In too deep

My summer term for school started up today and I'm done playing games.  Ya heard?

I'm going to invest my time and efforts in to my work because (a) contrary to what I'm usually deluded in to thinking, I actually like school and (b) school's fucking important.

No more crazy procrastinating, no more just getting by.  I'm awesome and I should live up to my full potential for awesomeness.

From Pinterest

I think part of the reason The Gloom has hit me so hard this year is because I'm not living for me.

Still.

Or again.

However you want to look at it.  Either way, I've tried to sort this out before and it's still not going well.

I am so ...addicted... to taking care of other people and putting them first that I forget to keep some stuff for me to function with.  Patience, compassion, bravery, mad cooking skillz.  I get home from work at the end of the day and barely have enough oomph left to clean up after dinner.  I drive home on mental autopilot, walk in the door, take off my shoes and sink in to the couch where I let myself slip in to a nearly catatonic state.  It's so much easier for me to zone out than it is for me to actively participate in life.  And because I'm not taking care of myself, my grades have fallen apart, my body has fallen apart, my emotions have fallen apart.  Basically, I'm a mess.

Putting others before yourself is supposed to be one of the highest levels of compassion, right?  At least that's what I've been taught.  Treat others as you would like to be treated, the golden rule.  But the flip side of that proverb is that we need to treat ourselves as well as we treat others.  The same way that I expect myself to treat others with overwhelming kindness, patience and respect is how I need to be treating myself.  And it's okay for me to ask that other people, the ones who I've let in to my heart, to treat me that way as well.  If they don't, well, that doesn't make me any less worthy of being treated that way, it just means that those people don't have their shit together yet, and that's not my fault or my issue to deal with.

I have more thoughts on all of this, and there's more reasons why I've been depressed on and off for the past two-ish years, but those thoughts are just too personal to publish for everybody on the Internet.  So they'll stay trapped in my mind, chasing each other round and round.

><><><

Sometimes life sucks, and I have no problem admitting that (please see the above melodramatic paragraphs), but sometimes life is really, really cool.

Exhibit A:  I'm taking a biology class this term for which I received a lab kit (!!!).  My fancy, shmancy lab kit includes: beakers, test tubes, gigantic ass tweezers, unknown liquids, protective glasses and a mortar and pestal.  I am so excited to do experiements and make lab notes and be all science-y.

This little beaut was posted on Instagram right after I got home from the post office:

SCIENCE.

Exhibit B:  Friday night Jon and I had a CAMP OUT NIGHT that I rocked like a second grader, except better because there was alcohol and no bed time.
We blew up the air mattress right in the middle of the living room floor, ate junk food, quoted movie lines and quickly fell asleep at ten pm like the old married couple we are.


Caesar likes to spot jack.

Exhibit C:  Jon and I headed over to a friend's to celebrate her graduation from grad school.  I have such smart friends.
The ladies beat to death a metallic piñata and the guys hung out outside playing beer pong for most of the night.  We drank strawberry rum with cherry soda and ate some delish BBQ.  Burgers, homemade guac - my fave, carrot cake.

As a fitting end to an awesome weekend, I made fresh salsa and then spilled it all over the back seat of my car.
Well, really more like I acciently dumped the entire bowl of salsa all over the back seat.  And do you know how difficult it is to clean salsa out of a fabric upholstered cushion?  I didn't.  The temperature has been hovering around ninety degrees for the past few days so opening my car door releases a gaseous plume of hot spicy/garlicy air.*

Also, for the record, Jon said it would be okay back there but he was wrong.

*This event is not have included in Exhibit C as it is not something that I would define as "really, really cool", especially as mercury is boiling out of thermometers.


The single life, and then some.

The hubby is out working late again.  Like, late late.  I tend to do odd, unnatural things when Jon's not home.
Like clean the grout with a toothbrush.
Or eat an entire pineapple for dinner.  Canker sores for days.

Tonight I made some bangin' salsa.  You'll taste it and swear we're hanging out on the Gulf.  It's that good.
It only needs to be accompanied by copious amounts of beer and hard alcohol.  Tequila, preferably   My drug of choice.
Maybe, someday, I'll share the most authentic secret salsa recipe this side of the International Date Line.

It's Mexican food that sings its siren song to me.

***

Being honest.

Expression is hard sometimes.

In those sometimes it feels like my heart is muffled, like the private thoughts and feelings and instincts inspired by my deeply buried soul are caught in the wash.  They're tossed and thrashed around, unable to figure out which way is up, or down, or why they're stuck there in the first place.

For a long time I've been trying to get them out.  I'm not sure how to do that.

Before my deep truths are able to escape, propriety and timidity shove them back in for another spin cycle.

Where is the boundary?  The meeting place of rudeness and honesty, it’s lost.

You meet me.  I’m nice.  I smile a lot and I listen well.  Sometimes I make inappropriate jokes and insult the close-minded.  But you know nothing else of me.  I’m that show that used to play late at night on Nickelodeon, the one where pretty, peppy Christian folks begin talking so boringly that you finally turn off the tv, knowing you’re about to be guilt-tripped to read your Bible and donate a goat to starving kids in the Congo, and so you force yourself to go to bed.  Maybe something more interesting will be on tomorrow night.  But it’s not.

I think the weather knows I’ve been feeling alone, and confused, and a little empty.  It’s been raining for the past three days.  Today, on the drive home from post, the windshield wipers weren’t strong enough for the overwhelmingly large drops of water smacking in to the windshield and road and every newly sprouted weed in this Bavarian countryside.  Feeling the wind beat the car, the thunder echo through the valley and the splash of flooded walkways was fantastic, exhilarating.  It’s the ever changing mood of the clouds that’s so exciting; they’re dark and they don’t explain their secrets, they just express themselves through rain, drenching everything they can reach.  Rain is their truth.

Rain knows which way is up and down and why it’s here.  It never misses its purposeful destination.  It invites you to hibernate in coats and boots, to become another anonymous person hiding in wet clothes and hurrying to the nearest coffee shop.

I hope it rains tomorrow too.