LinZi and the no good very bad...

day week  month year couple of years.

I'm feeling a little like Alexander today. I am having a case of the grouchies. And a case of the half empties. And I just feeling like getting it all out! So here it goes.

I have the nicest little dog. He is sweet and lovable, and quirky, and sometimes scares guests, but I love him all the same. And then he got cancer. And it is in a place they can't really do surgery. So they put him on chemo. Which worked for a year. Then that stopped working and his tumor started growing so they put him on a different chemo. And that made his tummy hurt sometimes . And I HATE when my little dog's tummy hurts or he feels bad at all. So it involved a lot of adjustment of medication. Now he is feeling kinda better but his tumor is still getting bigger. And I hate cancer and it is expensive and it's stupid and I don't like it. He has to go visit his doggie oncologist every couple of months and get lots of labs done too.  I love my little dog and I am glad he is here but it is stressful and nobody seems to know how to give him his medicine right but me so if someone else has to take care of him I worry and then I HATE having to leave him. It makes me grouchy. It makes me stressed and I love him and I can't imagine life without my little dog but I see his tumor getting bigger everyday and it makes me so mad. But there is no one to be mad at.

I have lived in Portland for a year now. I work a lot of hours and it is stressful. I have a "grown-up" job now but I don't feel like a grown-up. I have only made a tiny handful of friends in Portland but I am normally a very fun-loving person who likes to be very social, so I often find things to be terribly boring, lonely, no good and very bad. I think I'll move to Korea!

I had to work on Christmas and so I had a terrible no good lonely-boring Christmas.  I also don't feel like my finances are any better than when I was poor and underemployed. I keep having lots and lots of bills. They make me so grumpy and they are hard to keep track of and then there are dog medical bills and human medical bills and GIGANTIC student loans and I feel like I will just be poor forever. Which is no good and very bad.

When I started nursing school I thought it would be the best career for me and I love it except half way through nursing school I got an autoimmune disorder that randomly makes me get super tired and the biggest trigger for autoimmune disorders are "STRESS" and how can I avoid stress and I am mad at my no good very bad body for being dumb and attacking itself randomly. Which makes me think if only I had a very good excellent crystal ball than I would have known to choose a calm quiet desk job somewhere I had a no good very bad opaque crystal ball.

My car is almost ten years old. It keeps breaking down and I can't afford to keep fix it. Last night it broke down on the way home and I had to get it towed and now I don't have a car until probably Tuesday and I have to take a taxi to work which costs money and I'm POOR and I also walked home today and it was raining and icy and I stepped in so many puddles and my feet got all wet.

I am supposed to go visit my friend for New Years and if I can't I might feel like I am having a terrible no good very bad New Years, but I hope not. I need to buy a new car but since I am poor and have no savings I don't know how I am going to manage that one.

Metadata of a Life

Fatigue

Fatigue slams down, hitting like a black, slightly tacky hammer in the darkness, smelling of a musty wood shop. It leaves the mind intact and willing to go about daily works. Sapped of necessary electrons, oxygen or perhaps antioxidants, the body becomes no longer a useful tool of the brain, but a hardship. Unfortunately the brain cannot bail out but must weather out the storm, finding ways to keep itself entertained until the body resumes its normal function. The body becomes a mass of floppy appendages, getting in the way of thought processes, useless but still requiring food and other necessities. Truly a burden on the brain. The only solace for the brain during these times is that it will all turn around and once again the body will resume normal function, which cannot be said for all bodies, something important to keep in mind.

Joy

Many lives are spent waiting for joy to happen, or waiting for it to doused upon them like a sudden, welcome downpour on a warm summer day, or to come specially labelled in a big shiny package set at their door step. But joy comes in fleeting moments. In seconds—small fragments of time but millions times a day.  Joy is not a certain thing, but a certain way of thinking. Sometimes it is easy to miss it. Humans living their lives do not often stop and look for joy. They check their check boxes. Straighten their ties. Do not recognize those minute moments for what they are.

Loneliness

Loneliness used to be a word spat out with hate, a word to be destroyed.  For a time, nothing worse could be imagined that this mere fact. A person on their own. While sometimes you still glimpse fear as it crumples the corners of you papers as it tries to dart into the familiar corners of your heart-- but mostly loneliness has a different relationship. It is more like plunging deeply into a warm calm ocean with eyes open. You can see the surface of the sky from here. Looking up. Thoughts. Words. Actions.  Loneliness gives you confidence. To do things not often done. To step out of the humdrum.

Sorrow

Sorrow inevitably unfolds from things that cannot be changed. Things that cannot be changed are some of the hardest the deal with. What to do with a memory, an emotion, a guilt, a pain, a sadness?  Caused by you or unable to be stopped by you or happened to you. Sorrow is sorrow and nothing to change it. Sorrow slips into your mind like black ink. By letting it remain there it can become heavy and dark in your thoughts, a liquid pool of dense emotion, of doubt or guilt, of jolted dreams and stomach aches. Letting the black ink of sorrow slip and slide out splashing onto paper, vibrating into space, releasing your sound into the universe, reaching another’s ear, commiserating. Sorrow seems to dwindle through the act of expression.

dark warm windy nights.

Last night a warm wind blew across the city. A strange warm wind, at once gentle and warm, at the same time violent enough to rip the screen off my window and send it colliding with the pavement below.

I walked out to a park in the dark. From far back you see the black sillouette of park benches backdropped against the city below. The edge of nothingness. It's quiet. The lights glimmer silently. The wind whips at my coat. My music blares in my ears. Frenic music that blocks out the silence.

Sitting there. On the edge of darkness.

I feel that burning in my chest. The familiar welcome yet unwelcome feeling. I tried so hard to do it all my way. But here I am. It doesn't feel like my way. It feels like a trap. The trap I always knew it would be. The trap I wanted to avoid. But here I am.

I wanted to be different. I wanted to do it all differently. But somehow I did it just the same.