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.

I haven’t regularly blogged in eight years, and while I’ve talked about a lot of the things listed below, you’d have to browse my Tumblr, Twitter, and probably my e-mails with Chris to piece all of these together. AGGRESSIVE DRUM-ROLL: a FBF! I decided to stick to seven things, because I’m long-winded as is, and literally nobody needs to read eight things about me; I’m not that fucking interesting.

SMALL NOTE: I always double check my Spanish, and was writing “siete”, and couldn’t fucking figure out why my dictionary was translating that as “seven” instead of “eight”. Always check your grammar, and always check for reciting numbers in your head in the wrong order.

1.) My Dad died
I’ve blogged about this occurrence several times, but one of the reasons I stopped blogging was my Dad’s cancer treatment. While I was coding the Listing Admin 2.2 script, I found out my Dad has cancer. While I was coding it’s follow-up (2.3), I found out his chemotherapy wasn’t working. We moved down south to Gainesville (in Florida), which was literally THE MOST BORING CITY ON THE PLANET, where he died of complications due to a bone-marrow transplant.

I will probably never go back to Gainesville. Not because it’s where my Dad died — I find that part hilarious, because one of the things he told my Mom before we moved there was, “don’t let me die in fucking Gainesville” — but because I wasn’t exaggerating when I said it was boring. Like claws your eyes out boring; there is no water except in hotel pools, and there’s no curricular activity that doesn’t include basketball or football.

2.) Health problems
I almost listed all of my health problems up there to be dick, but I’m trying to keep this organised. My OCD won out over a being a shithead, you’re welcome.

I was 21 when my Dad was undergoing chemo in 2010, and during that year, I suffered from what I would later found out to be “attacks”. In 2012, I was diagnosed with two stomach disorders (neither of which are related to each other) and a spine disorder/injury. I’ve struggled with mental health my entire life (PTSD, social anxiety disorder, major depressive order, probably other shit) and I thought I was okay with it. Most days I am, actually. But when you add in chronic pain, you begin to question whether you can handle anything at all.

For the most part I’m functional — I work full time, and I’m fairly active — but most people don’t live with me/have to deal with me when I’m in pain or anxious, or both.

3.) I have a niece!
That title is about 90% more excited than I am right now, but I prefer babies over kids any day. My closest sibling, Hannah, had her in 2013, and while I would have preferred she waited, I’m glad she didn’t for this damn little girl. Here’s a picture of her when she was 2, and not prone to talking to herself in my vanity mirror, or telling me about a day I care nothing about.

4.) I was a nanny for a two years; now I’m not
From 2013 to 2015, I was a nanny to a beautiful little girl. I really loved being a nanny, and the free time it afforded me was pretty priceless. It also paid terrible, and towards the end, I was really unhappy. I’m kind of still unhappy — is anyone who works at a restaurant truly happy? — but I make more money, filing taxes isn’t as hard, and I have health insurance. Do I want to learn different cuisines, like I outlined in my In Ten Years post? No the fuck I don’t, but at least I learned that I don’t.

5.) I came out (twice)
I actually came out to my Mom when I was 19, but her and I had this unspoken oath to never really talk about it, because I was also crying in the middle of the kitchen at the time. I simply asked her (while crying) if she was okay with it, and she said, “yes” and “please stop crying” and “is that what this is about”. I never really thought too hard about the gender of any partner, but when you don’t have any desire to have one, you kind of forget to think about what kind of partner would interest you.

I don’t want to be the asshole who ignores how hard it is for other people, or how much people struggle with that part of themselves — it hasn’t exactly been easy for me — but I also don’t talk about whole parts of my life. Being bisexual is just a thing I am, not my entire personality.

6.) I lost my Dad’s cat and my best friend in a 4 month period
I’ve blogged about losing my friend but I also lost an animal in November 2017. My house is full of them, it’s hard to keep up with them. I’m close to all of them, because animals get me in a way humans don’t; all I want is to be left alone unless I’m crying, and my animals get that. Tanque was my Dad’s cat, and losing him hurt so much, because for my family, it felt like losing another piece of my Dad.

7.) “Who am I?”
…was not actually a question I asked myself, but the overall feeling was something I had a hard time dealing with. For so many years, I’ve known myself as Tess. Tess likes a lot of things — I’ve been told too many things — and Tess doesn’t struggle in quite the same way. I spent so long locked up in my own head, that as cliche was this is definitely going to sound, I didn’t know who Austin was.

Turns out Austin is kind of a dick, but when you deal with people on a regular basis, you kind of have to be. I’ve also had my ass handed to me so many times, and I needed that. I needed to know what I can and can’t deal with, what my limits are. I have also learned: how many times you can irritate a co-worker (depends on the co-worker, but usually about a solid hour before a meltdown), how to handle confrontations when you’re unable to walk away, when it’s appropriate to cry in a walk-in (before opening hours), and how many lost hours of sleep you can work efficiently on (4 a night for a week).

I wish I had a big fucking novel for my re-open; I wish I had thought to write this up in the eight months I’ve had it sitting, but if I wasn’t unprepared, I wouldn’t be me. This is a special day for me; not because I did something that’s been on my to-do for six years, or because it’s been six years since something like Lyone — a thing I dumped all my thoughts on — was in my life. Lyone meant a lot to me, and if it wasn’t for a combination of this day and Chris kicking my ass every time I turtle shelled out of life, it’d probably be sitting for another eight months.

I shit you not, this is what my rough draft of this post looked like for all of those eight months:

[INSERT HUGE INTROSPECTIVE HERE]

BEING AN ADULT IS GREAT 2k17.

I haven’t gotten to celebrate this day with my Dad for six years, and man — he was horrible about his birthdays. He hated getting older, he hated regretting the things he didn’t do since his last one, he hated feeling that regret every single year, and he hated that he couldn’t stop feeling that way. Trying to tell him that he helped people, sometimes in big ways (his job in the medical field) and in small ways (giving his special brand of “boy IF YOU DON’T GET YOURSELF TOGETHER” advice), didn’t shake him of those feelings.

Because we’re the Bat family, it became a Family Tradition™ to completely distract him from all of his feelings. This originated from my Dad’s 30th — a year and a half before I was born — of him moping around on a deep sea fishing ship. He was dressed like a pirate, next to his often-declared love of his life who was also dressed like a pirate, moping around because he was 30. He hadn’t done a lot of stuff at 30, G. He was getting old at 30, G. She took one look at this really tall child and his moping — and married him anyway.

On his 40th, my Mom nipped all of That Shit in the bud, and threw a surprise birthday party. THAT HE DIDN’T ATTEND, because he was — YEP! — moping at the bar he was a part-time DJ at. My Mom called him, and covertly asked, “Hey, it’s kind of late, didn’t you get off work two hours ago? It’s not like I threw a party, ahahahha, that’s a strange and weird thing to do on your birthday. Lowkey, the lights are all off, and it’s BECAUSE I AM IN BED AND NOT HIDING, READY TO SHOUT AT YOU.” He came home, was “surprised”, and then got handed a bust-shaped cake. Yes, a cake shaped like boobs. Because my Dad is a future version of me that lived in the past.

His 50th consisted of my Mom Freaking Out because we were so broke, and she didn’t have the money to do anything. “It’s going to be fine,” she said determinedly. It wasn’t fine; after two hours of moping, she called the neighbours over, who brought Jose Cuervo and weed. We all sang him happy birthday, and let him talk for three hours about cars with minimal eye rolling.

This is for you, Dad. I miss you every single day, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish you were here, experiencing every high and low with me. I want to hear your voice again, I want to cry on your shoulder when it gets too hard, I want to laugh with you just one more fucking time. I want your advice, I want you telling me to get the fuck over it, I want you to tell me I’m okay being me. I don’t get any of that, but I do get this.

Happy birthday, Dad.

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.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad — you mean more to me than you’ll ever know (probably because I’ll never say it, but shush). …and before anybody asks, that’s the back of the Mom’s head — the Dad is not some hippy mullet-wearing dude (…OK, he’s a hippy dude, but still no mullet!), but from the reputation he has on my blog, I sense that wouldn’t be such a bad thing!

Before I go on, I just want to thank everyone for the beautiful comments on my last entry! ♥ I had no idea my photography was interesting to anyone but me (and Christina, because she lurves me), and it was great to see such encouragement from those I admire so greatly. *squeezes all of you* Oh! And I added “Notify Me of Follow-Up Comments”, so now I won’t have an excuse not to comment back. /throws confetti

I decided to not go with my initial idea of Songs of Tess (disclosed for now), but only because I liked this one, and wanted to lift people up without being a creepster. So, life; we all are have one – some in more ways than others I might add, but in no way less meaningful – and we all go through some shit – again, some more than others – and we all just sometimes want to give up, because it becomes too much.

Musicians are beautiful in the sense that they can create beautiful melody, but I think they’re beautiful for relating to us normal folks. For releasing songs that we can all say, “hey! I know what that feels like, and it’s not just overinflated fan service, either!”, and for making us realise we’re not alone in the way we’re all feeling and experiencing life.

Songs can be « found here, of course (note that one song is missing due to size and type of the file)!

Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant

Probably one the best songs for “life”; it sums up what we all do for a living, but without stepping on toes in the process – I’m looking at you, Eminem.

There ain’t no rest for the wicked
Money don’t grow on trees
I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed
Ain’t nothing in this world for free

It reminds me of my parents, who do exactly that. Well, not the whole wicked part, but doing anything to feed the sister and I, and pay the bills. It’s a great view on what we all glaze over ».

Return to Innocence by Enigma

Like a lot of bands – Collective Soul, Duran Duran and Stone Temple Pilots to name a few – I grew up on Enigma, and Enigma is still very strong within me. Return to Innocence is one of my favourite songs simply for it’s innocence.

If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don’t hide
Just believe in destiny
Don’t care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don’t give up and use the chance to return to innocence…

It’s a powerful song », and it’s impact on me after all these years stays unwavering.

Here We Go Again by OK GO

I kind of look at this song as my life’s anthem right now – here it goes again is definitely the saying of the century, and I know all of us have felt this way in some form or another.

I guess there’s got to be a break in the monotony, but Jesus, when it rains how it pours…

The lyrics » can be interpreted as a relationship – or relationships – gone awry but it’s just so correct in every thing I feel a good bit of the time!

Last Resort by Papa Roach

I asked the Dad once what he thought of Papa Roach’s new music, and he summed up it up perfectly:

With Last Resort, we all in some way understood – we have all once been desperate, have all been in that black hole, have all broken down. That desperation just isn’t there with Getting Away With Murder.

I could relate to Last Resort because I had felt all those things – I just couldn’t go on living that way… and yes, that was totally a in-song reference!

I never realized I was spread too thin
Till it was too late and I was empty within
Hungry, feeding on my chaos and living in sin
Downward spiral, where do I begin?

Gore and intensity aside », it’s stunning in it’s reality nonetheless.

Drag by Placebo

Oh, come on… it’s me, it’d be a crime if Placebo wasn’t here! That aside, Drag is a really, really beautiful song, because it’s a very positive song. Placebo stunned me completely, because I was totally thinking it was going to be a drag queen song… I was quite surprised!

You’re always ahead of the pack, I drag behind
You possess every trait that I lack by coincidence or by design
You’re the monkey I got on my back that tells me to shine…

While the person – Brian, the lead singer, in this instance, but let’s pretend! – is dragging behind », it’s quite clear how the person feels about the person always ahead. Absolutely adorable!

And of course, the end of my five songs! These were actually quite difficult to pick out, because I tried to stay away from the angst-ridden songs – which is sadly a lot – and try for something bright and… realistic? I’m up-ing the cheese factor here, guys!

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.

I felt like using that title because it’s actually a song by The Blood Brothers », and you know me¹, if there’s a reference to be made, it will be had.

But I’m not here to talk about The Blood Brothers, or how awesome they are, or how I cried at the news of their break-up, but in relation to this entry » by Rachel » about a doctor who played around with his bushy eyebrows, and repeated the process a million, billion times.

So, I didn’t feel sorry for her like the commenters clearly did, and I just LOL’d SO HARD I almost had a cramp in my side. Which, if I were the superstitious type, I’d think that today’s events were Karma LOL’ing at me and biting me in the ass, as the saying goes. So along with the Dad and the sister, I had an eye doctor’s appointment this morning, and I was the last to go. I go through the whole shebang with the Halle Berry-esque nurse, and the Doctor comes into my room first. From there, the nurse decided she would have this conversation rather loudly in the hallway outside my room:

Nurse: She’s just been dilated, you don’t need to see her first.
Doctor: Oh, she is? So, the other two are dilated.
Nurse: Yes, both of them are fully dilated, I just dilated her. You need to see them.
Doctor: OK, I’ll go see them since they’re both fully dilated.

So, after feeling like a fat pregnant lady — and feeling like the Dad and sister were pregnant as well, as they were talking about them — I was then told to wait “just a moment”, a moment that I am convinced turned into an hour. During that hour, I stared down a headpiece I swear came from The Silence of the Lambs², and chastised my nurse internally at leaving a unlocked computer in the hands of hacker in the guise of a developer — but that’s neither here nor there, and for a different entry entirely.

I eventually did see my eye Doctor, where I would have convinced myself he was gay by his elegant and wide hand gestures and the way he consistently crossed his legs — except, well, my late Uncle had ravishing hand motions while being utterly³ straight and he did happen to be wearing a wedding ring. Of course, this in no way means I think my Doctor can’t be gay because he wears a wedding ring, or that I wrongly accuse others of being gay to myself — I’m just suggesting, in the future, that perhaps doctors should think about using terms such as “dilated” and the situations that surround them, as the sister and Dad got a kick out of hearing that they were pregnant, too.

(For the less than sarcastic variety, yes, they heard it from their rooms, too – and yes, we did laugh hysterically in the car on the way back.)

1. « And if you don’t, you certainly should.
2. « A headpiece he actually ended up wearing! Cue in the frantic heartbeat of trying to stuff down my laughter.
3. « I use “utterly” because most of us still think he was in the closet.

I’m standing in front of my microwave whilst writing this entry. I thought I’d start this off with something monumental, and well, I never stand while writing an entry. Slumped across my bed, hunched over my laptop at my desk, or propped up on the (too) comfortable footrest in the living room, why yes, but standing in my kitchen like I forgot where I was?

It’s the new black, guys!

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I am, not for the first time, going to talk about myself. However, this is also monumental, because I don’t just talk about myself, not in the way I’m about to. I’m taking a leap, and explaining my thoughts on several (but only one) matters. Continue reading, please.

I thought I’d write that in an standard-incorrect header tag to get your attention. And if you’re still paying attention, I’ll explain my reasoning as to annoy you.

When one gets into a fight, whether it be face-to-face or online, a mammal’s (and I’m using animals and humans in this statement) natural reaction is to lash out because they’re a) angry or worse b) in pain. For a human, we usually use the other’s persons weaknesses (or even strong suits!) against the other person. Is it right? Absolutely not, and I’ve been guilty of doing so in the past.

However.

However, I’m socially inept. I won’t go into peculiars, but that about explains it all: I have panic attacks when I’m in a crowd (in my own home or on the street, it doesn’t matter) or I’m out in public. This causes me to hole up in my house to avoid said attacks and this is not normal. This is a weakness, and it’s been used against me more times than I can count. I’ve been called abnormal, psycho and plain ole stupid because of this, and in the worst ways. Which, of course, is why I look at things differently, especially when fighting. I don’t point out others’ flaws, and I don’t use anything against them. My first natural reaction is to diffuse the bomb; if that doesn’t work, I try talking it out, and if that doesn’t work, I ignore the situation entirely.

So, the above statement that’s underlined explains why I had to underline it in the first place: I don’t fight like a normal person¹, so whenever I have an argument online, or someone disagrees with me, what would be a normal response is never used by me. I’m not deliberately cruel, so what may be a snippy reply in your eyes, can well be a LOL-worthy response in mine.

Take this situation for example: a friend of the sister and I was doing some inordinate things at their age. I was uncomfortable with it, but the one thing that made it weird for me was the fact that I did not understand them, or their decisions. Their age was a bit awkward for me, and I couldn’t relate to them on any level, so I left it in my sister’s hands. Not saying we could control this person’s actions – we couldn’t, and we didn’t! – but I felt I should take a step back from the person, because the normal bond we had was severed by our age difference².

The person took it as me being angry with them – or hating them – and stopped talking to me. Which was, in a weird way, kind of what I wanted. Lots of angst ensued, and they said some things about my person to my sister. They don’t know I know, and every time I look at them now, all I can think is, “they think all those things about me, and they used who I was against me”. I’m not angry or mad, I’m just sad, because I know they didn’t truly mean those words, that they were saying them in a moment of anger and frustration. If I had simply told the person I didn’t understand them, the entire situation could have been avoided, and we’d be better friends now more than ever. We’re not, and that’s something I’m going to live with for a long, long time.

My point of this point was: think of what was a miscommunication between us can well be a miscommunication between a friend and you. Take my lesson in your hands and roll it around for inspection. Don’t attack someone, even if it’s warranted; look at the situation from their eyes first, and then see how you feel. You never know how many relationships you can keep from something as simple as communication, trust and understanding.

As per usual, I don’t expect comments on this, but it’s out in the open, and I can say I talked about this in a healthy manner. I could never say all this with speech, so even if nobody else cares, I care. It’s important to me, and maybe somewhere in the world, somebody else feels the way I do, too.

1. « But, hey, I’m abnormal anyway, so who cares!
2. « It also has a lot to do with my sister and the person being normal teenagers, and me not having been a normal teenager. That is so much more important than people think it is.

I’ve been encountering several opinionated-run blogs over the Internet, and it’s put a slightly off taste in my mouth. I’m an opinionated person, and sometimes I need to tell myself to shut up and get lost, but I’ve never overstepped my bounds, and I’ve learnt that, for me, opinions sound better with a couple of facts behind the main frame, if not to cover my ass, to at least make myself look better.

When you complain all the time about something you don’t like, but do nothing to change it, it just gets… old, and withered, and fragile (stopping now). So, in a bid to be a bit different, I decided to compile a list of what’s been going on with me as of late¹.

1. For the past two weeks, I’ve been working furiously on Listing Admin », so much so that I cleaned the entire house (and I have a nice sized house) all in under two hours when I got frantic, and I now have a dime-sized callous on my right wrist. I feel lost, now that the main update is over, so much so I find myself daydreaming about coding + web development twice as much as I did before…I even sent myself to sleep last night with all of my dribble!
2. In a bid to be more active in a community other than web development, I started teaching myself Piano, which is pissing me off, because I can’t control it with a mouse! Despite this, I’ve managed to learn all the keys (CDE, FGAB), learn half the notes (I only have one note down), one simple song and three Kate Nash songs. Yay?
3. Raine » (yes, you are featured twice in a blog post…amazing) posted a very spot-on post about weight loss » and how we actually don’t really do it properly, and I ran into that little issue here lately; I thought I was losing a bit of weight, despite me not exercising for quite some time. I take medication for a disorder, and it’s causing me to not hold any type of food down, which I found out was the cause of my weight loss. Of course, the thing to do would be to, oh, stop taking the medication, except I’m stubborn and a little bit of a cheap-o; I’m stubborn in the sense that I refuse to back down from the challenge and a cheap-o, because I hate switching medications, and despite me not being able to eat (most of the time, not all), the medication is working great for me. Doctor’s appointment in October will address this, I hope.
4. I’ve been enjoying the Fall TV line-up (…somewhat, but that’s another post down the road), and also Fall itself! We are in the middle of our first cold front, and it’s so nice not to have to run the air conditioner on high, and to walk outside feeling comfortable. Florida does not always equal the most fabulous of weather, and I’m truly hoping this’ll bring a good Winter.

There’s a few other bits and odds, but they’re a bit private, so I’ll leave it on that lovely note, yeah?

1. « I almost went with Raine’s idea (er, meme?) of listing bad habits, but I’m a bit robotic and unreal, and I just refuse to open myself up to the that.