Everything In Between

Ever since I heard of someone trying to sell a Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus potato chip on E-bay (which I wanted to link to but can’t seem to find the page), I’ve been hearing about a bunch of various copy cats. For instance, today Blondzila has discovered someone selling John Kerry reincarnated as a corn flake and there have been recent reports of Virgin Mary appearing on a grilled cheese sandwhich. This is yet more evidence that humans are excellent meaning-making machines.

This was going to be one of those wiki-like entries with an early publishing date and timestamped additions throughout the rest of the day. Of course, like most things I had planned to do Sunday, my plans changed enough to completely alter the course of my day.

Yesterday (the 27^th) Morning

I managed to get only very little sleep Saturday night. I didn’t go to bed until almost six in the morning because I was blogging (and, as usual, ended up writing a lot more than I had intended), and then got a little caught up in a conversation with an online buddy. It was a minor heart-to-heart in which we both shared some personal things that had happened (or, in my case, had been happening) in our interpersonal relationships.

Though we both have very different ways of interpreting and analyzing our actions, there was (at least) one very strong common thread among everything we talked about. The difference between us and the people with whom we’d had interpersonal relationships (of various sorts, not just romance) is that we never give up, and we have never let ourselves become victims. Shit happens to all of us, it’s inevitable, and some shit is really, really bad, but we have ultimately never played the defeatist card.

As a result of my lack of sleep, I woke up with much-inflamed sinus trouble this morning. What actually woke me up was noise from the kitchen. Danica was home, eating a donut from Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast. When I realized she was home I couldn’t relax to go back to bed.

I welcomed her back, and she said hello. One of the first things she told me was I have your money for the coffee. (And yes, I actually did recieve a twenty-dollar bill before she left for work today.) She was clearly in a pretty horrid mood.

Harsh Nights

I tentatively questioned how the night had gone for her. She told me, in not so few words, that it was awful. Most of what she talked about didn’t have anything to do with Randy, either.

Apparently, there was a stream of what she described as propositions from various men on the street and on the subway during her trip downtown to see Randy. I asked for clarification, You mean guys hit on you? She said that no, it was more like they thought she was a prostitute. Due to her lack of clean laundry, she couldn’t wear the clothes she had wanted to and ended up having to put on a shorter-than-usual black dress, fishnet stockings, and the like.

She said that on her one-block walk to the subway station from our (oops, my) apartment a car slowed down and followed her, and the male(s?) inside rolled down the windows. She described the subway ride itself as harsh, though at first I thought she was talking about the night with Randy in general.

Confused about her apparent hurt that men would proposition her (it’s been something she’s talked about being very interested in for a long time), I rather thoughtlessly said, So what’s the problem? Isn’t that your thing? when what I meant to say was more akin to, Why did you not like it when these men approached you tonight? (Cut me some slack, I had just woken up and couldn’t even see straight yet. I’m allergic to waking up.)

She stared at me and, in that really firm and staccato tone she sometimes uses, said No. It has to be concensual. I nodded (that makes sense to me) but didn’t actually say anything in response. (I suppose she’s going to read this anyway, and I’ve probably explained what happened here better than I could do in words to her.)

Cancelling my Gym Plans

A little later, I called my mother and told her I had to cancel our gym date. I feel pretty awful about that since I really do want to exercise, but I just can’t for the life of me see myself pulling anything better than a 2:50 split on four hours of sleep. That just sounds utterly useless to me to even attempt, so I thought I’d aim for a good night’s rest and try again the next day.

My mother was disappointed and did the typical motherly thing of asking how I was, reminding me to do various items on my to-do list (which never really helps, by the way), and telling me to get better quickly. She can’t work out as often as I can, unfortunately, and it’s a shame that I’ve missed my chance to go to the gym with someone else. It’s a lot easier to actually do the work out when you know you can have a bite to eat with somebody at the end of it. (Note to self: find a workout buddy that’s not a blood-relative or a jock.)

Danica Reads My Blog

Afterwards, I went online and did nothing other than kill more time. (I think time should be dead by now, after all this senseless violence it’s had to endure.) I spent about an hour on Orkut before Danica appeared behind my chair looking at my computer screen. My web browser (which, I’ll plug, is the best browser ever) was displaying my blog’s main page. I asked her if she wanted to read it and she said sure. I busied myself with almonds and preparing a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich in the kitchen while she read.

When she was finished, she went over to her computer and started typing furiously. I thought she was angry with me, but when I asked her if that was the case she responded with a sad look and tears. She said that she wasn’t angry, just that everything that happened last night was taking its toll.

The Larry Situation

I expressed my relief, and the suspicion I’d had that her furious typing indicated furious emotions. Then she told me, If you really must know, I was writing a letter to Larry. He emailed me this morning. At that point, I took a really deep breath and said, No, I actually don’t think I want to know.

The Necessary Background

Larry, for those uninformed and because I didn’t do enough blogging about this whole fiasco when it actually happened, is a man Danica met on one of those online BDSM “dating” sites a while back. For the sake of reference, Larry would have been “Official Reason Number 2” why I should have broken up with Danica, but never did.

Danica corresponded with him a few times back and forth via email before actually meeting him one night around Halloween of 2004. They went out together on these pseudo-dates several times after that and conversed over email much more frequently.

I never liked Larry the moment I heard about him. Firstly, he’s thirty, if not older. Secondly, by his own admission (though this is admittedly heresay via Danica’s words) he is only interested in a sexual relationship and not really in any kind of friendship at all. Thirdly, I spent more nights than I’d like to recall doing my best to subdue feelings of raging anger and supplant them with compassion and empathy when Danica would come home and, mere minutes after telling me how great the night had went, sob uncontrollably as she recounted how he would, and I quote, grope [her] ass and feel [her] up. (Danica had said many times how she felt horrible about not saying or doing anything about that.)

Last but certainly not least, Larry’s manipulation of Danica is one I instantly recognize from my time in the public New York City BDSM scene. He was pulling a nearly identical emotional power-play over her as was pulled over my previous girlfriend when the two of us joined the BDSM scene and started meeting all the so-called “friendly and like-minded folks.”

Thanks to my experiences entrenched in the sociopolitical warzone that was (and likely still is) the public BDSM scene, I have gained some invaluable social experiences that have done miracles to hone my perceptiveness and degrade my naievety. Which, by the way, is exactly what I hope this relationship with Danica has done for me in regards to my love life.

The bottom line is that Larry is scum and somewhere not-so deep down inside her Danica knows it, too.

So she told me that Larry had emailed her this morning and I told her I didn’t even want to know more than that about it. I may have a new attitude in regards to my feelings for her, but that still doesn’t mean I want to see her end up with scum. Danica may not be ready to committ to a serious relationship yet, but I’d like to think she is still better than scum. I don’t want to see her prove me wrong by ending up with said scum.

Also, while there are certainly compassionate, well-intentioned, and caring feelings behind that motivation, I will readily admit that part of it is utterly selfish. I think my last girlfriend ended up with scum after our break up, and I’d like to keep my record of respectable exes higher than two-out-of-three. Especially since the only one I would consider respectable if Danica ends up in such a self-debasing situation is respectable only out of sheer doubt, as I no longer have any means to know what has happened in her life.

Clouded Moments

I did my best to try and put the fact that she was back in touch with that man out of my mind. I returned to the kitchen and tried to focus on helping the organic peanut butter for my sandwhich to thaw. (I kept stabbing it with a spreading knife to help the oils sink back in.) Every once in a while, however, Danica kept appearing at the doorway in tears and asking me something.

First, stammering a little and face streaked with salt water, she said she wanted to beg me for something. She didn’t say what, she said she couldn’t say what it was. I just shrugged and kept stabbing at my peanut butter.

Then she told me she wanted to beg me to take her back. She said, I’d go to counseling, I’d do anything. [...] but I know you can’t do that now. I wasn’t saying anything, but I was taking deep breaths and stabbing at my peanut butter pretty harshly.

The second time she appeared at the doorway she was still in tears and again said she wanted to beg me for something. This time she didn’t have as much trouble getting it out. She said that she had read my blog and figured I wouldn’t do this anyway, but she still asked.

Please, if I say anything bad to you about Randy or anything to do with us, which I took to mean Randy and her, please don’t write it in your blog. Randy means a lot to me and if I say something stupid it’s just because I’m angry at myself and….

I emphatically told her that I would never do that because I consider it low to sabotage another person’s relationships. Besides, I also know exactly what that feels like (a la Larry and several members of the public BDSM scene, who surely know who they are if they are reading this) and know exactly how painful it is to be on the other end of the stick. Yes, I’m a better person than that. (I’m not perfect, but I have no problems at all touting how much better I am than most folks, and for the record, I couldn’t care less about what most people think about that.)

She left the kitchen still in tears, so I followed her to the living room. I asked if my solemn promise not to publish something she said in confidence to me which slandered somebody else made her feel better. She nodded and quiety said that yes, it does, and thank you.

She had to go to work soon, and this whole Larry possibility was really getting under my skin. I didn’t want to, but I finally told her that whatever she thought she needed Larry for, she was simply wrong. I can’t really know how much good that did, but I just had to say it.

Yesterday (still the 27^th) Afternoon and Evening

When she left, at approximately 1:13 PM, I started writing this blog entry. Not long after I had started, I got a phone call from the acquaintance I went out with one night last week asking if I had any plans. Since I no longer had any, and since it was a rather nice day outside, I took her up on her offer to walk around Pelham Bay and Orchard Beach (I think that’s where we went).

Snow on the Beach

I love the water, and spending some time out of the claustrophobic city was wonderful. There was snow on the beach as well as plenty of great skipping stones. (I’m rusty, but I still managed to skip some stones over seven or eight times.) The two of us talked, walked, and sat down on some rocks after walking a bit off the trail.

While still on the beach a friend of my acquaintance’s called her up, and plans were made to see a movie later in the day. In the end, due to the Oscars, these plans were changed and I spent much of the evening at her place trying (and failing) to help with obscure Windows XP virus trouble. We had dinner, watched a few awards being given out, and then she took me back home before it got too late.

From the car, I could see that the kitchen light in my apartment was turned on. Since I always turn off all the lights in the apartment when I go out, I knew Danica was already home. It was quickly approaching eleven o’clock, so this made sense.

Before Bed

Brief Banter

Danica seemed to be in a much better mood than the one she was in this morning. I asked how her day had went, and she responded that thanks to the Academy Awards there were not nearly as many customers as there were most days. This provided her with a more relaxing day than she might have otherwise had.

She asked how my day had gone and I told her about spending most of it out in the Bronx. She remarked that she was glad [I] have Christine (the acquaintance I spent time with today), and I told her that I was happy I didn’t end up spending another sunny day inside the house all by myself.

Then she went to the kitchen and started eating a grapefruit. She said she was hungry. I told her I’d already had dinner but that I wanted to snack on something anyway.

Suspicious Stories

We sat and talked briefly before I couldn’t help myself and had to ask her why, all of a sudden, Larry would have emailed her this morning. Danica told me that before she stopped talking to him he had told her that around this time he was going to tell her how some surgery had went, so she wasn’t surprised to get the email at all. This all sounded extremely suspicious to me and I asked a bunch of follow-up questions in an attempt to get more detail about what really happened.

I don’t really believe for a moment that Larry would just up and write an email about nothing other than his recent surgery to Danica. They stopped talking months ago, and their last communiques to one another were quite angry. If I know men like Larry (and unfortunately I do), then when a girl stops showing interest in being their sexual plaything, they lose interest in talking to her. These men simply know when to quit.

Thus, I am hard-pressed to believe that it was, in fact, Larry who initiated communications with Danica, despite what she says to me about the way communication with him started again. I have heard her twist the truth so many times to so many people (her mother, her cousins, her friends, and me) about so many things (like her schooling, her work situations, her other friends, and of course me) that I just don’t believe what comes out of her mouth much anymore when it is supposedly a factual recount of the events.

Yes, I admit, perhaps I was trying to pry open Pandora’s box and get Danica to admit to something. Perhaps that was stupid, useless, and counter-productive. But I am telling you, her story just made me so suspicious (and not just of Larry, but of her as well) that I couldn’t help but do my best to try and pry the factual truth out of the steel trap. I did not, however, explicitly tell her I thought she was lying or somehow twisting the facts of the events (either purposely or subconsiously) because I didn’t want to get into a fight.

At one point in the conversation, I asked her why in all of hell she would actually respond to his email even if he did entice a response (with talk of surgery?) from her. She didn’t give me a straight answer, but said something about their friendship. I scoffed and asked her if she even remembered all the negative things that had happened with him.

This is the stunner: She said no! She said she didn’t even remember much of what happened with him at all. She said she simply couldn’t recall what she ever felt like during those times. The only thing she could recall was all of our fights, the bad times her and I spent fighting when Larry was the topic of the arguments, and a few things about going off on a tantrum as being the last time she spoke to the scumbag (aka Larry).

Personally, I have no idea how forgetting all of that is possible, but I am certain it is some remarkable skill that scumbags like Larry possess over weak-minded, victim-mentality girls like Danica. That is their social genius; they can completely erase the negative memories that involve them and replace all of them with negative memoies involving their obstacle (in this case, me) in order to continuously lure willing victims.

I am no longer really interested in fighting Larry via Danica, but I still took the liberty of reminding Danica of all the nights she spent huddled in my arms as a result of what amounts to nothing less than (unfortunately willing) sexual harrassment at Larry’s hands. Danica was somberly silent for a few moments and then sighed, How quickly one forgets. I would have thrown my hands up in frustration, but have since learned not to be surprised by such things.

Suffice it to say that much of this conversation included the words “Larry” and “scum” and “self-destructive.” I also won’t be surprised if someday soon she meets up with Larry for a cup of coffee. What-fucking-ever.

Bedtime

Despite all this, the generally good mood permeated dinner and continued until bedtime. I had made Danica a mushroom omlette (after I made her actually ask me directly for it; the girl needs to learn how to actually say things directly, like “Please do this for me” and “Don’t do this to me”) and ate the last grapefruit along with some almond slivers as a snack. Then she pulled me to bed and we cuddled for a while before she drifted off to sleep.

I cleaned up a little before putting my pajamas on and joining her in bed to sleep. She needed to wake up early today (the 28^th) to head over to the realtor’s to sign the papers for her new apartment before work. I managed to fall asleep without much trouble and only woke up once to go to the bathroom.

When I woke up today, Danica was gone (I suppose she’s at work), and the first thing I did was come back here to finish this entry. I’m still recovering from my sinus cold, and so I won’t be heading to the gym today. (It’s also late, anyway.) I want my head to feel better already, damnit, but I suppose only time will make that happen. I suppose only time will make a lot of things happen.

Got up somewhere around one o’clock in the afternoon today because I got a phone call from someone, though I don’t remember who. I believe it was my mother. In any event, I figured I’d stay awake and see if I could start the day, late as it was.

I went online and killed some time, trying to continue drinking as much as possible so as to stave off my sinus cold. Danica arrived at the front door (she didn’t buzz me this time) at around three in the afternoon. She brought me leftovers from her dinner last night with Randy, a chicken and roasted pepper sandwhich with a side salad. It became my breakfast.

The day felt like an uneventful one to me. I spent time on Orkut pretending that I’m not lonely. That was sort of a bust, though I am impressed with my evident wit, even if some of it probably comes off sounding asshole-ish.

Noteworthy Interactions with Danica

One major noteworthy interaction I had with Danica today came in the form of a few lines exchanged between us in the afternoon. We were both sitting silently at our computers, right after I finished writing my “Why I Don’t Take Medications for My Bipolar Disorder” post. Then she spoke up and said that she had read my entries, complimenting me on their quality.

I thanked her. Then she said that something Blondzila had written in my blog was bothering her. Blondzila had mentioned that Danica does not see [me] for who [I am] but for who she wants [me] to be: a matter and place of convenience. This upset her a bit, and so I offered that I had not been very objective in the entry Blondzila was commenting on.

Certain Uncertainty

I also told Danica, however, Not to toot my own horn, but you really don’t know what you’ve given up. This made her stop what she was doing and look at me. (Later, during another short conversation in the kitchen, Danica was crying and told me that I had said someting really snyde earlier, but that she couldn’t remember what it was and didn’t want to be reminded of it. My only guess is that this is what she was referring to.)

After a few moments, she then said, You know, I could say you don’t know what I’ve found. I assume she was talking about her oh-so-wonderful relationship with Randy. This struck me as yet another waffling lack of conviction. I have literally lost track of the number of times she has told me completely contradictory things about her relationship with Randy in just the past week as I’ve been blogging about all this.

If I were really an asshole, I would publish some of the very recent things she’s said to me about him and about their relationship. However, considering the fact that I’ve linked to Randy’s site and will probably be showing up in his referrer logs, (and, of course, if he’s technically savvy enough to know what this means) I will decline to relay the specifics about what Danica has said to me in this regard. Suffice it to say that the fact that I’m not willing to publish them here for fear of Randy’s eyes and what it might mean to Danica if he saw them says a lot about what I’ve heard her say.

(Of course, ask the girl about this directly and there will be an attempt to force the square peg into the circular hole. It will undoubtedly be successful. Naturally, it will also destroy the corners of the square peg.)

Anyway, when she implied that her relationship with Randy was something special, I replied, What you’ve found? I don’t believe you even for one minute. You’ve been so contradictory that I can’t believe anything you say anymore. Rather, the fact that you’ve been contradicting yourself so much says far more to me than the actual words which come out of your mouth. So I don’t believe one word of that, not even a little bit.

She didn’t respond, and we stopped talking for a while. Eventually, one of us changed the subject. I think it was changed to Irish Creme coffee from Gevalia. Danica really wanted to try some, but considering the copious amounts of coffee we had opened and not yet finished, I wasn’t really ecstatic about breaking the seal.

Money, Money, Money

She said she’d pay me back for it, and since I’ve been trying to go to the gym to work out lately, I wasn’t going to be drinking much coffee anyway. I agreed, and we attacked the Irish Creme coffee pack with a pair of scissors. We also noted that she had not yet paid me back for her Mocha or her Mocha Java brews, and that with the addition of this Irish Creme pack, she now owes me $18.65 for the coffees.

She told me that she would pay me some time ago, and I had even completely forgot that she even owed me any money for the coffees. Then she told me that she’d get me the money before she left for Randy’s tonight (she has another movie date and is spending the night at his place again).

Unfortunately, by the time she was getting ready to go see Randy, Danica was cranky and did not want to have to run out to the ATM to get my twenty bucks. I told her to forget about it, and she seemed to appreciate that. Here’s hoping she follows through and gets the money to me tomorow (er, today) like she said she would.

Earlier in the evening, she had mentioned that she might want to take the shelves from above our couch to her new apartment with her. This would leave me shelfless on one side of the living room, and would mean I no longer have a place to keep my DVD’s or VHS tapes. Nevertheless, especially after she mentioned the she had paid for those shelves, I told her to feel free to take them. I would simply have to buy new shelves.

Of course, I couldn’t help but bring up the fact that she had not yet paid me back for her share of the mattress I bought for us only last month (as just one of the many examples I can come up with off the top of my head). It was $400, plus delivery, plus a seventy-something dollar mattress pad that she had insisted I buy. She told me she’d pay me back for that.

Um, that never happened either. So all in all I spent over $500 (with my parents’ generous help) on a bed for the bedroom (not counting the actual platform bedframe itself that cost upwards of $1,000) which I have had to eat the cost of in full. This very quickly stopped conversation about the pair of $30 shelves she wanted to take with her.

Still, I told her to feel free to take the shelves anyway. She told me she’d buy the mattress off me if it fit her new bedframe, and while I appreciated the offer, that was just not a practical solution. What was I going to do for a bed? I got that mattress at a great price (it was originally a $750 mattress!) and could not afford to risk spending more money, despite the fact that this mattress is somewhat softer than I prefer. (She likes soft beds, I like firm beds, so this mattress is somewhere in the middle.)

Evening: Blogging, Laundry, and Back Home Alone

Thankfully, there was no real fighting going on between us at all. I’ve been doing my best to just not talk about hair-trigger issues, and so has she. I spent the early evening blogging about Gevalia Kaffe’s poor hypertext copy, and then prepared another batch of laundry (beddings) to do at my mom’s.

While there, I got my laundry done, helped my mother purchase airline tickets on American Airlines’ web site, and gave her some advice at her request on which mutual funds she should be investing her pension in. (Um, don’t ask.) My mother made me some tahini for dinner which I ate alongside a cup of chamomile tea and Rold Gold® pretzels for dinner.

I also got to watch some television as my mother worked on some of her things on her computer. I have to say, living at home without television service is sometimes extremely difficult. Most notably, on lonely nights like these, there is really no distraction from my own thoughts, no way to “veg out,” escape, or otherwise occupy my mind.

I think that’s one thing that’s been making these nights especially hard on me. The irony of it all is that one of my ulterior motives for abolishing the cable television service was to spend more time with Danica. Both of us would often get lost watching TV, but not lost together.

It was past midnight by the time I left my mother’s house. I brought the previous night’s load of laundry back with me, along with my new Squash racquet that my mother purchased for me with her Modell’s awards points (I’m looking forward to playing with my uncle next weekend) and the newly-laminated packet of Japanese language vocabulary cards I made back when I was studying the language. (I’m looking forward to putting them up around the house again.)

Well, gee, I think that’s all of it for today. I am planning on going to the gym with my mother tomorrow, since my sinuses are feeling a little better. I also have a ton of email to respond to that I “haven’t gotten around to” yet, tons of housework is still waiting for me, and then there’s the money stuff.

But I don’t want to think about any of this right now. One day at a time, I suppose. One hour at a time.

I have been experimenting with my coffee purchases as of late and found myself changing some of my Gevalia shipments around. After removing a product from my delivery list, I was asked to confirm the action. I was also given the choice to restore the product or add a new product.

Curiously, they used the hypertext copy …to add a new product click click here, with the last two words made into a link to the product-adding page. This is the epitomy of the so-called “click here” mentality, where the very phrase “click here” has been so objectified that it is used as a noun unto itself.

To make matters worse, there was no title attribute for the link which may have served to mitigate the uselessness of the instructions. Adding to the confusion is the fact that the clearer instruction on how to restore the product was not a link. Instead, that button is way over on the other side of the page.

So, the morale of the story is that nobody’s actually going to click a “click here” link the first time around. They first have to decipher what it will actually do and sometimes that’s even more confusing than it was in this example.

Instead of such meaningless anchor text, it is always better to turn the verbs of a sentence into a link. In this case, I would have said something like “The product will no longer be sent with your future shipments. You can still restore this product if you’d like to continue receiving it, or you can add a new product instead,” with the emphasized text being the links for the respective actions. For extra credit, change “The product” into the actual name of the product I’ve just removed.

Clear, unambiguous, and personable text that’s easy to read with just a quick glance. That’s what hypertext copywriting is all about. More to the point, I gaurantee you that more folks would actually order additional products that way, too.

People are often surprised when I tell them that I no longer take any medications for my bipolar disorder. Sometimes this is because they’ve heard me advocate the importance of medications. Other times it’s because they don’t understand how I can be bipolar and still be okay without them.

The Obligatory Disclaimer

Before I explain why I no loner take medications, I need to make a few things crystal clear:

• Medications saved my life. Without them, I literally might not be here today. They are an invaluable part of treatment for bipolar disorder and if you have been prescribed medications by your psychiatrist, you must take them. (I did.)

• There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking medications prescribed by a mental health professional. In spite of what you may be hearing elsewhere, taking medications does not make you “less good” of a person in any way. Taking medications doesn’t make you weak, it actually strengthens you in many ways. They certainly strengthened me.

• Regardless of personal feelings, you must involve your doctor in your decisions to change the dosage or kind of medication you are taking, or else you are just asking for trouble. It took me several tries to find a doctor with whom I could feel comfortable speaking freely with and who would respect my input in my treatment. This was a vital first step for me before starting to experiment with my medication’s dosage because there is no substitute for a professional’s advice.

• During this entire process, I was seeing a licensed psychologist who I trusted implicitly. No matter what anyone else says, I strongly believe that having a therapist is the single most important support mechanism you can have. Friends and family are wonderfully helpful and nothing short of necessary, but a professional therapist can provide objectivity and insight that no one else can, and which bipolar disorder patients need. (At least, I did.)

• Just in case it isn’t obvious yet, I am not a mental health professional and nothing I say should be interpreted as medical advice. I speak solely from personal experience, and I have no doubt that you are different from me. Everything I say is about me and only me.

My Simplistic Logic

Now that that’s out of the way, allow me to share my own reasoning. Like many other people with bipolar disorder, I was told that I would need to take medications for the rest of my life. In fact, I took them for about six years, from the ages of twelve to eighteen.

The short answer to the question “How come you’re no longer taking medications,” is because I no longer need them to function. I think that medications, like every other form of treatment, are a tool and nothing more. You can use them to modify your base mood and decrease the standard deviation of your mood swings and episodes.

For many people, like they were for me at one time, they are an absolutely critical tool and need to be used constantly, much like a stove-top range or refridgerator or pen and paper. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Lots of people I know don’t even want to think about going off their medications because it is such an important tool for keeping them stable and in a good state of mind.

Specific Reasons

For me, however, there were several reasons why I wanted very badly to no longer take medications. For instance, they had a load of side effects that I simply could not tolerate. These inclued but were not limited to:

Side Effects I Experienced

• Photosensitivity (pain in my eyes caused by light).
• Lethargy, apathy, and sleepiness.
• Frequent urination.
• Difficulty focusing and intense trouble comprehending written text.
• Weight gain.

Lack of Emotional Self-Awareness

The most prominent reason however, was the fact that they were simply too effective at quelling my emotional self. In other words, the medications doctors prescribed for me worked so well at quieting emotional uprisings that handling my emotional wants and needs, outbursts and swings, could have been completely relegated to the medications.

All I’d need to do is a pop a pill and I’d be an emotional zombie for the rest of the day. That’s not how I saw myself growing up. Remember, I was a young teenager at the time.

In order to grow up and increase my emotional intelligence, I knew I had to actually deal with feeling emotions on my own and not with a pill that abolished all of my feelings for me. So I started slowly reducing the dosage I was given. The net effect was that I could slowly turn up the amount of emotional “volume” I wanted to handle by myself and still let the medications mitigate a portion of it for me.

Getting to the point where I was completely free of medications was an extremely slow process. It took me four years of being stable on medications just to be able to safely cut my dosage in half. I expected the other half to be no easier, but thankfully, with all that I had learned during the first four years, it was.

All of those dosage experiments, of course, (except the last bit) were done in conjunction with supervision from my psychiatrists and while I was seeing a psychologist (a therapist). That was important: a psychiatrist can help you with your medications but only a psychologist, and only one that you really like, is qualified to help you deal without the medications. No friend, no family member, and no stranger with a kind heart can help you as much as a therapist, in my humble opinion. (Though it is important to seek out other forms of support too.)

Life Without Medications

Now that I am off medications, don’t think for a moment that my life has suddenly become easily manageable. If anything, it’s far harder; I have mood swings all the time, I am constantly fighting a battle against irritability and a lack of motivation, and I still experience majorly disturbing bipolar symptoms like racing thoughts, hypersexuality, and hypomania. Nevertheless, despite all of that, I have learned how to handle myself well enough so that I can still (at least for the most part) function in day-to-day life.

You won’t find me going on a spending spree during a manic episode. You won’t find me sitting in a corner of my apartment with a kitchen knife pressed into my wrists. You won’t find me blowing up at friends or family at the slightest provocation (though this one is really hard not to do).

You will find me taking deep breaths to combat a mood swing. You will find me working on personal hobbies during a hypomanic phase. And you will certainly find me biting my tongue when I get into pointless arguments.

The bottom line in all this is that, while the emotional impetus to do all sorts of things that would be harmful to me exist all the time, I no longer respond to them in the same way that I used to. This is nothing short of a minor miracle for me, since at one point in my life I was completely under the control of my mood’s whims. Changing that has not been easy, but it has been unbelievably rewarding.

Finally, it should also be noted that all of this is possible while still on medications, and much of it indeed happened like that for me. No form of treatment is exclusive of another, and most of the time different treatment regiments actually spill over and benefit one another. Everything I used (and still use) to help me, from medications to therapy to support from family and friends, contributed major benefits that I don’t think I could have gone without.

In the end, I’m still learning how to handle myself in more effective and efficient ways. It is a never-ending journey of self-reflection, challenges and successes (and failures), and just growing up. Even after all this I realize I have a long way to go. That’s life.

Oh sigh. At half past four I’m just starting to write this thing. This will have to be a short entry because I’m finally getting tired.

Daily Recap

Struggling to Sleep

I woke up feeling pretty bad, physically speaking. My sinuses were hurting, my nose was running, and my head felt like it was full of cotton balls. Unfortunately, I’m just about positive I’ve come down with a sinus cold.

Needless to say, I didn’t go to the gym. That would have been somewhat dangerous considering the horrendous amount of dehydration that my body was putting me through. (Look at me, I’m getting knowledgeable about this stuff!) I spent all day with a glass of water at my side, refilling it constantly.

I got almost no good sleep last night, either. That might partially explain why I came down with the cold today. I must have woken up about eight distinct times to pee or because my sinuses and the back of my throat were hurting me.

In the morning, I was woken up by several phone calls. Between the hours of eight o’clock and eleven o’clock I kept getting up to stop the ringing. I did finally get a few hours of undisturbed sleep from then until about two in the afternoon, though, and I had some pretty bizarre dreams. (I won’t go into them because it’s not to the point and somewhat sexually explicit.)

Danica had gone out again to Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast and had asked me if I wanted anything from the store. At my request, she bought me two grapefruits, and at her insistence, she also bought me four cans of chicken broth. When I woke up, she said she’d make me some of the chicken broth, which I appreciated but didn’t actually ingest until much later.

Danica Gets Her Apartment

Very soon, at about three o’clock, Danica left to go meet with the realtor to see if she could procure Randy’s apartment. At approximately 5:30 PM, she returned stating success. She spent nearly six and a half thousand dollars (of her mother’s money) on the apartment, but had secured the lease for Randy’s apartment. She will thus hopefully be moving out within the upcoming week! (I am very glad.)

Climbing Out of the Hole

The afternoon hours from around 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM moved by pretty quickly. I didn’t do much, but I did have some chicken broth, leave a few comments on Danica’s new MySpace profile in response to some of the ones she left me and struggled with the ever-growing list of things I needed to do.

Despite how disappointed I am at having to do it, I decided that the only way to get myself out of this rut was to unload some of the responsibilities I had shouldered which I now felt were overwhelming me. Specifically, that meant cancelling the programming job I had. First, I called my father to ask for help in how to do that professionally (I didn’t want to burn any bridges) and then I called the client directly.

The client never answered her phones, so instead I wrote her an email. Later, she got back to me asking if I’m sure and if I’d like to reconsider. She restated the relatively long timeframe for the project (I had said that I was cancelling because I didn’t believe I could do it in a timely fashion) and asked for a referral if I really couldn’t do it.

I haven’t gotten back to her yet, but I think I’m going to confirm the cancellation. I just can’t handle this work right now, even though I don’t really have the money to do something like this. There are still so many things I need to do just to get at a point where I can work efficiently. I haven’t set up any one of my Linux or *BSD servers yet, for instance, and I haven’t even finished getting the tables into their final positions! I’m still using one of the computer tables as a kitchen table, still have furniture to buy, curtains to put up, and a host of other tasks.

Of course, when Danica moves out a lot of that will be easier. For instance, I won’t have to vacuum the floor so often. (Yes, there was more walking in the apartment with dirty shoes, and the only reason I’ve not vacuumed again is because it was late when I got home from my mother’s. More on that in a bit.) Also, a lot of her stuff will be gone, such as the couch and the TV and all her clothes and bags and boxes and junk. The coffee table will actually be clean, instead of being overrun with a mess of reciepts and fabric and napkins.

Evening: Laundry at My Mother’s and Home Alone Again

Danica had plans to go out with Randy tonight. She said she was meeting him at about nine o’clock at his place to go see a movie down at the Pioneer. Before Danica left the house, I gathered my laundry and a few of my things and went to my mother’s to go do laundry and have a small salad for dinner which she had prepared for me. (Thanks, Mom!)

I was at my mother’s from 8:22 PM to about 10:45 PM, when I returned home to find the living room light on but the apartment empty. I had brought back some housewares from my mother’s, such as a few knives and extra silverware that she gave me in preparation for Danica’s imminent move out of here. When she goes, I’ll suddenly find myself with a lot less stuff that I really need, such as non-stick pots and pans and a kettle.

I spent the rest of the night online, talking to folks and killing time on Orkut. I didn’t really know what to expect and I don’t really know what I was doing. I started to feel somewhat motivated to do work (not programming necessarily, but just some “recreational” coding) when I was at my mother’s, but that motivation dissipated like a virgin snowfall when I returned home. Still, having that spark is a good sign and means I’m on the right track, emotionally, of unpiling my responsibilities until I get my shit in order.

I have no idea why, really, but I also spent some of my time later reading through the CraigsList newsfeeds I recently subscribed to. Much of that just pissed me off, so I stopped, though I did come across a few actually well-written posts. (Most of that site is utter junk.) I even found myself responding to a couple ads.

Introspecting Again

One of the things I was talking about with the folks online was the whole notion of “casual relationships,” what they are, why they’re so frustratingly popular, and why I can’t seem to have any of them. (For instance, Danica keeps waffling back and forth between her so-called conviction that Randy is a casual relationship, and that’s what she supposedly wants right now.) I reached no real conclusions to any of my questions, but one thing resonated across all the conversations: It’s absolutely normal that I should be interested in them at this point after my break up, especially considering the way it happened.

I can’t really say that that is any comfort, but it certainly makes me feel less weird. I think I wrote about this briefly before, but I’ve never had a casual relationship of any romantic and/or sexual involvement. I just don’t seem to work that way.

Nevertheless, the idea that those types of relationships are “beyond me” is an absolutely stomach-churning notion. Perhaps, then, they are “below me,” though even then my curiosity (and resentment?) of their existence acts as a thorn in my side. Then again, I’m chronologically only twenty years old, as Danica keeps describing herself. No matter how much I like to think I’m more emotionally grown-up than that, perhaps that’s all just a “defense mechanism,” to use the popular psychobabble.

Sometimes I’d just like to forget about all of that and pretend that I am missing enough neurons to make me blissfully unaware of others’ emotional matters and ensure that I am stupid enough to fit in with the crowd. Maybe what it takes to get a date on a Saturday night is a lack of maturity and several billion brain cells that won’t function properly. Of course, what kind of fun would that be?

Looking (Slightly) Ahead

Well, so much for a short entry. It’s super-late and I’m afraid I’ve just fucked myself over for tomorrow. Danica is not home, and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I’d like to believe I didn’t wait up for her, but I don’t really know what to think at this point. I’m tired.

I tried to set up a Squash game with my uncle this weekend, but I got on it too late and we couldn’t get a reservation for a court. That’s probably a good thing, though, because I’m still feeling under the weather and a game of Squash probably wouldn’t do me very much good right now. We’ve rescheduled for next week so at least I have something to look forward to.

I was gonna put up my to-do list, but I haven’t got it all in one place at the moment and haven’t the energy to aggregate their contents. Suffice it to say that there is too much to do. I can’t wait until Danica gets her stuff out of here, since I think not having any furniture to speak of and having a lot of space to put it will be a big incentive to go to Ikea or something.

As a fitness dummy, the book Fitness for Dummies has been extremely helpful for me. One of the recommended best-practices the authors write about often is keeping some sort of log of your work outs. I’ll be trying to follow that guideline by blogging about my gym experiences, along with whatever else happens.

The Morning (er, Afternoon)

I woke up a little late today, again, due to falling asleep at an ungodly hour near sunrise. It was two o’clock before I knew what had happened. The morning went smoothly. Danica had gone out right after I woke up (we woke up at about the same time) to fetch breakfast from Dunkin’ Donuts. She bought me an apple pie, which I ate half of after eating a mushroom and shallot omlette.

Sleep was not as good as it could have been, however. I am pretty sure I’m coming down with some form of sinus cold. My head is hurting right now, and I’ve had an unusually dry mouth all day long. Nothing, not even drinking water almost non-stop throughout the day, has managed to help.

Before I left for the gym, which I was determined to do today, I called my dentist (something I had been meaning to do for several days) and set up an appointment for the second week of March. Hopefully, everything regarding my missing canine tooth will still be peachy keen by then and the implant procedure can proceed normally. Otherwise, who knows what I’ll have to go through (again) to get this behind me.

Work Out Routine

Finally, at about three o’clock, I left for the gym. I read more of Fitness for Dummies on the subway. When I got to the gym, I changed into my Under Armour gym clothes and hit the floor.

Warm up consisted of five relatively painless minutes on the erg (rowing machine), since that’s the only thing I really know how to do. Then I stretched for about ten minutes; hamstring, calf, thigh, butt, and back stretches. For some reason, my mind seems to enjoy wandering when I’m stretching, which is good because I end up holding the stretch for longer than I probably would otherwise. Shir told me I’m supposed to hold them for at least thirty seconds, though ideally each stretch would be held for a minute.

Then, after the stretching, it was back to the erg. I didn’t push myself as hard as I did the last two times because of my sinus discomfort and dry mouth. I made sure to drink a lot before and after the warm up as well as after the stretches and before the work out, yet I still felt parched within the first five minutes.

To make matters worse, by now I was feeling a slight pain in the back of the roof of my mouth when swallowing. This is a sure sign of a sinus cold and so I did not want to push myself harder than normal. Instead, I set the work out for forty-five minutes and did my best to stay at a split of under 2:30.

In the end, I managed to do pretty well, I think. I averaged a 2:28 split (a split is the amount of time it takes you to row five hundred meters), burned around 540 calories, produced 108 watts of energy, and rowed 9,100 meters total. Not too bad for my fourth time on the thing ever.

After the rowing work out, it was another session of stretching, and then off to the showers. I cleaned up, got dressed, and headed out to street level. When I left the gym, the weather was no less than a blizzard.

Post-Workout Recuperation

I felt pretty good after the work out (I always do), and so I glanced around and decided to eat at a nearby cafe. I was also right next to a bagel store, a great one (mmm, H&H Bagels!), so I called Danica and asked if she wanted a bagel. She said yes, with lox and cream cheese and cucumber, so I bought her two everything bagels, a pack of cream cheese, a few packed slices of Nova-Scotia lox, and two cucumbers from the nearby grocery store.

For myself, I bought a soup-and-sandwhich combo consisting of a toasted panini with proscuito, basil, tomato, and mozzorela (the mozzorela cheese was a bad idea, considering my sinus cold) and a Thai lemon grass chicken soup (which was a great idea for many reasons). I also bought a bottle of carrot juice and a load of fresh carrots to bring home so I could make more.

On the way home, I read more of Fitness for Dummies, and that’s when I read about keeping an exercise log. When I got home, I gave Danica her bagels and cream cheese and lox (she totally forgot about the cucumbers) and went online to catch up with email. I was still drinking about three glasses of water every five minutes, but my sinuses continued demanding more.

Finally a Truly Calm Evening

I had planned to go to my mother’s to do some much-needed laundry. Danica had sorted our laundry from one another’s so we now each have our own piles to do. She told me she would do this before she left, and I was glad to see that it had indeed been done.

Unfortunately, feeling under the weather as I was (and considering the actual snowstorm going on) I decided not to go to my mother’s tonight. I can always do laundry later. Instead, I started preparing carrots for carrot juice.

Danica came into the kitchen during this process and told me she had found plenty of old lyrics she had written years ago. She laughed as she said, You could beat me over the head with it! I’ve been making the same mistakes over and over again, and you know how I know? Because I keep writing about the same thing after each relationship! Naturally, this piqued my interest and when she asked if she could share some of the lyrics she had found, I gratefully accepted.

I said little throughout this entire “heart-to-heart” (no one’s words, just my description, in quotes because it was rather one-way) and I think not saying anything was actually more helpful than sharing my own opinions. Like my father, Danica can easily misinterpret my intended message when I say things (or write things), and I was too busy making carrot juice to risk getting into an argument. (Yes, Aba, I think you have trouble understanding my intentions when I write about them sometimes, which is why my replies to your comments seem defensive to you. On the other hand, I’m still open to suggestions on how I can improve the accuracy of the messages I communicate.)

After I finished preparing the carrot juice (and washing all the dishes, and clearing some of the silverware, and cleaning some parts of the floor), I sat down to have the last bagel. Danica shared some music, I listened and ate quietly. It was now reasonably late (I am guessing that it was sometime around 10:30 PM), and I was getting tired.

When I hopped into the shower, Danica needed to pee. Our shower curtain is somewhat see-through, a remnant of our shopping together as a couple (don’t ask), so whenever someone’s in the shower anyone else can easily see the so-called full monty on the other side. Thanks to our good spirits, Danica and I were still talking.

I can’t remember how the conversation got around to it (she must have been talking about her past), but at one point she brought up certain aspects of the abuse she went through, and I asked a question about it. Her mood instantly shifted, not to anger or any other externally-focused upsetness, but just shifted. She didn’t say anything and instead she took off her clothes and joined me in the shower.

She hugged me and, somewhat taken aback, I didn’t really know what to do. So I hugged her back and tried changing the subject. To make a long story short (and to spare the paragraphs necessary to recall most of our inconsequential conversation from that point on), her happy mood returned shortly thereafter. We ended up showering together, sort of.

For the curious: yes, showering together is arousing. No, nothing really happened. I made the mistake of doing my thinking with the wrong head a few days ago, and I wasn’t about to do it again. It was extremely tempting, however, and Danica’s presence (as well as what she was doing with her hands and other body parts at one point) made turning sex down even more difficult. Nevertheless, reason and emotional awareness did prevail this time. Of course, I ended up waiting for her to finish her shower so I could, um, finish up, on my own.

After that it was email, quick snack (of more carrot juice and a few nuts), and then this entry. Now, it’s off to bed. I still have to get moving on that programming job, do the laundry, buy a vacuum cleaner, and a bunch of other things, but at least I don’t feel so horribly bad anymore.

I can’t stand it. She is laughing. Laughing!

I have had a horrible day. Despite my various efforts at motivating myself, from opening my work documents to reading relevant subject matter, nothing had worked and by the time I finished writing my previous blog entry, I did not know what to do. So I picked up the phone and called my father.

He convinced me to come down to his office. Neither of us knew what for, exactly, but by that point it didn’t really matter. I was not getting any work done at home and staying in was not doing me any good, so visiting my father could not possibly have made anything worse.

I spent only an hour or so there; most of the time out of the house was actually spent travelling to and fro his office on the subway. I managed to complete the first Introduction and the first chapter to Fitness for Dummies, which my brother bought for me after our work out the other day. At my father’s, we spoke little about any actual work.

I left his office with a bag full of computer odds and ends, including a broken hard drive (with a working enclosure, which might come in handy), several RAM chips for my new boxes (I don’t know how much capacity yet), and an old flight simulator for classic Mac OS called Fly!. He also gave me a large sketchpad, which I currently envision doing plenty of database design and mind-mapping on, but for what I haven’t a clue. Absolutely nothing motivated me to do any work.

When I got home, I’m sure I did something equally unproductive. I can’t even remember what at this point. Right now, I am angry at Danica, very angry. That should be warning enough not to take everything I say too seriously, or to add your own grains of salt. Nevertheless, my father noted that whenever I stop blogging, my mood deteriorates, so this is an attempt not to let myself slip deeper into bipolar moodiness than I already have.

The only thing I can accurately recall doing after setting my new possessions in their respective places is vacuuming the living room floor. I remember this because, as I said, I am angry at Danica. The reason I had to vacuum the living room floor (for the third time in four days) is because Danica keeps walking around with her boots and shoes on after she comes home from work and before she leaves in the mornings. I spend most of my days in here, and cannot abide the feeling of dirt and dust and all sorts of other crap on my feet as I walk around, so I end up vacuuming.

Anger, Without the Argument

At approximately 10:50 PM, I went to take a shower. It was yet one more attempt to bring myself out of my bad mood. Near eleven o’clock, Danica buzzed from the building’s front door. I stepped out of the shower and listened for the door. Then I heard yet another insistent buzz from the buzzer.

Pavlov Returns

I grabbed a towel and scurried to the foyer to let her in. I unlocked the apartment’s front door and opened it when I saw her approach through the peephole. “Hello,” I said, “I was in the shower.” She gave me a look, not a blank look but not exactly a compassionate look either (I’m actually not sure what it was) and said, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Do you not have a key?” I asked. She said, “I was tired.” That wasn’t at all an answer to my question, but was a typical answer nonetheless. I interpreted it to mean that she was too lazy to actually take out her own keys and open the door herself. This is not entirely her fault: she has been buzzing me to let her in for about as long as we’ve been living together and, like an obedient lapdog, I have always opened the door for her.

To make it obscenely clear: I believe I am too fucking nice all the time, and was too fucking accomodating throughout our relationship. It did not do her, nor I, any good for me to coddle her all this time. It did, however, teach me some valuable lessons on self control.

I asked Danica again, “Do you actually have your keys with you” because I simply wanted to verify that indeed, yes, she had them. She said that she was sorry, but when I opened my mouth quickly added that she did, in fact, have her keys somewhere on her person. She undoubtedly sensed my next question, which would have been the same as my previous two as I had not yet recieved a straight answer.

Of course, there were two ways this conversation could have continued. I was dripping wet, cold, and soapy, and it would have been all too easy to glare at her and tell her to use the damn keys. While potentially making me feel a little better at the moment, I knew that would have been disastrous for the night ahead. Instead, I said, “How was your day?”

She said something about Tori Amos being at her place of work and it being an awful day because of it, but I paid more attention to the way her facial expression relaxed from that worried look she had on. Good, I thought, one potential fight avoided. The night was looking up.

Randy Returns

I finished my shower, wrapped myself in the towel, and headed to the living room. Danica was on her computer, bouncing back and forth between a few of her things (I caught a glimpse of her shoes being put away). I went online myself.

Then, some minutes later, I heard her speak. She was talking into her cellphone, and the moment she said the word “Hello” I could tell it was most likely Randy on the other end because of her instant switch into what I have come to call breathy voice. Breathy voice is when, during a moment of noteable drama of one sort or another, Danica silently clears her throat and pays careful (possibly unconscious) attention to the intonation of her speech. Breathy voice is quieter than normal voice because even though it uses more air it produces less vocalizations than normal speech; it is a seductress’ voice.

This angered me for several reasons, plenty of which are surely obvious and needn’t be repeated. One of the potentially not-so-obvious reasons was that just the other day I had explicitly asked her not to speak to Randy on the phone when I was unable to get away from the conversation. To be specific, I did not (and still do not) want to hear conversations she has with Randy and I especially don’t want to hear one side of them!

In this apartment there is no real way to avoid hearing phone conversations. Sure, I could put on headphones and blast the music, but why should I fucking have to do that? Okay, maybe I am not that nice. But that’s fine by me: I am through being nice.

More to the point, however, was the fact that she agreed not to talk with him on the phone while I was around. Despite her earlier (pseudo-)promise, however, there she was, talking, no, flirting with Randy on the phone and setting up another date for Friday night a mere two feet away from me. Perhaps I should have been able to ignore it, and I did try, but the more she talked with him the louder she became and soon I just could not stand it anymore.

So I rolled my chair out in front of her and started tapping my fingers on the arm rests firmly. It took a few moments before she got the hint, but she did eventually get it. Unfortunately, it did not do me much good. She told Randy, Hold on, I have to move to another room, went to the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

A valiant effort, perhaps, but not completely satisfactory. I am sure she tried to remain quieter, but I could still hear her decently well from my computer chair. After a few minutes, I wanted to somehow express my feelings.

I walked to the bedroom door and knocked three times. She told Randy to hold on and asked me what I wanted. I opened the door, and informed her that I needed to grab my pajamas. (And that was true, I was still wrapped in a towel at that point.) She asked me if she was bothering me (at last) and I sighed, saying I thought you agreed that you wouldn’t talk on the phone with—. She interuppted me with I know, I know, but he left me a message and I called him back and— something else about what happened.

Of course, all of that was true. Randy had left her a message on her voicemail (I heard his voice when she checked her messages) and then she had called him back. Here’s my point: She called him back. And the topic of discussion wasn’t even something urgent like the apartment lease she wants to get on his place. No, she called him back and made plans for Friday night!

Where is the integrity? Where is the personal responsibility? Where is the awareness? Where is the fucking consideration? (Okay, that last one is probably too subjective to be called anaylitcal, but then again most of this entry suffers from that. Hence the earlier disclaimer.)

In the end, she got up and put on her sweater and shoes. She left the apartment to talk to Randy (who was still waiting on hold on the phone) in the hallway of the building, outside the apartment. This was better; I couldn’t hear her anymore.

She came back, off the phone and finished with the discussion with Randy, only minutes later. On her way in, she held up the cell phone to me as if holding up her arms and said That’s it, it’s finished, I’m calling my mom now. And she did, in order to stress the importance of moving out as soon as possible.

New Attitude

Obviously, I began writing this entry back when she was on the phone with Randy, laughing and flirting. I was angry for a while, during that phone conversation, and even after she finished talking with her mother. Ironically, I had hoped tonight would be far more mellow, since I had had a pretty mellow, if unmotivated day.

After she spoke with her mother, Danica came to the living room couch and layed on it to rest. I was blogging. Somewhere in the middle there, she approached me and kissed my shoulder, and said I’m sorry, Mei. I didn’t really know what she was apologizing for, but I didn’t really want to stop writing. I didn’t answer, or react in any noteworthy way, so she left and went back to the couch.

(Later, I asked her why she had apologized. She said that she was sorry to have caused me pain, because she hates it when she does that and never means to do it. I didn’t say anything in response, but I did not really take what she said to heart. If she truly meant that at the time when she was causing pain, she would have stopped rather than get upset that I was inconveniencing her conversation with Randy. She also mentioned that she called Randy back as a last resort, after having tried to reach him online and having thought that his phone call was urgent. Even if this is true, I still wonder why she did not conduct her conversation with more consideration and awareness of her previous promise.)

Finally, somewhere during writing the previous parts of this entry, I stopped feeling so angry. In the angers place a quiet, uncaring resolve formed. Uncaring, that is, because I realized that I should no longer care what Danica’s intentions are. They should no longer constitute any part of any equation with which I form my reactions to situations that involve her. In other words: no more being nice.

I stopped blogging right before this subsection (the “New Attitude” section) and went to the kitchen to make myself dinner. I thought I’d prepare some pasta, but when I looked at the available ingredients I decided I’d make myself a sandwhich instead. While I was preparing the sandwhich, Danica came into the kitchen and sat down at the kitchen table.

We spoke during my dinner. She cried. I did not really empathize any more. I probably came off as quite distant and aloof. I spoke about my feelings and my decision to no longer be nice or accomodating. I mentioned that it was a conscious, calculated choice intended to do one thing only: protect my emotions.

At one point, Danica asked what time it was. She said she wanted to call her mother to further stress the fact that she really wanted to move out, but that it was too late to do so. (It was about 2:22 AM.) I simply stated that I was glad she found it necessary to move out, and that I was glad I was encouraging that behavior.

She told me, during this conversation, that she had been invited to a party after work but decided not to go because she was hoping things would be better between us tonight. She said she remembered how I said it was still hard for me to be alone (and it still is, regardless of whether I am nice or not) and so she came home for me. I told her not to blame me for her choices, and that I would not succumb to some unfounded reason to feel guilty. (Besides, she had made plans with Randy for Friday and Saturday nights; her social life is looking far better than mine, but you won’t find me guilt-tripping her about my lack of social outlets.)

In short, the fact that she broke her word yet again and I was hurt by it yet again showed me that I really must begin to remove myself emotionally from her. She seemed surprised when I told her it seemed like she was rubbing my nose in it when she called Randy. Maybe she truly doesn’t realize how often she breaks her words or what she was doing to me emotionally, but that is no longer going to temper my reactions. Ignorance is not an excuse to break the law, so shall it be with me.

I told her, when she was trying to explain her actions in that regard, that I no longer cared what her intentions were. I only cared what her actions were and how they affected me. That means they hurt me, and I was going to protect myself in whatever way I could. Obviously, the ways I have been trying so far have failed, so it is time to try a new way.

She claimed that I pushed her out of the apartment. In fact, I explictly told her when I entered the bedroom to get my pajamas, and I quote, No, I can’t kick you out of the apartment at this late hour. She told me that she should not care if I asked her not to speak with Randy on the phone, that she should just do it because it shouldn’t matter to her what I felt about it.

I told her that she had the right to do whatever she wanted, but that if she behaved that way then I had just as much right to make the environment palpable for me, whatever the cost. I would no longer hesitate to make speaking with Randy on the phone as inconvenient as possible for her in order to dissuade the action if it was hurting me. Childish? Protective.

She expressed fear that I would be “cruel” and do things like “misplace” her belongings. I told her I would do no such thing, that I had no intention of being agressive (or passive-agressive), and that I considered such things to be below me. I told her I was merely going to protect my own feelings at whatever cost necessary, which is reactive, not agressive. This means there would be no more accomodations, no more favors, no more considerations.

By the end of dinner, and our talk, she said she wanted to hurt me physically. (Her actual words were I want to kill you.) I shrugged, and when asked what I would do if she attacked me I said that I’d defend myself. I don’t believe she has any intent to actually lunge at me with a knife, but I do think she is quite pissed off at me. Good.

I will endeavor to no longer consider her emotions in what I do. Perhaps this is even something I should have done much sooner. At least now she gets to see the difference.

Bedtime

So now, I’m tired. It’s way too late, yet again, and I would actually like to get something done tomorrow. Hopefully, I will find motivation in some shape or form.

I am planning on going to the gym, even if it’s late. The subway ride will give me more time to read Fitness for Dummies and the work out will be beneficial. It may even give me the motivation I’ve been looking for. At the very least, I’ll be burning plenty of calories.

I am hoping that my new attitude will make life less painful, even if it is not necessarily smoother. I am not going to shy away from conflict and I am certainly not going to do any more bending. Typically, I have no tolerance for people whom I am not considerate of. Folks who know me know how caring and how thoughtful I can be. Folks who don’t know me don’t deserve special consideration because they have not earned it.

Danica has just lost all priviledges, and hopefully this will make my life with her here much easier; I don’t have to care anymore.

Meta-Data Notes on This Entry

This entry was written over a time span of about 6 hours. The timestamp is the publishing date and time. That means it’s long, obviously, and now that I’m done with it I’m way too tired to spell check it and go over it more than this brief look-over to find appropriate headlines.

As a result, this is simply not going to be as readable as some of my other entries which have undergone a less subjective write-up. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to pick out the facts from the story I have here.

I’m also just a little concerned that this entry will not accurately reflect all or some of the thoughts I intended to portray or record. I know for a fact that given more energy I could have phrased some things more accurately and included more pertinent details. It’s all good, though, since this is ultimately my entry and that’s all that matters to me.

I have been struggling with motivation woes once again. It is pretty annoying, actually, that most of the times when I have an opportunity to do something I would ordinarily really enjoy working on the main thing holding me back is me. Frankly, that’s just unacceptable but I’ve yet to find a workable solution for this monstrosity of a problem.

Fights with Danica Continue

Danica and I have been fighting somewhat frequently over the past few days. I fault myself for it just as much as I cite her (possibly unconsciousness) instigations. I have asked her not to talk on the phone with Randy when I can’t get away from it (i.e. whenever we’re both in the apartment) and if she should talk to him online I have asked her not to tell me about it. Most recent fights started because he or something to do him was the subject of conversation.

I don’t even know if they are fights so much as just frustrating arguments. When she tells me something like how she “prefers” to communicate with the minimal amount of words as possible pretty much across the board, I get frustrated because it was that mentality, incongruent with several other supposed principles or goals that she holds, that caused our break up. I keep thinking (and occasionally saying) “And how’s that working out for you?” with the obvious implication being that it doesn’t, and that it should probably be obvious by now.

But it is utterly useless, I know, to even attempt such arguments. For one reason or another, and probably more than a single one, she is unwilling to accept what I say and in all fairness I am unwilling to accept what she says. We keep butting heads and the only thing we do is feed our mutual frustration with the other. I think that by now we are both looking forward to when she will move out.

Side Notes on Moving Out

Things have been slow going in her quest for a new apartment. She has decided that Randy’s apartment is the perfect one for her (or is at least in the perfect location), and since he is moving out she has been hopeful that she can get the apartment. Of course, it has taken until yesterday for her to get the realtor’s number, and she has still made no phone call to either her mother or the realtor regarding her specific intentions to move in there.

Nevertheless, regardless of what happens, the locks are being changed on March 30^th and she will not be given an extra key. One already broke, but my landlord has not called me back about fixing the door. I will have to call back again, and then again, and then probably yet again.

Going to the Gym

One of the reasons I have not been writing as much lately is because I am tired and (get this) able to sleep full nights these days. When my brother came home over Presidents’ Day weekend I started going with him to the gym. He showed me how to use the erg machine (the one that simulates rowing) and I’ve been keeping a pretty consistent routine with that.

After the work out, we go to eat. In the evening, I am so tired that I have managed to sleep eight hour nights or longer. I’ve been shooting for sleeping between eight and ten hours because that’s the window in which your body can recover from the previous day’s work out, or so I’m told.

Getting out to the gym is a bigger hassle than I would have liked. I have to take the subway downtown because there is no New York Sports Club in my neighborhood. Also, the membership is crazy expensive. I don’t yet feel like it’s worth the money, but I am willing to give it some time. Their stupid ten day trial is not a reasonable timeframe with which to judge the effectiveness of a gym anyway, so I’ve resigned to paying through the nose for the time being.

All Comes Back to Money and Motivation

Of course, that means I’m pretty strapped for cash, or will be when all the bills roll on in. I just recently paid my first (prorated) Verizon telephone bill for my new landline. I am thinking about cutting off long-distance service, since I don’t really use that often anyway.

The only thing to do, then, is make more money. That’s where it all comes back to motivation. The programming job I got that I’m having trouble getting started with is a small project to build an extranet for a company’s promotional sales so that communication between folks in radically disperate timezones will be eased.

The trouble with this project for me right now is that it is not directly in my field of expertise. I can do it, but instead of feeling motivated I feel overwhelmed and outclassed. If this were a CSS project or some other web front-end work, I don’t think I’d feel this way, but it is instead mostly a back-end programming job that I simply haven’t the guts to tackle right now.

Things to Do

• Buy a Squash racquet in preparation for playing Squash on, hopefully, a regular basis.
• Call my dentist to proceed with the tooth implant appraisal. (Fuck, it’s past four. I guess this will have to wait until tomorrow. Again.)
• Get the programming job started, at the very least.
• If not, then at least work on Maymay Media’s web site, which for now is actually front-end only.
• If all else fails, I should have gone to the gym today, but it is already five o’clock and I don’t think I’ll realistically make it out.
• Try not to mope for the rest of the day.

I tried my best to stay awake for the remainder of the day yesterday, after writing my previous blog entry as the sun was rising today. (Well, technically yesterday again, damnit.) I managed to stay awake until slightly after noon. I spoke with Danica in the morning a little bit, after she woke up, but then fell asleep for a few hours.

I woke up a bit past six o’clock. Danica was preparing herself to go out to see Randy. He had called her the day before and asked her out, formally this time, on a dinner date. She told me about it before she went to bed, and had remarked that she was impressed because for someone like [Randy] asking a girl out is a big deal. (Whatever. I should do the diplomatic thing and say that I have no comment.)

She had planned to leave at seven o’clock, but Randy called her at 6:45 PM and informed her that he was going to be late, possibly very late. Danica stayed here until 8:15 PM, when she finally couldn’t stand being here anymore and left. She had told me before she left that she was planning on sleeping at Randy’s tonight, so I know not to expect her back.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the lack of her presence is making things easier or harder for me. It would certainly be easier not having to deal with Danica’s volatile moods as much anymore.

On her way out, for instance, she dropped her headphones and an earpeiece broke on the floor. Frustrated, she got out her iPod’s original packaging but was unable to get it open easily. To top it all off, she had already put her coat on and said she was overheating. All this was just piling up over the fact that she was ticked at having her plans pushed back in the first place.

To calm her down, I ended up opening the iPod’s packaging for her and helped her put the padding covers over the earpieces. I saw her to the door after she got her coat back on (she said she had to take it off) and waved goodbye. Then I went back to my computers.

Another Night Alone

It’s still hard to spend these nights alone. I haven’t been able to put my finger precisely on it ust yet, but I would feel safe to hazard a few guesses. I’m still angry, lonely, and hurt.

This morning I told Danica about what I did when I went out last night. She kept telling me that I’d have another girl falling head over heels in love with me in no time. She was implying that the female acquaintence I went out with was this girl.

I kept telling her that if that were so, that girl would just have to keep tripping over herself because I wasn’t going to catch her; I said I don’t want a romantic relationship now and I meant it. All I want are some friends to keep me company (who are able to see me in person).

I spent much of the rest of the evening burning Danica’s They Might Be Giants CD compilations into my iTunes library. While she was waiting for the minutes to pass so she could go see Randy, we spoke a bit about the CD collection she has. She remarked that one thing he co-worker who spent a year living with his ex-girlfriend constantly complained about was that his ex took a bunch of the good CDs they owned.

I reminded Danica that all of her CDs are just that, her own and not mine. She said she’d like me to rip the ones I liked anyway and I thanked her for that. So I ripped the They Might Be Giants CDs (because they are awesome song-writers), and this one CD called Boys Lie which was playing off her computer before she left. (I could identify with the female vocalists.) There are many others that I think are great which she owns, but I was not interested in fishing through her CDs tonight.

Necessary Maintenance

Much later tonight, I finally made myself a decent meal. I’ve been meaning to try out this Japanese fried tofu recipe for some time, but have been unable to find the motivation to try it. I have also not had any appetite for days now.

However tonight, only because I was beginning to feel faint from lack of food, I cooked myself a handful of spahgetti and tossed it onto a bowl with some Ragu tomato sauce I bought a week or two ago. I actually finished the entire bowl, and then ate an apple. Except for a piece of toast I had before I fell asleep this afternoon, this meal is the only thing I’ve eaten all day.

When I went into the kitchen I noticed several things.

• First, the lid of the garbage bin I had purchased was still stained with some kind of tea or coffee. I had noticed that yesterday and asked Danica what happened. She just said she’d clean it up. Of course, I was the one who actually cleaned it up before I made myself that bowl of spahgetti today.

• Second, there were plenty of dishes still in the sink. A few of them were mine from that morning, but most of them were not. I never did ask her to do dishes, so I suppose it’s unfair that I felt pissed at her for leaving them for me to do. I grumbled angrily to myself but cleaned them all anyway.

This was not really a surprise or anything; I’ve been living with the girl for over a year already so I know what to expect. It was not irritating me because there were dishes to wash that I did not want to wash, rather it was irritating me because it was a reminder of her. I don’t hate the chore so much anyway, and this was the sort of thing I would have been happy to do for a kiss on the cheek when she came home later.

But now, I didn’t want to be reminded of her existence, especially when that would also remind me of where she was most probably located at the moment. (That is, with Randy.) On a broader level, it reminded me that she was also not about to do any changing.

Like I said earlier, I really don’t believe she has the capacity to be self-reliant. Her irritability and frustration as she was leaving the house today showed me that, too. When I told her this flat-out in the morning hours today (should I not have?) she nodded and agreed with me. Then she said something about seeing Randy that night. I felt like I was talking to a wall.

Dead Roses

I also noticed that the roses she had bought me the day before Valentine’s Day were almost dead. I had been taking care of these roses with a lot of enthusiasm for the past couple of days, changing their water, feeding them with the little packet of plant food that came with them, trimming the ends off their stems, etc. Now, I didn’t really care that they were dieing.

The enthusiasm stemmed from my need to divert my attention from Danica’s explicit and implicit requests to get back together over the course of the past half week or so. Taking care of these roses let me end the relationship the way I wanted. I knew that these flowers would eventually die no matter how hard I worked to keep them alive, but as long as I was trying to keep these flowers alive instead of my relationship, I would be strong enough not to get back together with her when she asked me to.

Getting her out of my head has been an impossible challenge. Even when I was out of the house last night walking around downtown, I had considered buying her something. I was at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square and bought myself four DVD movies that were on sale.

• Pi
• The Iron Giant
• Mullholland Drive
• A Clockwork Orange

All together, these were only $48.88, which is actually a pretty good deal, I think.

I bought them because I really like each of these movies and do want to own a somewhat respectable movie library. I’m hoping that sooner, rather than later, I can get my fileserver functioning and will be able to back them all up as well as stream them to my laptop no matter where I am in the world. This will make travelling a lot easier, because I’ll still be able to take my entire movie and music library with me thanks to the wonders of SSH and VLC.

But, I digress. The point is that as I was browsing the shelves of the store, I saw many things that Danica would have loved and I would have bought for her without a second thought had it not been for our recent breakup. These included such things like Mr. Show DVDs, The Office (First and Second Seasons along with The Special), and Fire Walk With Me.

I do honestly hope that Danica is enjoying herself with Randy. Before she left today, while she was desperately trying to kill time, she said a few things that struck me. Most of these things were probably just things she said due to an emotional impulse of one sort or another, and they all had negative connotations about her, her relationship(s), or something related to that.

Among the comments she made was the remark that her relationship with Randy will be over so quickly. This struck me because she had told me before how much she cared for the boy. (Er, man, or, whatever.) Also, in the morning before I napped this afternoon when she brought up Randy again, I told her that one of the things that had hurt me so much during the past few days was how she had compared me to him.

She had told me that Randy was more the type of artistic [she] like[s] and that he is geeky like [me] but more creative in what he does. She apologized profusely when I told her about this, and said that she didn’t remember saying either of those things but that if she had she must have not been thinking clearly. She then told me how brilliant she thought I was, and gushed for a few moments on that subject.

I didn’t say very much, except for mentioning that it really hurt me then and still hurts me now, despite the fact that I appreciated her compliments. It all just goes to highlight the point that the contradictions won’t end, and I can not believe what I hear at any given moment. Actions have always spoke louder than words, and they are somewhat consistent, too.

The Final Death of Past Ghosts

Of course, it is very likely that much of her behavior is triggered by her bipolar disorder. As someone with bipolar disorder myself, I empathize immensely with what she must be going through. In fact, part of why I have been so forgiving is because I have gone through very similar things myself, and I was not expecting calm waters all the time.

So I am reminded of one of the things I had said the day after we broke up and she had spent hours crying asking me to take her back: I don’t resurrect past ghosts.

I am looking forward to tomorrow; I am seeing my brother, who’s coming back home for the weekend. I also have an appointment with a periodontist in the afternoon, for which I should be resting for. And that’s about all I want to say about that tonight.