Let's clear something up.
When I say romantic I mean like medieval , or the Merriam Webster version -4 a: marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized.
Last night my room mate said something about me in a very off handed way. I mean to say that she wasn't being malicious by saying it, that there was no feeling behind it really, because she was saying it about me in reference to herself. Which made it hurt that much more - it was just a commonplace thought for her. I suppose I knew it, just never simplified into such a ... well, here.
She's going through this break up. She and I have entirely different approaches to relationships, and I've been trying to be supportive, but I suppose I'm not really that good at it.
Anyway, in response to something I said, she says, "No, it's like I'm dating you, which is shitty. Because no one gets out alive."
Bam. Just like that, I am almost in tears. It's true. I mean, when it comes to relationships I'm pretty f***ing heartless. I don't really try to be, I just don't want anyone hanging their happiness on me. I've been trying to approach that about myself, trying to find out if I really even want to change it.
I took it much too hard, because I did cry about it, when she wasn't around. I'm not angry about it, I'm just sad that it's true. It's like the occasional dark hairs I get on my neck (yeah, you get to read that about me). I can't really be mad that they're there, it's part of who I am. I can pluck them (and I do, I don't want to intimidate anybody) but they come back, and they probably always will. It sucks, but I have to live with it.
So in the midst of my tears I just really wanted to be up in the mountains somewhere, camping or in a cabin, looking out a window at the brisk night. I would be laying on my side in my sleeping bag or under a blanket, and maybe it would snow.
Which is awful. I hate snow. Let me say that again to reiterate. I HATE snow.
I'm not sure I've ever been in that situation, but I could see it clearly. In a bout of (possibly unwarranted) emotion, I was nostalgic for something that had never happened, and comforted by it.
Yep, that last paragraph was probably all I had to write to relate this post to the title. Really though, what would be the point in having a too-personal blog if I didn't alienate the audience?
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Monday, April 28, 2014
Bad at Conclusions, or Mystery Bush of Butterfield Place
4/22
5 a.m. is sneaking past the curtain, making it just light enough for me to watch myself scratch at my side with all the delicacy of an ogre and think nothing of it.
Six hours later I'm out of the shower and my whole left flank is bright red and will later be described as "angry."
After what should have been a really embarrassing emotional snippet at a tutoring section I shuffle, fidget, scratch, and wiggle through three hours of class.
Standing outside Waldo Hall I make the mistake of looking up "scabies" on Google Images. Luckily for me, my torso doesn't look anything like that. It has now spread up my arm and to my right side.
In a moment of itch induced insanity I consider asking the professor if she knows anything about rashes. The blinding panic subsides, and I realize what a severe social mistake I have narrowly avoided.
Later, at home I subject my room mate to at least two hours of more Google searches;
Shingles.
Heat rash.
Ring worm.
A whole website called "What's This Rash?"
Nothing looks like what I have, but I've all ready slid down the slope.
I convince myself of two things; (a) stop looking on the internet and (b) this is a stress induced rash. I lay awake trying to reconstruct my recent past to find some hint to my current state. It's a rough night for sleeping.
4/23
I make an appointment with Student Health Services, call my dad, and withdraw from my biology class.
I procrastinate and worry about the possibility of hypochondria.
At 2 p.m. I am sitting in the lobby of the Student Health building, trying to catch my breath and get my wallet, keys, head phones, cell phone, backpack and helmet to coordinate with each other. I'm not winning at this game when the medical assistant calls me back.
By this point I have settled in to an ominous state of acceptance. I joke with the MA about my shingles/heat rash/worms and he jokes about throwing the blood pressure cuff away.
When the doctor calls me into his office I am still struggling with all of the things I've decided to hold instead of put in my backpack.
I lump them in a pile on the floor.
(Let me take a moment to tell you about the trouble I go through to not be partially naked in a locker room on campus. I mean I change in a stall - a toilet stall - with a towel wrapped around myself as much as possible while trying to change one handed.)
The doctor introduces himself, says something about itching and I say, "Look, this is going to be a lot easier with my shirt off," because I am tactful and patient.
He is not in the least bit phased, which is good because I don't have time to be embarrassed. Soon I will have scratched away what few social skills I have along with the top layer of my skin.
"Ah, that looks angry."
"Yeah, and it's jumped my bra line." Because it has - there's a suspicious patch of not itchy skin right under my not itchy arm pit. My bra is still on, by the way. The rash is only on my sides and the bottom of my left arm. It hasn't progressed since the day before.
"Urticaria." He doesn't even need to think about it. "These are the classic symptoms of contact dermatitis, a severe allergic reaction to something that's touched your skin. If it was something you ingested, it'd be all over, and the same with any lotions or creams you use - it'd be where you put them." He prescribes a three day regimen of two antihistamines and Prednisone.
This is when I finally get embarrassed. Of course my mind would go to the most complicated and unlikely solution. It's not stress or shingles, you diva, it's allergies.
This is why I'm bad at math. If a train leaves a station going at 60 miles per hour and a second train leaves an hour later then there's probably a Russian spy on the second train who has just smuggled a suitcase full of illegally imported wormwood past the border and is planning on sabotaging the first train's induction into the Union Pacific museum. I mean I make things more complicated than they need to be.
Sure enough, after one dose of the prescriptions the itchiness subsides
4/25
A follow up appointment just reaffirms the doctor's diagnosis. I did not feel the need to pull my shirt off this time.
I have narrowed it down to a wool sweater and a bush that lived and died in our front yard.
A big dead bush I wrestled with on the 20th, in short sleeves and gloves.
A nasty bush which I managed to inadvertently get a piece of in my mouth somehow, because I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh, that is probably poisonous."
A stupid bush whose stupid dead branches worked their way under my shirt while I was trampling them into the yard debris cart, and probably left a few scrapes on my side and arm.
These are things I just don't even think of after so many scratches, pokes, dings and what have you. A few scrapes don't even register on the ow-meter, let alone the "huh, I may be severely allergic to this" meter. I don't even have that meter. It didn't come with the factory settings.
To be fair, this will be my first allergic reaction to anything (minus hay fever, of course).
4/28
And now it's Monday at about 1 in the morning, and I am writing too many personal details about an incident that is only slightly funny and/or ironic to me.
I feel like there's an awful metaphor in there somewhere.
5 a.m. is sneaking past the curtain, making it just light enough for me to watch myself scratch at my side with all the delicacy of an ogre and think nothing of it.
Six hours later I'm out of the shower and my whole left flank is bright red and will later be described as "angry."
After what should have been a really embarrassing emotional snippet at a tutoring section I shuffle, fidget, scratch, and wiggle through three hours of class.
Standing outside Waldo Hall I make the mistake of looking up "scabies" on Google Images. Luckily for me, my torso doesn't look anything like that. It has now spread up my arm and to my right side.
In a moment of itch induced insanity I consider asking the professor if she knows anything about rashes. The blinding panic subsides, and I realize what a severe social mistake I have narrowly avoided.
Later, at home I subject my room mate to at least two hours of more Google searches;
Shingles.
Heat rash.
Ring worm.
A whole website called "What's This Rash?"
Nothing looks like what I have, but I've all ready slid down the slope.
I convince myself of two things; (a) stop looking on the internet and (b) this is a stress induced rash. I lay awake trying to reconstruct my recent past to find some hint to my current state. It's a rough night for sleeping.
4/23
I make an appointment with Student Health Services, call my dad, and withdraw from my biology class.
I procrastinate and worry about the possibility of hypochondria.
At 2 p.m. I am sitting in the lobby of the Student Health building, trying to catch my breath and get my wallet, keys, head phones, cell phone, backpack and helmet to coordinate with each other. I'm not winning at this game when the medical assistant calls me back.
By this point I have settled in to an ominous state of acceptance. I joke with the MA about my shingles/heat rash/worms and he jokes about throwing the blood pressure cuff away.
When the doctor calls me into his office I am still struggling with all of the things I've decided to hold instead of put in my backpack.
I lump them in a pile on the floor.
(Let me take a moment to tell you about the trouble I go through to not be partially naked in a locker room on campus. I mean I change in a stall - a toilet stall - with a towel wrapped around myself as much as possible while trying to change one handed.)
The doctor introduces himself, says something about itching and I say, "Look, this is going to be a lot easier with my shirt off," because I am tactful and patient.
He is not in the least bit phased, which is good because I don't have time to be embarrassed. Soon I will have scratched away what few social skills I have along with the top layer of my skin.
"Ah, that looks angry."
"Yeah, and it's jumped my bra line." Because it has - there's a suspicious patch of not itchy skin right under my not itchy arm pit. My bra is still on, by the way. The rash is only on my sides and the bottom of my left arm. It hasn't progressed since the day before.
"Urticaria." He doesn't even need to think about it. "These are the classic symptoms of contact dermatitis, a severe allergic reaction to something that's touched your skin. If it was something you ingested, it'd be all over, and the same with any lotions or creams you use - it'd be where you put them." He prescribes a three day regimen of two antihistamines and Prednisone.
This is when I finally get embarrassed. Of course my mind would go to the most complicated and unlikely solution. It's not stress or shingles, you diva, it's allergies.
This is why I'm bad at math. If a train leaves a station going at 60 miles per hour and a second train leaves an hour later then there's probably a Russian spy on the second train who has just smuggled a suitcase full of illegally imported wormwood past the border and is planning on sabotaging the first train's induction into the Union Pacific museum. I mean I make things more complicated than they need to be.
Sure enough, after one dose of the prescriptions the itchiness subsides
4/25
A follow up appointment just reaffirms the doctor's diagnosis. I did not feel the need to pull my shirt off this time.
I have narrowed it down to a wool sweater and a bush that lived and died in our front yard.
A big dead bush I wrestled with on the 20th, in short sleeves and gloves.
A nasty bush which I managed to inadvertently get a piece of in my mouth somehow, because I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh, that is probably poisonous."
A stupid bush whose stupid dead branches worked their way under my shirt while I was trampling them into the yard debris cart, and probably left a few scrapes on my side and arm.
These are things I just don't even think of after so many scratches, pokes, dings and what have you. A few scrapes don't even register on the ow-meter, let alone the "huh, I may be severely allergic to this" meter. I don't even have that meter. It didn't come with the factory settings.
To be fair, this will be my first allergic reaction to anything (minus hay fever, of course).
4/28
And now it's Monday at about 1 in the morning, and I am writing too many personal details about an incident that is only slightly funny and/or ironic to me.
I feel like there's an awful metaphor in there somewhere.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Oh, sure. You and everyone else with their blog.
Here we are again.
More than a year down the road. I'm a student again, knee deep in archaeology classes and minoring in Ag Science. But who cares, really?
I guess this blog was really for me. A tribute to myself, "Look, me! Look how witty I am and how well I can write, and all the things I do!" Good lord. For all the private thoughts I have about a certain social networking site being an attention vacuum, I sure am capable of attempting to be a vacuum myself.
That's right. I'm a hypocrite. Also, my writing could use some improvement - or a lot. I know it.
The thing about this blog - nobody is going to see it.
And while I secretly hope that out there in the ether someone is reading these words with admiration and a smirk, I'm fairly certain no one is.
It's a little dangerous, a little head trip. I could write whatever I want! Isn't that the point? I'll admit it. I want someone to think I'm clever but not tell me about it, just moon.
Hey, I don't dictate your fantasies.
I'm just letting you know (and by you, I mean me, because I am probably the only one reading this), that I know what this is all about. This blog. I get it. I don't need your approval, me. Get off it.
More than a year down the road. I'm a student again, knee deep in archaeology classes and minoring in Ag Science. But who cares, really?
I guess this blog was really for me. A tribute to myself, "Look, me! Look how witty I am and how well I can write, and all the things I do!" Good lord. For all the private thoughts I have about a certain social networking site being an attention vacuum, I sure am capable of attempting to be a vacuum myself.
That's right. I'm a hypocrite. Also, my writing could use some improvement - or a lot. I know it.
The thing about this blog - nobody is going to see it.
And while I secretly hope that out there in the ether someone is reading these words with admiration and a smirk, I'm fairly certain no one is.
It's a little dangerous, a little head trip. I could write whatever I want! Isn't that the point? I'll admit it. I want someone to think I'm clever but not tell me about it, just moon.
Hey, I don't dictate your fantasies.
I'm just letting you know (and by you, I mean me, because I am probably the only one reading this), that I know what this is all about. This blog. I get it. I don't need your approval, me. Get off it.
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