Reddish Musings

Life seems to gang up on people. I'm not arrogant enough to think the entire world and the cosmos are out to get me, but I can make a case, perhaps a convincing one, that the world and the cosmos are out to get all of us... sometimes, anyway.

See, things go pretty smoothly for a while.

Then one day, you wake up. You get out of bed, and you lean down to pick up something, and you hit your head on your nightstand.

Ouch, but you continue. You wander into the bathroom, but your turn is just a few degrees too sharp, your toe runs right into the frame of the door. More ouch. You start wondering if maybe you should go back to bed. But, that's really not an option and there's stuff to do, so you keep going.

Dressing goes okay, except you find out that your bra (or, I dunno, boxers or something) has a broken clasp or the underwire is twisted or poking out, or something. Whatever, you pad it with a bandaid and move on.

From then on, it's anybody's guess what could happen. You're out of oatmeal, milk, berries, bread, anything. You get cut off and almost run into by a handicapped driver. Your class is cancelled. Your blinker in your car goes screwy. Your car won't start. Your bills come and overdraft your checking account with something you hadn't even expected.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

So why does this all have to happen in such a tight space? Why can life not wait to spread out negativity? Some would say that so many bad things in so short an amount of time could be a sign of something bad. Something you weren't supposed to do.

Others would say it's a test, that you'll be stronger for making it through.

Me? I just think life is cyclical. I don't think much of karma on a small scale. Astrology has yet to make much sense to me, except where the earth rotates in a pattern and I think life swings in a pattern, but these two orbitals don't intersect at any specific, trackable points.

Divination, psychic powers, all of that really boils down to the universal truth that life is sometimes good, but it carries with it the danger of turning on you. This causes fear in people who feel they have the right to know what life is going to throw at them next time around. It's easy to tell people they feel fearful and concerned about finances and their love life... because really, who doesn't?

But when it's happening, all I can do is sit there and tell myself, "This, too, shall pass." Because it normally does. Everything just gets so much more uncertain and stressful when the pendulum swings back to hit me in the face.

Maybe part of growing up is enjoying the swing up, but preparing for the swing back down without losing it when it happens. Not taking things for granted.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Personally, I think part of growing up is also just learning to fake being a grown up.

WARNING: Girly Bits Discussion Ahead!

Anyway. I'm worried about my body. Not the weight thing, I'm working on that. No, it's just that every month seems to be increasingly worse when it comes to the amount of pain I deal with. I know many women suffer your average amount of cramps and ooginess around their period, but I've yet to be able to figure out if I'm normal and just whiny, or if I have an actual problem.

All I know is that the level of pain that I've dealt with has only increased exponentially over the years. My first experience was not at all painful, and not really a surprise, either. So, fast forward about... gah, 6 years? 7? 8? Wow, I'm old.

Anyway. I started taking birth control pills about a year ago, because I was moving off to college and my mother loves me and wanted me to be prepared "just in case." But more than just the protection, there was also the offer of regulating my period, which had been kind of weird in the past. Short, and on a shorter cycle than one month. So there was that.

From that point, my hormonal bursts of sadness seem to have escalated the week prior to me starting. Maybe that's the pills, maybe it's me maturing, I don't know, but it's annoying. More importantly, though, the day that I start, my back suddenly breaks out into pretty bad pain.

It wasn't as bad before the pills, but it was still a problem that was getting worse, so I don't blame the medicine for that. But each month seems to bring with it another degree of pain, all coming from the tailbone-area of my lower back, but on the inside, what I can only assume to be my uterus.

I can flex, I can lay down, I can sit down, I can walk, nothing makes it go away. And the past couple months have also brought along their friend Mr. Headache, bad enough to keep me awake at night. And this month especially seems to have brought a special buddy, Stabbing Pain Contractions.

yay.

So, yes, I've Googled it, but I'm not going to diagnose myself with anything until I talk to a physician next week. I've got an appointment scheduled for my yearly Lady Exam, and I plan to ask about getting on the Depo shot, as well as ask if maybe I do have dysmenorrhea. Because it sure looks like I do.

Granted, my mother informed me that she struggled from endometriosis prior to having me, and these two things kind of go hand in hand, so I won't be surprised if that is the case, but... I really don't want to.

I don't plan on reproducing for quite a while, and if having a child is one of the only ways to fix it... that sucks for me.

Sigh.

Here's hoping something can help, because Advil/Tylenol/Ibuprofen/etc. doesn't seem to.

Simply put, I don't think it should be done. I wrote a really florid piece of drawl whilst waiting for Art to begin on Monday morning, and I'm not going to repost it or even really pay that much attention to it, but at the very least I'll get the point across again: Art should not be defined.

You can show me the history timeline of Art, and show me how it has changed and what we accept as art and as not art, but you cannot, and should not, put a certain criteria out for it. Also, you shouldn't tell me that writing is not an artform. Jerk teacher.

Also he made us listen to a Charles Ives piece. I know nothing of the composer other than at this point in time, I hope he died a horrible death for making whatever it was that was just injected into my hearing places. Augh. I'm sure he had other stuff that was notable and not ear-raping, but the piece we listened to was detestable.

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I feel this unstoppable urge to write. I don't know what I want to write, or how, or in what style or for what story or if for any story. I don't think I have a point or twenty just waiting to come out in insightful essays, and I certainly don't feel like writing for class, but the need to make words come out of me is there, just the same.

Maybe it's the hypnotic sound of the keyboard, or the indisputable "rightness" of how a white text box appears once it has been filled with substance. I don't know what it is, but I have that bug again. Maybe it's the reading I've been forced to do for class. Reading more always produces an urge to write more.

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Also, I'm dying of hunger and I do not want to go to my next class. No specific reason, just History is boring and I'm tired and crampy and hungry.

Pain + Hunger = :(

Anyway. Job search must begin. :(

So I've started my second year of college, and it feels almost exactly like the first year. That is to say, it feels almost exactly like High School part 2, except for now it's part 3, and I'm getting really fed up with it all.

People told me to wait for college, that it would be my shining point, and I would love it so much. Out there in college, they said, the goals are academia, not popularity contests! Wit and intellect are rewarded with great fervor! You'll find friends who are so like you, because that's what college is for! Smart people!

Wrong.

College is for everyone who managed to make it out of high school without being shot or killing themselves. Anyone who can sign a piece of paper to apply and get a loan to go is now here, sitting in my classes, eating up the brain energy and causing me to be cramped and uncomfortable.

Now, of course, "they" tell me that it doesn't really kick in until your Junior or Senior year of college. Excuse me?

Okay - Yes, I am aware that college can be what I make it. I won't find those friends with similar interests if I don't go to events and actively try to find them. Cool, so which soccer game, Indian dance show and mudball event do I attend to find geeks? Oh, try SPOON! They have geeks there!

No, those are anime nerds. Yes, sometimes that Venn diagram overlaps a little bit, but I have NO interest in anime as a pastime, so to weed through all of the people who are just WAITING to orgasm out all of the episodes of Death Note at me just to find someone who might have watched Buffy and who might be interested in a game of Dungeons and Dragons... no thanks.

So, what then? Go to all of the events I have no interest in and hope someone like me shows up?

I'm not looking for a group or responsibility, so I don't really want to go to the trouble to start a Club or Organization or something. I just want to make contact with a few people like me on this campus and share numbers and find friends. Isn't that how that works? I don't know.

I've never really "found" friends. Friends kind of find me. I just happened to sit next to KayLo at Orientation, and we ended up rooming together for Freshman Year. Fiance came from the internets. Even Linz was from a website of shared interests.

The more I look around each classroom, the less I feel like reaching out to talk to ANY of these mooks. I'll be nice and helpful, but I feel lied to.

This isn't a place for intelligence to shine. This is a place for intelligence to try and crack its way out of the dome of ignorance and uselessness. Sure, maybe by Junior or Senior year the chaff will have dropped out and I can merge with people who share my major, but by that point, I fear I'll be too tired of this whole experience.

On a side note - What the bleepity is up with pre-requisites? It's bad enough that I have to sit through hours of subjects I care nothing about, but when they force attendance for a grade AND require group projects, I just want to stomp my foot and hold up a giant sign saying "GO BACK AND TEACH HIGH SCHOOL I AM PAYING YOU TO BE HERE SO I CAN LEARN NOT VICE VERSA".

Or cry. Crying is also something I want to do these days.

I just want to be grown up and out of this place. And class is starting.

Woo, History.

Okay, not an awful lot is changing. Just my lifestyle here and there. You know how it goes.

Today is my last day at work - ooh, aah. Everyone is hemming and hawing about how much they'll miss me and how they don't know how they're going to get on without me... but this happens every Summer. People become surprisingly dependent on me within a month or two's time, but they manage to somehow survive after I leave. /eyeroll.

There's a party in the cafeteria for birthdays and to commemorate my last day... I hope there's not a big deal. I get a card sometimes, sometimes not. And I'm bound to get teary-eyed, even though I've hated this place since the first month ended.

As for what I'm doing after this job ends? Well, there's about a week's break and then it's right back to school for me, on the 21st. The troubling thing being that one of my classes has STILL not posted textbooks that I need to buy. The other class that waited this long ended up getting cancelled, and I had to find another section of it to fill my schedule out. I'd prefer to not have to do that with less than a full week before classes START. Work with me here, people.

On a side note, I had a wicked dream last night. Some catastrophe had befallen our town, maybe the world, I don't know. There were scenes of Fiance and myself huddled in a grocery store, locking ourselves in the bathroom for some peace from the outside world of people trying to rob and kill us. Then we took a drive to a housing development area, wherein Fiance had this huge house that looked like it was going to be half home, half Haunted House. There was a big skull on it, and it was green and creepy.

He had a lot of money in my dream, apparently, but it was surprise to my dream-self too. He let people stay in the house, fended it off from burglars and crooks, and took care of whatever people needed while they were there. And we talked in the hecticness of it all of just getting married before we died.

It was... it felt like a movie, of sorts. Cinematic, definitely.

Now begins me weighing the pros and cons of getting a part-time job for the school season. Tune in next time where you can hear whether it is good to be poor and content or have income but be exhausted. :D

(This also depends on whether or not Fiance gets laid off)

Watching Bridezillas on Women's Entertainment (sigh) suddenly decreased my faith in the human condition. Truly a tragic thing, since my faith wasn't all that great to begin with. Thankfully my kitties are alongside me to remind me that some things will always be cute.

But really, perhaps it is only those deemed "Bridezillas" that act this way when it comes to their weddings and their supposed future relationships, but good God. These people turn what should be a happy day into a spiraling cyclone of hatred and spite. I guess, having not been through that experience of yet, I can't really comment on how I would react in this situation, but... yikes.

It's frightening. You see people who barely have anything in common, and who certainly don't seem to get along, yet they've decided to spend the rest of their lives together? Color me confused.

Granted, I have some friends who are in relationships and marriages I see the same things in - but they seem happy. I don't judge, but I won't pretend I'm not puzzled by their pairings. "Whatever turns your crank" as my pseudo-fiance says, and I tend to agree.

Still... don't marry someone you don't love. Those tics that drive you crazy now? Are probably only going to get worse. Getting married to change someone is, frankly, a horrible idea. I heard somewhere, and I'm probably going to mangle this, "Don't marry someone because you love their good points, marry them because you can stand their bad points."

PF (Pseudo-Fiance) and I? I get emotional and sometimes feel depressed, but he can make me smile and works me through it. He's kind of forgetful and unobservant, but I'm supportive and help him remember. That's about it.

We've yet to really fight about anything. The closest we get is over what we want for dinner, and anything that really requires a choice. Not so much fighting as it is "Oh god, someone please have an opinion so we can get this done."

So yeah. We're not really worried about our future together, but sometimes I just wonder what we have that other people don't... or if you're supposed to make each other miserable just a little bit.

I'm happy with how we are, though. And that's really all that matters. :)