From Now On

Copyright

Linda Escaip

"I may be grumpy,

but I like you."

The Suns and Moons of the Grumpiest Girl in the Room.

Welcome to my journal, zippy.

From Now On

12-Feb-2005

11:20 a.m.

Something glorious has occurred. Someone who adores me and likes seeing me naked has let me in on a little secret: I'm getting a pink iPod mini for Valentine's Day. Yay! One thousand songs able to accompany me wherever I go. Excuse me while I squeal with delight like a pig as pink as my soon-to-arrive iPod mini. Music, music, music. I might just have to start rocking again.

Speaking of music, I have two CDs on the way from Amazon: Romantic Piano Adagios and Violin Adagios. Heaven on discs, I tell you. I want to learn how to relax, having not felt calm inside my body for many years. My ability to visualize is strong, so I'm going to incorporate it into my music listening and see what sort of changes come about. Hey, people have rid their bodies of cancer through visualization,* and if they can do that, I can teach myself to relax. Everything begins in the mind anyway.

Earlier I watched (formerly washed, for some reason) a 1999 movie called A Slipping Down Life starring Lili Taylor and Guy Pearce. I enjoyed, although there seemed to be pieces missing here and there. But there was no lack of spider, that's for sure. During one outdoor scene, Lili had a good size spider crawling on her hairline, and when the camera shot to her again it was gone. For some reason the filmmakers chose not to cut out the spontaneous arachnid cameo. I wish they had left in the footage of Lili realizing it and slapping crazily at her head. Maybe they'll include it on the special edition version, if ever there is one. I would briefly like to mention that if I were a man, I would want to look like Guy Pearce. And because I found him to be even cuter in drag, I would be a drag queen. Oh, wait, should I have typed hot in place of cute? I think cute is now too sterile a word to describe someone's attractiveness, since we're now taking temperatures to deduce fuckability rankings. I just think he's cute, and don't particularly want to fuck him. So, there. Now, may I get on with my drag queen parallel existence fantasy in peace?

I fold my underwear. Do you?

Since I made the decision a couple days ago to devote time to learning how to relax, I have actually been more relaxed. I guess just the idea of relaxing is pretty relaxing. The world is weird and wonderful, and sometimes the weird outweighs the wonderful, and I let every last bit of the weird get to me, hence the lack of tranquility.

There is much depression and anxiety going around, and I am no stranger to either. I have been anxious since I was a very tiny girl—I'm a chronic worrier. The depression became quite noticeable to me around the age of 10, after my beautiful friend died. You're not supposed to lose your friends that way when you're ten. The rules need revision. But sometimes the world just can't wait to spring shit on you. I picture it sometimes—the world—rubbing its hands together in excited anticipation of the next big shock, the next nasty rip in someone's heart. But then I try to console myself with everything happens for a reason thoughts, and I feel a little better for five minutes. And that is what I hope, that everything does happen for a reason, and that one day we'll know why we witnessed and experienced so many painful events, which we didn't understand, which took our hearts and our minds and rearranged every last bit until we were left with jagged jigsaw puzzle pieces that, when put back together, no longer resembled what we had previously known as ourselves.

I have a feeling a good deal of the anxiety and depression being experienced by so many has something to do with expectation. And either the expectations are multiplying or they are expanding. We are expected, by ourselves and others, to be, to do, to have, or else we will measure under the mark. And even if you don't feel moved to measure up, there can be plenty of anxious, depressing feelings accompanying you as you watch others trip over themselves, often oblivious to their own scrambling, trying to accomplish goals that will hopefully render them more important than they felt previously.

There is much to bum you out—take your pick. Not knowing where you're going, where you're meant to go, or what you want, and all the while feeling varying degrees of pressure to go and get wherever and whatever it is you're not sure of yet. And then there is the knowing exactly what you want, but not knowing how to get it. Or being too old to get it, or so you've come to believe, because we seem to be executing time limits for more than just contest entries and tests these days.

I am familiar with all of those unpleasant feelings. I've spent the last eight and a half years trying to understand an illness it seems no one has completely figured out, and in that time I have felt my dreams fall out of the cracks in my heart. I pick them up and try to stuff them back in, but they find their way out again. Sometimes people stumble upon them and bring them back to me. And I am hopeful for a moment, an hour, a day. I live for those moments.

Hope is never lost, but you can choose to stop hoping, which will land you in a dark, crap-coloured place where everything unfortunate seems endless, and where people languish between anger and apathy. Anger, if left to flourish, will eat all your best parts first and spend years snacking on the rest until you no longer recognize yourself. Apathy will suck your personality out of you almost as quickly as a Shop Vac can down a cat hair tumbleweed.

So, hope is good. Like cake and friendship and promises kept, hope is something you want to keep around. Don't ever let anyone convince you that your hopes are unrealistic or naive—nobody has the right to dictate that to you. And if they try it, kick them in the weenie. No—don't do that. Just plug your ears and sing loudly until they go away, probably in search of someone else to bum out.

Hot shit, I just learned something new. The health food store up the street sells bogus ham sandwiches. You know, nothing with the word bogus in it sounds edible. I ordered the Enchiladas Corazon, mostly because I'm spicy. Can't wait to eat those beauties. This bread-free diet is not kicking my ass nearly as much as it has in the past. I do miss cake and spaghetti and toast, but I don't miss the heartburn. And it's nice not to appear six months pregnant just from eating a sandwich.

I hope I exercise some self-control when it comes to downloading MP3s for my shiny pink iPod. I can see myself losing my nugget a little and having to start entertaining lonely businessmen in the evenings. No! I will not do that again. If I slip over the edge I'll just follow through with my idea for Pet Wigs. Yeah, like you don't wish you had come up with that idea.

That fluffy-headed bird I mention from time to time, the one who craps on the solar lights, he still visits daily, rain or shine. He loves the rain; I watched him the other day, frolicking by the pool. I don't know how to express how much I love that bird. In the photograph below, the boy's crazy hair looks just like what is happening on top of that bird's head. Good stuff.