aciel, posts by tag: depression - LiveJournal

It's so hard to not be angry about this.


The wind was blowing so hard I had to fight it every step


http://www.newsvirginian.com/wnv/n…


mighty crash the tree behind my house fell over. My first reaction was to think that a bomb must have gone off,


Clearly, hindsight is twenty-twenty. But when two students are shot--one the RA of the other--in a dormitory, and you have no idea who did it or why or where he might be, don't you fucking send out an email?

And not just to Environmental Health and Safety, either--to the whole campus.

I mean, it's not every day two people get shot at Virginia Tech. Or, at least, it didn't used to be.


and the spring flowers were always so cautious in emerging from their buds at the end of every Blacksburg winter. But all the best laid plans were for naught, because by the evening every petal had shriveled in the icy wind


jets flying overhead, so much to protect just one man, with so little done to protect thirty-two or the rest of us


cop cars swarming like ants, more than I've ever seen in one place ever. The cops didn't look at us like cops normally look at people our age. Nor we them as we'd normally look at cops. Gone was the fear that they'd perceive some slight, and gone was their desire to look for any slight. Never have I felt so strongly that a state trooper wanted to give me a hug


And when the stranger in the other car saw my Virginia Tech diploma in the backseat, he made eye contact for a brief moment--he in his car, me in mine--and he put his finger to his eye, as if wiping away a tear.


and I kept having to think to remember how to breathe

A couple days ago, a friend lashed out at me over my tendency to make political comments.

It doesn't matter which friend this was. It's likely there are others who feel similarly but don't say it, and it's good to get verbal feedback from time to time. Certainly her anger gave me pause. It made me think.

I believe scientists have a duty to question their own beliefs¹, and therefore also to discuss their beliefs with others. Just today through conversation, I learned that an assumption I had made was introducing unnecessary complications into my research project.

I would never have known the assumption was wrong were I unwilling to talk about the project. Taking part in a discussion with someone much more knowledgeable wasn't easy by any means: I still don't know exactly what I'm talking about, and it's always embarrassing when someone else discovers that.

Politics is a lot like biology. Everyone involved has a hypothesis, whether she admits it or not; and not everyone's hypotheses can be correct. Through discussion--political discourse, it's called--we have mostly managed to converge on a handful of these models of reality.

Democrats have one such model: as Stephen Colbert once said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Republicans have another model. A third is embodied in the group of people who consistently vote for Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, or anyone else who has no chance in hell of winning. There's even a fourth, in those who refuse to vote at all, arguing that it would be buying into a broken system.

None of these models is inherently correct (or incorrect). They all have strengths. I happen to believe that Democrats come closer to reality with their model--and that's why I happen to be a Democrat. I also believe that Democrats and moderates² are more open to discovering that their model is wrong, but maybe I just think that because I'm open to being wrong.

If one is willing to discuss one's beliefs, one can learn about alternative points of view. One can take advantage of other people's accumulated wisdom. That accumulated wisdom is the foundation--as well as the product--of science. We turn to doctors for medical advice, Stephen Hawking for physics help, and Al Gore (whom my parents have affectionately taken to calling the Goracle) for tips to avoid the coming apocalypse³.

If one is unwilling to discuss beliefs, one is nothing more than an adherent of a cargo cult. (Cargo cults are justified interpretations of reality based on narrow observations. Cult members are coerced by explorers into building runways in the jungle, so the explorer's hired airplane can drop more supplies for the explorers. Later, after the cults' respective explorers leave, they build new runways and attempt to repeat the radioing-for-supplies ritual to induce the plane-god to return and give them supplies.)

As for me, I have pressing reasons to participate in and discuss politics. Politics is not something I see on television: politics has immediate and deadly effects. The Rwandan genocide was allowed to happen because Americans saw it as politics on television. Virginia Tech on 4/16 was my life--but to so many people, it was just more politics on television.

The gun lobby even likes to use the it's-all-politics line as a talking point: "In what can only be seen as the politicization of a tragic event for political gain, the gun-control advocates at the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence and ProtestEasyGuns.com...sought to hold their own demonstration on the Drillfield at [Virginia] Tech [on 4/16]..."⁴ What they don't mention is that this very demonstration was organized by survivors and victims of the shooting.

The pro-handgun crowd isn't alone in using the it's-politics line--but the gun lobby is especially relevant to me because the background check system was one of many failures that contributed to my friends' deaths. That background check system was hobbled by the NRA and GOA well before the shooting, and it is still hobbled. Thirty-three people had to die to close one loophole, and others remain open. For comparison, consider that only five people were killed in the Boston Massacre, and we had a revolution over that.

It's never just politics. Universal healthcare saves lives. Making guns harder to access (e.g., with trigger locks and cooling-off periods) prevents suicides. If your congressman votes to bomb somewhere, people are going to die. That congressman's constituents have a collective responsibility for those deaths, even if they didn't vote. I'm not suggesting war is universally wrong, or that there aren't just wars; but I am suggesting that citizens have a responsibility to be aware of whom we're killing and why.

There is a reason I canvass for the Obama Campaign and not for the Brady Campaign. If Obama does a good job as president, a whole new generation of voters will be inspired by progressive values. They will see that the Democratic Model of Reality (DMOR) works when applied to the world. The DMOR tells us that the world is not as simple as Good Versus Evil, that corporations have too much power over our legislature, that empathy and willingness to listen are as important as discipline. If more people adopt the DMOR, better and safer gun laws will follow.

I participate in politics because I desperately need to see that a good person can win and make positive changes in the world from time to time. I need to know that the person who murdered my love is not representative of humanity. Life cannot be the Lord of the Flies, or I will surely perish too.

Slowly but surely, I am perishing. For so long I've been quiet about Max and the others, because I never want to use my tragedy as an excuse for bad behavior. I don't tell new acquaintances about what happened because I can't bear to see the stricken looks on their faces, can't bear to think other people are feeling a fraction of the pain their deaths caused. For months I had this odd view of reality where by writing about the shooting I could help other people value their loved ones without first having to lose them.

I reach out and I share my political beliefs in hopes that someone will take my outstretched hand, that he or she will be inspired rather than forced to care. That's why I was so livid when my friend suggested I (wrongfully) inject politics into everything: not only had I failed to inspire this person, but she fundamentally failed to understand me.

I live in a different world from her. She lives in the world I lived in before April 16th, 2007. In that world, Bad Things only happen to friends of friends--not to friends. In my world, my love dies again every time I hear what might or might not be hammering elsewhere in the building during class. She dies every time the University tests its warning siren. She dies every time there is a suicide bombing in Iraq.

If I stop talking about politics, my heart might as well stop beating.

Footnotes

1. This does not apply to religious faith. Faith is a different kind of belief entirely, which can't be questioned on the basis of factual evidence. Otherwise, it's not faith.


2. Maybe moderates are just more likely to be skeptical of all things.


3. Al Gore turns to scientists. He doesn't just manufacture it.


4. The linked source is not directly associated with the Gun Lobby, but it's definitely Gun-Lobby-funded public relations. I've seen this exact line in NRA press releases before, though I don't have one on-hand.

The title of this entry refers to a song by Great Big Sea, "Buying Time."

annanaka called me last night, lost in Michigan. She wanted directions back to her house. She didn't know the address. Also, the person driving had a knack for getting east and west confused. As a result, it took a little while to get them home.

Betwixt giving directions, we chatted a bit. Anna's friend wanted to know if I knew someone in the plant biology program; I thought the name sounded familiar, but didn't know for sure.

"Don't you know everyone?" Anna asked.

"No," I said, "I really don't know very many people at all. I've been very shy lately."

"What!? But you knew everyone at Tech. You're Virginia Tech famous; the only person more famous is Toby."

Those words stayed with me. I had known everyone at Tech, for at least the last four of the five years I was there. What I didn't know, exactly, was how I had come to know so many people.

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I remember that I was outgoing in my classes in college, that I participated in many student activities (Rocky Horror, Tae Kwon Do, and for a time SYNTCO), but I don't remember the details. Everything leading up to meeting the people I would become friends with, but not the meetings themselves. What led me to introduce myself to them? How did I shed the fear that now holds me back?

Eventually I would become a little less outgoing than I had been, but by then extroversion was unnecessary. A blue mohawk made it hard to be afraid of anything. I mean, what could people really expect from someone who was informally called Mohawk-John? Actually, I think I managed to pleasantly surprise a lot of people; perhaps they were expecting Sid Vicious. I was also teaching Tae Kwon Do by then, and participating in all of the Club's activities. In other words, people knew who I was without much effort on my part, and I got to know them as my students.

Things changed when I came to Texas.

I swore to myself that I wouldn't let the shooting affect my relationships. I also swore that I wouldn't let any of the people who died be forgotten. I made a lot of promises, and kept very few; but it was not for lack of trying.

I thought I'd be afraid to lose people. In part, I am, but that's not what stops me.

At first, I was stopped by a fear of having to explain my past. What if people asked me what happened? Did they really want to know, or were they just hoping I'd say I hadn't been there?

Eventually I figured out what I could say to those questions. But the fear remained. Why? What is the source?

Is it fear that I will forget people? Fear of their disapproval when I introduce myself a second or even fifth time? (It does happen.)

Is it that my life lacks extremely extroverted people, who in the past have set an example for me to follow?

Is it that I participate in fewer activities because I'm so busy studying?

Or is it that people at UT are simply less receptive to being friends, since they're all mostly from around here (quite different from VT, mind you, where most people were from either Northern Virginia or out of state)?

Perhaps the problem is that I form friendships best with girls, but it means something different to suggest hanging out than it did when I was in college. People are (more) serious about relationships now. There's no way to ask someone to hang out without making it almost offensively clear that it's not a date.

I think it's many of these things. But I miss how I used to be, and I desperately want to get back there.

Can a person stop being an extrovert and become an introvert? I would go nuts without my independence, but was I always like this, or is it new? I suppose the long walks across campus at Tech gave me enough alone-time that I didn't need it elsewhen. Or perhaps this is old scar tissue from rejections long past, back when I was still the new kid, finally manifesting itself as I am again the new kid?

I want my fucking personality back.

I tried briefly doing the mohawk thing again, but I felt too self-conscious. When I was Mohawk-John, the hair was a way of avoiding self-consciousness. How did things change so drastically?

I want to have a community again. A place where I can walk down the street and see someone I know every two minutes and we smile and wave. A place where I always run into someone I know at my favorite coffee shop, even if I never introduce myself to anyone there.

This is not too much to ask. I know this, because I have had these things before.

I'm prepared to do almost anything.

* Though now, oddly (or maybe tellingly), I'm the atheist, and she goes to church.

** To be fair, I think they wouldn't have actually hit me. Still, I was surprised they hadn't grown up even a little bit.

*** This is a British word meaning "liked" or "were attracted to."

I made sure to recover fully from my hangover before attempting to drive to my study spot, yesterday. Shouldn't be driving all dizzy, I thought to myself. Drank some water. Read a book. Laid around for awhile.

Got in the car. Not dizzy, but dazey. The way you act when you'd rather be in bed but can't sleep anymore and feel guilty for not spending more time outside. Contemplated taking the bus but decided the need for grocery shopping was too great. Also, it's a Sunday--don't want to get stranded again once the bus stops running.

Saw something out of the corner of my eye. Distracting. Not shiny, just oddly shaped. For some reason, I thought I saw a body propped up against a car. Probably just a homeless person sleeping in the garage. Not unheard of--then the screaming of mechanical devices misused, a car horn, a loud pop. Smell of burnt rubber.

Still alive? Check. Car intact? Nope. Tried to open the door. That's not going to work, it's pinned shut by the pillar with which I just collided. Tried the door again. Still not opening. One more time. Oh, crap, just broke the inside door handle, which was on the point of snapping as it was.

Finally I got with the program enough to turn the steering wheel to the right, then applied the gas. Flop flop flop flop. You know--the sound your car makes when you have a flat tire and try to drive on it.

The damage isn't too bad. I ripped a hole in my front left tire and knocked off the rear-view mirror. The door still opens normally, though it's got a dent now. The alignment may be off, but I don't think I broke a strut this time. Oh, and I need a new hubcap.

I'm not the first person to hit that pillar, either. It's pitted like the surface of the moon.

It's odd. When something very traumatic happens, your threshold for pain goes way up. That is, you experience lots of shitty things but can never really say, "Today I had a bad day." The things that used to make you feel like the world was against you seem much less important. Wah, life's unfair. Duh. Somehow your house burning down or your computer dying just seems less important; it's still stressful to deal with, but it means less.

Today and yesterday, though--they actually feel like bad days. The fire alarm went off last night and again this morning. The first time I pulled the covers up over my head; the second, I screamed curse words at the thing. Neither managed to coax me from my apartment. What happens if there's an actual fire, I wonder. Yes, it feels bad in the sense that the world's against me, I suppose, but that doesn't really express it. I feel like I'm pushing through heavy fog, but like the fog's made of elastic maybe. It's storming outside and I can't even find my anchor the sun the sky and I just kind of need a hug.

I don't care about the car. I'm just mad I did something so stupid.

Glad it was something so trivial, though. Hope this constitutes my statistic for the year. I've had enough of being a statistic.

I really wish I hadn't rented "Capote."

I don't know why I went to the video store last night. "I haven't had any problems with pollen here in Austin," I told Sherri on the way to the airport; the next morning I woke wracked by the worst sinus pain I've experienced in years, and I was eager to get to bed last night.

Instead of going to the Sleven next door for medicine, I hiked to the 24-hour CVS. I Heart Video was on the way back, so I stopped in. No one knew the title of the movie I had wanted, so instead I picked up Capote. Didn't bother to see what it was about, don't know why. Maybe my subconscious knew somehow. Certainly I'd heard of the film, heard it won an Oscar, heard my parents say they loved it.

It was perhaps the most pain compressed into two hours I've experienced since April.

I felt awful for the victims, awful for the survivors (those affected), awful for Capote, awful for the murderers who were to be hanged.

About ten minutes from the end I sort of rolled from sitting to laying down, positioning myself such that my head was in the lap of an imaginary Max. I wrapped my arms around her, she stroked my hair. I clung more tightly.

It's 3:39 PM, and I desperately want to go back to sleep, though I'm not at all tired. Unfortunately, my sinuses feel like there's a truck driving over them repeatedly (attempts to visualize this fail horribly).

I just watched Jib-Jab's "2007 in Review" animation. Apparently lots of stuff happened that I only sort of noticed. For me it was a little more like this:

TKD in Burke not at Khan's, learn Jim Marvin is going to live and be okay, do stupid things for love, stuff, visit grad schools, passive-aggressive roommates, stuff, become better friends with Max, 23rd birthday, stuff, Max's formals, TKD tournament, shooting, pain, meeting the Turners, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, realize how I feel/felt about Max, pain, pain, pain, pain, move to Texas / pain, Pearl Street Co-op, start grad school, more pain, swing dancing with Clara, Toby and Hannah visiting, pain, "Stardust", David Hooper dying of cancer, pain, swing dancing without Clara but with new people, lots of new friends, pain, getting the crap beaten out of me, pulled hamstring, pain, pain, ALX, Thanksgiving and the best turkey ever, pain, home, new dog, Christmas / pain, run into Khan's black belts at Megan's, Annapolis New Year's Eve with close friends who I will love forever.

I don't post this for sympathy. You'll notice there's lots of good stuff in between pain and pain, and if nothing else I have some wonderful friends who have pretty consistently been here for me even when they couldn't be there for themselves.

Last year I wrote, "There is one resolution and one resolution only. It is the same as last year's."

It's cliche to say "I don't remember who I was back then," but unfortunately it's true. I don't have a fucking clue what my resolution was last year, or the year before. I didn't write it in my journal, or if I did, I can't find it.

At the end of 2005, Lindsey's friend Becca died very suddenly and for no reason. At the end of 2006, my drama teacher and mentor from high school was nearly crushed to death by a stack of plywood (for a while we thought he'd never wake up again, let alone teach again). I'd like to think my resolution was not to take people for granted; but clearly I failed at that, so while I would like to think that, I don't like to think it (a very fine but important grammatical distinction).

Perhaps there's a more important topic: What has changed significantly in my life in terms of my perspectives?

• Memory. I realized that I remember almost nothing of what happens to me, my experiences, my interactions. When I am gone what will be left? If memories make the person I am, what happens if I lose them all? If they're written down somewhere, recorded, are they still valid as experiences; or do I have to remember them in order for them to be truly real?
  
  If people continue to exist [only] as long as I remember them, what happens when I die? What happens when I am forgotten, too?
  
  Sometimes I think fame is the only cure for this, but as t approaches infinity, what the hell does that matter? Humanity is destined for death in the long run.
  
  I resolve to record the important things that happen to me in a more private place.*



• Attitude. I told Grief Group the story of the doctor who offered me drugs without spending much time talking to me. "Do I really look so sad?" I asked them.
  
  "You look very serious," someone said.
  
  It had never occurred to me that people could see me as serious. I'm so completely whimsical and happy-go-lucky, I told myself. Maybe these people only see one side of me, I told myself.
  
  I think they were right. I took a picture of Mom with the new iPhone and she commented on the crease in her forehead and said it was ugly. I told her it wasn't (truthfully, I hadn't noticed it on her until then), but I also didn't tell her I have the same crease. It appeared in May, at least ten years too early.** Sometimes as I'm driving I'll notice it in the car mirror and realize I'm thinking about April 16th.
  
  I'm not ready to be this serious but I can't think of a resolution that will help. My April 16th resolution was, I will hold on to Max's optimism. I think I'll try and bump that to the top.



• Barriers. This falls under attitude a little bit. I'm terrified of talking to people, terrified of looking different, terrified of being rejected. It's all irrational, and I'm done with it.
  
  If nothing else changes for me this year, I'm back to being Mohawk-John. I don't need the mohawk for that. In fact, I think I'm already marked by the VT '07 ring on my finger, or the crease in my forehead.



• Life Goals. I'm still working this part out, just a bit. Uh, yeah, I know, we all are. Actually, though, I did come to one realization. If Huckabee can run for president and be well-liked--this is a man who supports covenant marriage, mind you--then my past hairstyles are not going to keep me from running and being liked. If I ultimately decide to do that. If people ultimately will support me. If America passes the Al Gore test and I think running will allow me to help the country.
  
  More on this later. No resolution just yet, but it's worth mentioning.

Tonight I saw "SPAMALOT" with family, and it was quite funny. Max's family was there too, coincidentally. Her little brother texted me during the show with something like, "Hope your ringer's off; otherwise this should be funny" (paraphrased, no where near the original words, and maybe not even how they meant it). Luckily it was off, and so I laughed pretty hard after the show. Also, Max's mom and next-door neighbor caught the bouquet at the end of the show, but it was not a bloodless victory; they had to wrestle the lady behind them for it.

Happy 2008, everyone. I've got no expectations this time around.

* Private mostly so as not to bore my readers. Maybe just locked entries. They won't be written for you to read, only for me. Of course, I'll still write normal stuff here.

** Shit, I don't even have teenagers yet.

The dreams I had today were the sort that make a person not want to get out of bed (either because they're interesting or because they're so depressing, I know not which). Therefore I did not, in fact, get out of bed: I lingered for twelve hours, as I have every day of this break.

---

1. This first dream, I barely remember. I was in a labyrinth of sorts with many puzzles to solve; at the end there was a prize, and the whole thing was part of a game show. Nevertheless, there was some suspicion in my head that they would simply let me die if, say, at the end of the diving part I ran out of oxygen without having solved the last puzzle.

Sure enough, I was down there for an awfully long time. Every ten seconds I thought, this is it, this is when I run out of air. It had to have been three or four minutes, but finally the treasure box burst open and the water drained away. I clutched at only one or two of the greenbacks that floated by, happy simply to have survived and passed a stage of the puzzle only a few had managed.

---

2. Presently I was in a stark concrete array of condos for college students. Each had a garage, and was one or two stories high above that. There were sixteen apartments to a block and a total of four blocks per level. Any sky that we saw was simulated and lacked the proper lighting to achieve anything close to realism, and the simulators broke after a couple of days anyway leaving us in a gray underworld.

The only plant that grew here was diviner's sage, salvia divinorum, ska pastora. Her leaves grew broad and green and she didn't seem to care that there was no light. Perhaps there was sufficient radiation to maintain the proton gradients across her thylakoids; or perhaps there really is a salvia goddess and she was watching over us with one stoned eye.

Once upon a time fratty boys and sorostitutes had driven their SUVs and gotten drunk every night of an extended weekend in this place. Now they were gone, replaced by us, a few struggling survivors. Or maybe just stragglers.

Once our quiet gated community had been attached to the rest of the world, but Armageddon had sent our tiny arcology into space. I'm not sure what happened to the ones with the letters. Maybe they all moved to a different block and even now are waging the world beer pong championships--small world that it is now.

My block consisted of me and a couple of engineers, all male. I don't remember seeing any women at all, actually--perhaps this was part of our curse. These other engineers mostly worked a couple of hours a day to make sure we lasted as long as possible in the vacuum. Then they'd retreat to their quarters and watch action flicks and pornos.

I don't recall my own job. It involved a lot of wandering, bicycles, and perhaps tending the salvia--though why it needed me was a mystery.

One of the engineers, Dave, informed me that the vacuum had been modified. We were no longer surrounded by regular space. Outside was a zero-gee abyss that was neither freezing nor boiling. There was no oxygen, but one wouldn't need it. "How long could someone live out there?"

"A long time, I reckon," said Dave. "Don't need to breathe out there." He looked confused, scratched the back of his head. The walls of this reality were growing thin, and on the other side was a void that had neither life nor death. One day the walls would simply vanish and we'd all be left floating alone, neither breathing nor dying. I practiced from time to time, visualizing myself in that blankity-blank nothingness.

---

3. Rewind. Now I was in a place that must've been Virginia Tech, though it had characteristics of Austin. I was living in a dorm, and my roommate had been Brian Bluhm; but now he and the others were gone, just as in the real world. Friends of his had come to claim most of his things, but a few files remained.

I was supposed to move out in a couple of days, when the semester ended, but there was some doubt now as to whether it would end at all. The world was breaking, you see--well, it was being broken by someone. Occasionally we'd see them driving on the roads now forbidden to us. They drove things that were shaped like cars but weren't quite cars.

Those of us who had survived were wandering around doing what we could. We didn't know how much time we had left, but a few restaurants were still serving food--though now it cost nothing--and from time to time there was still laughter in the world.

---

I think I may be depressed. The amount of sleep I'm getting is absurd, and I know I could lessen it by getting more exercise; but I can't motivate myself to do more than push-ups. I feel a lot like the world's ending, which I suppose is an improvement over thinking I was going to be killed in some stupid accident this year. I'm still extroverted but I don't act it and I miss that. I just can't think my way out of this one, so I'll probably go ask my psychiatrist for drugs.

I suspect it's low dopamine, related to the ADHD. I'm on meds usually when I'm at work, and then I'm fine but I can't sleep. I wish I could find something that would increase my dopamine without taking the norepinephrine with it (no, not cocaine, please). I might have to settle for an SSRI or something. Wikipedia calls my symptoms "atypical depression," and says it's actually quite typical.

There are some days when it is almost like nothing happened. I always knew these days would happen, and vowed to be grateful for rather than worried by them. Still, they're tricksy things. Typically, there will be months and months of grief, interrupted only by one-to-three-day interludes. Occasionally, though, two or three weeks will pass semi-pleasantly, the sunlight dampened by nothing.

Then, suddenly, the pain will return. Hours will be spent paging through photographs and listening to songs meant to bring sadness (never too much sadness at once, though). Once I described this to the psychologist as being hit repeatedly with a baseball bat in spots that neither bruise nor break; eventually one grows used to the pain, but it only really goes away when the mallet stops making contact.

The worst part about these longer interludes is the doubt. You've forgotten about her! seeths the specter, Only seven months and it's as if she was never a part of your life at all. And then the thing that cuts bone-deep, hurting just as badly but differently from the grief:

You never really loved her. It's just another claim made for your subconscious desire for attention. That's why it's so easy to forget her.

In my better moments I remind myself that the pain accompanying this accusation tells the real story. But the specter has more to say: And even if you did love her, you don't now; remember what you learned about social psychology? "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is a myth*, and there's another appropriate proverb as well: "Out of sight, out of mind."

Be awfully nice if the pain was more predictable, if I knew what to expect. Be awfully nice if none of this had ever happened.


A lot has changed since April.

• I wrote that all insecurity had left me. It's back. I'm less extroverted, or perhaps simply perceive that I've always been a closet introvert. In high school, the Jung Typology Test reported that I was ENTP (I think); today, I'm ENFJ, and only weakly extroverted.
  
  In theory, it's stupid to be afraid to talk to people. Most people you will never see again anyway, and if you're a good person, it's nearly impossible to make a horrible impression--only one that will disinterest them in you. Better to talk to many people, because (1) you get more practice at saying "the right thing," (2) there's more chance of making a good impression on many people, and (3) thus more chance of meeting someone worth talking to who also wants to talk to you.
  
  So why the hell am I so scared all of the sudden? I was really good at this freshman year; I wasn't scared of anyone, no matter how different from me they seemed. When did it change? I suspect long before April.


• I wanted so badly to leave Blacksburg. "You just need to get out of this town," several friends said to me. I find now that I failed to appreciate what I had. Not just the people, even; their absence was immediately obvious. I miss the trees, the feeling of community, the need for only the cheapest of bike locks, Bollo's and Gillie's, D2 meals, the general sense of enginerdery, and of course Tae Kwon Do.
  
  Will there ever be a time when I don't look back at my five Blacksburg years as the best time of my life?


• I've all but quit Tae Kwon Do and started swing dancing. I didn't actually intend to quit, and I'd try to return if I wasn't still injured. The instructor is the best I could hope for after training as good as that of Khan's and VTTKD.
  
  Even if it weren't for injury, there are serious time constraints. I never believed people who said they lacked free time for TKD, but for the first time I don't have time. I'm in the lab working late every night--or at Epoch, studying late. The one exception is Thursday, reserved for swing dancing.
  
  Swing dancing keeps me in some sort of aerobic shape, but my flexibility is going to shit and my body feels all-around not so good.


• I'm still not quite where I'd like to be in terms of close friends in Austin. (Okay, so this is something that hasn't changed since April.) I have a few people here, but none of the circles that made Blacksburg fun (those would be: the gays, the ninjas, the Hillcrestaceans, Tolls of Madness, and the physicists; whereas here, I have: the dancers, the biologists).


• Rarely are there nightmares, but my dreams are all very twisted.

The dreams reflect what should be, perhaps, the scariest change of late. I realized this week that my subconscious does not expect me to survive the year. It has taken the eventual inevitability of death and decided that eventual means by this April. By no means am I suicidal or even careless lately; but still, my mind says, Don't bother planning that far ahead. We won't make it. Something bad will happen--something unexpected. That, or you'll go todash and end up in Roland's world.**

The oddest part is that it doesn't scare me. If I would die so soon and (from my perspective) unexpectedly, I really do believe I'd wake up in another world. It's not over just yet, folks.

* Actually, I found an article that implies otherwise, at least for men. I haven't bothered to read it, but I'll still cite it here:

Shackelford, T. K., LeBlanc, G. J., Weekes, V. A., Bleske, A. L., Euler, H. A., & Hoier, S. (2000). Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but only for men: The psychological architecture of human sperm competition. 12th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Society. Miami, Florida.

The specter replies, Maybe that explains why you think you love her.


** It doesn't help that there's a certain part of Guadalupe near my home that has a bunch of Dark Tower riddle portent-type things. I'll write about these later, if ka wills it. Right now I can only remember one.

Nearly every person on my mother's side of the family has experienced depression at some point. I may have a history of bipolar disorder on my father's side. My psychiatrist described as depressed as a child. At some point around high school, I taught myself not to be depressed any longer; half of the change was accomplished by becoming more proactive and going out and making friends, and half was a change in attitude.

The change in attitude came from something Bettina said: "Sometimes you just have to stop thinking about things that make you sad," more or less, though I don't remember the exact words and now I sort of doubt that she meant it the way I took it.

Still, "not thinking about things that made me sad" worked well for me. I went from being lonely and sad most of the time to being more like most other college-aged kids (sad some of the time, I suppose). Sure, there were bad times mixed amongst the good, and for those I had close friends to whom I could talk, and I even found a great outlet in the Tae Kwon Do Club and Khan's.

More importantly, though, there would always come a day (usually after a couple of weeks of feeling down or angry at myself) when I could say, "That's it. I've spent enough time being angry/sad/upset about this. Look at how beautiful the stars/trees/sky/rain/people is/are, and be happy that the world is such an amazing place." So there were two elements to recovery: admitting that I had suffered enough for whatever had gone wrong, and simply smiling at the beauty of life.

Writing helps me formulate thoughts like this. For example, at 4:55 PM I didn't know there were two elements to my recovery. Now, at 5:12 PM, I do. And now it's also clear why I don't know what to do about this sadness.

The second element is sort of this-will-work-even-if-nothing-else-does. It never failed me, because I truly thought the world was beautiful.

The first few weeks of April were gorgeous. It was my favorite season, Spring, and the trees were that beautiful color of green that only comes around once a year. Flowers were beginning to bloom and the painful Blacksburg chill had left the air. Graduation was a mere three weeks away and we had planned to have a "Fuck This, Give Me My Diploma" Party during exam week. After that I'd be going to Austin and starting a new life with beautiful new people. Additionally, I'd had a wonderful birthday party a few weeks prior to which many of my closest friends had gone, and I felt loved.

Then the world seemed to regurgitate, as if dispelling some tainted, foul thing that had been slowly eating its way out with acid teeth and burning talons. So it was with April 16th. The weather became cold the week before; a particularly noxious bit of cold rain--bad even for Blacksburg--descended upon the town on Saturday the 14th. On the eve of the 16th, all of the flowers on the cherry tree outside our house withered and rotted away. Max and I had tentatively planned to attend Jeff's notorious Smores 'n' Forties event on the 13th, after the dance, but the cold made most of the attendees (including us) stay home. By Sunday night the wind was blowing, I think, and I had to pull my coat back out of the closet. It was a bit like the Plagues.

Monday morning, It happened. I remember hearing a huge snap and crash outside; a huge tree behind out apartment had gone down in the wind, blocking the stadium path to campus. For me, this tree became intensely symbolic. It was there every day as a reminder of what had gone wrong, blocking my path to class. The wind continued to blow, becoming so intense that it was physically difficult for me to return to campus from Max's that night to pick up my sister. The next day the tempest had been replaced by jets screaming overhead, angry hornets, and swarms of police cars and news trucks; but the world got better.

The world got better, but none of us did. And here is my problem, because I can no longer see the world as beautiful after it let Max be taken away. I can't look at the sky and say, "What a beautiful day," even though the weather is beautiful here. I think I'd hardly notice if it was wet and rainy instead. How hard it is to finally escape the dismal Blacksburg winters only to have to carry them with me forever.

And then the other component of recovery is missing: I would normally say, that's it, I've been sad enough. How can I get to that point? I can't even make myself want to be there right now. I know conceptually that feeling depressed isn't going to bring Max back, but that doesn't translate into suddenly being happy again.

I've spent the last five minutes meditating on that last paragraph, trying to add to it. No success. It'll have to be the subject for another entry another time. Maybe by then I'll have an answer. It's hard here, though; I don't have Tae Kwon Do in which to immerse myself as I did at Virginia Tech, nor hiking with Curtis, and no Sammy to hug when things get really hard. Most days I even find it hard to keep Max's incredible optimism.

I guess I'll just have to keep holding on as best I can.

I was supposed to go to the first football game of the season here at the University of Texas, but my department still hasn't paid my tuition. This means I could not print my ticket out. By the time I realized this, it was too late for me to go catch the Virginia Tech game with the alumni association here. Nevertheless, I donned my "Hokies United"/"We Are Virginia Tech" shirt (which Lindsey just sent me).

It's a little weird wearing it sometimes.

For one thing, It's maroon. This is the color of UT's arch-rival, Texas A&M. Texas A&M is very much like Virginia Tech, probably more like it than any other school in the country. It's a rural agriculture and engineering school, has a ring tradition and a corps of cadets, and people are really freaking nice there. It even has steam tunnels which they break into from time to time. I know all of one person from A&M, but my first impression of her is that she could easily have fit in at Virginia Tech, though I'm not sure I could explain why.

So most likely people's initial reaction to my shirt is, "Woah, here comes an Aggie. Throw something heavy!" But actually, I'm not really sure what people think when they see it, because most people here really don't like to talk about Virginia Tech. Probably that's more the case just since April. On the other hand, people don't bother me much when I'm wearing it. Even the drag rats pretty much stop asking me for money.

Or, at least, this was the case until last night. Last night, a guy from LSU tried to pick a fight with me.

"Are you going to win next week?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said. Default answer since I don't really know much about football. I didn't know he was from LSU at this point because he hadn't told me yet.

"No you're not. You're going to lose," he said coldly. "I'm an LSU alum. You're going to lose. You played like fucking shit tonight."

At this point I returned to my friends and continued dancing. He remained against his wall, occasionally casting a malevolent grin towards me.

The other two incidents had little to do with my shirt, at least. It's tradition in the coop to pool people on their birthdays. Well, it was Taryn's birthday, and we were pooling her. As a side note, there were lots of naked 21st Streeters in the pool. They do this a lot. I usually refer to them in these entries (somewhat affectionately) as naked dirty hippies. Well, one of them jumped out and started trying to throw people in the pool, not caring at all that three or four people were still trying to pool Taryn without bashing her head against the concrete.

Well, Taryn got pooled, and he finally succeeded in throwing someone else in--who landed right on top of her.

Then he came for me and started trying to shove me in.

"Let go, I have a cell phone." Usually this is enough. I was trying to see if Taryn was okay.

"Throw it away, you have five seconds to throw it away before I throw you in."

At this point, he was very lucky my hands were in my pockets because I would probably have ripped something off of him. Since he was naked, that wouldn't be referring to clothing. I guess he saw this in my eyes, because he let go of me.

Taryn was bleeding profusely, but she was okay. Not the best thing to happen on a birthday. And I realized, watching this situation, that most people really have no clue how little there is between any one of us and death. This guy, he was really, really sorry he'd hurt Taryn, but he didn't understand why it was a problem that he was trying to throw people in an already very crowded pool. He didn't seem to see that it could've been much worse.

I told this to Clara. She asked how I was doing. "I'm sad, really sad," I told her. "I got here and I was so optimistic--still really sad, but at least there was hope. And now I'm still sad, and the optimism is almost gone." She hugged me, saying, "It'll get better."

I walked home, feeling disillusioned. A car passed; someone leaned out the window and yelled, "Pussy!" I pretended to ignore him, and he didn't slow down.

I went to bed feeling very, very angry with the world. I had dreams about robots trying to enslave all of us with mind control. I rescued Max from their metallic clutches, and then we kissed for a while--reward for the hero, perhaps.* I woke up feeling better than I have in a while. Went back to sleep, hoping for more kissing; had other sorts of pleasant dreams, but sadly no more involving Max.

* All the little things you forget about a person when you're awake, they come back in dreams sometimes. Kissing is always hard to remember, so this dream was a special treat.