Mourning

 I've been in mourning a lot lately.

I think any other time, I might just categorize this as a particularly weird spate of depression, but... it tastes different to me.

sometimes grieving can just come out of the blue

I lost my grandpa a little more than 3 years ago - on the near-anniversary, I wrote this:

"it's about my three year anniversary at Trupanion which also means it's the three year anniversary of my paternal grandpa's passing - I started working there about 2 days before my mom called me and told me to find a place to sit down so she could give me the news.

my sister walked me through figuring out bereavement time off. his funeral was the first time I saw my extended family as Moss, without any dresses or skirts.

I wore a tie.

I remember talking with my cousin about how we both wish we could have talked to him about our lives better before. I wonder what my cousin wanted to tell him.

I came out to my extended family really Firmly this year because of how much that's been a regret for me, and I'm glad I did it. I wish I'd done it sooner.

anniversaries here are always really weird because of this. I still have the brochure from the service on my work desk.

I dunno. I feel like this is always a sore spot for me, and I'm not sure how to move forward. I'm not sure I want to yet.

thanks

I don't think I want a solution here. I think the grief just punched a button tonight after remembering it's pretty much my work anniversary in a week. just, solidarity."

Today I've been thinking about how grief can continue to impact you in these weird little ways. like a tide coming in, there are more and more small things creeping up the shoreline, until you're underwater.

at least I know the tide will go out again.

My housemate killed herself 2 years ago. It's hard not to take on responsibility. someone you live with, see every few days...but we all see friends and family, and we all go through hard, difficult, even cataclysmic times inside our own heads. She was assaulted by a guy in a sport she played, in our house, and was going through the process of reporting it. I don't know what internal switch flipped, what came up for her that left this door open, what made that decision become more and more real to her.

we once had a coffee date where we talked for almost an hour about personality tests, because we both love them. when i got a silly possum plushie to give to my partner for our first valentines day together, she was in the room when i opened it, and i excitedly told her about it. she lamented to me about her love of costco and buying in bulk - especially, weirdly enough, whole cases of mint gum. she quoted me on twitter once about my then-obsessive love of dominos pizza.

"So I've become friends with some of the Domino's delivery people, which might be a sign that I need to stop ordering Domino's." Mar 3 2018

I struggle with being too close to people. I know that sometimes my own internal switch can flip, that I push people away so that I don't over-rely on them. I struggle finding a middle ground, and so aloof-ness is usually safer, emotionally. We were new housemates to each other, and I don't think I pushed her away, which is a relief to me. I know I have hurt people by being intentionally unavailable, because I am myself afraid of becoming overwhelmingly invested in them. It helps to know this about myself, and it helps to have such a clear view of this tendency, because I know that I gave her the friendship that I would have wanted in a new friend.

Sometimes all the support in the world isn't enough.

In the same ways that I don't believe in the idea that a person could be a monster - or wholly good - I don't believe that anyone is safe from these sorts of personal tragedies. Whatever we do in life, however we protect ourselves, something can always slip through. No matter how we rebuild, no matter how supported we are, we have no guarantees of permanence or protection. 

It's hard to mourn for people. It's hard to still be struck by these feelings. It's hard to navigate anger and grief, matter-of-factness and frustration and intensity. Knowing Chelsea is now a part of my own history, one of those things that I have to balance how and if to tell people. I want to respect her memory, and I want to respect that we all approach death - especially suicide - in different ways. 

I'm still building how to mourn. In that days after, I tore out all the carpets in the house, pried out staples and nails, swept. I did this with housemates and without. and still, at the end of it, there's no end. There's no final ending nail that tells you that you're done mourning, no final scrap of carpet that wipes away the grief. 

Ghosts are just memories. We build up what we think people are like, and we talk to them, and we reinforce those models. And when those people leave our lives, in whatever way is available to them, we are left with those echoes in our heads.

Grief comes in like the tide, and goes out again in the night.

Reply 2:

Here's the original Post.

And the first reply.


And now, the second reply is by my very good friend Anna, who has survived half a decade of being my friend:

Dear Moss, 

Here is my opinion on this matter, 

Over the course of my life, until very recently, I have not really done too much with politics. Once I got to be in high school and through college my response to politics has changed more. I have become more involved. After taking an introduction to sociology class and studied how media is everywhere and that it influences almost every way we think I do think media has changed how I view politics. I know for the most recent election there was a radio commercial that skewed how I was going to vote for president because it dealt with an issue I am currently involved, college. When campaign teams turn to issues like that I do not know how I could not fall for campaigning of that nature. As I sit here writing this response I cannot think of a time when media changed my idea of politics for the worse. I think how nowadays with all the campaigning that people do is a bit ridiculous and at times makes me want to not vote but I do not think the media advertising them has affected my view of politics. For the most part I think the media has done a very good job of conforming to my view of politics. While I was growing up I saw myself as a liberal but now that I am in college and trying to make my own life I see myself more conservative. For our society today I think a lot of what is presented in the media for political view does have a lot to do with liberal or conservative views. Some examples that I have seen presented in media are television shows, radio ads, stories in newspaper, and some magazines. Most of these sources of media are things I found interesting or examples of how other people with similar political views were expressing themselves.

Thanks Anna!

I'm starting to see a trend here: For one, only college students have replied. Right now, admittedly, that's two out of two. But I am seeing that we have noticed how much media changes our opinions of politics. Now, that could just be the classes we're taking. But Anna goes to college in Wisconsin, whereas Cthulhu goes to college in North Dakota. So it's not one specific class or professor. It could also be the admittedly liberal views of most of the colleges that I've been in, but acknowledging media's influence isn't the realm of the liberal, exclusively.

Media's influence is a fairly obvious assumption to make these days, which I say says something rather important about the skewing of details in the news.

One of the questions I have is: Has this always been around? Or is it a fairly recent development going hand-in-hand with the proliferation of media?

A request for help:

A plea for help:
For one of my Hon. classes, I'm doing a blog-related thing. I'll ask a question; all you have to do is answer it. I won't even ask for references, but should you accidentally write a research paper, I won't judge. This can be from anyone. I'll put your answers on my blog. And hopefully I'll get an A.
I've also got a share-able link here, for anyone who wants to share it with friends.

However, here is the question:

For the purposes of these next few posts, we’re looking at media’s influence on your view of politics : has it (media’s influence) changed it (your view of politics) for the better? For the worse? Can you recall a time when your view of politics hasn’t been defined by what’s on television, or are there other strong influences on your view of politics? What are they?
Note: Media in this case will be defined by such things as television shows, magazines, and the news (paper, radio, and tv)

I would enjoy it if you emailed it to my yahoo email at taimeloche @ yahoo . com

Then I would read it and post it here!

If you have any requirements for posting, I would also follow those. 

Thanks!

Depressed-You is an Idiot

I'm going to say first that if you have depression, and you think talking about it will be triggering, then stop. And go here instead.
Or here.  

For the past few years, I've been having issues with depression.
Apathy and insomnia is the worst of it lately, but it's all bad.
I like to say I'm a writer, but I can barely explain what depression feels like, because you read books about it and look at web md's symptom pages (warning, going to web md's symptom checker may cause you to think you have leukemia), and you still can't quite grasp it.

But, okay. Here's my attempt at explaining depression - for me, at any rate.  For those of you who already know, skip down a few paragraphs.  Go ahead.  That's where I'm talking about how I'm dealing with it.  Shoo.

I find it easiest to compare depression to a migraine, because I've had my fair share of them (that's a lie.  The only "fair share" of migraines a person can have is none.  I have had way too many migraines.) and it's easier to explain a migraine (ow, ow, my brain is broken and I can't see) than it is to explain depression (ow, ow, my brain is broken and I can't see because I've been crying for the past week).  For one, it's easier to be funny.  You can be more open about migraines, because we don't have the same stigmas about physical pain than we do about emotional pain.  With depression, I feel like I can't be as funny about it because while I can compare a migraine to evil little gremlins driving spikes into your brain while playing *shudders* country music, I can't say the same thing about depression without sounding, ha ha, crazy.

Depression is like having a migraine for three weeks months years and not having any Excedrin.  Straight up.  Sometimes you're listening to music that you like and the migraine goes away for a few hours, or you're talking with people that you actually like and you forget that your head hurts.  But the one surety for those entire three weeks is that it will come back.  

Depression is like all of those scenes in horror movies where the heroine is bashing away at the villain with the baseball bat screaming "Why won't you die?"  And then the villain stays around for the next 8 terrible sequels.  

The important thing to know about depression is that sometimes it does go away, and sometimes, with help, it stays away.  But in my experience, it comes back.  And sometimes it creeps up on you, so that you don't realize you have depression until you're lying on your friend's couch staring at the wall crying.  And then you can talk about it, because depressed-you isn't the same as you-you, and you-you has the ability to talk about what's wrong.  Depressed-you is a proud idiot with a mental illness.  Don't Listen to her.  

Here's the part where I talk about what I do.  What I've been doing.  Those of you who skipped down, welcome back to the party.  The depression party.  We have black balloons, but our confetti is made out of glitter, which is the prettiest confetti, and we stay up all night because when we go to sleep we have really bad dreams.

What I do is I figure out what triggers me.  And I avoid it.  I tell my closest friends that I have issues and we work on it.  Together.  Community is the thing that helps me the most, honestly.  Lately I've been working on a blog where I talk about the sort of things I avoid talking about here.  It's depression-me's blog.  Even though I'm fairly sure no one reads it, I like thinking that when I'm older, and better, (and famous and popular and rich, because this is my fantasy, dammit) maybe some kid will hear me reference that blog, and look it up, and maybe they'll read it and think, "Dayum.  If this lady is so effed up, and ended up so cool, then... I guess there's hope for me."

That's what helps.  That's what keeps me going.  I don't want to change the world.  Just someone in it.  I make goals for myself.  I want to be at my cousin's graduation.  I want to write a book.  And one day I want to read the last book of the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss.    And it's going to be awesome.

Meaning

I wrote this a while ago on Facebook for a few friends. I figured I might as well post it up here as well.

Life does have meaning.
I know that sometimes it is hard to see it, and sometimes it is harder still to know that you do, but it does.
There is meaning in the way that branches curve against the sky, in the way that the sunset sometimes lights up the horizon in a last burst of color before dropping down, in the way that sometimes it doesn't. There is meaning in a child's laughter and a grandmother's tears.
There is meaning in the way that a dog will sometimes look up at you with such a look of devotion... and immediately afterward eat your favorite pair of slippers.
There is meaning in the knowledge of friendship and in the possibility of friendship.
Life has meaning.
People might read this and completely get what I mean.
People might read this and not understand it at all.
And you know what? There's meaning in that, as well.
The quest to find meaning in the world is everywhere in history and myth - it's a common human striving.
Some people have to find meaning on their own, and some people have to be shown it, but it is for everyone.
Usually this quest for meaning takes the whole of your lifetime, and too many people are brought low by hopelessness long before they ever find it.
Do not be brought low by hopelessness.
Your life is your own.
Your life is what you make of it.
The human life span is something like seventy years and it is a waste, a waste, in not appreciating that length. Too many people are influenced by the romanticism of suicide, the lure of helplessness and hopelessness, and they splinter those seventy years into fragments.
And I have no sympathy for them.
There is always hope if you are willing to take it.
The possibility for failure lies only in your willingness to quit.

So don't give up.
Find your own meaning in the feeling of a friend's hand in your own, the smell of the air after it rains, the bright colors of the sunsets and sunrises in your life. When it seems as though everyone is trying to shape you into a mold, think about hope and perseverance and the bright future that lays ahead of you if you are willing to make it.
The future is never set in stone, and you are never what others tell you that you are.
You are what you make of yourself.
The responsibilities, the joys and the sorrows, the highs and the lows, the hope and the moments when it seems that all hope is gone, the friends, the lovers, and the mentors wait for you, at a point somewhere up ahead in your life. All you have to do is reach out and take them.

Minor Disagreement

"And I'm sorry, but I don't want to have this argument anymore. I might feel..." Searching for the words to say how I feel, what I feel. Right now the only thing I can think of, honestly, is tense and uncomfortable. Why do you have to talk about this now? Why did you have to spoil this now? I can't eat - I look down at my half-eaten pepperoni pizza slice on my plate, next to it the grapes. It had made me so happy when I'd realized that the dining center had had them.
I can't eat.
"badly for the fact that you had to wake up, but we have rules in our room now." I'm still fumbling for words. Words - spoken words - are never your problem. And when I'm talking in front of three people, one of whom are angry, two of whom are, I know, judging, weighing, measuring in that way that our gender has...the words stick in my throat along with the partially digested grape.
You say something to the judge, say it again, there's a question. I know these things but they're already fading in my head.
At this moment I can think only of escape. It's always been my habit to run from these things, these conflicts that make up our lives. But I'm serving no good here but to repeat myself.
"See, we have these commandments in our room. And we've been asking people to stop leaving garbage in our room for a while now, because we have to clean it up..."
"But there were *5* other people in that room, and *I* had to wake up..."
"And I don't want to argue about it anymore. I'm not going to apologize for it."
Awkward tense silence to match the tenseness in my stomach. I'm not done with my plate but I'm done with my food.
I get up, walk to the dish area, put my dishes down. I can't even pause long enough to put them on the conveyor belt, and then I'm walking - not running- walking briskly down the stairs, through the tunnels.
In the elevator I can put a hand to my stomach, a fist to mirror the fist in my gut and my head and knotted around my feelings. It's hard to disagree with a friend - I have gone from having none to having many in what feels like a very short time, and I'm still terrified of losing the ones I have.
I will mourn this, angst over this, and finally write it down, trying to work out the tenseness in my stomach.
You won't remember this.

The tale of the swim trunks.

I might draw pictures, but right now I'm too busy. And my drawing style's changing, but I have to figure out how to draw everything again.

So.

The tale of the swim trunks.
*Dum Dum Dum*

One day I woke up and looked outside on a cool morning near the end of summer to find a pair of wet navy blue swim trunks tossed casually by my window.

I don't know whose they are. Or where they came from.

Frankly, I don't want to know, because all the stories in my head about it sound much better than the real story could ever be. Most of them involve a streaker. In the dead of night.

But they were by my window, and by my window they remained. For about a week they were the subject of quite a few facebook posts, but then I got distracted by something shiny and forgot about them.

Summer changed into Fall and then snow covered up the snow trunks abandoned outside my window.

And I forgot about them entirely for several freezing months of pain and despair and wind and flat (except for that lovely week when I went to visit my sister in New Orleans...) and...okay, I ran out of adjectives.

Anyway, I forgot about them until there was a sudden thaw. I looked out my window, and lo and behold! The trunks were partially uncovered...still lying outside my window.

And they became my main griping subject for the next week or so, until one lovely (rather stressful) false spring day. I walked into my room to see two young gentlemen outside my window.

They picked up the swim trunks, laughed a bit, and then PUT THEM BACK outside my window. Like I needed them for some bizarre type of EXTERIOR DECORATING.

"Oh yes, move the trunks just a little to the left...now to the right...yes that's perfect. Now your room's positive energy will stay in, and the negative energy will flow out, thanks to these navy blue swim trunks crumpled delicately outside your main energy portal..."

So my mind may or may not have broken. Just a little. So I made a sign (misspelling "swim" once and "please" twice)

PLEAS PLESE PLEASE TAKE THE
SMIW SWIM TRUNKS
I DON’T WANT THEM

And then I waited. Two days.

And then they disappeared.

I did a little dance, and removed the sign from my window, confident that the drama of the swim trunks was over.

A day later:

My neighbor walks into my room.

"You're a bitch."

I jolt upright. While insults and commentary like this are actually fairly common in our friendship, I'm reasonably sure I haven't done anything to warrant this. I say (quite cleverly,) "What?"

"The fucking swim trunks are outside my window now!"

"WHAT?"

Totally wasn't my fault. :D

I have no idea how - or if - she got rid of the swim trunks.

Personally, I think that they just gained a type of sentience over the winter, and seeing that they weren't wanted, simply started lurching on.

If you see them on the road, be nice to them.

Bleh to Introspective

I wanted to write a post when I got on here...
Then my mind blanked. And then disconnected from my fingers and fine motor functions.
So I'm just going to write stuff that comes into my head.
Kay?
Kay.
Good.
(This is the good thing about running a dictatorship. The only person you have to agree with is yourself. If you don't have multiple personalities, you should be good.)
I'm kind of sad that I have only one follower right now. However, I am fairly sure that more people than one person read this at least semi-periodically...but still. The follow button is >that> way!

Now I sound whiny and not tough. *sigh*

Oh well. I knew it was only a matter of time before my clever disguise of awesomeness slipped and I would be revealed for the crazy lunatic that I am.
I just didn't expect it would come this soon.
*obviously employing heavy use of sarcasm*

Hmmmm...

On a more serious note...

I'm also really pleased at the fact that some of my friends (who shall go nameless, but know who they are if they read this) have been experiencing either relationship success or easy contentment with the way single life is going after several years of crap that they are far too nice and patient and wonderful to have put up with for so long.

It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling in my chest. Of course that could also be indigestion.

My own life is starting to settle again, after the initial craziness of moving into college.

I have many old and new friends...which is cool, and still gives me a surprise when I think about it.

I've had so many years of thinking of myself as an outsider, a lone wolf...that when I actually look around at the friends that have surrounded me...I can only wonder at their patience for dealing with my ego, oddness, and misplaced humor for so long.

And then I remember - they are every bit as odd as I am.

There are very few people (in my opinion) who are as blessed as I am with the sheer awesomeness of their friends.

I started a club - a creative writing club - and I have high hopes.

For the past year...and the first time in a long while...I've been on really good terms with both my siblings and my parents...

And my grandfather called me last night.

So I'm in a good place right now.

Possibly one of the best places I've been in a long while.

I'm going to go make popcorn and edit the spelling on my previous posts now...