exhilaration | Odd Day Yeah

I woke up this morning hung over.

I woke up at eight. That's really, really late for me. I'm used to waking up at three thirty every morning, and if I go back to sleep I usually wake up again around five or so.

I did not wake up until eight. So I guess my sleep schedule is already getting weird on me.

My head hurt. My neck hurt. My shoulder hurt. My back hurt. My hands hurt. My face hurt. Every fucking thing hurt.

I tried to get out of bed but the floor dumped me back in. It can do that, the floor.

Okay, so, now that we've established I must have gotten drunk last night...

No work today. No work tomorrow. No breakfast this morning, cause, ugh.

Between me and Erica we demolished two bottles of wine. Maybe there's something particularly potent in red wine, I don't know. I definitely got really drunk, though. It wasn't much fun. I'm kind of remembering things in bits and pieces - I wanted her to watch Supernatural with me, she kept saying she'd give it a try but I don't think we actually watched it.

And I said some weird stuff about my parents, I think. I'm not the best at explaining anything to begin with, especially the first sentence, and me being drunk definitely made me say some things very strangely.

I woke up feeling really, really wrong. Like I did or said something really, really bad. I know I didn't, I just feel so completely unsettled. I know we didn't go anywhere last night - even if I don't remember every single little thing, we didn't leave the house. And there's nothing I could have said that would warrant feeling this awful about it.

The only thing I can think of is talking about my family. Which is something I pretty much never do.

I just figure, there is no way anyone is ever going to understand all the dynamics of my relationship with my family. They aren't, because I'm not going to be able to explain it correctly. They'll just be left with me saying bizarre things, and either thinking that I'm making it up, or that I was abused as a child, or something. And there's no way I can explain it objectively. Not even now.

But I'm thinking how I probably told Erica some really awful things about my parents.

And not that I'm real big on defending my parents, but. I don't know. I'm not going to argue that they did the best they could. But they thought they did at the time. If that makes sense. They were wrong, of course. Of course they were wrong.

Even now, I can hear my mom telling me I'll never be able to find a job. I can hear her voice so clear telling me that I should volunteer at church or something, because "there aren't any jobs." Just, blanket statement, "there aren't any jobs." And she was so full of shit.

I can hear her saying "oh he didn't really mean that" or "he was just making that up." Or, wait, "he was just making that up because he wanted you to go away." A teacher once told me that there was a make-up test on a certain day that I wasn't going to be in school, and he told me that instead of taking the test he just wouldn't count it in my grade either way, and that was my mom's response to that: he was just making that up. She also told me that my very first job ever, when I went for the interview and they told me I had the job, "oh, they were just saying that."

She would listen to me talk to my friends on the phone and then when I got off the phone she would tell me how horrible I was, how I was so nasty to them, that it was just terrible how I was talking to them, and that it disgusted her. Funny but, I don't really remember talking nasty to my friends.

So, my first job? Yeah that was at McDonald's. A really long time ago. I worked in the drive-thu window. Taking people's orders and ringing them up and stuff. And, well, I know now that people are crazy and rude and disgusting and basically impossible to please, but back then I did not know that, and the first nasty customer I ever had really freaked me out. She stuck her finger right in my face, right into my window, and called me a "rude little girl" because I would not let her use two coupons for one item and I was very adamant about how it wasn't possible. Her husband or whatever was in the car too, and he leaned over a joined in, so it was both of them ganging up on me telling me how horrible I was and how after that day I was going to need to find a new job because I was surely going to lose the one I had if this is how I treated people.

They were clearly crazy. Sometimes people just are like that. I've worked enough places and enough jobs to know that - it's the kind of stuff you just have to learn to deflect, let it roll, not let it get to you. And my boss told me I had done nothing wrong, that the people were just horrible, and not to worry about it. I was, of course, in tears at that point, and she let me go in the office and just get myself together and stuff, and I did, and tried not to think about for the rest of the day, but when I got home of course I told my mom all about what happened with the crazy lady and she said "well you are very rude and nasty."

Sometimes I would just like to claw into my head (because I have claws, right, of course) and pull this kind of shit right out and toss it. It pops up at the stupidest times and knocks me off in the stupidest ways - nobody likes their parents, not when they're teenagers. Plenty of people don't have parents, or parents who beat them, or did other horrible things. Mine? My mom just has this voice...

I think I'm getting into my quarter-life. I mean, obviously, I am in my quarter life - I'm twenty four. But I feel like my teenage self is somehow co-existing with my current self, living a simultaneous life a decade apart from this one, and all the things that got to me then are getting to me now, after a very decent-sized gap of running away and never looking back. There are, oh, lets see, certain things that I tried very, very hard not to think about, for a very long time, things like stuff I did and how I acted and how I treated people - because I just didn't want to deal with it. I guess I was waiting for my free pass or something, like, okay, you have now reached your statute of limitations, you are no longer accountable for these things you did, go enjoy the rest of your life.

Apparently that is not how it works.

Apparently that's what I've been counting on all this time.

And now, I don't know why now, but so it is, now, I feel like I've been flung right back to being face-to-face with that other me, the one I can't stand even thinking about - and both of me are being tormented by my mom's constant negativity and tearing down.

Blegh. This is not really helping.

Talking about this with Erica last night did not really help either.

Talking to a therapist has never helped me much either. What is the point of going over and over and over unpleasant things? So why do I still try to do it? Why can I not become one of those people who has made peace with their lives and moved on?

Or is that what happens when you're dead? Only THEN you finally make peace with everything and "move on" because you have no choice in the matter?

When I die I'll probably haunt the shit out of somewhere and the Winchester brothers will have to come hunt down my spirit and salt and burn my bones and THEN what? Then do I get a fucking rest?

Huh, so, does this nearly-intolerable feeling of wrongness, is this what real depression feels like when one is taking medication for said depression? Does the cycle keep on going underneath all the drugs, it just feels a little different, a little unrecognizable? Cause I have been feeling okay these days. For a while. Months, even. I didn't really notice it, I guess, but now I'm noticing it.

Billy Corgan named the album "Siamese Dream" after the line in the song in my dreams we are connected, siamese twins at the wrist and that doesn't sound half-bad to me right now.

How's that for lonely? Maybe that's what I'm feeling. Lonely. That's nothing new.

I kind of want to call Erica and see if she'll come over. She probably will. She (I don't know how she can stand it) has no job, so really it's just sitting around her house or sitting around mine. If someone else is here, I shouldn't feel lonely, right? But somehow, I don't think it really works that way.

There are people in my life. Maybe not the people I want (not Daniel) but there are people. There's Erica - she's... she really is a friend to me. Maybe she's just a friend out of convenience, but maybe not. I guess we kind of made friends the same way dorm-mates do in college - by immersion. Be being together all the time and still preferring each other's company.

There's my job at the restaurant. That's kind of like a little family there. My manager Vicky calls us all her "kids," after all. Working for her is nothing like working for Renee - I've always felt like she's 100% reasonable. Sure, it's a restaurant, things get crazy and she can get bitchy, but when it's all said and done, she's a nice person who cares about her employees. If ever I can't come to work she has always sounded concerned first for me and second for her staffing issues, not the other way around. I've never been stuck there without a ride home, either, and I've never even been stuck at home with no ride to work. That counts.

There's my Aunt Jen and Uncle Ber, who have had me over for dinner a total of TWICE in the last few months. That's progress, isn't it?

There's Bevan. He counts. He counts as someone in my life, he really does, even though I don't know what the fuck is going on with me and him right now. He still counts.

So, Lara, why so lonely?

I did not really want to take this medicine. But sometimes I shudder to think what I would be like without it.

I am feeling like this day is squeezing in on me. I should go out and look for a job again, but I've kind of exhausted all my options, I feel like, but besides that, I just do not want to go out. I do not want to sit here at home by myself, and I do not want to do a single thing. I do not even want to call Erica. Maybe if Erica comes online I will IM her. But I already turned off my IM because I didn't want anyone to IM me.

You know, the whole reason I wanted a journal was so that when things got fucked up I could look at my entries and see if I could find a pattern in it all, see what I was doing that was causing this, but now I think it's pretty clear. There's just something wrong in my brain, some kind of glitch, some kind of misfire that causes me to be permanently, incurably depressed, always has been, always will be.

Geez, if you read through all this, you're a trooper, that's for sure. Thanks. Even if you don't leave a comment, thanks for just reading. I think a few months ago in one of my entries I swore I wasn't always like this. Huh. Apparently I am always like this. Sorry to mislead.