Let go

It’s getting so much more intense than it should

I keep trying to look away

It’s no use.

Your best traits have been there for years

I’m jealous of those who knew you when...

Before you were broken

Took it out and broke me.

And likely others before me.

As much as you can’t trust

I trusted you tenfold.

That’s my detriment, my fatal flaw.

Not just with you, with others as well.

But something in you, something about the talk

Made it seem worth testing.

We all have our fears

Most of us let them get the best of us,

But you have to either own your paranoia

Or conquer it.

For every person you’re afraid will break you

For every person you don’t grant a chance,

You break another in turn.

All because you don’t want to get burned.

You can either let it go, trust without limits

Or limit yourself more than anyone else could.

Sabotage is not the same

As taking a situation into your own hands.

It is only taking it out of the hands

Of the people who care the most.

The people who can burn you the worst

Are the people who wouldn’t even dare.

So let it go, or risk being let go.

Gobble gobble!

This year for Thanksgiving, I didn't go back to my hometown in North Carolina to spend it with my family. This isn't the first time I've opted to stay in MA, but the experience was very different from the previous two times I stayed.

My freshman year I stayed and cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my entryway-mates who also stayed behind. Sophomore year I went home to NC on the Amtrak (20 hours each way, it was brutal). Junior year I stayed in MA, but spent it with Eric's (dysfunctional) family. I say that in the nicest way possible. All of us are dysfunctional in some way. Then last year I went home to North Carolina, but only because we knew my grandmother didn't have much longer to live and I wanted to see her one last time. It was good that I went because she passed away only a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving.

This year my friend Janice and I spent Thanksgiving with our mutual friend Patti's parents in Wenham, MA. It was a different experience for me because it was the first time I've ever drank at Thanksgiving. No one in my family drinks so until this year I was unaware that it was normal to have wine with Thanksgiving dinner. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for it, it was just different.

I've also never had a Thanksgiving dinner that included appetizers earlier in the day (which were eaten alongside champagne, by the way) and then the dinner itself served on nice dishes with fine silverware. It was quite the change from my previous Thanksgivings and, while very enjoyable and unforgettable, I look forward to hopefully being able to spend next Thanksgiving with my family in North Carolina.

During the break between dinner and dessert, Patti took Janice and me to her family's beach house in Ipswich and we "hiked" along the beach, in Janice's words. It was high tide, so the sandbar was covered, and all that was left of the beach were large rocks and small boulders, which we climbed over on our walk. It was definitely not my average Thanksgiving activity, but variety is the spice of life.

:-)

Grief

It's been a really rough couple of days. Don't get me wrong, things could definitely be worse, but I'm just not feeling it right now.

It has been almost a year since my grandmother passed away, but I never really grieved properly. It has been just over a month since my Aunt Linda passed away, and I was very close to her, but still I didn't grieve properly when she passed.

It's all hitting me now. Then there's the grieving for missed opportunities, mistakes made, the unknown.

I should be grateful that I've held up as well as I have this far. I've grown so much in the last year, more than I ever thought I would. It's amazing what can happen when you get out of a toxic relationship. I've had bumps along the way where I've regressed, but they've been fairly few and far between.

That said, I'm coming to a point where I feel like big decisions are about to greet me and I need to meet them head on. Before I can do that though, I need to come to grips with the decisions and obstacles I'm already facing, not the least of which are obstacles at work and prepping for grad school.

I have a lot to think about and work through and in a lot of ways I feel like I'm doing it all on my own.

For a while I had my head above water, which was largely thanks to a few specific people. I've all but lost one entirely and another is moving in two months. I can feel myself starting to slip under, I can see the warning signs. I haven't felt this way in a long time, but if I don't do something soon it has the potential to get much worse.

I'll be fine and I know that, I just wish I had someone to remind me every once in a while.

Providence

Well, I finally made it down to Rhode Island!

Last night the girls took a drive down for Carol's friend's birthday and we had a blast! We started out at a little dive called Wild Colonial and then drove over to Jerky's to listen to some band. I don't even know where to even go in explaining the night, so I'll just direct all attention to the photos on facebook. Namely, those of "random drunk Derick" as this gentleman is tagged in Carol's photos or "Derek?" as he is tagged in my photos.

Dude was druuuuuunk, but so much fun! He told all sorts of lies that I was able to catch him in, so it was just all around a really hilarious conversation. I'm fairly certain his name isn't actually Derek, but it's not like it really matters.

He had a couple of buddies who kept selling him out on his lies, which was the best part. I love drunk people, just so long as I'm not too sober to appreciate it.

After we dropped Janice off at home (she was the furthest gone of all of us), Carol, Patti and I went to IHOP, which was just what I needed at 3 a.m. or whatever time it was. I also saw Keenan there, which was beautifully random. :-)

All in all a very successful night to cap off a very successful weekend. It's been a while since I've had a weekend that was this much fun.

This whole having girlfriends bit is so new to me, but I'm really enjoying it so far.

Yay!

My day off

I have no idea why I waited this long to do laundry. I didn't even realize I had this much dirty laundry at all until I sorted it all out! My day off just became far less enjoyable. :-(

Granted, that enormous pile includes sheets and towels, which don't have to be done right away, but that's still a lot of clothes, regardless.

What's worse is that it's not even really a day off. Starting at 3:30 I'll have to make several phone calls for work. Eh, whatever, they only last like 5 minutes and it's not like I'm doing much else.

Let's be honest, what was I doing before I sorted laundry? Playing Farmville. Oh yeah, really making the most of my day off. I guess I needed a relaxing day off work where I'm not lying in bed in pain or coughing, but I still feel like I've been entirely unproductive. There's always the weekend, I suppose.

Appreciation

How long do you have to have something before you miss it when it's gone?

The emotion of regret plays a huge role into missing someone or something. I've been thinking about what it really means to miss something and I can only think of people or experiences that also make me feel some level of regret. Either I regret not saying something before a loved on passed away or I regret not handling a situation slightly differently to make things turn out differently. Even when it comes down to situations that were nothing but good, what makes you miss them? Regret that they're gone.

But what makes something worth missing? At what point do you start to regret losing someone or something?

It starts with appreciation. It revolves around appreciation. Once you appreciate something, you're at risk of regretting if you lose it. Maybe that's why sometimes we put up a wall and hesitate to truly appreciate people, things and situations. If you don't appreciate something, it hurts a lot less if you lose it. Once you let yourself appreciate it, you're bound to miss it, even if the something, or someone, has only been in your life for a short time.

As much as regret sucks, and as much as it hurts to miss something or someone, it's so worth it when you find something, or someone, truly worthy of your appreciation.

<3

Not knowing

For me, there's almost nothing worse than not knowing; I just don't have patience. It could be just about anything, something completely random and trivial, but if I don't know the answer, I'm frustrated.

Imagine how much worse it is when the question isn't trivial--when there's actually something riding on it.

Sometimes though, I think that maybe it's not that I don't know, but more that I don't like the answer very much and I think that if I wait long enough, maybe the answer will change. It's worked a couple of times, but only a couple.

How many more times does it have to not work before I get the picture?

Wouldn't I like to know. ;-)

Wish upon a star

Someday I'm going to meet a man who will be sitting with me on the top of a roof with a bottle of red wine, wrapped in a blanket, during something like this:

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=8774

Learning experiences

Catching up at work after being sick is never fun. Neither is staying late to do assessments with families, especially when they don't pick up and you're stuck late at work for no reason.

One thing I'm really grateful to this job for is the clinical experience it has already given me. I got a disturbing series of text messages today from a friend of mine about his girlfriend, who was threatening to commit suicide and acting generally aggressive, verbally and physically. It didn't come to the point where I actually had to intervene at all, but I felt fairly calm throughout and just continued to ask questions. If this had happened a few months ago, I'm not sure how I would have handled it. I'm sure I would have asked some of the same questions, but it's unlikely that I would have been anywhere near as calm.

This job has actually taught me a lot about parenting as well. I listen to some of these kids talk about what they've been through, and I listen to the parents make excuses, and it's more obvious than ever what I shouldn't do when I have kids. It's not just the physical abuse, which is not something that would have ever happened with my kids, but just some of the verbal abuse I hear on a daily basis. Kids are resilient, but there's only so much they can take.

There's only so much any of us can take...

Very little is funnier than a pregnant, gangsta devil.

I guess I'm still not 100%.

I went to watch football at Uno's today, but only made it through the first game before I was utterly exhausted. Clearly my body isn't totally recovered, but it was nice to get out of the house. The weather today was perfect! I was actually kind of glad that it took the bus forever to come by so that I could enjoy the sunshine and warm(er) weather. After the 1pm games I came home to take a nap, but by the time I waited on the 71 bus and then took it home, an hour had passed so I didn't get to nap until 5.

It was one of those disorienting deep-sleep naps where when you wake up you're not sure why it's dark outside, but your alarm is going off. :-) I needed it. My body is eternally grateful.

I was on the Uno's Harvard Square facebook page looking through their Halloween pictures and found a new picture of Jason and me, so I tagged us in it. It's a really good picture and I look so happy in it. That was a really fun night, for sure. I wish we had taken a picture of Jason with his grocery-bag baby because I realized that night that very little is funnier than a pregnant, gangsta devil.

I guess that answers that question

This is totally not the day I envisioned waking up to, but you can't pick and choose your battles.

Well, I guess you can pick and choose some of them. Time to battle the huge mountain of laundry I haven't touched while I've been sick.

We can be whatever you want us to be...

Those words were said to me 11 days ago and I wasn't sure how to respond to them, so I just did the best I could with, "I'm not trying to define us."

I feel like most of the early interactions between two people who are interested in each other are tests, to an extent. How else are you going to feel each other out, determine worth and value? You want to be sure that the person is worth your time before you jump in and risk getting hurt. Still, is that really fair? Sure, we all do it, "Hmm, I wonder how he will react if I do this..." or "I wonder what she would say to that..." But is it really constructive at all? It leads to a whole lot of anxiety on both ends because you know if you're testing someone, they're probably testing you, and if they're not, you have a lot of undue stress.

Relationships are silly, intimate or otherwise. We do it as friends too, though not as much as we did it in middle school when every girl tried out three-way calling to see if their friend was a back-stabber. That's the most brutal test of them all because no matter how you answer, you're betraying someone. That's the problem with these tests, there's no easy answer. There's no way to know for sure what the other person really wants you to say. Sometimes experience is enough to at least guide you a bit, but whoever said 'honesty is the best policy' had clearly never been in a relationship.

That last sentence right there goes against everything I have stood for and anyone who reads it will probably doubt that it came from me, but bear with me. I don't for a second encourage or condone lying, especially in intimate relationships where trust has to be built and fostered, but what I've learned (despite my lack of a filter) is that sometimes you have to just feel out a situation and say what you think the other person wants you to say, provided it isn't a gross departure from what you actually believe.

This goes back to the old adage, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." But as humans in social situations, we can't always just hold our tongues entirely. Our faces tend to give us away if we're pondering something and denying that we have something to say when asked is almost as bad as saying something hurtful. Some people would be more than happy to accept your denial of opinion, but others will assume the worst. And here is where the 'anything nice to say' part comes into play.

For the purposes of this example, please assume M=Man and W=Woman, however I do not mean to insinuate that this situation only happens in heterosexual relationships or only in this direction.

W: Baby, does this dress make me look fat?

M (thinking): Oh god, this is a trick.

I know, this is the most cliche example around, but that's because it works. Now, whether the dress actually makes the woman look fat here, matters.

If it doesn't, but the man is afraid that saying "no" will seem too insincere, a good response is, "You look beautiful." Any stable woman is going to understand that as a compliment and not question it further. An unstable woman is another story altogether, but I can't help you there.

If it does make her look fat, DO NOT SAY THAT. There are much better ways to handle the situation. Again, tell her she's beautiful, that's key. Then, put the emphasis on why she's asking you about the dress. Does she feel uncomfortable in it? Does she think it makes her look fat?

W: Baby, does this dress make me look fat?

M: I think you look beautiful, as always, but what's up? Do you not like it? If you're going to be self-conscious in it, I'm sure we can find another one. I don't want you worrying about it throughout the night.

Okay, so maybe it sounds lame in writing, but it puts the emphasis on what she thinks of herself and what she'll be feeling when she wears the dress, plus it includes a compliment.

This doesn't just work in romantic relationships. I've seen one too many friends send another friend out in something atrocious because someone was afraid of hurting someone else's feelings. I'm guilty of this myself, but I've realized that you don't have to be mean to make someone realize they shouldn't be wearing what they have on. Chances are that if it's wildly inappropriate they've already second-guessed themselves. If they haven't second-guessed it, chances are that even being mean wouldn't have been enough to bring them around and then you've just pissed off your friend with nothing to show for it.

That said, how do you get back to what you really want to say?

Let's say that what you ended up saying wasn't all that far from what you really think, but it's still lacking something important that could come back to bite you later. Lying by omission. It's a sneaky little bugger. Figuring out when, if ever, you should broach the subject is very important.

There are also cases where you don't realize that what you said was off-base until later. Approaching that discrepancy may be more difficult than expected. You're likely to run into the dreaded response of, "But you said..." Okay, yes, I said it was fine; I was wrong. I changed my mind. Am I allowed to change my mind?

So do you approach the topic by first acknowledging what you said?

"Hey, remember a few weeks ago when I said...?"

Something tells me that isn't going to go over very well, especially if the other person has gotten used to your first response. If they didn't already expect you to bring this up, they're going to be completely blind-sided and likely defensive.

Two things to really think about before you begin:

1. Is it worth bringing up?

2. Why didn't you say it in the first place?

If it isn't worth bringing up, don't. There's no need to tell your friend, girlfriend, significant other that her/his attire wasn't flattering two weeks ago.

If it is worth bringing up, why didn't you say it the first time you had the chance? Was it just not the right time? Was the relationship too new? Had something already been said to make you worry about how your response would be received? These are all pretty common, it seems.

I'm almost certain it shouldn't go like this:

"Hey, remember the other day, when we were talking about the possibility of me being a rebound and how I didn't want to be a rebound? And remember how I was talking about all the things I didn't want to be and you said 'We can be whatever you want us to be' and I was really quick to say that I wasn't trying to define us? I like you, I really really do, and while I don't find it necessary to define us right now, I want to keep that possibility open in the future. I didn't realize it until your ex girlfriend starting posting on your facebook wall, but I really like spending time with you and I don't want to lose that. I guess some really lame girlie part of my is afraid that if we're undefined, you're more likely to slip away, to go back to her or someone else. I didn't mention all of this at the time because you had just finished telling me about how when you were with her she was always wanting you to change your facebook status to 'in a relationship' and how much that bugged you. I don't want you to think that's what I'm asking. I'm just asking who you are. When my friends as about you, who are you? Are you my friend? Because I don't stay up until 5am talking to just anyone and I don't kiss just anyone. I know you haven't had time to determine my worth, and I'm not asking you to drop everything (or anything!) for me, but I want to be more than friends, if you'll have me."

While I'm fairly certain that is how it shouldn't be done, I can't think of a better way to do it. Sometimes it isn't perfect and you just have to take it as it is. Sometimes, you just have to run with it.

Why am I still sick?

Well, remember how I was certain this wasn't flu? I'm not so certain anymore. By the time I got home from work last night, my whole body was hurting. I took some medicine and tried to get in the bed early, but I was up most of the night in pain. At one point I woke myself up, yelling in my sleep. I was yelling, "It hurts! It hurts!" So yeah, I didn't exactly have a great night. Now, my skin hurts, which leads me to believe that I may have had a fever last night.

The worst thing right now is my head. It's hurting really bad and the medicine doesn't seem to be phasing it, which is concerning given how much acetaminophen is in the DayQuil I'm taking.

I feel really bad for missing work today because I was scheduled to do an assessment at 4pm, but not only would I have been worthless at work today, I might have spread this around. There's no way I could have gone to work in good conscience.

Guess today is going to consist of cycles of taking medicine and drinking water. What an exciting life!

Go away, sickness!

I'm getting sick and I'm none too happy about it.

Yesterday I was feeling a little sniffly, but didn't think much of it. By the time I got on the bus, I was coughing, but not much. It was one of those coughs that could have been triggered by anything, so I figured my throat was just dry from all of the talking earlier in the day.

By the time I woke up this morning, I felt miserable. I thought about not coming into work, but knew there would be a ton of work waiting when I came back, so I sucked it up and came into work. For the first few hours I was feeling much better. I attribute that to the coffee I had this morning. Ever since around 2pm though, I've been coughing pretty regularly and my throat isn't exactly feeling great.

That said, I need to get a flu shot, ASAP. I really don't think this is the flu. As a matter of fact, I'm certain it isn't, but now that my immune system is compromised, it's all downhill from here. I get sick every November and February, almost like clock work. The last time I didn't get a flu shot, my February illness was full-blown flu that had me at UHS for four days, during two of which I had an IV. No thank you; I have no desire for THAT to happen again.

Besides, I need to make sure I'm healthy for Thanksgiving. I won't be going home like I had hoped to be; I just can't afford it. Instead, I'm going to try to make a trip to NYC. I have a friend from middle/high school who lives there now, so hopefully I'll get a chance to see her if I do end up down there. At this stage it's very preliminary, but I'd love to get back there, especially for Thanksgiving. I've only been there once, and that was this past May, so I can't wait to have another opportunity there. :-) In the last couple of weeks I've told two different people about this place in Brooklyn where I had brunch in May and now I really want to go back, haha.

I hate staying late at work and it's even more miserable when I'm sick. I'm scheduled to do an assessment right now, but I'm talking to the child after a colleague talks to the parent and it's already been an hour. :-( I still have to do laundry when I get home. I knew I shouldn't have put it off! *sigh*

And now my BlackBerry is dying. Great. I haven't even had it on vibrate today and the battery is beeping at me. WTF? THIS IS A NEW BATTERY! :-( Sorry to have pissed you off, gods, please don't be angry with me anymore.

Wait, what?

I go through some pretty distinct phases in the type of music I listen to. I can sometimes go long stretches without listening to a particular genre without even thinking about it, but when I go back to it, it's almost exclusively that genre for a while.

I'm on a rap/hip hop kick. It started when Emmy posted Petey Pablo on her facebook. Then there was a whole conversation with Jason that had me listening to Ludacris. Now all I've listened to on Pandora for three days is Ludacris radio. I can't help it! It's obviously just what I needed too, as I've only skipped two or three songs in that time.

I'm cutting all my hair off. Maybe not as short as freshman and sophomore year in college, but a lot of it nonetheless. I'm sick of it. I thought it would be shorter after Locks of Love than it ended up being, but I had a lot more hair than I thought. Next paycheck, it's coming off. I need a change, big time. Besides, it'll grow back. Watch me change my mind by next paycheck, haha.

Man my head is everywhere today. I can't even really finish a complete thought. I woke up at 4 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep for a while. That was after not going to bed until 1. This crap is getting old.

I need to get things back in order, in more ways than one. Aaaaaand, break!

Insight

I had a great weekend overall, though I must say that it took on a slightly different form than I expected.

The Tron party was a lot of fun, but I wish I had actually followed up on the whole eating thing I mentioned during my last post. Never got around to that, which resulted in a much more intoxicated night than planned, but it all worked out.

Today has been kind of not so great, but I spent a long time talking to an old friend tonight who provided me with some useful advice. I feel better about the day and better about things in general. Some things are just not worth getting worked up over! :-)

Time for bed, I'm already going to regret staying up this late. Yes, I know it's only 11, I'm an old woman since starting my job, haha. :-)