Category: Miss Elaineeus

Peter Pan had found life to be one of easy luxury. Days full of sleeping. Eating. Smelling the rubber band on the carpet. Is it alive? I shall pat it thus. Dreaming. Watching life outside. When will she be home?  

And then came the day when it all would change.

Where life was once bright, darkness has now enveloped. Between his legs, a pulsing battle ensues. Peripherals malfunctioning. What did I do to deserve this? Lethargy. Is this the end for me? The bed seems so far away. The cabinet he could once pounce atop cannot be summited any longer. Days are endless. Life grows mundane. The itch behind his ear goes un-scratched. The small pebbles of food do not taste the same. Bland. Will this last?

She comes home, finally, but he does not have the energy to leap up per protocol, greet her with a warm meow, and paw at the bottom of her leg. She’s worried. She wonders if he’s hurting. He lays there, his eyes glazed over. It’s been two days. She wraps her fingers around his neck. A little pressure, and then the world opens up. Light filters into the edges of his eyes, brightening and shaping the pupils. I can fly. Peter Pan shakes free of the phantom bond, and springs to the floor.

Oh, the cleverness of me!

From days of endorsing his own despair, stiff joints protest. He stretches high and low, and proceeds to bring life to his creamsicle fur. He licks his paws and his chest. He moves to his stomach, and then lifts his right leg… Something appears different about the space between his hindlegs. Something is missing. Numbess remains. He licks at the fur there, watering the dead soil… She makes a sound of reprimand. He looks up, and then darkness blankets him once again.

Sounds ironic when I say my cat has become a man only after enduring the surgical process of ball removal…. Elegantly put, no? I thought so.

In honor of Peter Pan (cat’s name) letting go (against his will) of the things in life we, as humans, are all scared to seperate ourselves from (Men, keep your balls), I’d like to do the same (I don’t have balls, so I’m set there. But I have baggage.) Going into this week, I’d like to purge myself of all the shit I don’t need. I want to do more to benefit my health (mental and physical). I’d like to take time for myself, but not by laying in my bed. I want to try things or step out of my comfort zone by going somewhere by myself. I want to buy healthy foods, and reserve splurging for the weekends. I hope to one day not even have the desire to “splurge.”

I want to look for other jobs, just to see what it feels like. I want to look at college classes at the local community college and make plans to take one or two next semester. I want to find a life outside of the life I maintain now. I want to take action to be happy. I want to start living the only life I’ll ever have. I want to make an effort to write daily, outside of the writing I already do at work. I want to volunteer somewhere. I want to make my mark.

And I never want to take the Elizabethan collar off my poor cat ’cause he looks so darn cute, but I guess I should…

I want to start by saying I realize stigmas are a very real part of life. It’s unavoidable. But I think it only appropriate we try to debunk stigmas where necessary.

It’s not that this subject is a particularly touchy subject for me, but I realized something last night and I wanted to share.

Per routine, I got depressed last night after work–simply thinking about the monotony that is life. Wake up. Go to work. See work friends. Leave work. Hang out with work boyfriend. Go home to sleep in my apartment shared with work roommate. Aaannddd repeat….

These thoughts tend to make me anxious. I feel stuck. Inside a bubble of molasses. Uninspired. And these thoughts make me angry, sad; they make me feel alone–so much so that I wonder when the day will come when I’ll just give up. I’ve never been suicidal, but I worry, pretty regularly, about what it would take to get me there.

I was texting my boyfriend, trying to get him to come over to keep me company. Being with someone I love seems to help me in those situations. Though I wasn’t being 100% straight up with him about my feelings, in terms of the severity, he didn’t seem to understand how serious I was when I said the words, “I’m depressed.” (aka, he didn’t run over right away) On impulse, a thought crossed my mind: “If I tell him I’m eyeing my open window right now, or the medication bottles on my bedstand, then he may understand. Only then maybe he’ll pretend to care.”

Now, I realize these thoughts came from a very spiteful place–commomplace for anxious/depressed individuals. And it’s these words that lead others to assume people who kill themselves or try to kill themselves are simply looking for attention. Most, if not all depressed people, respond with, “Of course not. You just don’t understand. Sometimes that’s the only escape we see left.” Perfectly reasonable  I suppose. As a someone with depression, I can understand death feeling like the only escape.

But the reason I’m writing this post is not to argue pro-suicide. Not at all. The reason I’m writing this post is to say, maybe we are just looking for attention. Because maybe, in that tiny little blip of time, we’re feeling incredibly alone and uncared for. We’re feeling lost, not by our own actions, but because our friends, family, left us behind. Whether or not that’s true, the brain is telling the mind to feel this way. No depressed person WANTS to be depressed. But in those low moments, we’re desperate. We’ll resort to anything to make the pain go away. We’ll look for attention in the only way that’s proven successful–threatening others with our own lives. It’s a sad fact that people don’t understand until you throw it in their face.

I’m by no means saying seeking attention this way is the right thing to do, but before you ignore your friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, or family member because you think they’re just looking for attention, consider the fact that maybe they’re only doing it because they’re in desperate need of saving. Think of it as a cry for help. And all that takes from you is company, caring words, and a listener’s ear. Having support can be the difference between light and dark; life or death.

I think it might have been a month since I posted. BUT I have good reason.

I believe I mentioned I got a job; well, I’ve been working in said new job for about three weeks now. It’s a lot of sitting, and a lot of writing/editing, both of which are great for me. I have found something that fulfills my need to help people and my passion for writing.

However, nothing good comes without its challenges. I’m emotionally…kapoot. I’m transitioning into this person I don’t know at all, and on top of that, I’m moving out of my house, the house I’ve grown up in, tomorrow. Luckily, I’ll be living with my best friend from college, but my heart has ceased to beat below 25 mph. I believe that’s deadly in some countries.

All these changes are good. Life IS change, and I have to get used to it. For some odd reason, I took a job that required frequent travel. Have I mentioned how much I hate planes? Not because they are planes, but because I’m worried my anxiety will creep up, and I’ll have no where to go, so the only way I can escape is by latching on to the partly digested food making its way up my throat and out my mouth, all over my lap and the person’s next to me.

I’m terrified, but excited. I want to run away, and move forward, so I’m stuck in place, wanting what I’m most afraid of.

We base our behavior off what people think of us. We are who they want us to be. I was thinking… if I were blind, how would I know how to…be? When I whisper, I base the pitch of my voice off the attention of others. When I yell, my voice grows louder until heads turn my way. When I speak, I use the expressions of others and how they respond to influence my own words. I say nothing for myself, but for my reputation, because reputation is of great significance in this society. If you have a bad reputation, you are no one significant; no one worth listening to. I wish, in the words of Joan Jett, I didn’t give a damn about my reputation.

I wish that when I spoke I used my own words. I’m not even sure which words are mine. These are the reasons that when I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t know who looks back. And it’s not simply an identity crisis; it is who I am. But… who am I? If you really start to think about it, really ponder who you are, you’ll find yourself down a deep, dark well that never wants to end. You’ll find yourself going in circles. Maybe we aren’t supposed to know who we are. And yet, we try so hard to discover ourselves. We seek for the answer, but have no idea where it lies. Within ourselves? Within others? Maybe if we stopped trying so hard, we’d finish this lifelong quest.

I went to dinner with two of my really good friends tonight. I hadn’t talked to one of them in a while, so we had a lot of catching up to do. We were talking about a girl she recently began seeing (she’s gay – no judgement), who, I might add, has made her very happy. I’m really, really happy for her. We asked where this girl is from. “Where is she from? Like in real life?” my friend asked.

This isn’t the first time someone has asked a question about life outside of college, describing it as “real life,” as if college is, what, fake life? To be fair, the college I go to has been compared to a bubble. Our beautiful, pristine, reputable school sits in the middle of a struggling community. Drive a mile in either direction and you’ll come across faded buildings, men sitting on boxes in the middle of sidewalks, and graffitied stop signs. Regardless of my college’s placement, why do our lives outside of college constitute as “real life?” And I get we might just say it because we don’t know how else to ask “Where are you from when you aren’t living here?” Because that’s just way too long, and who has the time for prolonged dialogue anymore?

It hit me harder tonight because I won’t be in this fantasized “fake life” anymore. I’m graduating. I’m going back to “real life.” Was I ever living a “real life?” Four years. That’s all you get. That’s the only time you have to be young, wild, carefree, before you enter the more demanding “real life.” In college, you forget there is life after graduation. You forget your bubble has boundaries. You have papers to finish, and tests to study for, but none of it feels real. Not like “real life.” You’re playing a part, never realizing what you are preparing for. Until you remember you have to go back, but this time, you have to lead your own life. Your parents can’t do it for you. You have to get a job, earn your own money, make your own REAL decisions; you have to depend on your own survival.

That’s real life. We all have to return it eventually.

#thankgodforbooks

I got a job. A big girl job, with big girl responsibilities… 6 days after my May 10th college graduation. I’m terrified. Petrified. Systematic! Hydromatic! And I know it must not be grease lightning. 

It’s a good thing. I’m glad I’ll be making money. But I’m not sure I’m ready to be an adult. The thought throws me into a fit of nostalgia, leaving me whimpery, limp, numb, and anxious. 

I’ll be holding the position of Creative Writer for a “marketing” company in Virginia, and I love the company. Everyone is so nice, so really, I’m not lying when I say I’m excited. But I have to travel a lot, which scares me because planes. And I have to be an adult, which scares me because adulthood. I haven’t been reading as much lately, and I haven’t had any motivation to write which sucks because I adore both of these pastimes. I just can’t find the energy. 

I’m going to have to move out soon. The commute from my parent’s home to the company is only 35 mins. so I’ll commute for a while until I raise up the money to move out. Besides, I’m not ready to transition into adulthood cold turkey. Baby steps. I’ll move out when I’m ready. Should I be ready now?

Ya know… I read an article recently about how Millennials like me have grown increasingly anxious when faced with the task of becoming an adult. Maybe it’s the helicopter parent issue? Maybe it’s not. Why is it worse with us Millennials? Why did we pull the short straw when it came to growing up? What did my parents do that made me grow up into a weak, anxious, little coward too afraid of her own adult shadow to accept it? I’m too stuck in my own head…I can’t accept reality because it isn’t compatible with what I want. What do I want? 

My whole life has been one huge existential crisis. 

After broadening my literary repertoire (?), and delving into the deep depths of Mark Twain, Sylvia Plath, and Paulo Coehlo, I’ve come to realization. A lot of Young Adult novels today are written with a terribly shallow hand. I never noticed this before because I had hardly any comparison. Don’t get me wrong, I love the stories in YA novel (however monotonous they grow each day), but GOOD GOD! Must you make sure to add each, every little detail on how she stirred in soup? On the color of the sky? On the color is eyes? Must you fall in love with the first boy you meet?! Must you complicate things by meeting another boy, really kinda sorta same as the original, but gosh, who will she choose?

Also, I’ve noticed something else. Many, many, many YA books do this. Girl hates life, but girl has boy, but boy makes girl’s life better, but no, they do not date; only best friends. In the first book, girl has epiphany. Girl confused. Girl angry. Girl sad. Girl want to kiss boy, but no, God forbid you cut the tension. Girl goes on journey, physical or mental, and comes back with knowledge. Boy missed her. Boy wants girls. Then book two comes along, and another boy comes to complicate and piss off the original boy. This always happens in the second book. The Selection. Twilight. The Maze Runner (gender difference). Shatter Me. Delirium. Enclave. The Infernal Devices. Uglies. The Hunger Games (kinda). And in this second book, the original boy is always really depressed, and acts like he hates the girl. Divergent.

Again, I love a good YA novel. In fact, I’m reading one now. But these monotonous plots get a little monotonous after a while.