End of Days

I think, therefore I fear. I have an obsession with Armageddon and the end of the world. I have pretty much been interested (i.e. terrified) in since I was about 12 years old and first really comprehended the implications of death and war. I know most of the prophecies, and have researched almost all of them. I am particularly obsessed with 12.21.2012. I have nightmares about it, I will have periods of time where it is all I think about. I will spend hours online searching for more predictions and compiling lists of independent predictions that coincide. I have pored over the book of Revelations so many times that I nearly have it memorized.

On top of that, I have a serious problem with believing in God. My problem is that I want to believe. I want to believe more than anything I could possibly want, but I have such a hard time. I think too much. I can't help but question. I feel like I just don't try hard enough. Like the answer is on the tip of my tongue, but I just can't get it out.

I'm so incredibly terrified of the end of the world. I'm both afraid that there is a god, and all the prophecies will come true and I'll end up going to hell for being a lukewarm believer, or that there isn't a god and the prophecies will come true and I'll suffer only to die a real and final death. Do I fear hell or do I fear a complete cessation of existence more? It's hard to say. I almost fear the end of me more than I fear hell, but of course if there is a hell, not existing would be infinitely better then going to hell if it really is as bad as it is supposed to be.

One thing I do believe, I do believe that the world is going to end in my lifetime.
Maybe its only because I also fear the alternative, dying of old age. I don't know what's worse. I have such a fear of death and the end of the world that I have panic attacks when I think about it too much. It's ridiculous, really, but I can't help it. When I start to think about it I have to force myself to think of someone else so I don't freak out. If I really could believe that there was something beyond death then maybe I'd be ok. But I can't. I want to, and sometimes I do, but I don't believe it all the time.

What's interesting is that while I've always had this fear, it's never been this bad until Chase was born. Before that, it was all abstract. But now, it's constantly just under the surface. I will be playing with him and someone will make some kind of comment about him growing up, which of course naturally leads me to think of my growing older, and my thoughts progress from there. And then I have to sing at the top of my lungs, or read a book, or somehow detach the thought from myself. I just want someone to hold my hand and tell me that there is nothing to fear.

--Dragon Read more!

Your World Is Killing Me

Bored and lonely. The weather today and yesterday has been bad. Really bad, especially yesterday (note: if you live in some part of the world that actually has real storms, you're going to laugh at me. But this is California. We don't have real storms here). The wind blew trees and telephone poles down all over the place, roads were closed, and pretty much the only part of town that still had power was the part I live in. Lucky me. There are still people without electricity.

Thanks to the lovely weather, my boss canceled work yesterday. Making me miss out on 3 or 4 houses (a full day, in other words), so my next check will be for only 2 days, as have been every check for the past 3 or 4 weeks. I've been clearing less than $100 a check, and I'm pretty much screwed.

Next week I have Monday off because I have 3 appointments that I made before I started working at Merry Maids, and we are supposed to be having fewer houses each week now that the holidays are over. This sucks. This really sucks. I love my job. My bosses are fantastic, and so are all the girls I work with. But I need to essentially make double what I'm making now just to break even.

On top of that, I start school on the 22nd and will be going to school from about 8am until 10pm Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then from 11am until 5pm on Saturdays. Which leaves me 3 days to work, as I refuse to work on Sundays. I have worked 2 jobs before without any days off, and it was sheer hell. There is no way for me to make it if I don't have one day off a week. I will self-destruct, as I did before. So I can either get a second job working Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the evenings, or I can find another job that somehow magically pays more and lets me work those days during the day.

Now, while it would suck, I could do it-- if I didn't have Chase. How can I work two jobs, go to school full time, and still take care of Chase? He'll never get to see me. I'll be gone from 8am until 11 or 12pm every day except Saturday and Sunday. That's got to be detrimental to the kid's mental health, right? What should I do? I am swiftly running out of time to figure out how to make it all work. Fuck. Yep. Bad words, even.

--Dragon Read more!

In Search Of The Rising Sun

Well, here we are on the eve of a whole new year. I have spent this year in a holding pattern, and only now am I beginning to take off. Will gravity hold me earthbound, or will I break free and soar? Only time will tell. I can only hope that I will make it. So, as tradition dictates, I am here to outline my goals for 2008. With a bit of luck and a whole truckload of determination, I will conquer them.

1. The first and foremost goal, and possibly the most labor intensive, is to complete the semester without dropping out. I am almost legendary for starting things and not finishing them. But there are only so many second chances, and I can't keep hoping that I'll be able to get it right 'next time.'

2. I also intend to stay at my current job until at least August. Not only is the work physically demanding and therefore good for me, but I have a tendancy to screw things up whenever they are going good. So I am going to do my best to make sure that I don't throw it away. My bosses are wonderful and it is incredibly difficult to replace an employer who is so compassionate and understanding as they are.

3. My final goal for the year is to see Evan and decide what I want to do about him. He says he is coming out to visit his family (and therefore me) some time in the next few months, and at such time I need to decide whether I want to keep him or just be friends. He's fantastic, but he's also timid. Very timid. So we shall see.

These are my goals. In text for anyone to look at. It's much harder to break a commitment when other people know about it.

This year was mainly a year of senseless motion with no real direction. I will not dwell on it, beyond to say that I ended it on a beautiful note, watching the stars until sunrise (albeit in below freezing temperatures) on top of Table Mountain with a bunch of friends. We were seeking the rising sun. Let us hope that next year, as we did this morning, I find it.

So long and goodnight. See you all next year.

--Dragon Read more!

Space, The Final Frontier

Mom's moving out. She and Sam are going to move back in with Russ, my stepdad. So Samantha, a friend I've had since I was 13, and Christian, her boyfriend, are going to move in with me. Do you know what that means??? I GET A ROOM ALL TO MYSELF!!!! Sweet! Chase and I will take the upstairs bedrooms and they'll take the downstairs bedroom, and so I'll finally have a room all to myself devoid of any buffin paraphernalia and all kinds of nice empty space that I won't have to clutter up! Yay!

--Dragon Read more!

From Dwelling to Home

Been feeling like crap. Things around here have been sucking incredibly hard lately-- broke, sleepless, stressed out, effing moronic me forgetting to take my meds every day so I've been feeling even more crappy, and worse, the running is in my head again. Sometimes I feel stifled, like my skin is too tight and I can't breathe, and I just want to run. When everything is a mess and I feel like there's no use cleaning it, and I just want to start over with a clean canvas. Those times where I feel like grabbing my CDs, some clothes, and my journal and just driving until the gas runs out. This has been one of those times.

But today there is hope. Finally we got some good news- today we heard from the people at the apartment complex we applied to. It's a brand new complex (only a few people living in it right now), it's absolutely gorgeous and feels blank, no impressions or leftover unpleasantness from previous owners (I get impressions in places. I've turned down more than a few awesome apartments because they made me feel sad or creeped out. Wierd, I know.). We have to turn in a few things and we are pretty much guaranteed to get the place.

It's CHIP (Cali's low income housing program, for those who don't know), so the rent will be about the same or less than we are paying now for a beautiful 3 bedroom apartment. It's a really unique design, too: it's in a three story building and occupies the top two floors in a building with 8 units, 4 3 bedrooms and 4 2 bedrooms that are located on the bottom floor. The upstairs is accessed by a door leading to an internal staircase that is part of the upstairs apartment.

There are 2 bedrooms and a bathroom on the top floor and one bedroom and one bathroom on the lower floor. The bottom room would be mine, and I'd have my own bathroom (OMG YAY!). It is awesome. Filled with light, all energy star appliances, a kitchen with a fantastic work triangle, and lots of storage space. It also has a large storage closet on the ground floor for things like barbeque equipment and the like.

I am so excited. I love moving, it makes me feel new and satisfies the nagging urge to run. Best of all, my mom will finally have her own room (right now she sleeps in the living room), so we will have a real living room and won't have to retreat to our rooms after about 9pm. Yay! Late night movies and all that when I can't sleep!

Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

--Dragon Read more!

Beginnings

September has always been a month of beginnings for me. Perhaps it is because I spent so much of my life in school. Not only that, but September is when the summer begins to fade and the light shifts from the hazy gold of August to the crisp blue of October. The time changes, the nights grow longer, and the wind begins to blow. I've never had the feeling in January that I do in September, the feeling of wanting to start again and make myself anew.

This September, especially, I want to be renewed. I feel as if I have been on hold for the past year, doing, being nothing. Last fall and winter I was far too messed up to even want to think of changing. I only wanted things to be the way they had been before. I spent most of my time locked in my room wishing I had the courage to slit my wrists. I stopped going to work, and spent the majority of my waking moments trying to lose myself in a game or sitting on the floor of the shower so no one could hear me cry. The rest of the time I tried to sleep, laying on my bed dreaming the surreal dreams of one half-awake.

After a few months of this, reality hit me and I had to pay rent and a slew of other bills I had accumulated. I got a job but lost it within a few weeks because I hated going to work in the morning. I got another one and the same thing happened. Since I was fired, however, I was able to apply for unemployment. I started looking for a new job but it was pretty half-assed. By this time I had gotten my license, so I was free to go wherever I wanted. Instead of locking myself in my room I tried to outrun what I was feeling. I would speed down the highway blasting music as loud as I dared as if it would drown out the demons.

The other benefit of finally having a license was that I started to get out and be sociable. I figured that perhaps I would forget to be miserable if I was around other people. I began going to Open Mic at a local coffee shop, which is where I saw Erik again. We had worked together before when I was the assistant manager at Taco Bell. I knew he had a crush on me then, but I was never interested. He was nice, but not at all "my type". This time was different, however. I thought that perhaps my problem was in going after guys of a certain type, and if I found someone completely opposite of that, I would avoid most of the problems that came with it, so we began talking on the phone and spending time together, and I started to feel a lot better.

Shortly thereafter I started dating, and I felt like a regular person again instead of the mess I had become. I started school and was doing quite well. Shortly after that, I got pregnant. I was so upset. I never wanted to get pregnant, and while I liked Erik, I didn't necessarily want to go passing on his genes to future generations. Call me a snob if you will, but I just didn't think he was necessarily a prime candidate for furthering the species.

Again I fell into that dark spiral. I tried to be happy about it, but all I could see was how this was going to completely screw up my life. I left school because I had started working again, and on top of that had to drive Erik everywhere because his car was broken. It was all too much. I don't see myself as a very strong person, contrary to what many of my friends and family believe, and I didn't think I was capable of taking care of someone else and having a job or going to
school.

At this point, Erik and I decided to get married. I don't know why I said yes. I never really felt like Erik was "forever" material. There were certain things about him that I knew I would not be able to live with for an extended period of time. Perhaps I just didn't want to be alone. The world was looking so big and I felt so incredibly small.

So we began planning a wedding. And more and more I felt like I was trapping myself. Living with Erik, I didn't feel like it was me standing together against the world. It felt as if I was all alone and he just happened to be there. I had to protect him and do all the thinking and planning and making sure everything got taken care of. This was not how I wanted to live my life.

Finally, after months of this, I decided enough was enough and I told him that I was tired of being the only adult, of making all the decisions and taking care of everything. I told him to either step up or get out. He didn't believe me. Of course, I was serious and I ended up asking him to leave.

Then my mom moved in and things got a little better. Still, it feels like one thing after another is going wrong. And I just need something to go right for once.

I started this year in a black hell that I managed to escape, if only part of the way. Things started to get a lot better and then I slid back. I couldn't take the responsibility of taking care of myself and taking care of Erik. Finally someone realized I was serious and said, "Gee, I think you're bipolar. Let me see if I can help you with that." Even though I had been looking for help for months, this only came after Erik called the cops on me because I was sitting in my car having a panic attack and threatening to kill him or myself. Gotta love the system.

(On a side note, one mental health worker told me that no psychiatrist would touch me because I was pregnant and there were no medications you could safely take while pregnant. She even suggested that if it was really that bad that I should just have myself committed until the baby was born. She tried to make me feel guilty for seeking help while pregnant and as if I had no right to life or sanity now that I was an incubator for another human being. If I ever see that woman on the street, I will beat her to a bloody pulp. She has no right to work in mental health and ought to be strung up by her heels and let bleed to death slowly. But I digress.)

Every time that I felt as if things were going ok, I felt prohibited from doing anything that would make me feel remotely useful, because I would just have to stop when the baby was born. I was too tired and overwhelmed to even try.

But now, September is here again and I no longer have to worry about giving something up or having to quit because I'll have to take care of the baby. Now, he's here and I can try and have a life. I plan on starting school in January to get an AA in Computer Information Systems, and I have a combination of 8 weeks maternity leave and 12 weeks CFRA (California Family Rights Act) Leave, so I won't have to go back to work before then. Which on the one hand is a good thing, but on the other, I don't know how I'm going to last almost 4 months without working. My mom and I are going to make a bunch of mei tai carriers and swaddle blankets (yep, I can sew. Pretty damn well, too.) and sell them at local street fairs and the farmer's market, etc., so at least I will be doing something productive.

Hopefully things will be different now. The September breeze brings change, I can only hope it brings it for me.

--Dragon Read more!

Zero Hour

So this is it. The zero hour. I have to be there tomorrow at 5:45am... in other words, too frickin' early. I'll be in the hospital for 4 days. After tomorrow I'll no longer be just me. I'll suddenly be me + 1... what a strange thought. How do people deal with the sudden transition between only having themselves to take care of, themselves to think of, to having a whole other person who depends entirely on you for everything? I wonder what the person I will become would have to say to the person I am now. I hope that I like the new me.

--Dragon Read more!

If It's Not One Thing...

Let me first say that I feel so much better. Thank you so much to everyone who commented regarding my fear of labor. Of the few people I've told so far about it, some have been very supportive while others have made it seem as if I was being selfish and unreasonable, and I was just very afraid that more people would feel that way. I have a tendency to be a shameless people pleaser, sometimes to the extreme. You have helped me see that it's ok, whether they think so or not, because what matters is what I am comfortable with. Again, thank you. :)

That said, right now Erik is driving me nuts. Remember how about 3 months ago, in June, I kicked him out mainly because he refused to step up to the plate and get a decent job? Well guess what: still no good job.

I have done everything in my power to help him find a job. I have done far more than I should have to, more than anyone else in their right mind would do, I'm sure. I created a resume', found ads for jobs that sounded suitable, I signed him up for a class to learn how to write his own resume' and another class to help him work on his interview skills. I even told him what to wear to an interview. It turns out I'm not the only one-- his aunt and sister bought him a bunch of new clothes that were more professional than his old clothes, everyone in his family, even his sister's boyfriend keep an eye out for jobs he might like and let him know about them.

Regardless of all the help he's getting, he still won't do anything. I've told him in every way I know of that he needs to get a new job, that not only are his expenses going to go up once the baby is born, but he can't even keep up with his current bills. He goes from agreeing with me to giving me all kinds of rediculous reasons as to why he can't search for jobs now. For example, his band is playing in an upcoming festival about 2 weeks from now. Now, I'm pretty good at getting a job easily, but even for me 2 weeks is pretty fast. Not to mention if you let them know that you have prior engagements, most employers understand.

I'm not the only one who is getting fed up with him. Everyone in his family has been after him and feel as if he should be taking responsibility. We are all so frustrated with him. Babies cost money. Now, I have plenty of help if I need it. I have my mom, Sara, my dad, everyone in Erik's family including his mom and stepdad, both his aunts, his uncle, his grandma, and his sister and her boyfriend. So if I ever really need something, there is no shortage of people who will gladly help me out. However, it's still Erik's responsibility.

I'm hoping that he will surprise us all when faced with reality in all its screaming, pooping, chubby-cheeked glory, and do his share. But to be quite honest, I really don't believe he will. And it frustrates and angers me to no end. I don't want to be a bitch. I don't want to have to tell him that either he gets a job and starts helping out financially or I'll have to go to Child Support Services and let them go after him. Because they will attach his wages and he'll have no choice but to get a better job, as he'll have barely anything left. They don't care whether he can pay his bills or not. I'm not that cruel. But if he doesn't hurry up and be a man, then I'll have no choice.

I'm so sick of being put in positions like this. I'd much, much rather be nice. If people would only listen to me, everything would work out so much better. It's not like I say these things because I like the sound of my own voice (and really, I don't. It's too high pitched.). I just don't feel like I have any other choice.

--Dragon Read more!

Scrying

When I think of the baby, I don't think of a tiny helpless infant. I think of a little boy with sandy hair and green eyes, maybe 2 or 3 years old. I've tried to imagine him as a baby, a new and wriggly little bundle to cuddle with and sing to when I'm kept up at crazy hours, but for some reason I just can't picture it. Instead I see myself chasing (no pun intended :P) him across the lawn, or him reaching up to me with hands covered in mashed potatoes and a sloppy grin. Perhaps it's easier for me to imagine a personality for a toddler than it is for a baby, but I've met plenty of babies, and even when they are very small they have some hints of their future personalities. Or perhaps it's more of a fear that I won't be able to hash it out as the parent of a newborn and the image of a walking, talking terror is my imagination showing me my percieved reward if I can only make it through the first 2 years. I'm not really sure.

Sometimes I think I must be crazy. I have a really hard time with long term commitments. I can do anything for 6 weeks at a time. After 6 weeks, I can usually convince myself to do it for another 6 weeks. But to push those 6 week blocks on for at least 18 years? Am I nuts? Everytime I have something good going for me, I self destruct. Am I going to be any different as a parent? Or am I going to throw my hands up in despair and walk away forever? Right now I don't feel any sense of attachment to the wee one. I read and hear other people saying how they loved their babies from the moment they knew they were pregnant, or how they talked and sang to their bellies for the whole 9 months. I know right around this time (26 weeks) babies can hear what's going on around them, but what do I talk about? What am I supposed to say? I feel as if I'm supposed to just know these things, but I don't. I keep hoping that as I get farther along these feelings will come naturally. I have a very hard time becoming emotionally attached to people. I try to remain very logical in my relationships with people, because I feel irrational and out of control when I become too emotionally involved with people. But with my very own child? Isn't just kind of wierd?

--Dragon Read more!