from FB notes

I have been writing in FB my funny things and only coming to mhf towrite really sad stuff.

that should change.

so here's some FB notes, repurposed for the blogosphere:

Note title: "Seriously?"

my attempts to meet someone online have brought me this delightful number:

my introduction/interrogation

what do you do?

where do you live?

i'm a grad student in philly.

-joey

his response

hello.

i just look your picture i understood you are very nice.

i came in usa last week. i come from turkey. i am engineer. i won green card, i am looking for a new job. i living my cousen in phila. i need new friend. i join pof.i wnat to write you.

Now I recognize my interrogatory technique is not the best but this was my second email. I was more tactful in the first...

Note title: "Family"

i am so blessed with my family.

there are moments I start to cry and I hate dobutamine

I hate it because it made me hope for something that didn't hap

pen.

and it's not dobutamine's fault.

sometimes I hate lasix. and i hate that the kidneys and the heart and the lungs can't work it out without one or the other failing.

and i keep learning these things in school. and every time. EVERY TIME we learn about diuretics, about kidney failure, about cardiac output and function I see myself speaking casually about Grandpa's 10% cardiac output fraction. He was stable for a few years at that fraction and that's freaking fantastic.

i don't know when it will come.

driving home from ACCT the other day I just started crying and I don't know what started it.

it might have been a billboard for Penn Health.

and it made me SO ANGRY because they didn't fix him.

and i know, i know, I KNOW how this works. how the body works. how the kdneys and heart and lungs and everything work.

but he was MY GRANDPA.

i hope he is with grandma now. i am trying to find my faith.

If I can believe that grandpa and grandma are together again and are watching their family from above I would be so happy.

grandpa, i miss you so much.

i don't know what they're building in that vacant lot or what the weather is supposed ot be this weekend.

i haven't sold any poems to hallmark or any of my jewelry.

i'm a fiscal failure.

but i'll keep trying.

I'm going back to river this summer to be outside, to build with my hands.

i will know the differnet types of says and teh +/- of all. plus the screws, nails etc....

I wish i could come home and talk to you about it.

we'd go out to the diner.

and i'll always order onion soup.

i love you so much.

grandpa and me at his dr.'s appt

"Tainted Love

Lately I have been finding my soft blanket on the floor a few feet from the couch. I was suspicious of this but thought perhaps i had dragged it with me or carbon had been tangled in it. I was suspicious because this blanket and the matching pillow have more than once been the recipient of Kitten’s wayward love advances.

Since he has no testicles nor penis I don’t know what drives Kitten’s sexy dance. I struggle to comprehend the apparent seasonality it manifests as to me that would suggest an instictive neuro or hormonal component. A behavior that varies with the sun implies (to me) a behavior rooted in physiology but I tend to write his love-dance off as a learned behavior, some sort of strange, sad steriotypy that continues on in the absence of functional parts.

but back to the point. I have 4 cats right now but i do recognize everyone’s separate meow. As I was lying on the couch, attempting to comprehend neuro-ophthamalogy I heard Kitten making his most plaintive, fetching yowl. He then jumped up on the pile of clothes he sleeps on. Instead of sleeping, however, he took the arm of my green sweatshirt in his mouth and began his sexy dance. His sexy dance consists of biting the distal arm of my sweatshirt while he straddles the body of it and kneads it rhythmically, all the while continuing that plaintive yowl.

Over the years Kitten has loved many things beginning, perhaps most disturbingly, with my yellow pikachu pillow. Kitten’s love of the Pikachu Pillow was so extreme my mother and I took him back to the vet to make sure they had really neutered him. I understand now why the vet thought we were crazy people.

When I moved to long island I didn’t bring the pikachu pillow with me so Kitten started up an affair with a stuffed animal I came to call the Love Puppy. Love Puppy moved arount the house usually in my absence. No matter where I left him I would return to find him in the center of the hallway or in the kitchen or some other random, obtrusive location. Again I had my suspicions but it was a few weeks before I was sure Kitten was the source of Love Puppy’s sudden wanderlust.

When I was on the phone for a little while I heard Kitten singing his siren song in the other room. I didn’t think much of it until he wandered into the room with the phone, Love Puppy hanging in his mouth and dragging between his legs much the way a dead antelope is carried by a lion on the savannah. Kitten made eye contact with me, continued his sexy cry and then lay on the side to commence with his sexy dance. In front of me. He continued as long as I stayed on the phone. As soon as I hung up he stopped.

This behavior continued for nearly two years, almost always when I was on the phone or otherwise occupied. I have often thought that kitten was jealous and this was his way of showing off in front of me, perhaps even attempting to make me jealous of the attention he showed Puppy. (I do recognize my gross anthropomorphism here. Strange things happen when you live with many animals and no humans).

Love Puppy is boxed up in the garage somewhere. In the last three or so years kitten has passing flings with a number of fleece blankets and small pillows but nothing with as much committment as he showed Pikachu or Love Puppy. It remains to see how this recent affair will progress.

...

After starting his dance with the sweatshirt Kitten jumped down and started off down the hallway, dragging the sweatshirt with him. I got up to get it back but then Carbon took off and ran over Kitten in her haste to get to the kitchen. This totally killed the mood. As I hung up my sweatshirt and settled back on the couch I heard a thump over to my left. I turned to see Little Black Kitty and Smushy Face enacting their feline parody of the WWE. They are currently in a 2:1 size ratio making these wrestling matches somewhat lopsided but hilarious to watch.

Kitten and Momma Kitty are asleep. I am using Carbon as a foot stool. I don’t know where LBK and Smushy are, probably wrestling in the kitchen. I have a very strange life but it is punctuated by moments of the absurd and the joyful.

enough for tonight.

i'm tired.

whatever

2 posts ago: grades good, mood lousy.

6 months later: grades lousy, mood bad (but better than 2 months ago).

if i didn't have all my pets i'd think seriously about killing myself. but i couldn't leave carbon or the birds. so i'm stuck here.

my grades suck. my motivation sucks. i have drifted away from my friends. i've gained about 4-6 lbs from my lowest weight and need to get back down. I am filled with envy and hate (mild version?).

my soul is dirty and it is so sad.

sometimes

i wonder why the phrase that runs though my head is "seriously, why don't I just go kill myself and die?"

i would not kill myself. ever. because i have pets that I love that need me. so don't calls social services.

but why is this the thought that surfaces in my mind when I am thinking of nothing?

why?

so how f*cked up is this

grandpa died.

november 1st, around 3:15pm.

nothing else seems to matter and the fuck shit of it all is that i'm so depressed I can't leave the house but I got better grades on my exams this go round than last time.

91.5 on parasit (i started learning the material 48 hrs before the exam, the day after grandpa's funeral). last time was 89.5

micro: class average 81%. I got a 95%. last time: 88%. 95% is awesome. again, started learning the material 48 hrs before the exam

i think i didn't do so well on the third path exam but i picked up my second path exam today -- 259/260. I actually said "holy shit" out loud in the secretary's office.

so that's it. I'm so depressed I can barely leave the house but i do one thing, i will study and i like to think that grandpa would be so proud of me for doing that. He kept saying that he didn't want us to be be crying, that everything was ok. To which we replied "grandpa, we're not crying for you, we're crying because we're going to miss you so much."

i just can't believe he's dead.

i'm clinging to life here but a thread, i'm so sad and hopeless I don't know what to do. but i'll study tomorrow. I'll do my best to get an A in parasit. I have to do well on these exams (i have like a 91% in the class right now).

i just feel so lost and alone. I have great friends who keep offering to help me but I don't know how to ask for help. all i do is cry and i don't know how to ask someone to be there while i do that. so instead it's me and carbon and the cats.

my apartment is a disaster. I'm hemorrhaging money. I want to cut myself into pieces and beat the shit out of myself. I hate every part of me. I am so filled with self loathing and sadness and fear I don't know how I string two words together.

but i'll keep going.

i'l get through this semester

i keep thinking about church and the bible as a way to be closer to grandpa. I like to think, to know, that he is up there, somewhere, with grandma, watching everything. and that, perhaps, in death, time becomes irrelevant. That understanding is a part of the heavenly package and that grandpa can understand me completely, without 70 years of life standing between us.

i like to think that. I think i'm a lot like grandma and I know grandpa loved grandma so much even though she was moody and stubborn. I feel like i've forgotten her. I can only remember moments - smelling her perfume, talking about wearing stockings to sunday school.

is this how is goes? right now grandpa is so clear in my mind i forgot he was dead on monday and thought i was going out to dinner with him. It fades, the clarity, the painful realism. I know these things.

but God, i'm struggling so much here. just give me the strength to make it through this semester. and if I could actually do well grade wise it would make me feel worthy, like i'm not such a fucking piece of shit who spends money and drains mom and pop and has had all the chances in the world and I still take a razor to myself because I want to cut myself and see me bleed.

i found this psalm in mom's mini bible sitting next to the computer when i was typing and i think it is perfect for me right now.

psalm 69

For the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in deep mire,

where there is no foothold;

I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

I am weary with crying; my throat is parched.

My eyes grown dim with waiting for my God

...

with your faithful help rescue me from sinking in the mire;

let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.

Do not let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up,

or the Pit close its mouth over me.

...

but I am lonely and in pain;

let your salvation, O God, protect me.

~ ~ ~

Grandpa would be so happy I'm reading the bible.

I love him so much.

I can't believe he's dead.

88%

or 89%. 3 exams, same grade on all three. I have 2-3 more exams in each class to bring that number up into the 90's but i'm just so frustrated. I'm starting to feel like I can't do this.

I'm going to see lizzi this afternoon and i'm going to talk to him about provigil or changing my meds cause i'm so depressed i can't get off the couch to do anything, i've even missed classes cause I just couldn't face leaving the house.

it makes me feel really hopeless to feel like i'm trying my hardest and coming up just short and I need to be better. But i don't have the energy to do it, i just want to get drunk and lie on the couch. I just want my brain to stop thinking and it hurts.

i hope seeing lizzi goes well. mom said i can go 2x / week if i need to but I really don't think i have time. I'm also so fucking greedy that i would rather go 1x and get the same amount of money as seeing lizzi if I complete a week of healthy eating and exercising and positive thinking.

hmmm. maybe if I had to really do a week of it. That might work. but we have no money. pop's not getting paid. grandpas in the hospital. Timmy's really depressed and thinking about suicide. I live in squalor and don't have the energy to clean and i feel like it's gotten to a pathological state. I just have so much to do that i don't do any of it and usually i feel like there are dual forces pushing and pulling me, i have nothing pushing me off the couch. nothing. i just want to lie there.

and then i'm scared that if when i got off the couch and went to class i got an 88%, what about now when I can barely make myself study? I am so afraid i'm going to fuck myself over for life, that i'm going to make a mistake I can't come back from and I just find myself feeling so fucking average.

i don't think it's reasonable that i could go to sleep at any time during the day (and would choose to sleep over doing anything else). I did nothing this weekend except lie on the couch and eat takeout and drink beer. I feel so fat, so lazy, so out of control. I keep trying to tell myself that I can take control, that i'm only out of control if i let myself be but it doesn't help. I'm sitting in class not taking notes b/c i'm annoyed by my parasit grade (though i did well on the practical) and i'm so tired i feel dizzy.

I am so worried about not being ready for the exam on monday. i need to start learning everything and i haven't even listened to everything. my fingers and hands are still so sore I can't face starting a new set of notebooks for my outlines. but I need to. I just feel overwhelmed and hopeless. and sleepy.

pretty much the only thing i like is sleeping, preferably preceded by xs beer.

the person i want to be

• The person I want to be would find a solution to a problem, not spend time dissecting the inadequacies at hand.
• The person I want to be would start figuring out now how to work effectively with the structure at hand. The only change I can control is how I react to it.

This evening:

dog walk with emily

start organizing my clothes

panicky thoughts

ICVM IV time where I am not allowed to place IVC or do venipuncture. I'm having anxiety knowing both that I want to do it and then also worrying that I don't know how to do it anymore and then having feelings about working at *** and being not good enough and wondering if i should have worked this summer and at the same time, missing the river.

heart in pieces

this morning i woke up, peed outside the tent, walked 5 minutes to the out house, was peripherally involved with breakfast....

i fail to capture what i mean to say. I just feel so lost here == i miss the hill, the river, the air sweeping through the tent and at the same time I am so familiar here, the couch of my childhood. but then, if it is so familiar, how do I ever leave the couch? Must I always be so far far away that the raw beauty around me overwhelms my natural proclivities?

i miss alexa and the river and carbon running without her leash and the thrill of the sunset and the feel of wet grass on my morning trek to the outhouse and the beauty of the garden fronds peeking up perilously high, the cistern, the boat, the dock, the view from everywhere. i miss it so much i think it is burning a hole in me.