Currents & Eddies of a Particular Mind

Angles

You would not believe how much my life is controlled by Angles. [And yes, I am referring to Angles, opposed to Angels, despite the confusion caused by my uppercase use of “A”.]  Angels – side long glances of the reflection in a passing window or car mirror.  The well know Angels at home that seem to take pleasure in pointing out my every flaw, each misplaced hair, each skin imperfection.

Really, I don’t want to look but the Angels get the better of me. A quick glance as I make my way from the living room into the bedroom and back.  Not a real in depth analysis but just an odd Angel of myself, seen reflected back to me as I pass the partly closed bathroom door.  Is that who I am right now?  I must say the most jarring part about the Angels – partial images appearing everywhere around me – is that they return a ‘me’ that is at times drastically different than the ‘me’ I am in my head.  My conception – my perception – of my outward appearance is always off.  This, in truth, I feel I could reconcile myself with if it were not for the eyes.  What do you do when the eyes staring back at you, reflected in the bizarre upward Angle of a car mirror –or what have you- don’t seem familiar?  And even if they are familiar, do not seem to possess the inward passion, desire, bravado and confidence you have come to know as YOUR eyes, your SELF.

It’s funny how the Angles have the power to alter my day.  They say every mirror is different, each reflective surface slightly convex or concave, and therefore portraying a more or less agreeable version of that which it reflects.  I know this.  I know they can’t be trusted, but as I exit a mirror containing room I do so with my sense of self completely confirmed – bravado, confidence and charm ablaze – or I don’t.  If not, I exit dejected, lost and somewhat confused, occasionally depressed, trying to build my sense of self up from scratch.  In the meantime feeling an imposter in my own skin – no, that’s not right – an imposter in someone else’s skin.  It’s only an Angle; it’s not to be trusted, yet its confirmation or denial of me through its ability to align some ‘inner’ me with some ‘outer’ version is unbelievably alluring.

Can I wash my hands without looking up?  Can I exit my car without a quick glance in the rear view just to make sure my hair is not doing some sort of Alfalfa ‘thing’? Can I look through windows and never at them? 

They say near death experiences change you.  Make you less superficial and more to the point. I must say that I have had more than my fair share. However after abandoning such a lifestyle, my life seems to slowly be filling with such banal, minor trivialities.  Sometimes we may just need bigger fish to fry.

The smell of cigarette smoke is doing me in.

My main question is: why now?  Why now am I feeling so vulnerable when faced with the urge to smoke.  The urge that for months has been completely absent and is now rearing it’s alluring inviting enticing ugly head?  Before all I had to do was remind myself how hard it was so stop, the health benefits - both immediate (ability to breath) and future (life itself),how unfair it was to keep smoking after my finance quit, how much I wanted to do this for my father.  Once I reminded myself of these things the desire to smoke would vanish instantaneously.  Now as I sit here I find myself wondering what all the fuss was about.  I miss it.

The funny thing is that I have always been really firm in my commitments to stop something.  Too firm at times perhaps.  It has gone so far as to take on a defining quality.  I AM that person who is strong willed, hard headed, and stubborn.  Who can set her mind to anything (self control wise) and just do it.  Once I concede that it’s time to give something up - well that’s it - done, finito, gone.  But therein lies the problem.

I have become so internally defined with my ability to limit and restrict that I can’t stop.  I have come to thrive on (or rather suffer from) my personal, epic battles of will power.

But now I am left asking: in constantly ’taking away’ from myself with goals of raising my own personal bar, what am I going to be left with?  Life is slowly but surely loosing the fun, the carefree, the enjoyable.  I actually once considered myself SPONTANEOUS.  Where have those days gone?  According to the records I am only 21 years old after all.

Can you understand how unsettling it is to have such urges to smoke?  If I were to give in to such an urge, where would the cycle lead me?  How would I define myself?  How would others’ view of me change?  If I started smoking again and told myself that if I quit once I could do it again - what would stop me from starting everything else I have stopped with the same justification.  What would stop me from winding up back in my car, family and friendless, with drugs as my sole desired companion.  Drugs and words anyway.  I have always believed a saying I once heard, something that has always stuck with me: The first time you try to quit, it’s easy. [ I take that to mean relatively so - in other words, don't throw away your one 'free-pass'.  Not that it is exactly 'easy' the first time, but I sure as hell don't want to know what the non-easy subsequent tries are like.]

I am leading this refined and sifted life that I (non-religiously) imposed upon myself.  For me it has always been all or nothing.  Entirely ‘out there’ or entirely ’here’.  Entirely absent or entirely present.  For some reason there is no give and take in me - it’s entirely give or entirely take.

Why the sudden insecurities?  Nothing bad, nothing troubling, no real bout of depressive thoughts - just BAM and the smoke smells way to good.   

UPDATE:

The name of this blog has been changed for the sake of anonymity.

Not that anyone should be ‘looking me up’ but more in an effort to cripple[hinder, break down, destroy, eradicate, erase, hog tie, limit, hold back, hamper, encumber, thwart, frustrate, foil, throw a monkey wrench in the works of, stop, etcetera so forth and so on] my own sense of self censorship.

“For centuries tragic playwrights have created powerful, charismatic men and women whose uncompromising faith in themselves is coupled with an indomitable will.  They are devoted to their own subjective vision of the world and their place in it, and this commitment, reinforced by pride or what the Greeks called hubris, bestows upon them both great strength and great vulnerability.”

Russ McDonald

University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Introduction to the Pelican edition of Shakespeare’s Othello. xxxix.

Ah, the first week of class.  Always an interesting compilation of intriguing class introductions, and the equally interesting albeit strenuous period of the teachers’ culling of the herds. 

Oh so you want to take my class with three times the approved limit of students crammed into every nook and cranny, every space against the wall occupied by another laptop carting body.  Well that shouldn’t be a problem, just read this over the weekend.

The funny part about it is that next week in class the teachers are going to have this funny look in their eyes when they pose easy questions to their audiences and receive only sleepy, befuddled stares in response.  We are asked to go into this zombie mode to have even a remote chance of completing the work they assign the first week - and then they inevitably wonder why we are not exactly on point by the time we finish such a gauntlet and walk through their doors.  For that matter, exactly how much coffee would you like me to drink trying to finish all this?  I happen to have given up all other, more effective and destructive, stimulants long ago.  You want me to read faster?  Well, I refuse.  I read how I read and it suits me.  I think about things, go off on tangents, pull out corollaries and points of interest, and fill the margins with a large percentage of what occurs to me as I read the text.  To me, this IS reading.  Anything else would be merely glazing over.  I want to digest what I read. 

I think, in part, this compulsion to break down what I read is a common delusion of mine that I can get anything done in one pass.  The same operation can be seen in so many little things I do:

Yes, I can make it out of the car (while locking the doors), across the street, and over to my apartment - with a couple hundred dollars of grocery bags cutting into my arms (and wrists and fingertips) - and still manage to get out my key and open the door.  Why?  Well two (or five or six) trips would be silly… 

Yes, I can burn off over a thousand calories at the gym (or so the ‘trustworthy’ machines tell me) - practically killing myself for hours on end so that walking back to my car I look like an individual who is quite certainly missing her cane - because going several times a week for a reasonable amount of time and pain would (once again) be silly…

So where does this leave me?  Slightly bitter about being assigned more than is reasonable, but hey, I like the challenge.  I will read everything assigned.  I will read them as thoroughly as if I had several weeks to finish them at my leisure (which ironically would most likely lead to my becoming distracted and therefore reading less of them).  I may be a little run down, but come next week I will be fully functioning as I make it into class.  And, importantly, during all this I will not drop off the face of the earth from all friends, family, and blog associations.

I look forward to this day.  I wait for it. I crave it.  It is the best day, by far, of the entire quarter. 

It is the day before the stress and workload begins to accumulate.  It is the day before all my classes begin.  It is the only day when I go to campus without being in a rush. No deadlines…yet.  Without having my mind spin endless circles around the readings I have done the previous night and that very morning…  Sorting out what I read where and what I though about it - and what those thoughts lead to and how, and in what ways, everything interconnects…. Today, rather, is the day I go to the bookstore.  GET TO GO, I should say. 

You see I, like so many of us, have a problem with books.  With everything else in my life, I am able to exert an impressive amount of restraint in my purchases.  Usually, the cost outweighs whatever benefit I see in the item.  No it is not the school sweatshirts and decals, hats, shoes, backpacks, trinkets - I easily pass them by without a second glance.  Not so with books.  Especially not so in a campus bookstore where I feel justified in buying everything that catches my fancy because it is, in at least some way, vaguely scholastic.  I want them all - and today is the day when I face the bookstore and know that I have nothing pressing to do - nothing calling me away.  What goes through my head as I face the bookstore?  I wonder how much my books will weigh (as it is a long walk back to the car), how many bags they will fill once I include the necessary notebooks and supplies (another, although to a slighter degree, love of mine), just how much I can carry back while at the same time looking reasonable (ie - like I have NOT entered into the strong-woman contest for book carrying…).

I have to say, I think it is the hunt that is the most appealing.  That hunt for the book I don’t know I will find, don’t know that I want, don’t know how much will impact my life.  How will I find it? Is it there?  Who wrote it? Why?  And assuming I find just such a rare item - when will I read it?  Right away or will I wait and eventually pick it up at just the right moment to GET what I need to out of it?

Justifiably scholastic.  So what if I am an English major - why can’t I add a book on practical engineering, applied mathematics, Italian, web technology, biological anthropology (already have and have read) .. to my collection. 

The wait for this quarter is ending.  The wait for the next will begin later this afternoon.

I do not normally do this.  Bike ride I mean.  Even a couple of months ago, after convincing Casey [he requests his name be put in full...] to take the bikes out, getting around the block was a struggle.  Okay, it was more than a struggle and I had to get off and walk uphill (by ‘hill’ I am referring to the slight rises in the pavement) more than once. So please, tell me exactly how it is that two days in a row I have taken my bike on a solitary trek through the hills (real ones this time)? As the miles fall behind me it is as if I am being projected forward.  Yes, the hills still hurt like a son of a … Well, needless to say they are not very easy, but the fact of the matter is that I was able to get past them.  I have found there is an indescribable feeling as the bike passes the high point and starts its plummet down the other side.  With legs that simultaneously burn and feel like jello, all I can do is hold on and hope, in desperation, that whatever steering I am able to do will be enough to save me from hitting a rock or bump in the trail - sending me, as my mind pictures frequently, catapulting through the air and down the hillside.

The green.  I am a slave to the green of the hills.  As I wind my way through the hillside, it steals all other thought from my mind until all I have left is an awe at the beauty in life.  The surreal.  The smell of being outside – the smell of dirt itself.   Connecting with the smells and sights that for me, recall a childhood connectedness with the outdoors.  Becoming in tune with life…with myself.

Alone.  Yes, I am aware that this is contrary to anything remotely advisable (especially in mountain lion terrain), but it cannot be helped.  Okay, the first day it could not be helped. Casey was at work and I was off early.  I needed something to do and a ride around the block simply turned into this grand adventure.  The second day?  By the second day I figured out how much it means to me to do this alone.  The entire ride was me against myself - conquering, learning, coping, surpassing.  I do have it in me to get over this incredibly tall, rocky hill.  I am brave enough to go speeding down the side of a mountain.   I can take the trails I am not familiar with and find out where their tiny, winding, barely visible paths lead.  I want to see the lake such-and-such a sign tells me is three more miles up.  And lastly, something equally significant as the rest, I can do all these things and then make my way back home.  The return trip where all the pedaling hurts so much more, the hills seem so much higher, the distance greater.  I can do this too.  I can make it back to my door.  Sore.  Utterly exhausted.  Spent. What a feeling.  Yesterday morning my muscles hurt in an uncomfortable sort of way.  Then I took my bike out and went longer, further, harder.  This morning my muscles are sore but in an almost pleasant way.  It seems that this is how I am supposed to feel. That this is how you feel when you tell your body to do things, and it responds by accomplishing what you ask of it.  This feeling is completely new to me.

Last fall I could hardly walk.  Could hardly get out of bed.  Between the smoking and the complete absence of the thyroid hormone T3, I was hardly able to function.  I still did it all [caffeinated to an incredibly high degree mind you]. Still commuted to work and school.  Still took on way more than I should have and still managed to somehow get it all done.  But it hurt. I hurt.  Walking was a challenge.  Lifting.each.leg.up. was a matter of will because at about 100 pounds (which, by the way, is counter-intuitive to hypothyroidism) all my muscles were atrophied to practically nothing and my lower legs were so swollen I could hardly pull a sock over them.  And the stairs at school? The ‘Jans steps’?  They were my personal hell.

Quit smoking.  New medicine.  Health(ier) eating.  A bit of time.  Now I almost feel REAL.  At least in a physical way.  Today, I am sore.  I can feel the muscles over my stomach contracting each time I take a breath. My body hurts, but simply put, it SHOULD.

Yesterday, if you had asked me for my opinion on the holiday (in a non-religious sense of course), my answer would have revealed my indifference.

Easter.  Yes, a time to be with family, but once the anticipatory ‘bunny’ fades into the distance of youth  - and prior to having any kids of ones own - what else is there?  This would have been my response last night.This morning, waking up to a sky not yet inundated with overpowering sunlight, I knew what I wanted to do.  Well, if not wanted, at least what I knew I should do if I did not wish to feel the pangs of regret.  So, up I got, stumbling into the bathroom to turn on the muchtobright light, to make myself at least halfway decent in a braving-the-public-at-seven-a.m.-on-a-Sunday-morning sort of way.

The grocery store.    Avenues of display items, the whole of the store devoid of the mass of people I generally encounter on my early evening supply runs.  The ‘holiday aisle’.  Why don’t these baskets come pre-made?  Okay, a basket, some chocolates, some stringy stuff for the bottom, random toys - all, in all, way too many decisions for my sleep-fogged mind.  A couple of donuts.  Some flowers. 

The return home.  Putting everything together.  It’s at this point that something in me changed.  Now, if asked, I would have to respond that Easter doesn’t seem too bad.  Sort of an enforced jump-start on the merry spring outlook. You know, the outlook you imagine everyone having as you scroll through blogs only to find little more than picture after picture of flowers. I have subconsciously been avoiding just such an outlook, holed up in my apartment with the air conditioner telling me that winter is still outside my door.  Maybe this spring is not too bad.  Today, it actually seems quite nice.  Plus, summer is my actual nemesis and spring is only colored in my outlook by proximity..

And the sunflowers I bought for C scream happiness… Today feels like a good day. 

It’s the creamer.  It has to be.

I happen to be one of those people who are doomed to be forever battling with weight issues.  If I am not carrying a bit too much around with me, then I am on my way to skeleton-ville.  For some reason I can’t seem to find equilibrium – always on the up, or down, swing.

With that said, I unfortunately find myself at an impasse.  By all accounts, I should be dropping pounds like there is no tomorrow.  I am going to the gym on a regular basis and giving my body a healthy (over)dose of cardio and strength training.  This, by the way, is somewhat unusual for me and by its lonesome, should be resulting in visibly slimming results.  I have combined this with eating a very healthy diet.  At least what has always worked for me in the past:

Salads with low calorie dressing

Fruits, steamed vegetables

Low calorie wraps with Deli Turkey

…..and coffee and tea (lots) with sugar free creamer and packs of sweet n’ low.  I suppose with all the healthy eating and exercising I may be pouring the creamer a bit too liberally.

This one has me a bit stumped.  As I go to pull on yet another pair of jeans from my ‘lets keep these around just in case I get a bit heavy pile’ and find them on the tight side, my mood shifts.  I find myself getting more and more bitter about the fact that all my hard work is paying me a negative return.  Why is it again that I am not going out to eat (which I obviously love to do way too much) and eating bottomless bowls of pasta and never ending baskets of bread?  Why did I work so hard to get all of that dreaded ‘holiday’ weight (okay lets call it NOVEMBER-DECEMBER weight since I gave myself free reign with food during the whole of those two months) - off?

It’s the creamer.  Or at least that’s what I can think of to cut.  Oh, I don’t want to do it.  I have this attachment to my creamer that goes back quite a few years now.  It’s good, it’s candy, and until now, it has been the one indulgence I have refused to abandon.  Sadly, it seems that time is over – at least for a while.  Hey, maybe if my coffee (which I make myself – out of extra fine (Turkish) ground espresso beans) doesn’t taste as good, I will drink less of it.  Plus, tea might be better for you if you can actually taste the tea and not just the pseudo-sugary goodness you put in it.

 We shall see…

Music.

 I am not a die hard fan.  I used to be. I used to know all [ahem, okay, a lot of anyway] the ‘up and coming’ artists.  I used to be one of those people with an IPOD forever sticking out of their pocket and a white cord attached to an ear.  If you wanted to talk to me, you had to do so loud enough to make yourself heard over the background soundtrack that I refused to turn off. 

IPODS break.  Things get busy.  Charging units hide themselves around the house and in the bottom of a car’s center console.

 I haven’t had music keeping me company for quite some time.  In the car, yes, but with a sound system that is forever on the fritz - that’s iffy.

So I go about listening to the only thing I have left.  My thoughts.  They have stepped up to the plate, magnificently, to fill the void left by music.  They question, confuse, muddle, ponder.  They SEEM to have their own agency but the ultimate goal of such a plan (scheem..) is something I am utterly in the dark about.  I listen.  People still have to talk loud enough to get through the background soundtrack - there is just a lack of melody these days.

 Today I woke up feeling a bit ‘off’.  In the head that is.  Probably due to a series of consecutive late nights studying and writing for exams/papers etc.

Sitting at my computer, working from home mind you, I had the bright idea to minimise my tasks for the day and go in search of a long lost ITUNES application.  Found it. Picked a song at random. [Put it on repeat because this is just something I DO - always have, and yes it annoys everyone but me].

Now I am sitting here with a long forgotten friend.  It’s this somewhat glazed, far away look in my eyes.  It’s not sadness - far from it - just this distancing from myself.  Not really escaping my head - but looking at it without the ‘ZOOM’ turned all the way up.

So now I wonder if I will make the effort to find that pesky little device…