November 25, 2005
A Well-Spent Thanksgiving
Zuzka came by with coffee yesterday morning around 9:30 to wake me and take me back to her apartment for turkey-making, which, given the hellish night I'd just had (two Xanax and still no sleep), I was very grateful for.
I was a little Bree Van De Campy yesterday, but I had to keep busy-- keep chopping, keep mashing, keep basting, keep checking-- in order to keep my head above water. I took another Xanax and let Desperate Housewives play in the background while I scurried around the kitchen. When Alex woke up, around noon, drinking began. It went on until 4am, when Alex, Zuzka, and I finally went to bed.
It was a successful Thanksgiving, I think. The turkey turned out well, we ate like pigs, and Meg brought over two delicious homemade pies and Tess-- the only person I know who has Cuisinart-type appliances in her kitchen-- provided the whipped cream. We ate and drank ourselves into diabetic comas and passed out in front of more Desperate Housewives. Once, I had to excuse myself to go into the pantry by myself and feel sad for a while, but later I drank more and Zuzka and Alex started making me laugh, and I had a very fun night.
I don't feel competatent right now. I'll try to write something better later.
Posted by hissycat at 07:22 PM | Comments (8)
October 25, 2005
Self-Pity: My Favorite Sport
For five days now I've been meaning to write a hilarious post about Friday's riotously funny escapade in which I brought about the destruction of ex-boyfriend's kitchen door.
Told with the characteristic wry humor for which I am famed, it would be a winning tale indeed-- just one of the zany mishaps of our endearingly neurotic neurotic encounters on her sometimes rocky, but always hilarious journey through life and love in the big city! I want to spin the story thusly so that it will blink back at me as it reflects off its readers' glossy eyes and I come to believe it that way: a charming story about a quirky, single girl, and not a horror story about a deranged ex-girlfriend, or, worse, a sad story about a deranged girl.
I have trouble mustering up the whatever it is I need to spin the story I envision. I sit down to write and at once find my intentions smothered by the thick dumbness and pathetic obviousness of the elements.
The primitive protection of the emotional endorphins buoyed me through last week with unrealisticly good cheer has worn off. Nearly two weeks have passed since the stunning calamity of getting kicked to the curb by boyfriend and by boss in the space of two days. The acute slap of unrequested freedom, so refreshing at first, is replaced by the persistent throb of lonesomeness, the dull ache of aimlessness, and a sickly dread of the grinding progress of untended days.
"There are people who are just depressed in ways that have nothing to do with their situation and there are people whose lives are genuinely depressing," Alex, in the car with me after helping clear out my office, said. "And then there are people like you who are both."
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October 24, 2005
Such A Fucking Idiot
I just ate a big, gooey, cheesy quesedilla.
Do you remeber the scene in Angels in America where the dummy at the Mormon Visitors Center becomes animate and speaks to Harper? Remember how Harper asks the dummy how in her experience of the world people change and the dummy responds and says "God splits you down the middle with a jagged thumbnail and grabs hold of your bloody tubes, and they slip to evade his grasp, but he squeezes them tight. And he returns them, mangled and filthy and it's up to you to do the stitching," or something like that?
Well, what the dummy says, that is exactly what happens to my stomach when I consume dairy.
Why do I always fail to make the connection between cheese and milk? Or maybe it's the connection between milk and the intestinal misery the befalls me following its consumption. Somewhere along the line, there is a connection that fails to be made.
Posted by hissycat at 05:44 PM | Comments (780) | TrackBack
October 13, 2005
Jokes
Set-up:
What is funnier(/ sadder) than a depressed, lonely person whose beloved cat has died?
Punchline:
A depressed, lonely person whose cat has died and whose beloved boyfriend has left (dumped) her.
Set-up:
What is funnier(/ sadder) than a depressed, lonely person whose cat died and whose boyfriend broke up with her?
Punchline:
A depressed and lonely person whose cat has died, whose boyfriend has left her, and whose boss has just given her (something like) her walking papers.
Set-up:
What is funnier(/ sadder) than a depressed, lonely person whose cat has died, whose boyfriend has left her, and who is about to be unemployed?
Punchline:
Nothing.
And who is sadder than her?
No one.
I live in San Francisco, should you want to hire me.
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October 12, 2005
Prophecy Fulfilled
The bad things have happened. I am coping.
Posted by hissycat at 10:26 AM | Comments (1726) | TrackBack
Insomnia
For the third night in the row I am unable to sleep. Last night I couldn't close my eyes until after six, and then, only after I'd polished off a tumbler glass of whiskey. Tonight I drank half a bottle of Kahlua Arvel left here, but it hasn't worked. I'm at Brett's place, and I kind of want to die. I drove here at four am because I had not heard from him all day and I felt sick and could not sleep and did not know what else to do. I still can't sleep, and I can't find any pills, and I left my copy of The Year Of Magical Thinking, which I am engrossed in, at home.
I didn't go to work yesterday because I knew if I tried driving I would crash the car. I don't see how I can not go into work today. I also don't see how I can. It is nearing six. I'm rocking myself by the window. I'm waiting for the bad things I know are going to happen.
Posted by hissycat at 05:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 10, 2005
The Sober Writer: A Sign Of The Times; and, An Appeal To Dave Eggers
Upon arriving at work this morning I was delighted to find in my inbox an email from my dear friend Ameeth directing me to this NYTimes article about the growing trend of members-only writing centers in New York. These exclusive cozies, apparently, are popping up faster than pustules on the member of Paris Hilton's latest conquest. Accompanying the link was a message:
Pathetic. I hate new york. stab stab stab stab
Though I love that city of mine with all my filthy heart, I admit to on more than one occaision been known to sputter with far less eloquence than he sentiments of a similair nature. I appreciate as much as the next New Yorker the chance to rag on the "cool people" and "writers" and other boroughlings whose lives and successes I wish I had. (For the record, I am allowed to say offensive things about New York, for I am of New York, much like Woody Allen may say offensive things about the Jews, for he is of the Jews. If Ameeth had not lived in Brooklyn the past two years, earning his right to resent and detest every white boy with bed-raggled hair in Williamsburg, I would have not taken his comments in such good stride. Lest you think his Brooklyn years were not enough, rest assured he also attended Brown, which, in certain crucial ways, bears a more than passing resemblance to Brooklyn.)
My reaction to the article was twofold. As I'm always keen on a chance to vituperate any writer more successful than I (in this regard, my utter lack of success is truly a blessing, as I have a virtually infinite number of targets onto whom whom to direct my groundless ire), you can imagine how I must have snorted with gleeful scorn to read statements such as this:
"The concept of writers as drunken Hemingwayesque malcontents traveling the globe is over," Ms. Cecil said. "They see it as a job now, and they see themselves not as inspired alcoholics, or depressive psychopaths alone in a tenement. It's more mainstream. It's good kids going to M.F.A. programs, then looking for a place to find the kind of writerly community they had in grad school."
Fucking rat shit good kids! Fucking bitchy bitch fuck fart M.F.A. programs! Jesus fucking mainstream! Ugly fucking whore cock grad school! Somewhere, I know, Fran Lebowitz is rolling around atop her unmade pull-out couch, horrified to read that the belles lettres have sunk so low as to fall to the hands of the sober. If these sober, ambitious, M.F.A.-weilding goody goodies are the writers of the future, than I am frightened for what the future holds. If writers can't be lovable alcholoic malcontents, I ask you, who can? Or, to put it another way-- and this is where it really hurts-- if depressive, alcoholic, deranged psychopaths who live alone in filthy tenement apartments, who have only a cat and a bottle of gin for love, can't be writers, what can I be? People, I am running out of options. An unreliable malcontent just can't catch a break these days.
Oh, and I almost threw up when the doyenne of Paragraph compared her quill club to a gym:
Ms. Parisi compares writers' rooms to gyms. In both, a large group of people share the same equipment. And, paying for membership helps writers take their commitment to writing seriously, she said, and gets them "off of the couch" and onto the literary StairMaster. . . And like exercise buffs, the writers who use these spaces need to be self-motivated and disciplined.
Egads-- "literary" and "StairMaster" are two words that do not belong together! Oh, somebody say a prayer to Jean Rhys, beg pardon from Oscar Wilde! Dorothy Parker weeps angel's tears at the thought that "writers" have become like "excercise buffs." With things such as they are one can hardly summon up the appropriate degree of horror at the lack of sexual goings-ons amongst members. It is a grim truth that when alcoholism leaves, it takes sexual debauchery with it.
And yet-- and yet-- And yet there is the other fold of my twofold reaction, which is this: I want to be let in the club. One writer quoted describes the communality of working in one these spaces as "parallel play, like toddlers in a sandbox." How delightful, I say, how appealing! That is perfect for me! I loathe human interaction and frighten myself! I need a place to go that is full of people who don't expect me to speak or smile back! "When you write at home, there's a lot of distraction. . . You want to go clean out the fridge, or tweeze your eyebrows," or, if you are me, pick your toes, "but when you go to a space to write, that's what you do." All that unholy Swedish furniture and track lighting would not only increase my productivity but impart a clean, modern birghtness and simplicity to every aspect of my life, I am sure of it.
So please, Dave Eggers, if you are listening, when you or yours decide open up one of these writers' clubs in SF-- and I know you will, because that's just the sort of thing you would do-- please, please let me in. I am sure you could find room for one alcoholic malcontent. I can be the club's kitschy, fashionably-obslete mascot. I'll sit at the door in my fashoinably-obsolete get-up of sweat-stained t-shirts, jeans I picked up off the floor, and underwear that should have been changed two days ago, I'll sit there with my fashionably-obsolete accessoriess: a copy of Ulysses and a bottle gin and let my forehead crash noisily onto a typewriter. Everyone will look up with an expression of ironic bemusement. I will be the source of much amusement! You clever young upstarts can laugh and laugh as I barf through the tears and I will oblige and drink all the more. I will blink back at you with my reddened psychotic eyes and I will not know whether your hearty laughs are ironic or sincere. And you will love me.
Posted by hissycat at 07:56 PM | Comments (94) | TrackBack
September 21, 2005
"The Three S's: Self-Indulgent, Solipsistic, and Sophmoric"
There are times when I feel too rotten and blue to will myself out into the world. I allow myself to slump alone in my dirty apartment when it would be far more beneficial to force myself out the door and into some boozy establishment of sociability.
Then there are times when I shouldn't be let out, and I go out anyway I pay; when I push myself stinkingly into the midst of cheerful company when where I ought to be is backed into the white-tiled corner of the shower stall, my dorsal plane flush against the uncomfortably cold ceramic and my front side under the scalding spray of the shower, getting sanitized. Or at the keyboard, working till the darkness lightens to a productive, mechanical blank, pouring amber drinks that attaining such a state may require. Or drinking in the green arm chair and reading me out of myself. Or sleeping it off.
Tonight was the latter. Having slept three hours Monday night, I was already dizzy with sleep deprivation by the time I was home. Twice I almost dropped my face into my Weight Watchers SmartOnes microwave dinner. The utter inefficacy of everything I tried to do at work left me feeling raw and cranky. I should have stayed home and tried to catch up on work work or else work on my work (i.e. my writing) so as to recover some modicum of self-respect. Instead, I went to Tess's movie night. I was too tired to have a nice time, and the pleasantness of everyone there just made me more aware of all the ways I fail as a person. I'm pretty sure I've gotten too fat to be taken out for viewing. Sitting there with all the same faces I sat with a year ago this time, I felt like a car that had stalled on a hill and after some time of merely slowing was now actually fast and wildly rolling backwards. I feel the extra mass of me everytime I move. I must have tacked on fifteen pounds in the last four months. I feel like I'm an embaressment to Brett. A year ago, in front of all the same people, he had a fresh, thin, new girlfriend to trot out before the people he knows and to desire and be proud of, and that's not what I am anymore. I've swelled and decayed like the wood boards of an unvarnished boat abandoned in a body of water.
I ought to go to sleep now. I know this. I state this to myself, but doing so seems to awaken me to every scrap of my worthlessness. I haven't written that review that I wanted to write. I haven't written that article. I haven't finished those stories that are longing for completion. I haven't written that novel. I haven't written those blog posts I've been meaning to and soon my thoughts will be outdated. I haven't written letters to all the people who have written letters to me and are awaiting my reply. I've a stack of books from here to next Thursday I want to get through. There are articles and reports I should read. There is work on the website that needs to be done. And I am still behind in my work work.
The supervisor, who finally gave me a timetable and assignments, is not happy. In fact, I would not be surprised if I was fired. I don't want this job, it's true, but I also don't have anything else. I need to make an effort. Things need to be pulled together.
Posted by hissycat at 12:22 PM | Comments (26) | TrackBack
September 12, 2005
Gloomy Monday
I should go to the doctor. Both kinds of doctor, actually. I never followed up on the breast lump. I had vague intentions of calling for an appointment this morning and going for a sonogram, but I didn't. That would require me to actually go ahead and file my health insurance forms. It would require me to call back the insurance rep. that has been harassing me about my last bill. It would require interacting with human beings and talking on the phone.
Since August, my mood, like the water table, has been dropping. Tess and Luke have had I don't know, maybe four movie nights, and I've yet to pull myself together enough to make it to a one. And they have a taxadermied moose head! And a projector that shines onto a large, large screen! And I love those things, but Tess & Co. are amiable, gregarious and kind, and sometimes, when I feel gloomy and jittery and low like this, that is more than I can take. I shrink from their invitations like a snail grazed by salt retracts into a shell. I am dark and formless and responsible for nothing.
I should have been seeing Dr. R regularly this summer, but I didn't want to. I did so much therapy this past school year, and then, I thought I'd be getting a new psychaitrist, one in the city, after June. Then, with this job back in Palo Alto, it seemed silly and exhausting looking for someone new, so I called Dr. R to let her know that, after spending the last three sessions exploring what it is like and will be like to stop seeing her after nearly four years, I would be back the following week after all. But we've just done med checks. I feel like I've closed out that account, if that makes any sense.
The last time I saw her was a few weeks ago and I told her my mood was slipping but that I wasn't wholly depressed. Even now, this is by no means a full-blown depression for me. I feel awful. But I have been much, much worse.
It seemed like it was going to be a productive depression a few weeks ago. Though unhappy, I was rattling off schemes of a quite soon writing career. And I was following through with the worldly parts, usually my downfall: writing letters and reaching out for advice and corresponding with people I don't even know. Granted, I should not have been doing all this on the company clock, and I did little to nothing about all the work I actually get paid for. So that. By the end of last week, I'd become a mess about it: so far behind, so twisted with guilt, begging for extensions I had no business asking for. I am constantly resolving to buckle down-- no blogging, no reading, no radio-- but I can't make myself do what I mean to be doing. Days slide by like this. I fail at being a person.
Wednesday and Thursday nights I stayed up very, very late, trying to do the work I didn't do at work. Of course, I accomplished very little, but sucking down cigarettes and Diet Red Bulls and being at a desk late after everyone in the world had settled into sleeping reminded me of being a student and the association lent me a feeling of productivity. I miss being a student, and writing papers that interest me. It is September now, and I would give up my toes to be tossing off a dreary summer job and starting a new school year fresh-faced and focused and resolved. I wish I were writing my thesis again. I miss having a good reason for not leaving the inside of my head.
On Friday I was blinking back insanity. I drugged myself to keep from nodding off on the drive home and even then it was only by the good grace of the Monsoon sound system and sheer will that I managed to curb the swirving. Friday night was spent at home, with a bottle of vodka, a copy of Midnight's Children, and the cat. It was worse than it sounds. I wanted and knew to go to sleep, but I was too miserable and frantic and stubborn to give in, and someone who should have called me that day had yet to phone and I had to stay awake in order to be more deeply wronged. I had to leave a lot of desperate messages, too. So I propped myself up in bed, the tray table over me holding my computer, a notebook, a bottle of orangina, the vodka. I do drink alone a lot, it's true, but it is not usually the case that if were to put the glass down and screw the top back on the bottle that would heave with the sobs. I had to drink to calm me down and to diffuse the heavy sadness.
Saturday I wallowed in my own filth until someone got home from his camping trip and came over to my apartment and made me take a shower for the first time in a week. It was eleven by the time I was clothed. We went out for a dinner that wasn't very good but at least got me out of the house. He was calming at least, and I felt safe if not happy. I felt bad on Sunday but behaved better. When Brett sent a text message cheering me on to clean my room (Clean your room! You can do it, baby!), I actually did. And I met Alex at La Onda. Our fingers scuttled over the keyboards and, occupied and in some sense productive, I felt ok for a few hours. I even did some work work, and then the darkness came back. When I was at Brett and Zuzka and (temporarily) Alex's apartment, I knew I was being wrong but I couldn't help it. Like, I wasn't interacting wholly appropriately. Responses came late and out of tune.
Yes, this post (well, this blog-- nay, website) is the hight of self-involvment, a regular pity-party. Well, ok. Now you know to skip entries that begin like this. Blogging, you know, is the new vanity publishing, and it's not like anyone is asking you to pay. Or, for that matter, to read.
Posted by hissycat at 10:51 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
September 11, 2005
Worst. Weekend. Ever.
So, I'm now officially moved to Movable Type. . . kind of. In importing old Xanga entries, formatting fucked up and comments were dissappeared.
Posted by hissycat at 10:48 PM | Comments (25) | TrackBack
August 26, 2005
It's 2 a.m. Do I know where I am? Yes, I Do Unfortunately.
It's 2am. I am not sleeping and I am not happy. This time,I'm not happy not in a depressive, listless way but in a why the fuckdo I do this to myself? kind of way. Yes, I'm propped up andbuzzing on Ritalin and Excedrin, desperately trying to complete alanguage arts course for third-graders because I've spent all my timeat the office this week fucking around on the Internet instead of doingmy work. Oh, and gaining .6 lbs, apparently.
Yes kids, today was a Weight Watchers Thursday. I knew this hadbeen a bad eating week. I've just gotten really slack about it,not measuring portions, underestimating my Points values, snacking toomuch, descending upon the free samples at Andronico's like an elderlyJew at a half-price buffet. Every time I go in there to get asalad, I end up hovering all sneaky-eyed over the platters of cheesecubes and coffee cake cubes and cubed pumpkin bread and miniatureslices of baguette laid out next to olive oil dips and fruitspreads. Oh man, a few days ago they had open jars of thisamazing bittersweet chocolate fudgey goop and spreadable caramel, and Ijust stood there, my basket resting on the ground beside me, makingmyself at home, spreading and mixing and eating. Then I felt kindof ashamed, as I had no intention of actually purchasing the stuff, soafter I picked up my basket, I just stood at the display, picking upjars and pointing my eyes at the prices so it would look like I wasreally thinking this one over, like I needed another sample to help meconsider, just in case the flavor had, you know, changed in the lastthirty seconds. You know what would be great? If I just gotbanned from that place. I always end up spending too much moneythere anyway on yuppie foodstuffs I can't afford.
Andronico's indiscretions aside, though, I didn't actually go over mypoints by that much. I didn't even use all of my flex points, infact. I feel cheated. I feel entitled to my thirty-fiveweekly flex points, even though I know from experience that I do notloose if I use more than half of them. I was hoping for amiracle. Or, as my meeting leader, would say, "Dreaming theImpossible Dream."
Yes, this was Persistence week, and so we were treated to a veryspecial "Man of La Mancha" revue. To, you know, inspire us? Man, I've been through the twelve-week Tools for Living (also known asthemes) cycle way too many times (I bet I can name them all:Persistence, Anchoring, Visualizing Success, Positive Self-Talking,Reframing, Planning Ahead. . . oh fuck it, it's like trying to name allseven of the dwarfs). On the sunnier side of things though, I raninto a former house mate (who shall remain nameless-- some people, itseems, don't care to be Weight Watcher's outed, though I can't imaginewhy) at my meeting today. This is the first time this hashappened to me in the two years (off and on) I've been going. Notjust the first time I've run into a familiar face, mind you, but thefirst time I've run into any face aged less than forty years.
You know what? I really need to get back to work. This shitis due at noon, and these third-graders are going to be getting somepretty zaney, tripped-out stories, hear?
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Posted by hissycat at 02:34 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
August 24, 2005
My-Up-Swings-Are-A-Sane-Person's-Baseline Kind Of Way
 | Currently Listening Tallahassee By The Mountain Goats see related |
I don't know if I'm falling into a depression or not. I know I'vebeen very anti-social lately (avoiding groups of people especially) anda bit more irritable than I'd like, but then even at my best, I'mfairly anti-social. I like to spend a lot of time alone, andalso, staying home more often is obviously beneficial for mywriting. Only I haven't been writing. And I cried lastnight when I thought I fucked up the settings on my snazzy newcomputer. All I want to do in the evenings is stay in, alone, andread novels. Which may not be good a sign. I'm usuallyhappy to be home reading novels however I'm feeling, but there havebeen times when I've been majorly depressed and I wouldn't leave myroom all day, not for class or meals or anything, and just sleep andread novel after novel, it was all I could do. We'll wait and see.
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Posted by hissycat at 06:11 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
August 19, 2005
It Is Impossible To Work
It is impossible to work today, impossible to concentrate. I amtotally deadened with sadness and a wet, ugly feeling in the center ofmy chest.
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Posted by hissycat at 04:07 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack