here, have some shuffle

[ontology]

Well, I have been trying to write a fairly gloomy entry about how I do not feel fantastic and circumstances not to mention hormones seem to be conspiring against me and huddling in dark corners with lots of mysterious maps and papers and whispering in code, but today has not been the sort of day that inspires great moaning from me. (Here I could likely talk about how I am nearly as good at suppressing emotions as Ten is, and it would be completely and utterly true. When I have a good day, it is mostly on the surface; there is always some horrid beastie lurking beneath, waiting to spring the very moment it becomes most irrational to do so. Which makes me feel horrid and unstable, but when I have a good day I can mostly ignore it. Which is probably not terribly good for the brain, but I do like moments of sanity here and there.)

Honestly, now that I'm here, I have no idea what to go on about. I haven't posted in a very long time -- anywhere -- and this would make me feel tremendously guilty if not for this strange business of stuffing emotions into convenient drawers bursting with stray socks and things. Mostly I have been reading the f-list rather dimly with that wretched feeling I get where my head feels as though it is sloshing with thick, nasty corn syrup.

(Shut up, self, nobody wants to read about you been unhappy and unpleasant.)

Today I cleaned the bedroom, which looked like a miniature war zone and has looked this way since, er, July. It needs a mighty vacuuming, but I've got muffins to bake for breakfast tomorrow and anyway I have been in that dratted room cleaning things half the day and I want to read a book, gorram it. I also made cookies, because the gingerbread was gone and I was not capable of waiting until tomorrow for desserty things to show up in my refrigerator and cupboards (and anyway you've got to be careful about pies; the nice thing about cookies is that you can eat lots of them without anyone noticing, at least at the beginning when the container is full -- pies in their neat slices do not lend themselves nearly so well to compulsive comfort eaters unless said people live alone). Oh dear, commas, I'm sorry. You can come out to play now, I promise.

Also I have nearly finished all of the library books I got out on Saturday and it is only Wednesday. This is worrying. I might be forced to, er, re-read something. Which would be dreadful. Even if there are bookmarks in at least two books on my shelves that I started to re-read and got distracted by Library Books Which Must Be Consumed In A Week's Time. Also also I would like to make an entry someday about Really Fantastic Films I Have Seen Recently but now that I've mentioned it I will probably never get to it. Anyway it would probably get all geeky and technical in the end, or just odd ("how can he be so worked up about nobody taking him seriously enough and yet flaunt a moustache like that? that is not a Serious Moustache!" -- "he's working on it! he's got a government grant!"). Also to the third power: Time Crash = unintelligable syllables of fangirly glee and Steven Moffat needs the universe on a shiny, shiny platter already, HULLO BBC.

Other thing I keep not posting: philosophical, grammatical, and anthropological musings on Firefly. Because, yes, I actually do spent great amounts of time thinking about these things. (Especially the linguistic aspects! Honestly some of the slang is so right on I wonder if Joss Whedon did a crash course in linguistics or just has an ear for things. I KNOW I KNOW NOBODY ELSE EVER CONSIDERS HOW FICTIONAL SLANG DEVELOPS IN A FICTIONAL UNIVERSE OVER SEVERAL CENTURIES SHUT UP.)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and the thing about Thanksgiving is that it always seems to arrive when I am absolutely the least ready for it. I seem to always be at my most despondent and lonely and frustrated in November. But holidays are beautiful, and that little sequestering of magic -- well, it's nice. The thing I like about Thanksgiving is that it's very, almost reverently, quiet. I suppose it isn't nearly this way for lots of people, but my family has almost always spent Thanksgiving alone, and there's something very intimate and beautiful about it.

I haven't any idea what I'm even saying anymore; time to fix up some muffins and go to bed.

Comments

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

♥ ♥ ♥

For what it's worth, the full moon's coming up in a few days; whether that actually has any bearing on my mental state I'm not sure, but I think it might, as I mentioned a while ago...and it always does make me feel a little better when I can pin irrational depression on hormones or illness or exhaustion or moon cycles or what have you.

Shut up, self, nobody wants to read about you been unhappy and unpleasant.

I want to read about whatever you want to write about. I haven't been doing so hot with the commenting lately, but I've been worried that you haven't been posting, and I was wondering how things were going in Banuiland. And...oh, blast it all, there are all kinds of things I've been meaning to say ever since you posted those entries about you being a failure (which you're not) a while ago and I promised to comment in more depth later and didn't, and now I can't think of half of them. So...more later when I've collected more brain cells? >_<

Seriously though, mellen...whatever you can do to prod your parents to getting you to a counselor would really help. It would be hard and uncomfortable, both talking to them about it (such that they understand it's important and don't just forget about it; it took months between the first time I brought it up and my first appointment) and actually going to the counselor, but it would be so worth it. In some ways it's really freeing--it's hard talking about all that deep dark stuff, but on the other hand it's a stranger who has not only heard it all before but also doesn't know you and will not judge you for any of it. Sometimes just having somebody who's familiar with the ways people's brains can sabotage them can just get your thinking onto the right track by asking the right questions.

Part of it, too, even when it's chemical or hormonal or whatever, is learning to change your thought patterns--that isn't everything by any means, and sometimes it's impossible, but it does help stop the spiral. The last thing my counselor said to me on my very first appointment was "Be kind to yourself." Which was hard for me to do then, because I didn't believe I deserved to be kind to myself, and I had a hard time changing my thought patterns until antidepressants helped me out--but it did help some, just learning to refuse to go down certain paths. When I made a mistake and started thinking You idiot, you suck! I had to stop myself and say No, you do not suck, and you are not going to think that. You aren't a failure. You aren't going there. I could still be upset, but not dwelling on it and castigating myself in words did help. So that's one thing you might be able to do when your mind starts to go bad places.

And really...if it turns out antidepressants could help and you get some and they do...you won't believe the difference. It happens slowly, but at some point you'll be able to look back and understand that you were even worse than you ever thought, now that you can finally get away from the lying monster in your head and get some clarity on the whole thing. Going through the difficult process of getting there is unbelievably worth it.

So apparently I did remember what I wanted to say after all. ;p Shall I ramble about school- and job-related things next time?

Also "Time Crash" equals so much win I think if it had gone on any longer the universe would have imploded from the sheer awesome, and yes I think about Firefly slang/dialect too! Because I heart it and I want to borrow parts of it for my Thieves' Honor dialect even though it's not going to be that heavy (and I am wondering now, after years of calling it Thieves' Honor, if it shouldn't be Thief's Honor after all. Is it "scout's honor" or "scouts' honor"? ...Yes, that's where I got the phrase from originally, gah).

[anthon1.livejournal.com]

I know precisely what you mean. I am rubbish at writing journal entries when I want to anyway, but I'll often write angsty journal entries in my head on my walk home from school and then get distracted nby something shiny or cuddly before I get the chance to type it up and then forget what it was that I was going to say.

I was thinking about this earlier today, whilst musing on whether I was happy or unhappy or merely content, and I realised that I am happy unless something rubbish enough happens to make me forget that I am happy, and that when I am feeling unhappy as a baseline I will often forget that this is so when something marginally awesome happens (like going places with friends, or having amusing conversations, or reading an exceptionally good book, or the world being an exceptionally beautiful place when I am walking to school, or some such thing like that). It's a little difficult to pin things down, sometimes, therefore.

*cuddles your commas*

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I do that all the time. I've composed so many blog entries in my head--when I'm at work, especially, or when I'm having an emo day, or when I'm on vacation (there's a good reason I've never talked about any of my trips in anything resembling detail--because first I have a long post thought out, and then I don't have time for it, and then I forget what brilliant things I meant to say)...and by the time I get to the computer, I don't want to take the time to say it, I'm no longer in an emo mood, or I've forgotten all the best parts.

Seriously, who needs stuff like TxtLJ? We need something that goes direct from our brains to the computer. ...Er, except maybe not, considering how well similar things went with Cybermen and all, but...yeah.

[anthon1.livejournal.com]

...then Six Apart could CONTROL OUR BRAINS, surely, with some kind of negative feedback loop or something? (And yes, I know that that's entirely the incorrect usage of the term negative feedback loop, but it's technobabble so nobody will notice. Ah. Oops.) Apparently you can e-mail to eljay too, which I should probably work out how to do so that I can procrastinate from the school library with greater ease. :D

I do that with trips too, especially the long ones - I'm pretty sure that I never did get around to posting about my four-week trip to a war-zone (or so I like to say, a little inflatedly) in any kind of detail, and that was pretty Important. Real Life is the best procrastinator of all...

(Also, you not only seem cool but have an awesome Eliot eljay - mind if I add you? :D)

[lady-moriel.livejournal.com]

Four-week trip to a war zone? Dang, now you've got me interested too and I'll probably never hear about it. :p

Sure thing! You seem cool too, from the comments I've seen you make on Jolene's LJ. (Plus I checked out Perdido Street Station after you recommended it to her...and never had time to read it before it was due. Oops. But it's still on my list of books to check out!)

[anthon1.livejournal.com]

Only because the story's a little embarrassing, really, because I feel horribly self-conscious and uneasy about going there because of the politics. (I went on a youth group trip - back when I did youth-groupy stuff - to Israel two summers ago and flew back on the day of the cease-fire, and although we stayed very clear of the North it was still a very bizarre time to be there. It was a fantastic trip and I'm glad I went and so on so forth, but the propaganda they pumped at me backfired predictably spectacularly and I returned no less cynical about the whole shebang and considerably better-informed. And with accidentally blue hair and a taste for tea and hoummus (separately), but those are entirely different kettles of bananas... :P)

*laughs* At least you saw the pretty picture on the cover. :D O New Crobuzon... :D

[airys1.livejournal.com]

Unhappy and unpleasant is when it's easiest to journal (at least so I've found)...and I've also found out that the people who care about you like to know what's going on in your mind/life. Such is the nature of relationships (yeah, I need to take my own advice). I think you do a wonderful job of expressing yourself, and holding things like that in doesn't help anyone, least of all yourself.
Wow, that was heavy. I shall go lurk somewhere now...eek.

[midenianscholar.livejournal.com]

I really am drawing a blank. Except that I do agree with Kyra: half the time it's my own thoughts that do me in. It's important not to let them win, at least not most of the time.

[builtofsorrow.livejournal.com]

I am never good at saying things in situations such as these, but did want to note that I love you very, very much, and I always want to read anything you care to write because I do want to know how you're getting on, no matter if it's good or bad (though of course I always hope for good).

I need to clean my bedroom. Ack.

I also need to steal Steven Moffat and keep him for my very own.

On a final note: am not sure what you have been reading, but might I recommend To Begin Where I Am by Czeslaw Milosz? It's a gorgeous collection of essays (I've read the foreword alone at least seven times), and I always find essays (/non-fiction) take longer to get through, so if the same goes for you, this might last longer (it's a fairly long book anyway). ALSO. anthon1 recommended me Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled, which is about poetry and such, and it is splendidsplendidsplendid.

♥♥♥&infin