality just like everyone else, but I'm not ready to deal with it.

I keep closing both of my parents and my brother out, and I'm acting like a pretty despicable person lately. I have exhilarating moments of happiness, and then I go numb, and I can't let them in. I know I'm coming off as callous and heartless (or hiding behind being drunk), but it just keeps happening.

I'm doing it with friends and exes too. I have these feelings of hurt I can't escape. The feelings aren't coming in anger or sadness or something identifiable, just a dull ache. I keep remembering things that happened and how they felt, and I can't look at people in the present without remembering how I hurt because of them. I know it's self-defeating because no matter how sorry someone is, they can't get in a time machine and repair the past, but I have a really hard time getting over things or quieting myself when I am sure the same things are happening again. It has been pointed out to me that I am lousy at forgiving, and I'm disappointed with myself because I know it's true.

I suspect the solution is to engage in the present and quit building walls between myself and other people, but it's not just about protecting myself. It's more to keep from lashing out and hurting others, saying more than I meant to, being a little too honest and not being able to take it back.

That's the thing with words. You can't unspeak them. You can't erase the bruises they leave on the heart, and even if they heal, the memory is there. I suppose it's for the best that I'm struggling so much to communicate - my brain might actually succeed in filtering myself enough to minimize the damage.

I spoke with the friend who had advised me to spit things out yesterday, and he shared some more pretty great advice that he had received. He's 29, and a friend told him that being 29 is about dealing with all the stuff you don't want to bring into your thirties. I guess in a way, I'm trying to do that with the end of this year. I don't want to bring all this stuff into 2009 (even though I know I can't avoid a lot of it), so I figure if I at least get some of it out, it can't keep sitting on my chest.

We'll see.

So I was reading this survey on Hope's blog, and I realized I had a lot of thoughts on what my 2008 was like, given how much my life changed and how many things I experienced. Because I am entirely too hyper to put together a coherent description of said thoughts, I decided I, too, would fill out a survey.

Wheeeee!!!

1. What did you do in 2008 that you'd never done before? I'm so glad I have a blog to remember anything from this year. Mycophagy, learned French, jury duty, made a mosaic, went to a child's funeral, participated in meaningful scientific research, and a bunch of things I haven't talked about.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?My main resolution this year was to Live Well. I think I'm finally getting there. I'll talk about next year's soon.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yup.

4. Did anyone close to you die? Yes, and almost. Let's not talk about it.

5. What countries did you visit? Italy. You mean there are others?

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? Two master's degrees (related: a finished thesis), peace of mind, financial solvency.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? August 10th, the day I arrived in Volterra; September 4th, my 4-year anniversary with Eric;October 13th; January 15th, November 2nd, November 4th, and December 26th, among others.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Starting a job I truly love and finding my career path. I'm also pretty thrilled about starting swimming and running.

9. What was your biggest failure? Being dishonest with myself. Also, I screwed up my financial life pretty badly.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I had the flu in March and a nasty cold a little bit ago. I had some minor and hilarious injuries, but nothing serious.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Plane tickets. I'm pretty happy with this whole graduate education thing too.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My parents and brother have been knocking it out of the park lately, as have my friends. Smokey continues to rock it old school.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? My own mostly, and a few others on both a personal and global scale.

14. Where did most of your money go? Pratt.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Traveling around and living in Italy. President-Elect Obama. Rediscovering the inherent good in human beings. Butterflies.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008? "Go Easy" by Ryan Adams, but I may have blinders on to all other music right now.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Infinitely happier, and more hopeful.
b) thinner or fatter? About 20 pounds lighter and definitely in better shape.
c) richer or poorer? In spirit, I have never been richer. My student loans indicate that financially, I've never been poorer.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Travel, thesis-writing, painting, seeing friends, exercising, being happy. I probably could have used more sleep.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Being unhappy, lying to myself, despairing, avoiding reality, fighting, packing and unpacking boxes, feeling angry and frustrated.

20. How did you spend Christmas? With my parents and brother, then my mom's family, then on the living room rug. It was actually a pretty great day.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008? Something like that.

22. What was your favorite TV program? TV and I are slowly becoming reacquainted with one another. Let's say Gossip Girl.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Hate erodes the soul. I feel a lot of anger that I wish I didn't, but no hate.

24. What was the best book you read? Probably Love in the Time of Cholera.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? Still gotta say, Ryan Adams. Officially obsessed. Actually, it was pretty eye-opening to realize that I prefer the Stones to the Beatles too, but I feel so disloyal admitting that.

26. What did you want and get? An amazing trip to Italy, an exciting and rewarding job, being published, to say the things I've been meaning to, restored faith, butterflies.

27. What did you want and not get? Two master's degrees.

28. What was your favorite film of this year? Secretary was on pretty heavy rotation all spring.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I baked a German sweet chocolate cake from scratch, and my family and I went to La Pastaria. I also had a really great conversation with an old friend that kind of made my day. I turned 27.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? I dunno, I'm pretty damn happy with how it's turning out.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? I still dress like someone's mom. I'm working on it.

32. What kept you sane? Perspective.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? It's always Robert Downey Jr. Always.

34. What political issue stirred you the most? Darfur.

35. Who did you miss? I miss a lot of people, especially my friends. Lately, I spend a lot of time missing one person in particular, but it's probably not who you think.

36. Who was the best new person you met? Everyone in Volterra.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. It's hard as hell to be honest and brave at the same time, but it's the only way to be happy. And, everything comes out in the water.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. "Nobody told me there'd be days like these."

I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to start running and doing other athletic things in addition to obsessively swimming. I asked for new running shoes for Christmas, with the intention of doing the Couch to 5k running program that my friend Hope had told me about a few years ago.

(After yesterday's rockstar performance, it would be more like Floor to 5k, and I will admit that self-loathing played a pretty heavy part in the urgency with which I decided to start today.)

My logic was that (as I may have mentioned a time or twelve) I used to run cross-country in high school and I knew what good form was, so I should be able to slog through a little run now, even though I haven't even attempted to run more than a quarter mile since college.

I started to read over the program, and I found myself getting discouraged. I couldn't remember where on earth my pedometer ended up, and I didn't really want to keep track of time while running, nor doing any math or, frankly, thinking at all. A while ago, I'd calculated the distance of our typical dog walk at 2.4 miles round trip, so I figured I would just start running along that route and see how I did.

Shockingly enough, I ran the whole thing. Actually a little more, because I tacked on an extra loop at the end to the park where I used to kiss boyfriends in high school. It felt pretty incredible to get fresh air and move my body. I ran by trees and down to marshes that open to the river. I kept wishing I had a camera. I enjoyed clouds and beautiful pale blue sky reflected in silver puddles in the road, and I really cleared my mind of a lot of things.

I nearly had a heart attack when a huge deer ran out into the road in front of me. We both stood staring at each other, and I frantically searched my mind for any knowledge of deer behavior, wondering if he would ram me or something, but it turns out deer are much more likely to give withering glances and continue on their way across the street.

By the time I got home, I felt about a hundred times better than when I left, most likely from sweating all the remaining wine out of my system. It's a small thing, but I feel accomplished.

I am trying to develop discipline about work and school (and my personal life), and I hope that running and swimming will really help with that. My new running shoes worked wonderfully, and I look forward to many more runs in the future. Next time, I will work up to 5k. Whether I am able walk tomorrow or not remains to be seen.

My family tends to call me Bridget, as in Bridget Jones, because very stupid things happen in my life and I rarely get it together enough to function like a normal person.

This Christmas was no exception. I started and ended the day passed out on the living room rug. It never occurred to me that there are more comfortable places to sleep when one has enjoyed the hell out of wine, and it never occurred to my family to wake me or at least give me a blanket.

I had grand intentions of giving everyone hand-made gifts that I started working on in like September, and predictably, I did not finish a single one. Instead I gave them a pile of cards I'd printed out with photos and drawings of what their gifts would look like. I amawesome.

One of my mom's said "F*** you Jobu, I'll do it myself." It's a quote from Major League and something that we say to each other just about every single time we go swimming and open our lockers. She was all sweet about it and said that no gift would be as nice as a chapter of my thesis. Her next card said "It's not a thesis chapter yet, but Merry Christmas!"

My parents and brother gave me awesome gifts, of which I am both undeserving and entirely overwhelmed with gratitude. I'm thrilled with the athletic-type gifts (a waterproof mp3 player, really sweet running shoes, a gym bag), as well as really sexy art supplies, including the most delicious sable paint brushes I've ever felt, a jar of malachite, watercolors, and travel sketchbooks for this summer. I concluded that I will know a guy is right for me if instead of jewelry he gives me sable brushes and pigments. Oh, my brother also gave me cheeseburger-scented cologne, and I'm not above admitting I find it more than a little appealing.

In the afternoon, we went to my uncle's house and had a lovely party with my mom's family. I managed to break a wine glass on the kitchen floor and had a few conversational doozies, but mostly I kept it together. I know, I'm just as surprised as you.

We did our Secret Santa exchange among the adults in the family, and my grandfather was really happy with the shearling slippers I gave him. My 19-year-old cousin who just joined the Air Force also appears to be engaged, and I'm going to keep from feeling bad about that because she's also taller and thinner than me. We've already determined that unless someone is down with a clumsy, awkward ridiculous person who knocks everything over and says exactly the wrong thing all the time and always shows up a little drunk and favors meaty scents, I'm going to be single forever. I think that will probably be okay, since it's highly unlikely that anyone is going to join me sleeping on the living room rug.

With that, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Things I Am Attempting to Do Today:

- finish knitting gloves for my father (2 fingers and a thumb)

- knit a scarf for my cousin's new wife (just started)

- bake a double batch of Earl Grey tea cookies, dipping some in chocolate

- make caramel popcorn from scratch, then make chocolate-covered caramel popcorn

- get my hair cut back into Reese Witherspoon style

- do enough laundry that I can change out of my mom's pajama pants and wear something other than a Strongbad t-shirt to Christmas dinner

- help Iggy & Smokey adjust to the dogs and Oreo, and mitigate the "discussions" which ensue

- get out of the kitchen and have myself decently human enough for a seven fishes dinner tonight

- wrap the enormous pile of gifts for my family that I've left until today

- and I think we're going to church?

This is going to be a long day, and the fact that I've been up all night working does not bode well for me lasting through it.

Whatever that was, it's done. Music, a little sleep, a bowl of cereal, some time in the sun, and I'm fine. I'm in my third decade of life, but I still forget how much better everything looks by the light of day.

I'm supposed to feel. It's not always pleasant, but I'd be a heartless bitch if I didn't feel. Sun rises, sun sets, life goes on.

I've done a decent job of compartmentalizing my emotions these past few weeks. I found enough distractions to keep myself from feeling much of anything, and it's been okay. I could probably even pass for optimistic.

I don't know exactly why or how it happened, but something broke. It wasn't really a snap, so much as a dull ache giving way, a membrane wearing out when pulled too thin. I've just kind of had enough.

Something opened an overwhelming floodgate of emotions, and I'm not sure how to stop the waves. I started feeling a torrent of all these things I've been avoiding, and I don't know what to do with them. All the walls are washing away, all my experiences are melding together into an unending and exhausting sea.

I'm trying to find the immediate areas of stress that I can address, some point on the horizon, and I'm coming up empty. It's everything, all at once. It's all the same, and nothing ever changes, it's just the same patterns traversing the surface of the water, constant faces of the waves.

I have a sort of bad habit of talking smack during sports. This is not to say I'm a bad sport, as I always won sportsmanship awards and was commended for being a really fair competitor, but I feel like if you really respect your competition, some good-natured ribbing makes it a lot more fun.

While I've been sick, I've been swimming at half-speed and half the length I usually do, which has been driving me a little crazy. This morning I was overjoyed to return to normal speed 100's, and I happily swam 2200 meters. I was alternating 100's of freestyle and breaststroke, and my mother said something about how she doesn't give herself as much distance on those laps because I'm "so much slower" in breaststroke. It happens that right after she said that, I wrapped a 100 around to lap her 50, in breaststroke, and she back-pedaled that she wasn't saying I'm slower than her, just slower at breaststroke than freestyle (which everyone is).

Of course I took the opportunity for some smack talk and I think the phrase "kick your ass" was thrown around. The guy in the lane next to us started laughing and my mother said "Did you just hear her say she'd kick her mother's ass?" He concurred and said all she needed to do was beat me once and I'd shut up for good.

(This guy, by the way, was wearing fins, and I was still leaving him in my wake.)

My mom stammered that while she probably couldn't beat me yet at swimming, even with fins and a motor, if she got on a ski slope she'd whip me soundly.

"Oh really ??" I scoffed, since yknow, I was there the last time we skiied. She started in on her own smack talk, the conclusion of which was "Well, why don't we take a little trip to a mountain and see!"

So uhh, I just scored a ski trip. Sweeeeet.

I just made the kind of sandwich dreams are made of.

Seriously. Homemade Philly cheesesteak with portobello mushrooms and green peppers, and it was, with no exaggeration, one of the best sandwiches I've ever had.

This was the kind of sandwich that couldn't even be improved with bacon (and if you understand my enduring love of bacon, you'd understand what kind of statement that is for me). The only way it could have possibly been better is if I had room to eat two. Or seven.

I'm so making these again tomorrow.

If this whole art conservation thing doesn't work out, I have plans for a side business in fattening comfort foods. I think I'll call it the Fatty Cafe.

I think it's no secret that I take a lot of photos. Some have bandied the word "compulsive" about, but I think that's excessive. The area where I seem to lack is editing and uploading these photos. As prolific as I may seem, the amount of images I've posted online completely pales in comparison to the amount of photos I actually take.

The other night, I felt the need to go through every single page of my Flickr photostream, looking back at all the images I've uploaded to that account since April of 2005. This kind of activity lends itself to analyzing one's life in that time, and I was startled at how much seemed to be missing.

Then I realized: it was. Lots of it. Thousands of photos from Costa Rica, Hawaii, Italy, the summer I lived abroad, and so on. Whenever I have a large batch of photos to go through, I fret over editing them down to a manageable set, dream about setting up a travel photo website, and rarely end up posting a single one.

I decided it was high time to start posting my travel photos, and I made a Travel collectionto that end.

The state of my brain this week has been ideal for the repetitive, nostalgic task of photo-editing and I've finally uploaded my photos from this summer's trip to Italy. Well, the first two weeks of it at least.

These are huge (no really, huge) sets, and they are not yet organized or properly captioned. I hope you'll forgive my enthusiasm and appreciate that this is still only a fraction of the photos my mother and I took.

- Milan

- Padua

- Venice 2008

- Florence 2008

- Assisi

- Rome 2008

- Cinque Terre

- Pisa

And as a bonus, I added a set of images from my second two weeks in Volterra. It's nowhere near all the images from that trip, either, but I'll get to them.

- Volterra

- Volterra 2

I went through the external hard drive on which I back up my photos, and I would be lying if I said I weren't daunted by the task of editing the rest. This is a start, at least, and I hope I don't wait another few years before I get to the rest.

I think one of my new year's resolutions is going to be to actually post photos when I take them. We'll see how I feel once I've finished this backlog.

I know it's really riveting when someone writes a whole blog post about being sick, but I've got little else to say.

When I'm sick, I tend to spike pretty high fevers, which are accompanied by bizarre hallucinogenic nightmares. Some of the ones I've had since Sunday are genuinely disturbing and have left me waking up with a racing heart, sweating and thinking things as random as "I haven't seen Eternal Sunshine in a while," "Why would Obama choose a Muppet song to accompany a speech after a national disaster?" and "Wow, I should probably go to church."

(The middle of these was during a really upsetting dream that featured the entirety of "The Rainbow Connection," which yes, I've memorized, even in my subconscious, and yes, the whole song played, and no, it wasn't as comforting as you'd think.)

Mostly, I've spent a lot of time looking at the sheets on my bed, which are red with little white and blue crabs.

You would not believe how these little suckers can dance.

Why do I have crab sheets on my bed in December? I'm not fully sure, but my parents tend to prefer flannel and fleece sheets in the winter, whereas I only like crisp cotton year-round (with very few exceptions). The bed in which I currently sleep is a full-size bed, but I only own queen-size sheets, so if I want cotton it's either crabs or pastel stripes for now.

Also, I'm sleeping in my brother's old room, and there is a Winslow Homer print right across from me (Fog Warning):

(Can you tell there's a nautical theme going on in there?)

Some of my nightmares have featured this setting, which given my intense fear of the open sea (thalassophobia), makes for some awful feelings lately.

Dear brain,
Knock it off please.
Love, Vicki.

Joni Mitchell knows how to say it.

Popout

I'm not sad, just stressed. And cold.

My mom and I have been working away at our respective projects today (she telecommutes), and we just took a break to have lunch together. At one point, we were talking about the episode of Saturday Night Live we saw this weekend, and after laughing again at Amy Poehler's awesome online shopping joke, I admitted that I've had this song stuck in my head since then.

(Decidedly NSFW, and probably not your style if you don't have a base sense of humor.)

Popout

Maybe funnier than anything is my sweet mom wandering around singing the refrain to herself.

Last night it snowed here, and I found it intensely beautiful. As it began to accumulate, kids from the neighborhood were having a snowball fight in the middle of the street, illuminated by our neighbors' icicle lights. My father and I stood on the porch watching the big fat flakes flutter down, and it felt like something from a painting or a movie.

Living in the city had made me rather hard-hearted about snow, seeing it only as a sludgy gray nuisance, so it was a nice reminder that snow can be lovely and sort of magical.

I also love the way the sky seems to glow, dispersing lights from houses into a soft pink aura around the (admittedly out of focus) trees.

My sense of warmth and coziness was assisted by total bodily exhaustion (you knew we were going to talk about swimming). Last week I swam 11,500 meters, which is like 7.14 miles. I feel pretty damn good about that. (Also, this morning I broke 2500 meters in one swim, woohoo).

When we got home from swimming yesterday, I was so tired that I curled up under a quilt and napped for a while. My mom and I ended up watching two Harry Potter movies, which we'd both been resisting for years. Suddenly we're both intrigued. They were surprisingly great, and I know, welcome to 1997, Vicki, but there it is.

I once dated a guy who had an interesting habit when he first met people. He'd tell them all kinds of personal, trivial details about himself and act as if they were instant best friends. Everyone who met him felt close to him right away, as if he were their new confidant, and because they felt as if they knew him so well, they wouldn't pry for other personal information or work to get to know him better. It was, he acknowledged, a wonderful way to keep people at a distance.

At one point he and I really did establish an intimacy, and he found himself desperate to tell me things about himself that were genuine, instead of his usual barrage of vaguely personal but meaningless details. He looked me deep in the eyes and told me I was one of the only people he felt he could actually be himself with, that I was the only person our age who saw through his game and refused to play. Naturally, I assumed he was playing another game and laughed my head off. It surprised the hell out of me when he responded with so much hurt.

At work today, I've been applying layers of protein-based paint over one another, with isolating layers between. These layers are usually a different protein than either of the other layers, and they serve to both prevent contamination between layers (with water-soluble paints) and sit as signposts for where the layers shift (the readings will change dramatically and you'll know you're dealing with a different protein).

I keep thinking about emotional isolating layers, like the ones my ex-boyfriend used to apply around himself with false intimacy. I have to admit that I am guilty of my own isolating layers, even using a similar strategy: an excess of information and availability gives the guise of candid openness, but I know when I'm not really letting people in.

I know how it feels to be on the outside of these layers, and I know it's not fair to do to people, or myself. Anything built on top of an isolating layer has equal potential to form a cohesive bond or become extremely friable and barely adhere at all. Why do I want to keep doing that?

Like my friend Hope, I am often hesitant to admit when I am sick or injured because I'm afraid I'm just being a baby. In this instance, I know that I am being a baby, AND I know that I don't want to talk about my injury because all the terms involved are a little embarrassing.

So here we go.

On Monday, I pulled my groin doing a bad pull-out in breaststroke.

My inner Beavis is having a field day and suffering paroxysms of snickering. That's about the only good thing, because walking is tremendously painful, as is just about everything else I've attempted since then.

I read about groin pulls online (the best place for all information to do with one's groin, surely), and there were three categories: mild, which included discomfort but no real limit to function; moderate, which had light bruising and some pain; and severe, which had large amounts of bruising, great pain, and difficulty walking. I was sure this was just a mild pull and that it would be fine once I got back in the pool and stretched it out some.

I should acknowledge that why I pulled it in the first place was because I was being overzealous, trying to reach 2500m after reaching 2k the day before. I got to 2300, but not easily. Last night, I only managed to swim 1500m (only), many of them in rather a lot of discomfort. In the shower, I noticed a lot more bruising and swelling than the day before and started wondering if I should... take it easy?

I spent some time with a bag of ice in my crotch last night (it's shockingly difficult to ice one's inner thigh), and while it's not quite back to 100%, it's dramatically improved.

My sense of humor, however, remains sadly degenerated.

Another reason to be happy I no longer live in a city - I was able to see the planetary conjunction of Venus, Jupiter, and a crescent moon to form a frowny face in the sky this evening.

Do you see it? Is that the cutest thing?

The sky is so emo.

Also, it's extraordinarily lovely here this time of day. I really enjoy watching the colors in the sky change and watching the lights in the neighborhood come on.

The universe does so many clever, beautiful things. It's important to take the time to notice them.