walking the line.

We watch a lot of movies these days. This one caught my interest the other day. I watched it, and I've been thinking about it since.

Research suggests that via genetics, we have a happiness baseline, which accounts for 50 percent of our attainable happiness. Circumstances, such as having adequate food, shelter, etc. make up only ten percent. That means anything we choose to pursue will make up the remaining 40 percent.

Research also suggests that people who have strong ties to friends and family are typically happier. Otherwise, it's up to you. Shit.

I wonder what percentage of happiness I'm achieving right now, eating these Skittles and writing to the invisible people of the blogosphere. I'd give purple a seven percent. Red gets a full 10, and orange is a close second at eight percent. Green and yellow...meh. Maybe a three percent for either. I don't mix, so there'll be no adding them up. Anyway, I don't like to rush things.

Not rushing things. Has to be a solid 15 percent, at least for me. So that means if I'm maintaining my baseline happiness, and I have food, shelter, maybe a shower that day, and I don't have to rush, I'm 75 percent happy. That's not to say one can't dip well below their happiness baseline. It's happened to me, and it can happen to you.

People also say, "If you don't have your health, then you don't have anything." My experiences over the past year or two with a number of off and on, mostly on, then off again health problems suggest that yes, it's very hard to hang onto anything if you don't have your health. That said, not having your health can sometimes alienate you from the friends and family that research suggests, would make you happier.

Instead of getting off-topic and continuing on a negative thread, I'm going to get right back to the happy part.

I wouldn't deny that I've had many moments, and even long runs with happiness in my life. What goes up, must come down, but...what goes down must also get up off the floor. 

Eventually. If you came down hard enough, you may first have to regain consciousness.

Maybe that's what I've been doing. Honestly, it does feel more these days like I'm waking from a long sleep. I'm recounting better days, and trying like holy hell to make new ones. I've come to the conclusion that 2006 was a very good year. Quite possibly my favorite. I miss that year almost as much as I miss my cat Lucky, who died in March. I still cry when I think about both of those things too hard. Sometimes I'm making tears of happiness for having lived with and experienced things I wouldn't have without them, and other times they're tears of sadness that all things must pass. Even the great things.

And now, I suspect it's apropos to write some things that make me happy.

Hugs.
Smelling my cats' heads.
The peace and quiet only a fresh blanket of snow can bring.
Song.
Clean sheets.
The moment at which I've paid every bill for the month.
When the person behind the counter at DollarTree strikes up a conversation with me, even though he/she doesn't have to.
Riding on trains.
Yardley's Lavender.
The short time after I've cleaned the bathroom sink and it's completely free of my boyfriend's whiskers. 
Coffee.
Spring. 

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"I don't know anything. I'm just a rock in the sky."

Do you like sad and funny? I do. And I really liked this movie. I won't say that Miranda July is right about everything, nor is she everyone's cup of tea. Yet even with her skinny arms, she can punch you in the gut so hard you'll feel it for days. Maybe even the rest of your life.

I like to dream that my skinny arms will be able to pack the kind of punch that moves someone someday, too.

mad world.

The fight to quit smoking has begun. Even I'm asking myself why, and I'm the one who started this.

Here's why. 

It's time to save my own life. Again. 

And isn't it sad that every so often, I need to remind myself that I deserve it? That's what kind of person an alcoholic father, mostly absent mother, and really career minded step-mother raises. I'm the kind of person that had my ass handed to me every goddamn day that I went to school, and I'm the kind of person that didn't rat people out, or ask the teachers for help. And that kind of person becomes very sad sometimes, and puts up an angry fight to summons the feeling that yes, I deserve better than cancer. Better than emphysema. I fucking deserve to breathe.

So maybe this is withdrawal talking, or maybe it's something that I've been able to avoid by making a smoke screen so thick that I wouldn't have to think about it. I knew that I was an emotional smoker. I just didn't know how very attached to the cigarettes I'd become. And I didn't know that a tiny little dig, or what appears to be a tiny little dig might make it so much harder to keep on quitting.

Tiny little things, like the fact that my childhood home doesn't belong to my family anymore, make me realize that actually my childhood isn't something I can remember very fondly, even if I wanted to. And that my adult life has often enough been more of the same. I remember feeling this isolated, this lost, and this lonely. Even so, I found the strength to keep going (obviously).

Today, I'm picking myself up by the bootstraps to find not only the will to keep going, but to finally convince myself once and for all that I'm worth all of this trouble. That in spite of my failures in the past, I can stop killing myself with these nasty coffin nails they call cigarettes. I don't need them anymore. Because as of today, I'm calling it. The punishment has far exceeded the crime.

it's here.

Mind over matter. I'm not one to give up hope, and I haven't given up on me.

While my body says, "Screw this shit, I'm going all messed up on your ass," my mind says, "I can take it as long as you can dish it out. Bring it, body." Because regardless of my faults, I don't deserve to be sick. I don't deserve to have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, nor do I deserve the nodule on my thyroid--any more than I deserve to have a cyst near my first vocal chord that's keeping me from singing, and sometimes talking.

I'm not dead. My fire's not out (in case my lack of activity here had you going). All of these problems will pass. I know this is true, as I take a long hard look at everything that's ever happened in my life. I've been bullied, cheated, and abused. I've been the victim of someone else's jealousy, and the victim of my own. I've been lied to, slapped, kicked, and broken. I've also been more than one thing in my life, and no one thing I've done defines me, who I am, or who I'm going to be. No one person can make that untrue.

So who am I? A force to be reckoned with. I can say that with confidence, regardless and because of everything I've ever done. Some days you have the world at your feet, and then, out of the blue, the rug gets pulled out. You come crashing down, and the only thing your feet get to see is the sky. Does this fill me with fear and loathing? Not a chance. Nothing good can come from a heart full of hate and bitterness. Not one action, not one single let down, beat down, or break up can take away a person's ability to overcome. It's a choice.

Today, I'm feeling good. Optimistic, even. That doesn't mean my fight is over. It does mean I've decided to use all of the will I can muster to heal my mind and body. Anything left over, I'm going to share with the people around me if they need it.

Somewhere, deep in the pit of my gut, I know I have the strength. Yesterday, I cut an entire 10 cigarettes out of my daily routine. Before yesterday, it was almost 20. When you're as emotionally attached to smoking as I've become, that's a feat. One I plan to repeat today. Some people say cold turkey is the only way to go. Good for them. Some people say a lot of things, but that doesn't mean I'm caught up in their confines. In their invisible lines that they suppose would limit me.

I'm tired of poisoning myself. With the food I eat, with the cigarettes, with the medicine that's supposed to help, but does more harm than good. With the idea, mine or anyone else's that I can't get better. Inside or out.

I don't know right now if I'll ever get back to writing every day. I don't know if the book I thought I had in me is still there, or if there's another one coming down the pike. I don't know if my ears, nose, and throat will ever let me like my guitar as much as I used to. I do know that sometimes a door closes, and you have to peer into a lot of windows before anyone will have the heart to let you in and out of the rain. Other times, you'll have to weather all of it while you build a new house, with a new door for which only you hold the key.

when you're strange.

It's funny, this getting better. Feeling good vs. feeling like shit is a crap shoot nowadays, which is better than a sure thing, at least in this case.

The bad side. When I'm feeling good, and I'm ready to get out well...no one's there. Very few people have stuck by me through this mess. I don't blame them. I was (and maybe still am) boring and sad. The ones that remain, or jumped on board my screwed up bus in spite of it all are great. I appreciate every walk, every message, every invite, every word of encouragement. One way to find out who's going to back you up is to get really, really sick. The same way you find out that our medical culture is a complete sham.

Instead of being pissed off, I've been thinking about better days. Letting my mind wander to faraway places I've been, people I've met, and everything lovely about both. Then I flip it. I think warmly of the people I know now, and the places I manage to go without having panic attacks (ie: Target, the grocery store, once around the park by myself). I think, "What next," more often. I've been thinking about what I'll think about all of this when I'm 80, should I make it there. Is that too much? Starting several years ago, I began a harsh scrutiny of every bad quality I think I possess. So did a bunch of other people, including my co-workers, some of my friends, and once in a while, my family.

Starting this year, I put a conscious halt to it. I've made a lot of changes. I don't work as much as most people. I broke out of a potentially lucrative career that was breaking me. I worry more about having less money, in lieu of worrying about work and making a lot more of it. And honestly, it's the lesser of the two evils. I stopped caring what anyone thought about it. My dad, who hated this change at first, keeps telling me I seem better. More relaxed. Happier. He's right, because in spite of the alcoholism, he sometimes still is.

More lately, I've been wondering what wisdom will come when I'm so old and so much time has passed that everything painful is just a faint scar on the face of my and our earthly years. Part of me dreads the aging, and part of me looks forward to every coming day.

“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.”
― Tom Robbins

getting there.

I am tired. The past few months have been a steep climb, and I'm never prepared for just how heavy burdens can become if I forget to let some go along the way. At the same time, my new path is unfolding faster than I could have imagined.

It's been a while since my cat passed, but we still miss him every day. That was hard. And expensive. I don't regret the expense. I just figured the dent in our budget would recover in a month or two. Then last week, not even a month later, my tooth broke. One enormous cavity and filling later, my fear of the dentist has been conquered, only much too late. My fear of dental bills--it's only just beginning.

In the meantime, I think I'm finally getting better. Little. By. Little.

Even feeling good feels foreign to me. The emotional scars caused by whatever monster has had a firm and painful grip on my head run deep.  I'm no longer confident in my health, and the occasional mild relapse keeps me from ever being too sure about anything. This type of ailment--the kind with no rhyme, reason, or easy fix--isn't foreign to me. So I know the emotional burden of losing trust in my body's ability to function normally. I know that it's a long haul to trips out of town, finding comfort when I'm out of my element, and relief from the panic that comes and goes after this kind of uncomfortable and sometimes terrifying experience. I've given up on ever receiving a diagnosis. Blood test after blood test, cat scan after cat scan and nothing. At least I know I don't have Lupus.

My part-time job has turned out to be good medicine. I feel useful again, and serves as a reminder that I've come a long way since the first days of vertigo. Numbness in my face. Gone. Crackling in my head. Gone. Feeling like my soul is jumping out of my body as I try to fall asleep. Mostly gone. Feeling like I'm still moving when I'm stopped at a traffic light. Hardly noticeable anymore. Memories of all of these experiences...oh, how I'd love to erase them.

What's back? Thinking about writing. Ideas popping into my head while I'm driving. While I'm in the shower. When I'm having my coffee.

Even better medicine than my job? Feeling loved. Loving people back. Positive thinking. Literally imagining what life will be like when I'm well again. Picturing myself as a non-smoker in preparation for the biggest kick of my life. 

Wait, what? 

Yup. I'm thinking about...no not just thinking about, but planning exactly how I'm going to quit smoking. All of these health problems have been scary, and I've made a lot of lifestyle changes for the better. Yet I continue to reward all of my hard work by poisoning myself.

End game.

and the winner is...

It's been a busy couple of weeks. A few short points today:

1. My boyfriend texted me this morning and apologized for getting a parking ticket, after he forgot to move his car into the driveway last night. I rolled my eyes at his poor judgment, but thought, "Oh well. What's 15 bucks?"

Then I parked in a garage to meet a friend for lunch. I'm pretty sure it was always free before, but I neglected to read any of the 10 signs on my way in. I got a $25 parking ticket.

2. While I was having lunch with a friend and complaining about how said boyfriend can't cook or tell the difference between clean laundry and dirty laundry, he was spending his lunch hour at work building me a shelf for my closet. Even more impressive than the act of building the shelf itself is that I asked him just yesterday if he would build it.

3. I'm still learning how to be less of an ass. Thankfully, I have days like today to teach me.