I've been working on a million things but the number one thing I've been doing is Trying Really Hard Not to Hyperventilate About The Future. Also trying to envision a future where my financial needs are met and I can spend my energy on better things than wondering if I'm going to be successful and how I might go about doing that.
The very fact that I exist at all is either a total fucking miracle or some kind of weird accident. Lately I've been feeling like I had a bunch of eggs and I put them all in one basket and then I feel down the stairs and now I'm at the bottom, stunned by slime, everything broken.
Why are money troubles are such a dirty little secret?
Why do I feel so useless?
I know what's broken but I don't know how to fix it. I need help but can't bring myself to ask because I feel like I should be doing it on my own and that needing any help at all makes me horribly vulnerable and being vulnerable terrifies me to the bone, and plus. Plus.
Plus, no one who wants to help is able and those who are able won't because I'm not worth it or they think I should be helping myself.
These are all very mean things I tell myself.
I should go eat something.
I will come back later. There are a million things I could write about asking for help and how shitty that turned out. I'm afraid of asking for help. I am the helper, not the helpee. I would rather saw off my leg than ask for help. How fucked is that?
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
I whip my mouse back and forth
I am accidentally obsessed with this video. By which I mean, I found this video by accident and am instantly smitten by the ridiculous energy of these badass girlchildren.
Specifically the magical thing that happens from 1:36 to 1:39.
And, were I not especially daft at this moment, I might have slogged through all the stuff about ripping a Youtube video (without pissing off the agreement) and then creating a gif of that sweet 3 second chunk of incredible so I could loop it indefinitely while saving her poor exuberant neck the trouble of a fine YOU GO GIRL, but it appears I am not cool enough to manage it.
If someone were to say, extract that magical bit and gif it for me, I would probably go mad with the hair whipping dance.
Specifically the magical thing that happens from 1:36 to 1:39.
And, were I not especially daft at this moment, I might have slogged through all the stuff about ripping a Youtube video (without pissing off the agreement) and then creating a gif of that sweet 3 second chunk of incredible so I could loop it indefinitely while saving her poor exuberant neck the trouble of a fine YOU GO GIRL, but it appears I am not cool enough to manage it.
If someone were to say, extract that magical bit and gif it for me, I would probably go mad with the hair whipping dance.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
I quit smoking. Here are some text blocks about it.
Even as I purchased my last bag of tobacco I thought, while certainly more economical, it would probably be a terrible idea to get the big bag. Clearly I knew I would need to confront the idea of quitting and I even thought it might be coming up soon. So while my rational side was prepared to accept the idea that I would/could be smoke free and really enjoy that, the dumb addicted part of me is still freaking out a little that I just gave up something that was such a huge part of my life. It was my go-to tool for thinking, writing, relaxing, socializing and dealing with stress. But it was also causing problems, in each of those areas plus others. Like labored breathing, chest pains, wheezing and waking up with a terrible taste in my mouth. These things were awkward and alarming and also a bad sign that I loved cigarettes 10 but cigarettes only loved me 2. Since I started rolling my own I stopped paying attention to how much I was actually smoking and some nights I would look down at the ash tray and just think, damn, where did all those come from? I justified it. (Really Self? Really?) Hand rolled smokes with a filter are cleaner and burn faster than a commercially created cigarette. I could see the tobacco that went into the cigarette and there were no obvious demon faces embedded in the moist fluff, no weird unrecognizable things, so I felt sort of safe about it. I embraced the smugness of the DIY kinda gal I am, the instant dance club hit at any pub or party. I gave a lot of Roll Your Own lessons. My smokes were described as “juicy” and “pleasant” and inspired declarations like “I gotta try this”.
This quit got a jump start because I thought I might need to quit soon, not because I HAD to, but because some of the perceived joy of it was now gone from the process. It occurred to me that I ought to at least pay attention to the Lorax in my own body that felt perhaps the Onceler oughtta fuck off and stop polluting up the place. I thought about that for a long time. Like pretty much every time my heart raced and I walked around alone in my house, swinging my arms and talking myself back to my happy heart place while doing stretches through an anxiety smack down, willing myself not to have a heart attack and deciding to take a just-in-case aspirin. Then I would pretend those moments were some kind of unrelated anomaly and the moment the feeling went away I would light up again. It isn’t like that happened ALL the time, but holy crap, shouldn't just once be enough?
This time quitting was a little easier because I had a lot of remorseful smoker moments banked up in my head and the circumstances that allowed me to be a comfortably dedicated smoker were starting to change around me. My sweetie had experienced a sense of disconnection from the health of his own body and he abruptly stopped smoking about a month ago. Just decided he needed some ridiculously expensive nicotine gum to get through the suck parts and he was done. I was very happy for him because quitting resolved the alarming health issues he was having, but I was also kind of selfishly sad because I had lost my smoking buddy. Smoking together (which I believed to be rather enjoyable) was no longer an option. I read that and marvel at the fact I felt so protective of my own habit that part of me felt sad that he had quit. What a confusing array of emotions! I got weirdly defensive even though he never asked me to quit. In fact, he told me it was for himself that he did it and that he would love me no matter if I quit or continued. And in my head I was like, “Yeah? Well...good for you... because...I do what I want! And... I guess I wanna... ya know... keep being dedicated to this shitty awesome habit I picked up... for now!... and stuff!”
There were many other things that had been occurring to me that made me believe that deep down I did not want to be a smoker, even as I pretended to myself that I was a cutting edge badass who looked really impressive and hot with a cigarette (an identity mostly crafted when I was 14 and thought smoking was intrinsic to being a grown up and also a key component of being a writer). I craft a lot and I was getting worried about selling stuff that smelled like smoke. I was so worried about I allowed my etsy store to expire. This is pretty ridiculous, but it sounds like such a silly problem compared to the fact that I was also having some trouble breathing. I could not belly laugh without coughing. I could not sing without coughing. Sometimes I would cough and a nasty chunk of lung shame would shoot out onto my hand. Revolting. When I got sick I smoked through it. I never kept track of how many smokes I had in a day because I rolled them myself. And then, I was sitting in my office, feeling anxious about my own future and stewing in the rage of mortality and thought “I will just have a cigarette” only to realize I was already smoking one. That was the moment I knew there was a monkey on my back, pulling my hair, rubbing its junk on my neck and poo-flinging all over my life while I was asking myself to please not protest because I liked the company.
I knew it was coming, but quitting also freaked me out. Last time I tried to quit it was horrid. I made it 10 days in a miserable state of deprivation and sadness, curled up on my bed crying like a junkie because I just wanted a fucking cigarette, like some kind of drug addled whackjob, totally ashamed of myself and super super angry. That is the thing I feared the most about quitting this time, and one of the reasons I put it off. I quit once for two years just because, only to dupe myself into believing I could be a casual smoker (hahahahainfinity). I quit for my children so I could be a healthy pregnant lady and also so I could nurse. It was easy then because smoking was revolting to me when I was pregnant. In fact, it was my first clue that something was up, it made me gag before I’d even missed my first period. But then I took it back up because I knew once I did nursing would be over, and after two kids and 350 gallons of breastmilk I saw it as a totally terrible way to reclaim my body as my own. I also quit for Katie’s 6th birthday because she asked me to. I quit for about six months. I threw a party and decided to be naughty and get smokes and claimed I would give the rest away when the party was over, but in the morning, there they were and it seemed so wasteful not to finish the pack. Just like that I was hooked all over again. Also, every time I quit I gained 30 pounds. Every. Single. Time.
With all this broiling around in my head, and all the stresses I’ve been dealing with and all the dealing with stresses I’ve been putting off, I was not thinking NOW IS THE TIME.
I knew I had a week long stretch where I would be staying with my sister to help her with the babies while her husband was traveling and the idea of this made me anxious because it would make smoking tricky. If I went outside a lot I would miss things. I would come in stinking of smoke and would have to scrub down before I would feel comfortable picking up babies. And because all this would be inconvenient I might not enjoy my time as much as I could. Butt disposal would be an issue. I thought these thoughts as I packed up my maker and tobacco and tubes, worried my supply would run out and wondering how inconvenient it would be for me to find a tobacco shop in an unfamiliar town. I seriously obsessed about it. Even AS it was pissing me off to obsess about it. I felt like a heroin addict trying to plan out where I might discretely shoot up if I were coming to babysit. Not that anyone else ever dared make such a ridiculous correlation, but the whole addiction thing swam into focus and made me really ashamed of myself. I knew it freaked me out, and I knew my non-smoking sister hated that I smoked, as do my children. It was TIME, but holy crap, what about the HOW of things?
I was nervous about the weaning period, afraid I would turn into an emotional asshole at exactly the worst time to be an emotional asshole. I was there to help, not turn into an angry addict in the throes of withdrawal. The entire drive up on Friday I smoked like crazy and talked to myself and vented a great deal of stress and anger and self pity and blah blah blah about everything but smoking, with no intention or expectation of quitting by Sunday. When I arrived I was stressed (I have a lot on my plate, seriously, it’s a heaping helping of WTF lately) and I was reflecting on how easy it is to help someone else cut the bullshit and see the path (they already know, I just help clarify, no meandering) but it’s so hard for me to do it for myself sometimes. I kept thinking “I wish I had a ME who could come and help me offload all this mental clutter” and then I thought, “Well, duh. I DO have a me. I already know the steps. I’m allowing myself to be shitty and proclaim that nothing is working and everything is hard. I am sucking the energy out of my own life”.
Puff. Exhale. Nausea, Puff. Exhale. Pretend this is relaxing. Puff. Exhale. Facepalm.
I arrived, I hung out, I pushed myself as long as I could before ducking out into the hot air to smoke and feel pretty unsatisfied about the whole thing. My boyfriend came over, he stayed inside while I went for a smoke again. I came in self-conscious and sat around in my invisible smoke suit and felt like crying because I hated the idea of giving up something I didn’t even love, like breaking up with a toxic friend and then feeling sad they were gone without really knowing why. I did not want to have that feeling. I did not want to have the feeling of wanting to avoid that feeling. Suddenly I was all about feelings. On Saturday I smoked twice. I went to bed tired and wiped out, but discovered that it was doable, even beneficial that I was not in my own environment and could avoid the traps I laid out for myself at home. I decided I would get some gum the next day and just see what happens. I had a lot of emotional conversations with my sister, snapshots of my own life where I was unforgiving of myself and pissed off about the waves of difficulties I’ve encountered, all my feelings right up at the spill point when I realized I was beating myself up pretty hard, like I had kind of made a profession of it. The emotional shit I really have to deal with has nothing to do with smoking. The smoking was an avoidance tactic. I worked through it. The gum helped. I never had a full on freak out but I could feel myself getting edgy sometimes, defensive and raw and kind of pitiful. I could usually track it down to craving and chewing gum helped.
Then I spent a few days with my boyfriend which were mostly lovely except for three stupid fights about my own turmoil and an overflowed toilet that had nothing to do with me, I was tapped out and crumpled up and crying for no reason and laughing because the crying was so embarrassing and my poor bewildered boyfriend was holding my sobbing head against his chest while I ugly cried all over his shirt and he exhaled in stunned empathy and finally understood I was not trying to make him mad, I was just a big old hot mess of snot and tears and big roller coaster feelings and he was my safety bar.
I am home again after being gone for 11 days. The car ride home was filled with urges to smoke because that’s what I did to renew my focus. Without it I sweltered in my busted AC/half stuck window heat box. I listened to the radio. I did not sing. There is a mid point of the drive where no good NPR comes in and I listened to some churchy AM talk show women going on about what Oprah meant when she said G.O.D. in her final show and whether it was a New Agey kind of thing where they were supposed to think Jesus was an energy or consciousness (and both words were used with such comical derision, because they KNEW him as a real man) or was she talking about their specific Lord? Apparently Oprah forgot to call her to specify, so it was all so terribly non-specific and this was terribly important because Oprah had so much INFLUENCE (and then the host said she wished she had as much influence as Oprah, which was obvious but also kind of sad and amusing for her to declare.) Then these two biddies went on to admonish Oprah for having a relationship “without the benefit of the sacrament” and noted that she had never done a pro life show. I don’t really give a shit either way, but the whole conversation was such an annoying and judgey missed-point rant that it made me want to slap them both. You might rightly imagine my great desire to smoke, my inner fiend trying to whip up extreme annoyance in an attempt to make my brain make my hand make a smoke and then make my lips smoke it. Though my remaining supply of lose tobacco and filtered papers rolled about the back of the van in a jaunty animal cracker tin, I never stopped the car to fetch it. I just drove for four sweltering hours, sad to leave Mike, emotionally jacked up and financially cranky.
So now I am home, and I put my ashtray in an away place (and thankfully the sight of it made me go, EEWWW). Woke up early and took the kids to school. Had my first morning coffee in the car with no smoke to go with it after dropping them off. Weird. Came home and did not smoke some more. Also weird. Not exactly a hardcore craving issue, more like a strange absence of doing. I am still chewing the gum and that’s been helping with the nic fits. Some people say it’s just swapping the addiction with the same addiction, but I’ve used patches and gum before and it helped without leaving me addicted to patches and gum. My real issue is the romantic nostalgic love of actually smoking, that’s the habit I have the hardest time letting go of. I’m not even chewing the recommended amount of gum (9-12 pieces? Sweet jeebus, I would vomit from that and I’m sure I smoked more than a pack a day.)
Gum has certainly made the transition away from the act of smoking bearable. I have not had a real honest to god slap yer mama kind of urge yet and I hope I never do. All this sudden “free time” is making me aware of how much time I wasted. I’ve been back in my own environment for about 24 hours now. I’m not smoking in it and that feels kind of weird, but I’m not sure why it should. I should be proud of myself I guess, but I’m also struggling with that. It’s like I bashed my head into the wall and then stopped and instead of patting myself on the back I'm wondering what kind of idiot does that in the first place? Congratulations on no longer being an idiot? And on the heels of the self-unfair harshness of that it occurs to me perhaps smoking was a way of expressing my own pointless self-loathing and now that I’m all done with the smoking it’s time to let go of that toxic habit as well.
This quit got a jump start because I thought I might need to quit soon, not because I HAD to, but because some of the perceived joy of it was now gone from the process. It occurred to me that I ought to at least pay attention to the Lorax in my own body that felt perhaps the Onceler oughtta fuck off and stop polluting up the place. I thought about that for a long time. Like pretty much every time my heart raced and I walked around alone in my house, swinging my arms and talking myself back to my happy heart place while doing stretches through an anxiety smack down, willing myself not to have a heart attack and deciding to take a just-in-case aspirin. Then I would pretend those moments were some kind of unrelated anomaly and the moment the feeling went away I would light up again. It isn’t like that happened ALL the time, but holy crap, shouldn't just once be enough?
This time quitting was a little easier because I had a lot of remorseful smoker moments banked up in my head and the circumstances that allowed me to be a comfortably dedicated smoker were starting to change around me. My sweetie had experienced a sense of disconnection from the health of his own body and he abruptly stopped smoking about a month ago. Just decided he needed some ridiculously expensive nicotine gum to get through the suck parts and he was done. I was very happy for him because quitting resolved the alarming health issues he was having, but I was also kind of selfishly sad because I had lost my smoking buddy. Smoking together (which I believed to be rather enjoyable) was no longer an option. I read that and marvel at the fact I felt so protective of my own habit that part of me felt sad that he had quit. What a confusing array of emotions! I got weirdly defensive even though he never asked me to quit. In fact, he told me it was for himself that he did it and that he would love me no matter if I quit or continued. And in my head I was like, “Yeah? Well...good for you... because...I do what I want! And... I guess I wanna... ya know... keep being dedicated to this shitty awesome habit I picked up... for now!... and stuff!”
There were many other things that had been occurring to me that made me believe that deep down I did not want to be a smoker, even as I pretended to myself that I was a cutting edge badass who looked really impressive and hot with a cigarette (an identity mostly crafted when I was 14 and thought smoking was intrinsic to being a grown up and also a key component of being a writer). I craft a lot and I was getting worried about selling stuff that smelled like smoke. I was so worried about I allowed my etsy store to expire. This is pretty ridiculous, but it sounds like such a silly problem compared to the fact that I was also having some trouble breathing. I could not belly laugh without coughing. I could not sing without coughing. Sometimes I would cough and a nasty chunk of lung shame would shoot out onto my hand. Revolting. When I got sick I smoked through it. I never kept track of how many smokes I had in a day because I rolled them myself. And then, I was sitting in my office, feeling anxious about my own future and stewing in the rage of mortality and thought “I will just have a cigarette” only to realize I was already smoking one. That was the moment I knew there was a monkey on my back, pulling my hair, rubbing its junk on my neck and poo-flinging all over my life while I was asking myself to please not protest because I liked the company.
I knew it was coming, but quitting also freaked me out. Last time I tried to quit it was horrid. I made it 10 days in a miserable state of deprivation and sadness, curled up on my bed crying like a junkie because I just wanted a fucking cigarette, like some kind of drug addled whackjob, totally ashamed of myself and super super angry. That is the thing I feared the most about quitting this time, and one of the reasons I put it off. I quit once for two years just because, only to dupe myself into believing I could be a casual smoker (hahahahainfinity). I quit for my children so I could be a healthy pregnant lady and also so I could nurse. It was easy then because smoking was revolting to me when I was pregnant. In fact, it was my first clue that something was up, it made me gag before I’d even missed my first period. But then I took it back up because I knew once I did nursing would be over, and after two kids and 350 gallons of breastmilk I saw it as a totally terrible way to reclaim my body as my own. I also quit for Katie’s 6th birthday because she asked me to. I quit for about six months. I threw a party and decided to be naughty and get smokes and claimed I would give the rest away when the party was over, but in the morning, there they were and it seemed so wasteful not to finish the pack. Just like that I was hooked all over again. Also, every time I quit I gained 30 pounds. Every. Single. Time.
With all this broiling around in my head, and all the stresses I’ve been dealing with and all the dealing with stresses I’ve been putting off, I was not thinking NOW IS THE TIME.
I knew I had a week long stretch where I would be staying with my sister to help her with the babies while her husband was traveling and the idea of this made me anxious because it would make smoking tricky. If I went outside a lot I would miss things. I would come in stinking of smoke and would have to scrub down before I would feel comfortable picking up babies. And because all this would be inconvenient I might not enjoy my time as much as I could. Butt disposal would be an issue. I thought these thoughts as I packed up my maker and tobacco and tubes, worried my supply would run out and wondering how inconvenient it would be for me to find a tobacco shop in an unfamiliar town. I seriously obsessed about it. Even AS it was pissing me off to obsess about it. I felt like a heroin addict trying to plan out where I might discretely shoot up if I were coming to babysit. Not that anyone else ever dared make such a ridiculous correlation, but the whole addiction thing swam into focus and made me really ashamed of myself. I knew it freaked me out, and I knew my non-smoking sister hated that I smoked, as do my children. It was TIME, but holy crap, what about the HOW of things?
I was nervous about the weaning period, afraid I would turn into an emotional asshole at exactly the worst time to be an emotional asshole. I was there to help, not turn into an angry addict in the throes of withdrawal. The entire drive up on Friday I smoked like crazy and talked to myself and vented a great deal of stress and anger and self pity and blah blah blah about everything but smoking, with no intention or expectation of quitting by Sunday. When I arrived I was stressed (I have a lot on my plate, seriously, it’s a heaping helping of WTF lately) and I was reflecting on how easy it is to help someone else cut the bullshit and see the path (they already know, I just help clarify, no meandering) but it’s so hard for me to do it for myself sometimes. I kept thinking “I wish I had a ME who could come and help me offload all this mental clutter” and then I thought, “Well, duh. I DO have a me. I already know the steps. I’m allowing myself to be shitty and proclaim that nothing is working and everything is hard. I am sucking the energy out of my own life”.
Puff. Exhale. Nausea, Puff. Exhale. Pretend this is relaxing. Puff. Exhale. Facepalm.
I arrived, I hung out, I pushed myself as long as I could before ducking out into the hot air to smoke and feel pretty unsatisfied about the whole thing. My boyfriend came over, he stayed inside while I went for a smoke again. I came in self-conscious and sat around in my invisible smoke suit and felt like crying because I hated the idea of giving up something I didn’t even love, like breaking up with a toxic friend and then feeling sad they were gone without really knowing why. I did not want to have that feeling. I did not want to have the feeling of wanting to avoid that feeling. Suddenly I was all about feelings. On Saturday I smoked twice. I went to bed tired and wiped out, but discovered that it was doable, even beneficial that I was not in my own environment and could avoid the traps I laid out for myself at home. I decided I would get some gum the next day and just see what happens. I had a lot of emotional conversations with my sister, snapshots of my own life where I was unforgiving of myself and pissed off about the waves of difficulties I’ve encountered, all my feelings right up at the spill point when I realized I was beating myself up pretty hard, like I had kind of made a profession of it. The emotional shit I really have to deal with has nothing to do with smoking. The smoking was an avoidance tactic. I worked through it. The gum helped. I never had a full on freak out but I could feel myself getting edgy sometimes, defensive and raw and kind of pitiful. I could usually track it down to craving and chewing gum helped.
Then I spent a few days with my boyfriend which were mostly lovely except for three stupid fights about my own turmoil and an overflowed toilet that had nothing to do with me, I was tapped out and crumpled up and crying for no reason and laughing because the crying was so embarrassing and my poor bewildered boyfriend was holding my sobbing head against his chest while I ugly cried all over his shirt and he exhaled in stunned empathy and finally understood I was not trying to make him mad, I was just a big old hot mess of snot and tears and big roller coaster feelings and he was my safety bar.
I am home again after being gone for 11 days. The car ride home was filled with urges to smoke because that’s what I did to renew my focus. Without it I sweltered in my busted AC/half stuck window heat box. I listened to the radio. I did not sing. There is a mid point of the drive where no good NPR comes in and I listened to some churchy AM talk show women going on about what Oprah meant when she said G.O.D. in her final show and whether it was a New Agey kind of thing where they were supposed to think Jesus was an energy or consciousness (and both words were used with such comical derision, because they KNEW him as a real man) or was she talking about their specific Lord? Apparently Oprah forgot to call her to specify, so it was all so terribly non-specific and this was terribly important because Oprah had so much INFLUENCE (and then the host said she wished she had as much influence as Oprah, which was obvious but also kind of sad and amusing for her to declare.) Then these two biddies went on to admonish Oprah for having a relationship “without the benefit of the sacrament” and noted that she had never done a pro life show. I don’t really give a shit either way, but the whole conversation was such an annoying and judgey missed-point rant that it made me want to slap them both. You might rightly imagine my great desire to smoke, my inner fiend trying to whip up extreme annoyance in an attempt to make my brain make my hand make a smoke and then make my lips smoke it. Though my remaining supply of lose tobacco and filtered papers rolled about the back of the van in a jaunty animal cracker tin, I never stopped the car to fetch it. I just drove for four sweltering hours, sad to leave Mike, emotionally jacked up and financially cranky.
So now I am home, and I put my ashtray in an away place (and thankfully the sight of it made me go, EEWWW). Woke up early and took the kids to school. Had my first morning coffee in the car with no smoke to go with it after dropping them off. Weird. Came home and did not smoke some more. Also weird. Not exactly a hardcore craving issue, more like a strange absence of doing. I am still chewing the gum and that’s been helping with the nic fits. Some people say it’s just swapping the addiction with the same addiction, but I’ve used patches and gum before and it helped without leaving me addicted to patches and gum. My real issue is the romantic nostalgic love of actually smoking, that’s the habit I have the hardest time letting go of. I’m not even chewing the recommended amount of gum (9-12 pieces? Sweet jeebus, I would vomit from that and I’m sure I smoked more than a pack a day.)
Gum has certainly made the transition away from the act of smoking bearable. I have not had a real honest to god slap yer mama kind of urge yet and I hope I never do. All this sudden “free time” is making me aware of how much time I wasted. I’ve been back in my own environment for about 24 hours now. I’m not smoking in it and that feels kind of weird, but I’m not sure why it should. I should be proud of myself I guess, but I’m also struggling with that. It’s like I bashed my head into the wall and then stopped and instead of patting myself on the back I'm wondering what kind of idiot does that in the first place? Congratulations on no longer being an idiot? And on the heels of the self-unfair harshness of that it occurs to me perhaps smoking was a way of expressing my own pointless self-loathing and now that I’m all done with the smoking it’s time to let go of that toxic habit as well.
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