Around the time when I really started having to interact with peers, I imagined a fantastical version of myself hoping that someday I would figure out how to be it.  The Gina of the future would be confident and no nonsense.  She would not take everything personally, and if she had a problem with someone or something, she would handle it head on, honestly and directly.  She would be her own person regardless of the expectations of others and especially regardless of the insecurities of others.  She would defend herself and others when needed.  She would be amazing. This started when I was 5, so the language then was perhaps not so flowery or sensical, but it evolved into that as I grew older and the dream seemed more and more out of reach.

I viewed it mostly as a fantasy because I couldn’t imagine ever being able to actually do any of these things well.  Over the years I learned how to act the part often.  People have often viewed me as confident and level headed, original, unique, no nonsense.  But it has, for the most part, been a façade.  In life, you do what you have to do to be successful, if you are able.  There were many times when this ability waivered horribly making things like excelling in college extremely difficult.  I had the desire for a comfortable life and did what I had to do to achieve that, but I was a mess at the same time.  In the moments when I was not a mess, I would condemn myself for not being like that all the time.

Recently the problem became prevalent because I found myself living the life that I wished to live and was still a mess.  I had managed to rid myself of toxic people. I live in a beautiful house filled with wonderful people who love me.  I have a career that can be fulfilling if I apply myself.  I make music in a band with my best friend.  I really can’t ask for more.  And yet anxiety and sadness fill my days.  When left too long to my own devices, my mind becomes flooded with awful thoughts about things in the past and fears about the future. I have invented realities that don’t exist, and in them I am the loser.  Negativity is the norm and positivity is an uphill battle.

Coming to terms with the idea that I suffer from a mood disorder was difficult.  I assumed that the only people who were medicated were people who had Real Problems.  From my view, I functioned well enough…I just wasn’t happy.  I thought it was greedy of me to seek help this way. “Who do I think I am? Someone who can have everything?”  I found myself calling it a First World Problem because I had so much and was still not alright most of the time.  But each time I lost it again, each time I found myself out of control with grief and anxious madness, I realized that it doesn’t matter if I’m not the worst off in the world.  Refusing to get help because I didn’t feel I deserved it as much as someone else was just another symptom of the disease and wasn’t a reason to continue to suffer.

Before I had my appointment to get a prescription, I read this post about how to get people you care about to seek help on JT Eberhard’s blog.  His writings about his struggles with his own mental illness are powerful and brilliant.  And though he was writing for people who would try to help someone else, I was comforted by the familiarity of the entire thing.  I had this same struggle within myself.  I had all kinds of reasons not to try medication, but one very important reason to do it: Misery does not have to be my general state.  My entire life does not need to center around keeping myself afloat.

So I started Zoloft and the first couple of days were terrible.  Then something miraculous happened.  For three days I was that incredible woman that I imagined all those years ago. I had occasion to deal with three potentially very stressful situations in a row and found myself able to navigate them beautifully.  Without the anxiety, I was suddenly aware that anxiety was always with me before.  Everything I did or said carried with it some level of fear.  To be without it felt like being finally free of some kind of demon that possessed me and suddenly I felt fully like myself because it was who I always wanted to be.  I was euphoric.  I thought for a second that the bad side effects were over with quickly and that all that was left was perfection.  I basked in it.  I felt like life could finally begin with gusto!

On Saturday I woke up feeling anxious and sad. I didn’t like that, but figured it would pass if I got myself moving.  I started going through the motions of the day and then noticed that the kitchen sink drain wasn’t functioning very well.  A little while later, Shaun emerged from the shower and told Ginny that the shower wasn’t draining. I went and involved myself (something I didn’t need to do right away) and immediately starting getting really stressed out as things we tried didn’t work.  I went to Home Depot and bought a drain auger and Draino and then attempted to fix the problem when I got back.  I was turning into a mess.  I was upset and angry.  I made Wes help me.  Nothing we tried worked.   He went to take a shower.  I fell apart in the back yard.

I sat on the back steps of the yard and cried for a while.  I cried because I felt like the three days before were just a big tease.  I kept saying out loud, “Please…why won’t this go away? Please, just go away!” Somehow I thought that I had found something that would help me not have to work so hard all the time and it abandoned me.  I felt like I would never be free of this bullshit ever.

I went upstairs to talk to Wes and he reminded me that I would never be able to stop working but that things should even out over the weeks.  I had no other desire except to curl up in bed, so I did.  We had plans to go see Rise of the Guardians (which I loved, by the way) and Wes tried to help me but I was being frustrating, unwilling to admit why I was upset and condemning myself as stupid and crazy instead.  Eventually he got me out of it and made me get up and move.  I went downstairs and Jessie was there to talk some real sense into me.  I told her I was upset because I had what I wanted so badly and then it went away.  I told her that I thought I had finally figured out how to be easy on myself and not work so hard every second.  And she said a wonderful thing.  She had her arm around me and explained that I might have to fight still, but that I don’t have to do it alone.  And this time she didn’t just mean that I was surrounded by people who love and care about me.  She said that it won’t just be me alone with a sword on the battlefield…Zoloft would be next to me with a bigger sword and lasers shooting out of its eyes.

I, of course, started laughing at the image and was able to get myself over the hurdle at the moment. And told Wes again how happy I am that Jessie is in our lives.  I often don’t know what I’d do without her.

I often don’t know what I’d do without any of the people close to me.  One of the things that my outburst showed me on Saturday is that a lot of my motivation for getting help has been to be less of a burden to the people who love me.  It made me aware of how I still view relationships as transactional.  If I take too much without giving back, everyone will tire of me and leave.  It was one of the things I had to admit out loud and Wes reminded me that my value to people is not in what I do for them.  He also reminded me that the people who love me now loved me before I took big steps to improve.  Clearly my emotional issues were not a deterrent to Wes 9 years ago, or Shaun a year and a half ago.  I was worse then.  I am better now.  I have to remember all of this.

I didn’t feel very good for the rest of the day.  We had to call Roto-Rooter to deal with the drains ultimately and they didn’t get to the house until 8pm or something.  It was Saturday and it was expensive.  Shaun had spent all day cooking for the dinner we had with his mom and Wes’ mom and all in all I would say it was a success, despite the plumbing ridiculousness.  But I had a hard time being present because anxiety aside, I was dealing with other side effects again too.  I was a little stoned, and a little crazed, and had no appetite, and all that fun stuff.  I calmed down more when the plumbing was fixed, but I knew that it wasn’t just about that.

I am hoping that in the next few weeks I will find a middle ground, an evened state of being that makes it easier to stay stable.  I know that I can’t expect for the issues to not be there at all ever, but I want to be better equipped to handle them when they arise, which is the point of Zoloft ultimately.  I was so excited by the early results that I was using the meds as a crutch to not center myself in the face of stressful stimuli.  I forgot the rational promise I made to myself before starting (and after talking to friends who have dealt with this too): The medication doesn’t stop the thoughts from coming.  It just makes it easier to deal with them.

On Sunday I upped my dose because I was supposed to, so I’m evening out again.  I will say that though I still wake up anxious and can have battles with badness, I think that it is actually starting to work because I’m not anxious all the time anymore.  This morning it took me two and a half hours to get to work due to public transit crap and I got depressed near the end after dealing with the ordeal alone for a long time.  Initially, I was fine, and I stayed fine for a while.  That’s an improvement and I’ll take it.  And the awesome days last week show me that days like that are possible, and I’ll take that too.

It’s cliché, but I have to take this one day at a time still.  I remember when my ex’s grandfather was suffering from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s at the same time.  He was on a bunch of different medications but for the most part was not present anymore.  My ex mentioned that there were miraculous days when all the medications would click just right and he would be him again for a little while.  I didn’t really understand it then, but now I think I do a little.  In this life there are good days and bad days.  It is what we do with them that counts.  While I’m getting used to this stuff, there will be good days and bad days.  The bad days are not a punishment for being too crazy even for pills.  The good days are not proof that everything is solved forever.  None of this is absolute, but it’s all progress.  It’s making my happiness and mental health a priority in my life.

I appreciate the people who have been reaching out to me, sharing their experiences with this kind of thing.  I think it’s important to know that none of us are alone.  Everyone’s experience is different over all, but with some common themes and it’s really good to know that there are people to bounce ideas off of, to ask the “is this weird?” question, or to simply rejoice in the ups and work through the downs with.

Happiness runs in a circular motion.  Love is but a little boat upon the sea. Everybody is a part of everyone anyway.  You can have everything if you let yourself be. -Donovan

I woke up on Saturday morning excited. I had big plans for late in the morning.  I was finally going to see a psychiatrist about getting some medication to help me.

A few months back I was talking to a friend about how open I am about myself and everything that’s going on with me on the internet. Zie didn’t like the idea of having so many profoundly personal details about hirself documented in the public sphere.  Once it is out there, it never goes away.  In the internet age, anyone can find you with a simple Google search and they will know everything that you share and will judge you for it.  In the era when employers search people’s lives for potential dirty laundry before choosing the best candidate, the dirty laundry they see is the items you choose to hang out in the air.

I had mentioned that in a recent recorded interview, I admitted that I had started therapy.  My friend said that he never would have admitted that because then it’s there forever.  And while the comments stayed with me for a long time, filling me self doubt and fear that I have done everything wrong and that my choices to be so ridiculously honest and open about my trials and tribulations, interests, beliefs, and relationships in the world where everyone could see with a couple of simple key strokes are putting my family and me at undue risk, I stood fast.  I’ve already shared so much…what’s one more thing.  What harm is there now putting a face and voice to the next adventure in both living a life less ordinary and a life very ordinary for people all over the world.

The psychiatrist’s office was in a lovely part of Jersey, nestled between a couple of farm fields.  It was a calming and beautiful.  I was already happy to be there and I was happy to be taking a very big step towards finally being well.  The doctor was pleasant and caring.  She asked a million questions to really get to the bottom of what I struggle with every day.  At the end, after listening to me closely, she gave me a prescription for Zoloft with instructions and warnings.

I left feeling positive, feeling like I made the right direction.  I need more help than just talk therapy.  I can talk until I’m blue in the face, but if I don’t listen…if I constantly have to fight waves of difficult emotion and anxiety, the conversation with myself can’t be productive.  And I had grown tired of walking on eggshells around myself when I felt an unsettled simmering beneath the surface.  And I had grown tired of being overwhelmed, with losing control, with being disinterested in anything I used to really like doing.

I filled the prescription and got my hair cut short.  I went home and dyed my hair red.  New stage, new costume.  The next morning I took half a pill and went to visit my parents.

I was not prepared for such immediate effects.  By Sunday afternoon, I felt in a haze.  I was numb and though I was angry about something that had happened, I wasn’t having a complete break down over it as has been the norm as of late.  These effects grew stronger as the evening progressed and by the time we threw a movie on I felt stoned.  I fell asleep during the movie, like I do, and then after it was over, I bolted awake.  I was completely awake and alert and completely anxious.

And so I was for the whole night.  I don’t know when I actually slept.  I laid awake in bed trying to calm myself down but doing a lousy job of it.  Poor Wes had to endure me tossing, turning, weeping, going nuts.  I was thinking obsessively about a few things and got myself completely whipped up into a tizzy and finally after writing an email I kind of wish I didn’t, I calmed and sat quietly in bed.  I think maybe a got a couple of hours, but I have no idea. My alarm went off and I was already awake.  I cried and Wes said he would take me to work.  I got to work feeling the effects of the second half pill settling in.  I sat at my desk, feeling an odd numbness, but it was not impenetrable to outside stressors.  I encountered one and for an hour did not know if I would be able to stay here for the day.  But it passed and I am still hanging in.

It is only Day Two and I am committed to at least giving this a fair shot.  Friends have told me that it can take a couple of weeks for things to even out.  The doctor said that it takes 4 weeks to really start working.  So I will be patient.  After having some issues today, I guess I am not much worse off than I already was, but this time I know that there is something at work chemically trying to set me right.  It may not be the correct ingredient, but I can’t know until I test and observe.

This is hard.  This is scary.  This means that I have to put some things to the side so that I can get my brain in order so that I do them well and happily.  Even though I feel completely bizarre right now, I find peace in the fact that I am taking steps to tackle this in a real, concrete, lasting way.  Good brain chemistry facilitates an environment where rational, productive discussion can happen and there is nothing wrong or embarrassing about taking that step.  There is nothing stranger about handling this like handling a case of gout. When you have a chronic issue, you treat it.

And so it is out in the world and no one is worse for it.  I look forward to finding some balance in my mind so that I can finally fully appreciate this amazing life I have built.  I am so tired of seeing it through a fog.

Hello! Happy Halloween!

You may have heard that there was a bit of hurricane that blew up the Northeast Corridor, and so state governments around here have been rescheduling Halloween for this coming weekend and beyond, but for much of the country today is still The Devil’s Christmas or whatever the kids are calling it during this time of rampant immorality.  After all, we’ve got preachers saying that The Gays caused Hurricane Sandy and it’s certainly fitting that it would fall right around the most immoral of all holidays.  Halloween: When women all dress as the “slutty” versions of favorite childhood characters and when gay people are…gay…or something.

Look, I’m just looking forward to the election being over, alright?

In honor of the holiday, we at the Polyskeptic Compound have been watching various thematically appropriate pieces of media.  For instance, we have all the seasons of Are You Afraid of the Dark…and I am not ashamed to admit that I am loving it.  I didn’t have Nickelodeon growing up, and this is one of the shows that I watched when I got the chance at my grandparents’ house or something.

Of course, Goosebumps was on broadcast television and I watched the hell out of that.  Mental note: Download Goosebumps also.

Last night, we watched the movie Pet Sematery, based of course on the novel by Stephan King.  Jessie is a huge Stephen King fan and I admittedly have not read or seen very many of these.  I started reading Pet Sematary once and got terrified and put it down. But I figured that I’d watch it because at least it didn’t have a bunch of twisted, blue, cat children like all the Japanese horror movies of recent acclaim.

Several years ago I went to see The Ring in theaters.  I went with three friends and it was a while after its initial release, so the theater was empty.  I spent most of the movie peaking sheepishly from behind my jacket and when I left, I was fairly convinced that I was going to be dead in 7 days.  I had a television in my bedroom at the foot of my bed and my door didn’t close properly and my window was in an odd place so the air current coming from it never reached me, but it would reach the door.  For 7 days I kept expecting a fucking phone call telling me of my fate, kept hearing the door creak in a sinister fashion from the wind convincing me that a weird hair-faced girl decided to take the stairs instead of the television…and then remembering “no, that’s stupid.  She’s totes coming out of the tv…at the foot of your bed.”  I only breathed easily after 7 days…because I’m a jackass.

What I’m saying is, I scare easy.  This is why I don’t go to haunted barns anymore.  Also haunted silos…and prisons…and hay bales.

Anyway, I learned an important lesson from watching Pet Sematery.  Namely, if the people in my house were the family in the movie, the movie would have been about 20 minutes long.  And so for your Halloween Reading Pleasure, here is a comparison:

***SPOILER ALERT!  IF IT’S, LIKE, 1989 OR SOMETHING***

The movie opens with us meeting a young doctor, his beautiful wife (Tasha Yar), 7 year old daughter and 2 year old adorable son. There is also a cat named Winston Churchill.  They’re new in town.  They have a nice house on lots of land, but beware, there’s a big nasty road nearby.  FORESHADOWING!

Their neighbor, an old an wise man, comes to introduce himself and warn them of the big nasty road nearby. Everyone thanks the old man, but don’t really think anything of it, nor do they do anything about it.  Within minutes in the movie, the little kid has already run toward the road in a haphazard fashion.  FORESHADOWING!

OK, so at this point we already have a problem.  If this was the Fenzorselli/McBrownigal household, I would already be pushing pretty hard for some kind of fence.  We have a crazy dog who likes to run around and not particularly come when she’s called outside.  If we also had a gaggle of unaware kids and cats that liked to be outside (which we do now)… Hell, I barely trust myself not to walk into the road in a haphazard fashion.  We would build a freaking fence.  So…at that point the movie is basically over.

But let’s assume that we build a shitty fence…which is certainly possible.  Wes and I are all about the half-assed projects.  Why use all of the ass when you only need to use half?  EFFICIENCY!

The doc gets ready to go to work. He’s also bringing the cat into get fixed because unfixed cats wander or something.  His daughter asks him to promise her that nothing will ever happen to the cat.  He doesn’t want to do that since it’s a bold faced lie.  Tasha Yar tells him to anyway.  FORESHADOWING!

Obviously, no one in my family would tell the kid that the cat is immortal.  Knowing us and our household opinion that cats are universally assholes, we would talk about cat stew recipes and how maybe the road will do our dirty work for us…because we’re terrible people.  But even if we weren’t going to talk about caticide, we would tell the kid that the cat is going to die well before any of us.  Then we would talk for the cat and say in a high scratchy voice, “AND I WILL COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU…UNTIL YOU GIVE ME MORE CAT FOOD!  ALSO, I WILL GHOST POOP IN YOUR BEEEEEEEED!”

Meanwhile, the old man has taken the young family on a field trip to the local pet cemetery at the end of the big nasty road.  The camera pans to a weird pile of sticks or something and ominous music plays.

Gina sez: Hey, old man, next time can you pick a less terrifying place for us to picnic in? Jeez! Also, I’m never coming back here again.  I don’t know if you noticed, but we have ample land on which to bury our animals.

Rest of the family: Yeah, this place sucks.  Also, old people are weird.

Meanwhile, a teenager gets hit by a Mack truck on the big nasty road and dies.  The doctor tries to help him, despite the fact that he is pretty much a lost cause.  The teenager’s ghost comes back to warn him not to go past the eerie pile of sticks in at the Pet Semetary.

My family: Yes, no shit, ghost.  We already said we’re never coming back here again and you’ve made fucking liars out of us.  THANKS.  Also, are you evidence of ghosts or do we just need to drink more?

The doctor’s family goes away for Thanksgiving.  The doctor’s father in law hates him for some reason so he decides to stay behind and eat turkey by himself.  The cat gets hit by a car.  The old man finds the cat and tells the doctor.

At this point, most reasonable people would say, “Well, shit.  I guess it’s time to bury this cat in non-weird soil…better yet, let’s cremate it.” That’s what we would do.  Hence, the movie would once again be over.  But let’s say we don’t just bury the cat and let the old man talk.

So the old man takes the doctor to an old Native American burial ground and tells him that it will bring the cat back to life.   This way, the doctor gets to lie to his daughter some more and nothing bad will happen!  The doctor asks questions that get no answers and instead of, you know, not burying the cat in the spooky burial ground that the ghost told him to stay away from, he does.

Presto change-o the cat comes back to life…as a total asshole!  Now, we at the Fenzorselli/McBrownigal household wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the new “evil” cat and one of our standard cats.  In fact, while watching this movie, we decided that Tandoori must have been buried in this place before we got him.  I laughed hysterically every time the cat did something dickish because it was just so darn familiar!

Meanwhile, because the family didn’t build a damn fence, the adorable little boy gets hit by a truck and dies.  The doctor is understandably grief stricken and, seeing this, the old man warns to not bury the kid in the burial ground.  He tells a tale of a friend of his who did that, and his son came back as a crazy flesh eating monster.  The old man (and a bunch of neighbors) came and burned the house down with the crazy flesh eating monster in it.

At this point, we’d all be asking this jackass why he told us to bury the cat in the asshole generating soil in the first place if he has first hand experience with its “magic”.  And we definitely would have not considered burying the kid there after a story like that.

But this doofus decides that this sounds like a great idea because he probably thinks the old man is blowing it out of proportion and that the worst thing that will happen is that the kid will come back as a hipster or something.

Aaaaand the kid comes alive, finds the doctor’s scalpel and starts slicing everyone up…like you do.  So, the kid kills his mother who comes back just in time (with the aid of the ghost who seemingly wanted her to die with all his freaking help) to get killed.  So the doctor shows up, re-kills his son and then decides that he should now bury his wife in the asshole generating soil.

She comes back to life, shows up at his house, they make out for a while and then she stabs in the head.

The end.

Being skeptics, it’s possible that we would have tried the burial ground for the cat…but probably not because we would have thought the old man was off his rocker…and this would have been a good decision.  But in the name of the scientific method, we might have wanted to prove to ourselves that burying things in the Native American Ancient Burial Ground was a terrible idea.  Upon getting a really big asshole of a cat back (where there was less of an asshole before), we wouldn’t test it again…right?  I mean, I guess reproducibility is the best route to declaring something a law.  But we’d probably test it with hamsters or something…not people.

But as I said in the beginning, this all could have been avoided if they had just built a fence.  Or more importantly, it could easily have been avoided had they hired competent people to build a really good fence.

Also, I would encourage us to either not follow the old man into cemeteries, or encourage him to be more upfront with his horrifying tales of horror from his past BEFORE burying things in spooky places.

The Fenzorselli/McBrownigal movie: Move in, heed the warnings about the shitty road, hire someone to build a decent fence.  If the cat dies, bury him in the backyard and don’t lie about it.  The End.

Man, pretty boring, right?  Well, whatever.  Fine…we’d put some scenes of us in our hot tub or something, ok?

There’s a song out by the band Imagine Dragons that, despite being catchy from an arrangement point of view, annoys the crap out of me because the entire point is that the narrator is the same as he always has been and won’t ever change.  The line that rings out often is “I’m never changing who I am”.

Now, you might be wondering why this would annoy me.  As Americans, growing up in the land of “Individualism” or whatever (I hear that’s part of our cultural identity, but you wouldn’t know it by how differentiations from the norm are dealt with), we are raised to believe that one of the ultimate quests of our lives is to figure out “who we are”, and once we do that (if we manage it), we must stand by “who we are” and not change just because of…anything.  Our identities are extremely important to us.

It annoys me because we should never be so attached to staying the same.

As you know, I have been engaged in a massive overhaul of my mind lately.  Well, for the last few years and now it’s getting into high gear because I refuse to waste another decade being miserable.  At 31, I look back at my 20’s and wonder what the hell I was doing with myself.  In my 20’s, I asked the same question of what I was doing in my teens.  I have accepted that I was likely depressed all that time and refused to seek out treatment because I disliked a good deal of people in my life and they seemed worthy of dislike, so my poor emotional state made logical sense.  But I wasn’t paying as much attention to it as I am now and I keep wondering how much I could have helped myself had I thought about the issues as also chemical, as also warped thinking that I needed to work on.  It’s easier to see it now because the people in my life are amazing and yet I am still not OK most of the time.  But it took me 20 years to see this.  I will be looking into medicinal help since the physical response to my ridiculous thinking patterns is doing me in.  I have started to exercise more in the morning, which helps keep me calm during the day.  I have maintained my no caffeine rule for many months now and no longer crave it.  I have noticed a huge link between my ability to handle stress and not only the amount of sleep I get, but also to any other low energy times during the day.  I have cut back on carbs, replacing them with protein and other lighter healthier stuff to attempt not to crash in the afternoon.  I am trying very hard to get this under control once and for all (with habits that will last a lifetime).

But none of that will change the way I think about myself, and that is the hardest thing.  As such, I have been thinking about identity a whole lot lately.

Identities are made up of “good” and “bad” things we think define us…but we define what is “good” and what is “bad”.  One of my issues is that I allow others to define these things for me often and I take things to extremes.  For instance, I have defined myself by my willingness to change and by the fact that I always look to myself first in difficult situations.  I generally assume that I am at fault, or am wrong.  It is not generally important to me be “right”.  And I see this as a virtue.

The problem here is pretty obvious.  My being willing to change IS a good thing, but the change has to come because I personally view it as necessary, not because someone else does.  It took me a long time to learn this and I still struggle with it.  Similarly, being willing to look at yourself in a critical way is great IF you are capable of coming to the conclusion that, after reviewing the facts, you aren’t wrong sometimes.  I very rarely do that.  If I had anything to do with something, I will take on as much blame as people are willing to pile.  I am stubborn about it because I think it’s better to be agreeable.  As such, I don’t really look at myself as an authority on myself.  I look at other people as that and require their validation and approval constantly because otherwise, I have no idea of my worth.  I have made it so my entire sense of self worth comes from outside.  Add to that the fact that I generally have a low opinion of myself, I have gotten to the point where I don’t even believe people anymore when they say good things about me.  But I still rely on the validation, so if people don’t say it, I assume that it’s because they don’t think it anymore.

Obviously, this is completely fucked up.

I’m not writing this to get a bunch of eHugs or anything.  I’m writing it because I’m kind of astounded by the discoveries I’m making about my perception of the world and my place in it.  The image I have of myself is completely ridiculous.  Take these statements commonly heard in the hallways of my mind:

“I am a bad person because I am selfish sometimes.  Being selfish sometimes means that you are a selfish person and that you don’t care enough about other people.”

“I am good as long as I keep doing things for people.”

“I had a hard time figuring out something that ultimately was easy.  I am not smart.”

“I get sad a lot.  I am not succeeding at my emotional goals and am therefore a failure…at everything.”

“I don’t know a lot of hard chemistry off the top of my head.  I am a lousy chemist.”

But even worse are the things I think when I want to be appreciated.

“I did all this stuff for them without getting asked to.  Why are they not praising me profusely??”

“No one else tries as hard as I do to be better.  Why don’t they appreciate that???”

Sometimes I wish that something awful would happen to me so that people could appreciate me and be worried about me and all that.  It’s terrible and I would never ask anyone to come into my head.  It’s a really aggravating place to be and sometimes I wish that I could have a lobotomy for a day just to not care.

So, yeah, I’m getting help and I’m looking to get more because I’ve had enough of this horseshit.  But I bring it up because I refuse to say “This is just who I am” anymore.  Fuck that.  They say that people don’t change and that’s a load of crap.  The truth is that you can’t change other people.  You only have control over yourself.  And change is hard so a lot of people won’t do it, but it doesn’t mean they can’t.  The key is deciding for yourself if you’ve had enough of something and that being a certain way causes you a lot of trouble.  My problem in the past was that I was trying to be what other people wanted.  I still struggle with that, but now I am making changes for me.  Sure, other people benefit if I’m happier and more confident and secure, but ultimately this is so that I can be comfortable and secure within myself based on my own merits and perceptions.  Change is an important part of life and stubbornly stating “This is just who I am” doesn’t do anything useful.  If your flaws and virtues become your identity, then having their “goodness” or “badness” questioned results in a lot of difficulty.

Maybe this all seems really obvious to you.  It wasn’t to me.  For instance, I always thought that being a nice person was a good thing, but it also means that people take advantage of you, so you have to balance that.  I always thought that being selfish was bad, but if you never do what’s best for YOU (regardless of other people), then you suffer and often for no good reason.  I thought that amount of work you do for someone is directly proportional to how much they will love you.  I thought I had control over people happiness if I was just as perfect as possible…and that every sign of imperfection would people question their decision to be associated with me.  I saw perfection as possible and hated myself every time I proved that it wasn’t.

I talk about this in the past tense because I am aware of it and am working on changing these thoughts, but I still have them all the time and I drive myself crazy with them and won’t let them go.  Letting go of “I am a person who works the hardest”, “I am a person who is nice”, “I am a person who will take only after I’ve given more” is extremely difficult because these are things that people liked and I want to be liked.  I want to be loved and while I have unconditional love from people, I am suspicious of it because I learned stupid lessons growing up that I incorporated into myself as profound truths.  I hear “You would have to become a completely different and despicable person for me to leave you”, but it translates to “If you don’t do the dishes as much, I won’t like you anymore.”  I have every flaw on equal footing and look at it like our country’s drug policy: Pot and Heroine are equally horrible.  I have no hierarchy when it comes to this stuff.  I have things I don’t like about myself and therefore I am probably not really likable.

My journey to mental health keeps taking me deeper to the roots of my problems and my identity seems to be the deepest root.  This idea of good and bad and the need to be loved has warped how I perceive everything.  I have not yet gotten to the point of generally digging myself while also seeing what has room for improvement and accepting that I will never be perfect.  I keep saying “I will let go of this whole perfection thing” and then I can’t because I just don’t believe it’s impossible.  I can admit that it’s an asymptotic reality, but because I have made a lot of progress I just see myself being able to get pretty much there and I just won’t stop.  I don’t know how to accept the imperfection is guaranteed and keep working on myself.  There has to be an endgame and I don’t know what that is if it isn’t perfection.

I guess that is the number one thing I have to answer.  An overall increase in happiness is certainly a goal, but what about everything else?  I don’t know yet.

Next time I’ll talk about Imagine Dragons’ other song which suffers from the same “decent arrangement, stupid writing” problem.  Accept, I’m much more scathing of that because “Radioactive” is an apocalypse themed song…you can tell because it has a line in it that says, “This is it.  This is the Apocalypse.”  Please see my explanation of why this is annoying in this post. Ugh.

Several years ago, Wes and I went to Longwood Gardens and I totally obeyed a sign that said, “Keep off the grass”.  I didn’t even think about it.  I follow the rules.  I keep the status quo.  I don’t ruffle feathers intentionally and if it happens, it is usually unexpected.

This is, to put it in thermodynamic terms (as though that makes anything more understandable), my lowest energy state.  Breaking rules, going against the grain willfully, challenging largely accepted world views, all require a large exertion of energy for me.  It is rarely energizing for me to speak out and often I have regrets because I do not have the thick skin required to withstand the attacks of people who disagree.

I care a great deal too much what other people think of me, be they friends or strangers.  I have made “being well liked” a large part of my identity, and as happens with anything you make a Part of Your Identity, challenging it hurts and causes you to question said part.  When I wrote that thing the other day and a few strangers on the internet all agreed that, to them, it sounded like a great afternoon and I’m crazy for being uncomfortable and I found myself believing that they were right.  “Oh no…what if I AM full of shit?  What if I’m just too sensitive?  Maybe I’m just an asshole.”  But thinking about it, and getting counseling from Wes, I remembered the actual inspiration for the post and had to find my wits again to remember that yes, in fact, there was something out about the whole affair.

I am a pretty theatrical person.  Jessie calls me a Muppet all the time (which, in our house, is a high compliment).  I am no stranger to putting myself out there in the arena of Making a Fool of Myself.  I don’t generally fear performing, public speaking, dancing on a dance floor to the cool tunes of the 1980’s (or anything really), but I am deeply insecure about my intelligence and the validity of my opinions about social issues, government, philosophy and other “high thinking” things.

I live a privileged life.  I am not blind to that.  I am married to a man and work in science.  I own a house and a car and worry about things like when to plant tomatoes.  From the outside, I look like a standard white, straight, female member of the middle class.  This identity enables me to blend into society.  All the other things that very much veer me away from the norm (atheism, polyamory, bisexuality, burlesque, and the fact that I knew that David Carradine died of auto-erotic asphyxiation after only thinking about it for like 5 seconds) can be practiced under the protective covering of Socially Acceptable.  I don’t have to be out about any of this to have a high quality of life.  I don’t need to fight the good fight to have it all.

And when I try to fight the good fight, I get exhausted with it quickly.  I periodically get tired of explaining polyamory, the advantages and necessity of applying the scientific method to all things, or the impressive, insidious nature of sexism and privileged outlooks in our modern Post-Sexist/Post-Racist/Post-Everyist society, for the umpteenth time.  When anonymity online emboldens people to cast countless vitriolic, hurtful things on those who dare to speak out with their real names, it is difficult to figure out who you’re fighting for.  And when the other end, the end which tells you that you can not disagree…even when disagreement is civil and for the purpose of furthering perspective…lest you offend someone, who is this conversation for?  I get tired of being told that I am either crazy for having a problem, or horribly privileged to even think something that doesn’t take the lowest of the low into the fullest account.  I do not live for debate.  I do not thrive on conflict.

But then, why do I speak out ever?  Why do I not stay quiet forever?  Well, it’s because I feel an obligation as a privileged (brave, due to that privilege), articulate person living a strange life “behind closed doors” quite normally and healthily to spread the word.  My privilege allows me to speak out and say that these are real things in the world.  These are things that are healthy and rational and they impose absolutely no threat to you whatsoever.

And I worry that if I don’t exercise this right; if I don’t use this privilege not just to my advantage but to the advantage of the people struggling who do not have a voice, what is my purpose?  What is my value?  Why should anyone care about me if I am too much of a coward to speak?

Of course, this is all a bunch of ego.  I’m not remotely on the level of any great thinkers.  I have trumped up my importance to the world and have allowed myself to be defined by it.  The world will not stand or collapse based on my willingness to blog or go to conferences.  I am one voice in millions saying the same shit.  I am part of a force that will continue to swell regardless of my level of involvement.  I am not so important that this should be some kind of grand soliloquy delivered to the fourth wall of the world’s stage just prior to my great act of madness and defiance that will cast everything we know asunder.  I’m just a chick in a labcoat who thinks about things sometimes.  I do not have my finger on the big red button.  I won’t make the statement that brings war or peace.

I’m much more Dr. Strangelove than President Muffley, is what I’m saying…in that I will like cackle and talk in a funny accent while the big boys make plans to nuke a country.  We do what we’re good at in Difficult Times.

So what I finally realized is that activism doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  If you are inspired to speak out or do something, and are able, then do it.  If you find yourself exhausted and without words or motivation, then take solace in the fact that ever little bit counts.  Some people might listen and you might get through, and some other people might call you a Pinko Commie Cunt.  That’s life on Planet Earth.  When you get tired of talking, then you should be peaceful in your quiet because your quiet is what you want at that time.  You speak and you act because you want a better world, but the responsibility of representing the ideals of this better world is not yours alone or even yours particularly. Speaking out is worthwhile.  Living your life as you choose to live it is paramount.  You do not need to do it all to have it all or to have great value.

I’m writing this because I never have much to say about atheism as a movement and because I often get exhausted being an ambassador for polyamory and because currently insidious sexism has hit me and has made it hard to be strong and brave and inspiring.  All this passes and my urge to say things will become strong again…and then it will get knocked back down.  I accept this now.  It is just hard to accept it when you want to do everything and have a great sense of humor the whole time you’re doing it.

The thing is I am not an activist.  I am a person living in the world but I won’t always be shy about what I see.  I question. And with often great difficulty, I call out.  And then I go back to regular life.  And even this low level dissidence is hard to maintain without injury.  So, I applaud those who fight outright.  I commend those who go into the fray and debate and enlighten in a way that I just don’t want to, or sometimes can’t.  And every now and then, I’ll help in the way I want to, but being a little squeak on the periphery saying, “Yeah! I see it too!  You’re not crazy!”

Yesterday I wrote a post about the insidious nature of sexism in the workplace.  Then, based on a bit of positive response to it, I decided to post it on Reddit (in their Feminism subreddit).  I would call this a mistake, but putting things on Reddit to share with a wider more targeted audience isn’t a mistake.

The mistake for me is ALWAYS going and see what people thought about it.  As has happened before, I posted something and was judged rather harshly about my interpretation of events.  Basically, according to four anonymous people on the internet, I am a fool for going to a sports bar with people I don’t like and finding that I dislike the people and the subject of sports.  There was more, but you can go read the comments for yourself.  I shouldn’t have, except that they have managed to get the wheels in my brain turning now that the fog of self doubt has begun to lift.

It’s not actually a big deal in any rational sense, but I am a pretty sensitive person and I question myself very easily.  Upon reading these things, I immediately thought that I had completely overreacted, that it was indeed my fault for being in the situation, and that yes, I suppose it is the price I have to pay to play with the boys.

Does any of this sound familiar?

It’s true.  It was my fault for going to lunch with these guys.  When talking about where we should go, the place we went was called an Irish Pub by the person who recommended it, but yeah, I should have asked if it was a sports bar and then upon finding out that it was a sports bar, I should have either protested, not gone, or should have pretended to be interested…or simply be quiet (please note, I did do the last two things, like a good little girl).  And if I was being ignored, it’s because I didn’t have anything to contribute worth listening to.  I can’t expect to be listened to if I’m not saying anything of note.  And if my political comments were misunderstood and used instead to comment about how hot conservatives on Fox News are, then, well, I shouldn’t be pushing my political agenda on anyone.  I should just listen to the conservative boys and suck it up.

Of course, I can’t really blame them.  I didn’t put a ton of background into the post about things I have endured over the past several years…things I just sucked it up and dealt with to be an agreeable cog in this particular machine.  It was suggested that my dramatization of what conversation might have happened had I not been there was ungenerous and simply showed my extreme dislike for these people.  Well, sure, I guess it could look that way…but I have walked in on conversations like that when they didn’t think I could hear.  I have very good hearing, and have listened to countless homophobic references, racist remarks, and watched as visiting female salesmen from other companies have been objectified by boys looking out windows.

What I also didn’t say was that this was a professional situation.  And in careers like mine, if you want to really get ahead, you have to make your mark.  Here this meant that I not only had to look good in the technical meeting, but I also had to either not go to lunch and be less visible by management and customers, or go where ever they wanted and…suck it up.  There is a fight happening everyday for women everywhere to be respected and accepted as professional equals in the workplace.  What some people don’t seem to understand is that part of being a successful professional is feeling comfortable socially with coworkers and customers.

And then there is a big difference in how you are accepted.  One way to be accepted is to be quiet and docile.  No one knows a thing about you that way, but they also don’t have a problem with you.  By being this way, everyone feels comfortable with you being around.  There is comfort in that, for sure.

Another way to be accepted is to become one of the guys.  For me here this means being insensitive, mimicking their sense of humor, being bawdy and inappropriate.

Both of these methods of acceptance don’t really work for me.  The easiest times I’ve had is when I’ve been at work/social functions and have gotten tipsy with people and not minded the flirtation or ridiculous sexual comments (not usually aimed at me). Instead of continuing to employ either of these strategies, over the last couple of years I have just tried to show more of who I am.  I am funny, confident, and dynamic…but am also separate from absolutely everyone.  I get along with everyone, but am just a little too this side of weird to really connect.  I am not a recluse, but I do not have friends.

But really, this whole thing got me thinking a lot about entitlement, privilege, and the hoops we jump through in life to get what we want.  My story yesterday was one with a feminist theme, but was my story special?  Is my being female, and a female of strange persuasions the same as anyone with an anxiety disorder or odd interests or whatever else makes you different from the norm? Am I being rejected solely because of my personality and should I just suck it up and deal with the fact that my personality is getting in the way of my being accepted and respected truly? A man with bad social skills probably can’t become CEO easily either.

I can’t tell anymore.  When you mention a realization about how you are treated differently because of sex, a lot of people want to immediately label you as oversensitive and just plain wrong.  It starts to feel like the fact of being female is a disease or disorder that needs to be treated with self denial.  I used to be one of those people, but as I said yesterday, once you see the way sexism colors everything, you can’t really un-see it.  My post yesterday wasn’t about hating football.  It was about not being valued as part of a group.  That is what it’s like to be a woman in a man’s world.  Sure, if I loved football I would have been able to throw more comments in, but I did try (because I do like football and watch it and know enough to be part of a conversation) and when I said it, it was ignored, but when a man said it, it was brilliant.  But sure, that was my fault for not being brilliant enough.  I didn’t have the right statistic at the tip of my tongue.  I didn’t have the right nasty name to call one of the coaches.  It was my fault I wasn’t having a good time and for being wrong.

Yes, it was just a shitty lunch period, but are people so far removed from what is often going on in these settings to see the real reason it was shitty?  It wasn’t shitty because I was bored (I get bored when people talk incessantly about art too, but I don’t end up having a philosophical/cultural crisis at the end…usually).  It was shitty because I didn’t matter and I didn’t matter because I wasn’t a boy.  You can accuse me of reading too much into this because it hasn’t happened to you or because you deal with shit everyday and you don’t write blog posts about it.  I am very happy that these things don’t happen to everyone or that they don’t bother everyone.  Why would I wish that on anyone ever?  But I do see, and it does happen, and I do blog.  I am a voice that should exist.

Anyway, here’s a picture of baby badgers, because I shouldn’t take myself so seriously and shouldn’t hate the entire internet.  I mean, I found this picture on the internet, so how could it possibly be so bad?

As you may have figured out, I am a giant nerd.  I am also a songwriter.  My nerdiness certainly influences my songwriting.  This is especially evident in my choice of subjects to write about.  I write rock songs that reference the Pied Piper and the Bubonic Plague, the Russian space program, Super Mario Brothers, countless references to the Apocalypse, happiness and love from a prehistoric anthropological standpoint, and the role of feminism during the Prohibition Era.  However, though I am a scientist by trade, I have yet to really make blatant reference to scientific concepts in my songs.

A lot of this is because I don’t like to be obvious in my lyrics.  I can understand that back in the early days of rock (and the folk music that was around at the same time), it was revolutionary to say things just as they are.  Perhaps when Barry McGuire first sang “Eve of Destruction,” people were all like, “Far out! I didn’t believe that we were on the eve of destruction, but when your blood’s so mad it feels like coagulatin’ and the goverment ain’t legislatin’, how can it be denied?!?”  Sure, I poke fun at this, but there was a time when this was not an OK thing to do and cryptic lyrics went by the wayside so that teenagers could express their outrage more efficiently.

There’s still a place for that, and if it’s done well (meaning you write something because you have something original or powerful to say about the situation), I like it.  But most of the time obvious lyrics just seem boring to me and so I avoid it for my own writing.  I extend this to obvious scientific references too.  I’m not going to mention Schrodinger and his cat unless they provide the perfect picture for what I’m saying in a greater context.  In short, I’m never going to just write a song about Schrodinger’s cat.  It would be much more likely for me to say quickly in a description of a snapshot in time something like “Erwin and a lion enter the room with uncertainty”.

Perhaps I shouldn’t deconstruct my songwriting for you here.  Then you’ll know all my tricks.  Damn it!

It might have occurred to you that I am pretty critical of lyrics.  I am, in certain contexts.  Really, it’s that I am critical of lyrics written by singer songwriters.  I don’t expect brilliance when I turn on most popular radio stations.  Pop has all kinds of other stuff going for it, like catchy beats and melodies that get trapped in your head, and subjects and lyrics you don’t really have to think about.  But when I turn on NPR or WXPN and hear a whole slew of people singing about nothing and begging me to ask the question, “Why on Earth do I care what you have to say about this and why the fuck are you on the radio?!?”, I just get annoyed.

That said, I really love picking apart pop lyrics.  When driving home, I often turn on Q102 (our local Top 40 station) to see what the kids are listening to.  In addition, it’s because I honestly like some of it.  That’s where you can hear Lady Gaga, for instance, and since I will generally dance to anything that has a good beat (Peter described me the other day as “shameless” in this regard…I think it’s good to be shameless sometimes, ey?), I really can’t say “I hate pop music”.  It serves a purpose.  If the Bee Gees are fun, so is Ke$ha.  Also, there is a true talent to putting out pop hits.  I have often thought while listening to something I have deemed mindless on the radio, “Man, why aren’t I getting paid?”  Well, the answer is that I simply don’t write things that are accessible to the masses.  And I’m not saying this to say “Oh, I’m just so much smarter and more interesting than most people, that they just can’t understand my music”, like it’s some kind of personal compliment.  I mean that my stuff takes a few listens before it sinks in.  It doesn’t usually have immediate appeal…not in a way that would make me millions.  A song sounding simple doesn’t mean that anyone can write it or arrange it.  You have to understand something about mass appeal, and that is certainly an area of expertise that I lack.

Of course, very little of this has to do with the stars that are the face and supposed voice of the songs.  Most of the stars on the Top 40 station are pretty manufactured.  Peter and I were talking about the production process for people like Rihanna and it was impressive to hear him deconstruct what goes into it.  Basically, you can take anyone that you want to make a star and have them show up for a day and hack their way through some singing…and then run everything through several pieces of software and, Voila! A hit is born.  What I didn’t know is that they do this to every instrument, everything involved.  In the stadium sellout, ginormous production value world, you are paying for the computers, the hot bodies of the performers, and the set builders, lighting designers, and pyrotechnic people.

I don’t think I have a problem with that.  As I said, that all in and of itself is art and it creates a product that people want.  So what if you are less talented than someone else.  Do you put on a good show?  Well, good.  The internet makes it so there’s all kinds of music going on with various levels of production and “reality”.

As the stars tend to be pretty manufactured, they have their songs often written for them…I think.  I don’t have any really statistics about that, but I’m pretty sure most of these peoples’ jobs is to stay in shape and to be controversial and provocative. So I get really amused when I hear lyrics that I categorize as either completely brilliant or completely idiotic, depending on how you interpret them.

Take, for instance, Calvin Harris’ “I Feel So Close to You”.  This is pretty much a techno dance song kind of thing I guess, but still, they take the time to have someone say something that is supposed to be romantic…when you’re getting ground on in a dance club somewhere.  Behold the ongoing verse:

I feel so close to you right now,
It’s a force field.
I wear my heart upon my sleeve,
Like it’s a big deal.
Your love pours down on me,
Like a waterfall.
And there’s no stopping us right now.
I feel so close to you right now.

So, sure, pretty unimpressive and cliche.  But I want to direct you to the very first line in the song: I feel so close to you right now.  It’s a force field.

OK, so here’s the fucking brilliant interpretation of this concept:

The love the singer and the subject of his adoration have brings them so close that there is a repulsion between them that keeps them from truly being together.  This is a situation made more tragic by the fact that the singer is completely vulnerable about his feelings and yet, there’s a force field stopping it from mattering.  And yet, despite the invisible barrier between them, the world continues to turn and the barrier is only between them and any real connection…not between them and the rest of life.  A pair of star crossed companions moving forward in parallel path to a similar destination. Hence there is no stopping them right now.  Once they reach the destination, perhaps all this will come crashing down…but right now, the Angstrom of distance means little as long as the closeness is intact.

And…and…just disregard the line about the waterfall.  I, er, I don’t have anything brilliant to say about that.

This is kind of interesting, right?  I mean, people sing about unrequited love all the time, but this is a somewhat original way to talk about it!

What? You think I’m perhaps reading too much into this dumb song?  Ah, well no worries.  I have also developed the Make a Buck with Bad Songwriting interpretation:

By force field, the singer simply means “there’s an impressive force between us”.  Aaaaand the rest of it is just drivel.

There, are you happy now? How depressing is that?  Here I am trying to find some meaning in this life and you just have to nay say and…and…

*Cue catchy chord progression and dance beat*

“Yeah! This song is awesome!” She says as she climbs on the nearest sturdy table to “get down”.

Another example is a song that was more popular on 104.5 (our local…”alternative” station?  Is that still a thing?), Civil Twilight’s “Letters from the Sky”.  It has pretty arrangement.  There’s a string section and synthesizers and such (I think) and there’s this lyric:

One day soon, I’ll hold you like the sun holds the moon.
And we will hear those planes overhead.
And we won’t be afraid.

Brilliant interpretation: Much like the gravitational force that keeps celestial bodies safely in orbit around each other, the singer will keep his loved on safe and protected from destruction, but always at a great distance.  If they were to allow themselves to touch, it would mean that everything around them would crash and burn and everything that they know would be gone.  It would be an end of everything, resulting in the quiet before a new beginning.  Vigilant, the singer and the object of his love sit distanced apart watching the onslaught of man made destroyers.  They do not fear them because their distance holds the key to actual safety and the reality of what would happen if they were to break this distance is far more terrifying than anything that a modern military has.

Shaun also pointed out that this could be interpreted as a nod to polyamory, because you really have to involve the Earth in this, making one big celestial triad.  The relationship between the sun and moon is not exactly direct.  The moon is held in orbit around the Earth due to Earth’s gravitational force, and the sun holds them both in orbit for the same reason.  So, much like how we are not islands and our relationships affect each other, the influence of the various celestial bodies on each other can’t be denied, nor is it preferred for any of them not to be involved.

I think that’s what he was talking about.  I admit that I was on my second mojito by the time we were talking about this at dinner and I also had a mental breakdown at work that day (which resulted in a lot of me stomping around and laughing maniacally), so my comprehension should be held in question.  All I remember is saying, “Ah! YES!  That’s ALSO brilliant!”

And then Wes said, “You know, neither of those interpretations is particularly brilliant.”

To which I said something like, “BE THAT AS IT MAY! It is more brilliant than…”

This, more likely,  interpretation: The singer will hold onto the object of his love really tight and no one has to be scared when there’s an unwavering hug happening. Or something.

I am sure as I listen to more popular music I will find more instances of using science as metaphors and similes in dumb songs and will probably talk about them, because that’s fun for me.  Do you have examples of your own?