Before mid-2017, I had no problems putting words to paper, or typing up an essay to a friend. I’d apply every thought, idea, emotion I had when I blogged in the past. Once the chronic pain started, that got harder; it never went away, I kept writing, but I found other mediums that didn’t include hitting the “Add New” button.

And it took — very sadly, so you don’t have to point it out, I know — almost 7 years to realise that what I was blogging about, I had blogged about before. Anything I blogged from 2008-2011 were curated versions of the blog posts I’d done from 2003-2008. I blogged about things that may have seemed unique to some, but for me, was just a recycled version of another idea that failed.

What I realised, 7 years later AUSTIN, was that I had never blogged through pain. Other than a few online friends, I had never even seen a lot of representation in my own blogging community about pain, because we hide it. We were all scared to talk about our darkest thoughts and self-harming, there was no way we’d find a way to the top-level tier pain: the kind that lasts forever and never goes away. No medication, yoga pose, meditation app, aromatherapy, eastern healing will take away from your body what your body gave you. The pain is there, and it’s there to stay, and I do wish I had heard those words 7 years ago. It would’ve stung, but I wouldn’t have kept getting surprised and disappointed by everything I tried not working.

Another thing I never blogged about was dating and then the aftermath of dating. I’m pretty private when it comes to those things, and it always felt so superficial to talk about the hurt after the fact, but none of the good before. And because I let myself believe that, I let a lot of good stories go to waste. I’ve tried writing them, too, but they just don’t have the same ring if I’d done it, like, immediately. I did a lot of voice recording, and whether you’re writer or a talker or both (me), those kind of journal entries can help yourself. I don’t have a lot of friends, and I didn’t always feel comfortable talking to them about my problems, but maybe if I hadn’t been, they’d have given me some burns.

For the past week or two, I’ve been experiencing excruciating pain behind my eyes that I chalked up to the heater drying my eyes out. My left eye was really red and swollen and when I started experiencing an ass load of symptoms – Wednesday night saw I-think-my-eyes-have-fallen-out-literally and my BB!Reid could not (shockingly) make this better; Thursday day I felt like I had slammed my head into my ceiling sometime in the middle of the night and (not surprisingly) forgot to tell the Mom about it; and Thursday night’s constant pressure, and the redness and watery-irritation spreading to my right eye – where I was feeling like a truck had run over my face 3858584858 times, something that only got worse over a period of seven hours, I made the truly magnificent decision to, ya’ know, tell the Mom about it.

The parents are cheapskates, cheapskates that work in the medical field¹ – which, ya’ know, isn’t at all bad, and is actually more convenient. The parents truly know certain things that other parents would pull out of their asses, and they have access to discounts on the money pit hole that is appointments and prescription medication. This does not, however, stop the parents from getting out of the sister and I going to do the Doctor, and it was to my surprise that the Mom got me in right away, and I was off to the eye doctor in five minutes flat.

My eye doctor was as flamboyant as ever, smelled like men’s cologne – a secret fetish of mine, and yes, I claim that is in no way as stalkerish as that sounds! – and was the second person to mistake me for a 16-year-old (the first being Christina » (kidding! (sort of lalala))). The Hannibal-esque equipment was still there – … yes, I did look for it, and was momentarily relieved to see it wasn’t there before I turned around and saw it sitting in the shadows behind me – they still left the computer sitting all open, hackable and tempting, and I swear every time I go there there’s something new to the endless amount of equipment – this time being a mechanical object that looked suspiciously like the gun Eames pulled out in Inception.

The point is, I have Iritis, which is basically just my irises being dicks and inflaming on me (I still love you, though!), and when I got home, I washed the dishes, pretended to be doing something on the computer, and watched a little bit of Criminal Minds and American Dad. I was redoing my toe nails when the Dad was all like, “WILL YOU STOP GO SOMEWHERE ELSE AND CLIP YOUR FUCKING DAGGERS” and I said something along the lines of, “hmph!” and soon found myself laying on the floor of my bedroom, fake plastic sunglasses on and head underneath my bed to get away from the one window that wasn’t blocked out (and is conveniently the one that gets the most sunlight).

As usually happens when I’m left to my own devices », I started thinking, “oh, hey – maybe I should cover up that window so I can lay down on the bed”, which of course had me rifling through my drawers to find the only sheet available:

Yes, my Harry Potter sheets.

My Grandma had amazing taste – amazing taste in clothes, fashion, hair, make-up and, of course, decorating. She’d buy two or three sets of the same sheets, and make curtains to match the sheet set; she was fucking amazing besides, but really. So, the ‘curtains’ (they were totally sheets, but if she can do it, I can certainly half-try!) next to the Harry Potter sheets had a match, a match I made into a canopy top that remains to be finished.

And, really, Harry Potter sheets wouldn’t be a bad thing, except I care what people think. My room is one of those rooms that’s cluttered with my things – in a very organised sense, keep in mind – and when I force Krissy » into decorating my room she’ll take one glance at it and run with “go to interior decorating hell, Tess!”. I’m totally the one with the Star Trek, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Batman figurines, the one who displays their crap TV series and movie collection all over the room, the one that flaunts questionable manga, and Harry Potter and Merlin slash photographs on two cork boards, and the one that has books about witchcraft and a Buddha figurine that’s rubbed periodically, and rocks from that one spiritual store that technically could be lived in if one went around sleeping in stores they wished they could live in.

I don’t care about these things, because they’re part of who I am, what makes up my heart, soul and terribly perverted personality. They’re all there for mostly shock value – but I don’t want some stranger to walk into my room saying, “oh, Star Trek, nice! There’s a digital T.V., oooh a canopy bed, a nice desk and a… not-really-nice clawed up chair OH YOU HAVE A CAT I AM ALLERGIC and that’s a nice vanity, so chic AND IS THIS HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE SHEETS AS CURTAINS WHAT IS LIFE AT LEAST DO MOVIE 5 I’M OUT”.

« The Dad used to be an x-ray technician (for thirty years!) and the Mom is a medical billing coder.

I almost didn’t write this, when Michelle » tagged me, because like Manda », I had a really hard time coming to my own conclusion of what my life will be like “in ten years”. It’s hard to say, and not for the reasons that are apparent; yes, I am young, but what I feared was not knowing where I’ll be in one year, much less ten! “Time will tell” kept going through my mind, and before I knew it, three weeks have already passed! I then decided that looking at this in a different way from everyone else might help me open up my shell a little bit, a way that wouldn’t scare me from writing it up. A ten year resolution, of where I need to be in ten years, for me; not where I want to be, but where I know I can and will be.

I also decided to actually use pictures(!) in this post. It’s not my style or preference – going through my own pictures has given me a new found respect (as if I needed more!) for Krissy », who always uses photos; how she does it on a regular basis is going over my head at the moment – but I felt that since it was my own photography, it would be a great addition (and kind of less boring for those not in any way interested in where I’ll be in ten years).

In 10 Years… I will be a photographer that travels, and works for National Geographic and Vogue Italia, because I can multi-photograph like this (and I just like taking pictures of animals and fashion… which, according to PETA, can’t possibly happen (I STILL LOVE MY PRINTS AND FAKE FURS)). I will have attended at least three Lady Gaga concerts, photographed her once, and made enough money to print up large posters of my favourite manga(/anime) characters, because it’s kind of less creepy than printing large posters of Ewan McGregor, Gaspard Ulliel and Gerard Butler – or worse, Lady Gaga herself.

I have also stated my love for Latino and Asian dudes many times, but if it’s not apparent – I want to be partners will a Asian or Latino man-dude in the future, and have great sex with said man-dude. It’s no rush, which is kind of why I left it out initially, but like most things, my posts cannot lack of perversion. Just to make you think, “wow, when I’m having a bad day, and Tess posts, I’m like, ‘well, at least I’m not her‘, and I suddenly feel better”.

…and the whole happy thing Manda » stated, because if I don’t have happiness with all of that, I won’t really be living any of it.

(I also tag Christina » (in her corresponding LiveJournal, of course), Dee » (which should be interesting, because she’s one of the few older (than me) bloggers out of school that I actually admire), Clem » (I’ve never spoken to her personally, but I know she’ll make a funny story out of it or draw dinosaur pictures, and I like both (especially together!)) and finally Georgina ».)

Heads up: Stone Temple Pilots reference in the title, hey-ho! I should totally get paid for musical referencing, guys, I really should.

Three guys moved into the house across the street from us, after being abandoned for…well, for longer than we’ve been here (a year in June). As mostly elderly people live in our neighbourhood, one of the three dudes – I’m going to call him Sam, as he’s 6’9″ and reminds me of Supernatural‘s Sam – Sam is the grandson of the woman who lived in the house before she died. He’s living with a college buddy – I’ll call him Dean¹, because apparently he looks just like Jensen Ackles – and another friend – I’ll call Nick for Nick Swardson, since he’s quite the comedian.

They started coming over to the house to talk the sister and a friend, and when they came over Saturday my parents, being the chatty-patty’s that they are, were all like HAI COME OVER AND DRINK AND STUFFZ. You can imagine the next three hours, which involved Nick cat-calling to me to come out and meet them – something that wasn’t going to happen unless Gerard Butler was cat-calling me to come out and meet them.

For those who don’t know, I have severe social anxiety. I have anxiety attacks, and they affect for me for days after. I can’t control them, and it happens if I’m with a small group of people I know very well, or I’m in a grocery store surrounded by people I don’t. I don’t like anybody witnessing these attacks – it’s very stressful to the people around me, and it ends up making the situation worse – so I don’t go out around crowds, which if you guessed, is very hard to do, especially in the city. So, of course: I wasn’t leaving my room – which was, coincidentally or not – right outside the front porch².

What’s been bothering the past couple of days, however, is not Nick threatening to not give up trying to meet me no matter what – he was rather intoxicated at the time, if not buzzed – or warning everybody he’d mow the yard nude³ and to get out the binoculars⁴ – it’s them hanging out in the front yard, which causes me to lock myself in the house, or in the backyard, away from where they can see me. I’m not afraid of them by any means, I just want to avoid the very-probable panic attack that will ensue.

Soooo-ooo-oo, I came up with a plan: as the men and their friends are consistently outside in their lawn chairs, I thought about going out into the front yard, sitting in the middle of it, and taking pictures of them – right in front of them. Not only would this paint me as a stalker and a huge creep, but it just might make them go inside long enough for me to not be afraid to actually be outside. The kicker: while I’d love to do this for shits and giggles – if their drunken behaviour was anything to go by, it’s likely they’d pose for me or something – I’d never actually do it. As I’ve been dodging the open windows in my own house, I quite sincerely doubt I’d ever get the balls to do it.

…I have been blaring Lady Gaga, Spice Girls and Britney Spears for the past two days, though. THAT’S SOMETHING.

1. « Chris actually started calling him Dean-o!
2. « WHY, HOUSE, WHY MUST YOU BE CRUEL TO ME? I kid, I kid! I’m the dumbass who actually chose the room.
3. « …OK fine, I admit it, I’d definitely come out if he ever did do that (and proposition him? IDK, I’m unstable in the face of male nudity).
4. « This was funny to just about everybody, as the Uncle and I had just been joking about spying on them with binoculars – my sassy zinger was to brag about having a mega zoom on my camera for pictures and zooming peekage, but that’s neither here nor there.

While » …and the Indians Mated With the White People – the infamous entry about my Dad’s explanation on my heritage – was a hit back in the “day” when I ran on WordPress and still had all my comments, I never planned on making a second edition, or expanding that story in any way, because go read it’s amazing by itself, but as per usual with my Dad, what he told me last week just needed to be blogged, and needed to happen.

For those who aren’t familiar, and/or don’t live in North America, the KKK » stands for “Ku Klux Klan”, and was a hate activist group that specialised in spreading the following message: white people rule, and if you are not white, you die. For many, this kind of outlook was especially a home run, and the entire “organisation” itself is often the butt of a lot of jokes seen in movies, skits and TV series’, as well as read in books and heard in music¹ – as seen today in this entry. The KKK is often associated with the Baptist religion² as the KKK really only exists in the southern part of North America, and Baptism runs deep in my Grandpa’s families’. My Grandpa Rodney and that side of the family doesn’t actually practise religion like my Papa and his family do, but our family roots apparently tie to the organisation. In » the aforementioned entry, the Dad mentions our heritage as:

Me: Dad? We’re Indian right? From Grandpa Rodney?
Dad: Yes, we are. About a couple of centuries back, we were pure Indian until we mated with the white people.

I had originally thought I was 50% English, but that isn’t true. Apparently, I’m:

Me: 50% English, right?
Dad: No. You’re 25% English, 25% Indian, 25% German and 25% Irish. Rodney is half-Indian, from his father, and half-English from his Mother… you know, I’m talking the K-K-K stuff!

And yeah, I’m totally excited that I’m more Indian than I thought I was, and I’m not as horribly Irish as my hair likes to insist I am – and yes, the K-K-K stuff had me cracking the fuck up, because only my family disregards important “monuments” as jokes, and only my family snubs their past religion(s) in a manner that would make my late Grandma go into a second heart-attack – but this is coming from the same man who thought it wasn’t hypocritical to, after quitting smoking, barge towards a innocent passerby, thump the cigarette out of their mouth and say “smoking kills“³.

1. « Not that I can blame the jokes; I just made a joke.
2. « It’s actually Catholicism – or the Catholic religion – that’s tied to the K-K-K, not Baptism; nonetheless, Baptism is also the butt of most jokes, so it’s an honest misconception.
3. « He didn’t actually do that, only said he’d do it, as he’d be “a horrible ex-smoker”. Still, I am fucking THERE with a video camera when he is one.