things i can't get enough of: the photo edition

gingers:

cochran:  i've been in love with this one since he was just an awkward guy who wouldn't take his shirt off.  he's ridiculously cute AND funny.  i could be his nerdy librarian.  also, dimples kill me DEAD.  and did i mention he kicked ass in the eating crazy things survivor challenge?  how are we not married yet?  follow him on twitter @johnmcochran

ed sheeran:  this man's music melts my heart

rupert grint:  call him ron weasley if you wish.  i call him wicked hot.

thai food:

shrimp tom yum (this stuff is LIFE CHANGING)

salad/fresh/summer rolls (whatever your thai place calls them)

my homemade white trash red curry chicken with brown rice

people who were/are on this season of the voice:

ryan innes:  this guy's adorable and dude can SANG!  check out his covers of ain't no sunshine and john mayer's gravity on itunes.  amazing.

midas whale:  besides having the coolest band name ever, these guys folk rocked it hard.  i'd be happy to date either one of these quirky awesome dudes.

the swon brothers:  another duo i'm in love with.  their harmonies are beautiful.  they caught my attention with petty's american girl but really wowed this week with george jones' who's gonna fill their shoes.  the short haired one is totally cute too!  what?  i'm single, alright.  ok, just kidding.  i'd date either one of them.

caroline glaser:  was sad to see her go.  she killed it with ed sheeran's a team.  she's incredibly marketable though, so i don't think we've seen the last of her.

sarah simmons:  she has both a really soft tone to her voice and some grit as well.  she slayed what if God was one of us for her blind audition

michelle chamuel:  this girl can sing and she's paving the way for all of us nerds!

ok, that's enough obsessions for tonight.  it's way past my bedtime.

less than forever

i don't feel good. i went home sick thursday and stayed home sick friday for probably the first time in two years.  i had some kind of cold allergy body achy thing.  i'm feeling better, but i think i overdid it today, eating steak, potatoes, and salad (with too much dairy, even for lactaid) and being outside with allergens.  tomorrow, i'm switching back from cold medicine to allergy medicine.  in the meantime, i feel like a bloated whale with sinus problems.  and i can't lie down because i know i don't have the willpower not to nap, and if i nap, i won't sleep tonight.

so i guess i'll write.  it's what i do.  usually to my detriment.

previous to me becoming physically ill, it was an emotionally rough week.  work hours were long and arduous, oslo's birthday would have been on Wednesday the 8th, and the thought of my 15 year reunion looming ahead caught me off  guard.  the reunion falls on the night before/the day of my 33rd birthday.  i will have been out of school for 15 years and i have no husband, no kids, no pets, no house, no great job, no amazing talent, and i'm not skinny.  i mean, that's what matters to the world at large, right?

but i do have friend(s) and family.  when paula brought her fish by (i'm watching it while she's gone to see her fam) on wednesday night, she found me still in my work clothes listening to colin hay's "waiting for my real life to begin" on repeat.  so she made me change and we went to cheddar's.  much laughter and (too) much food was had.  good thing i've got people in my life to keep me sane.

last week i was cleaning out papers and articles i had saved, and i came across a multi-part article called "how to become the person you were meant to be."  hilarious, i know.  i haven't read the whole thing, but the first part (of which i haven't read completely either), called "where do i start?" was written by one of my favorite authors/people:  Anne Lamott.  this, this is the reason i love her:

We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be.  The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the things that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down.  So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren't?  how do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?

Here's how I became myself:  mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake's line that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.    

--Anne Lamott 

if only i could follow that advice.  i don't think it's wrong for me to yearn for romantic love, though.  maybe it's the thought that i can never have it that makes it hurt so much.  maybe i could have it if i lived in a time where people got married and stayed married, even if they hated each other eventually.  but not today.  no one could ever love me forever.  and less than forever hurts too much.

depression: i don't want to talk about it

did you ever feel like your life was so broken that it couldn't be fixed?  that you've done so many things to yourself that there's no going back.  no matter how many steps you took in the right direction, you would never make it back to normal, so why even try?  and you spend your days walking around with this hollowed out hole inside of you.  you try to hide it from everyone, because the only thing more painful would be having to talk about it.  but you can't hide it.  so everybody tells you how to fix it.  how you're going to die because you're too fat or you're going to lose all your friends because you're too depressed.  or that you should follow steps 1 through 5 to be a real person again.  and that makes it hurt so much more.  so much that you can't even remember why you ever loved anyone to begin with.  even if they say they love you, they're judging you.  it's your fault for being sad or for being too sad or for not just fixing your life.  in the guise of helping, they give you platitudes and pat you on the back and try to make you feel like they could ever possibly understand.  everything has to be some kind of after school special, and you feel like you're being recruited for some kind of religion where you have to be their kind of normal.  eventually there will be a break in the clouds, but you won't want to be happy.  you'll know that people are thinking that you made the sadness up.  if you're happy now, why can't you always be happy?  if you're feeling better, then it couldn't have been THAT big of a deal.

mostly i just want to be left alone.  there's the rub.  in the age of the internet, i want to put my feelings out there.  i want to write.  i want to have some sort of a cathartic experience.  but i don't want to talk about it.  and maybe i won't have any friends left.  but at least i won't have to talk about it.

not quite a life

i came home and my toilet water was pink. i'm the only one with a key.

i don't know how much longer i can keep doing this temporary administrative job without pulling my hair out.  and i want a new haircut.  one with less pomp and circumstance and more feeling.  i thought about shaving my head, but i should wait for that, i think.

i want to eat curry in bed and listen to the rain pouring down.  i wish i had a roof and not just a ceiling.

there was a man, well, a boy perhaps, who asked me what song i'd walk down the aisle to.  he was part of not quite a couple at a wedding of people i didn't quite know.  i said probably something from the 90s, kriss kross, perhaps, or hip hop hooray.  but, i don't plan to get married.  when did i become uncohabitable?  i don't own an iron.  last night i had fish and jellied toast for dinner.  well, preserved toast, i guess.  with not quite butter.

i dream of having another animal companion.  a partner in crime.  but i'm not quite responsible enough.  i'm not ready to give my heart away again.  i've been doing too much of that lately anyway.  sometimes days are measured by the amount i can make you laugh.  other days are measured by how much i want shells and cheese.

my watch is too loud.  it ticks away the time of nothing happening.  i worry about the fate of me.  i watched bully.  if i were a superhero i would have an origin story.  but i'm not even a regular hero.  i do like sandwiches though.  can consistently reinforced worthlessness ever be changed back?  what determine's a thing's worth?  the thing or the owner of the thing?

sometimes my pen gets me in trouble and my thoughts feel like mr. dolores claiborne falling and falling forever down a well.

"tonight i can write the saddest lines"

i could write a thousand miles with a blue pen, if only i knew what to say.

my days are filled with diet soda caffeine and wanting to crawl under my desk at work.  every time i think there's an end in sight, the end moves farther away from me like some kind of cartoon cave drawn on a wall.  i want to get out of this hole, but every time i start climbing, i realize i've been turned upside down and am only digging my hole deeper.

i don't want to talk about it.  i don't want to get better.  i don't DESERVE to get better.  it's my fault that i'm fat.  it's my fault that oslo died.  it's my fault for not getting better help when i was younger.  it's my fault that i didn't make a better life for myself.  it's my fault that i never learned to be a girly girl that boys would like.  it's my fault that i've driven most of my friends away.

pablo neruda says "tonight i can write the saddest lines."  well, tonight i can start the easiest projects and never finish them.  i can buy the best books and never read them.  i can love the most men and never know them.  i agree with ed sheeran when he says "tell you the truth i hate, what didn't kill me, it never made me stronger at all."   i think it would have been easier to have never loved at all.

so i guess i'll do laundry and watch tv, and my life will be the same day after day after day.  i'll keep hating myself for loving someone and try to sleep away the pain like i always do.

writing helps.

irrefutable evidence

CONS:

• obsessions/addictions
• food
• men
• books
• TV
• hoarding
• shopping
• makeup
• compulsions
• counting
• picking
• personality
• anger
• hatred
• self-loathing
• depression
• social awkwardness
• fear
• laziness
• low self-esteem
• physicality
• fat
• facial hair
• moles
• scars
• cysts
• voice
• blotchy skin

feel free to let me know if i've missed anything.

more complaints

i'm such a mixed up mess.  i want to run away.  my apartment is eating my things, i can't buy enough pens and chapstick, and my only hugs are from blankets.  i'm sick of babies and sunny days and facebook blabbers lamenting the one day loss of their significant other.  try forever.  try being without a significant other forever.  i want to stay in bed for a week and have a life where i never have to talk to anyone.

i want to write about happy things like my love for cochran and midas whale and coconut macaroons and the thought of riding roller coasters with my sister.  but all i have left is a deep seated hatred for myself and a severe irritation with pretty much everyone else in the world.

i'm even a failure at writing.