i'm tired of thinking i'm evil. i've been feeling that way off and on, mostly on, for about two weeks now and its really starting to drive me nuts. i hear it in the air over and over, generally from the right hand corner of whatever room i'm in, and when i'm not actually hearing it as a "voice" outside my head then my mind repeats it on its own from inside my head. "you're evil" "you're bad" it doesn't get much more complicated than that at the moment but that's enough. i don't know how to be good enough to convince myself that i'm good. i can't seem to find either enough distractions or enough people to talk things through with. there are about nine million things going on in my mind at any given moment at the moment and i don't know what to do with it all. i've been talking to people all week and it does help but you can't talk to people nonstop forever. i've been trying to do every other thing i know how to do to refocus and settle myself too and, you know, i guess it is somewhat successful because i am making it through the weekend and i'm sure i'd be far more miserable if i wasn't remembering to draw and walk and concoct little research problems and so on. generally though, i know i'm getting in a bit over my head when i start consistently feeling like i really need to do some drugs. it doesn't really matter what drugs, the impulse is totally nonspecific. but i know that's basically just my mind's way of saying it feels out of control in one form or another and needs some kind of help to steady itself. the evil thing will pass eventually. so will the restless, seeking need for constant stimulation and contact. even if some of this started awhile back, it was a stressful complicated week which probably didn't exactly tends towards having a calming effect. meanwhile, i've decided i need as many different types of outlets as possible so i'm going to try writing here again for awhile. it seemed easier than going out to publix and buying a new paper journal!
I've spent the last two nights sleeping with the sliding door in my bedroom wide open. It's been cool and rainy and windy and i can lie in the dark listening to the rain splash against the screenporch and the palm trees whisper. As much as I love airconditioning in the summer here, i love even more the fall and winter when it's cool enough to turn the air off and leave the doors open all day and when i can do all my work on the green shaded expanse of my porch. or patio, i think they call it here. today i spent this morning presenting at a conference on interdisciplinarity and the environment. i had to get up at the crack of dawn and race out of the house, which i hate doing, but the presentation went well and it was good to see people. i'm still fighting lonliness here, but it's getting better. i'm trying to make an effort to reach out to new people, one at a time. it's hard for me to be social- one large looming side of my personality is so introverted and quiet- but i need people to feel connected, to feel that the place i'm living in is indeed home, at least for a little while. so- i'm trying. but i'm also trying to walk the line between overwhelming either side of my personality- the side that needs people and activity or the side that needs to be quiet and alone. much of my strength is found in my alone time and i need to honor that by making sure i get enough of that alone time or else i get drained and scattered. so today i went to the conference, presented, saw people and then, when i got too tired from all the interaction, i left and came home and sat on the porch and read a clockwork orange. the quiet was very comforting after all the noise of the conference. now i'm sitting here writing this, eating a box of raspberries i bought myself as a treat, and thinking about how my counselor always talks about me needing to learn how to take care of me. which is what i feel like i'm doing this semester- it's not an easy process or without pain, but i'm learning what i need, in approximately what amounts and how to get it for myself. and the conference was good because it reminded me that there are people who take my work seriously, that it can be taken seriously, and that i have a purpose to being here and going through all this. my lonliness, which is kind of self imposed and existential in nature, is worst when i let myself become disconnected from my work or try too hard to live a life which isn't mine. My life is quiet, in a lot of ways, but it can be good. i just have to trust that.
it's a cool windy day here. i spent all day out on my porch listening to the wind in the palm trees and reading The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K Dick. In the evening, as it was getting dark, I ran out to the grocery store which was over run with candy apples and scarecrows and pumpkins and every kind of halloween candy known to man. i'm still having trouble with c. i'm not having trouble with her so much, it's just that she's found a new group of friends she hangs out with and hasn't been inviting me along which makes me feel lonely and sad. maybe she thinks i wouldn't want to come though. i have no idea what she thinks and it's not good for me to try and guess. i try to guess what others think too much and i can't really know so i need to learn to just let other people be sometimes. but it does make me feel sad. sigh. on the good side, i had a good-bad dream last night. I was trapped in this house with all these carnival freak type people, werepeople, oddly shaped people. it was some kind of old psychiatric institute and a very scary place. me and all these weird otherworldly people worked together though and found our way out of the house and into a street where there was a carnival going on. we joined the other carnival people and began to dance and sing.
i'm lonely today. it's a wet gray day out with occassional thunder that shakes the house, the kind of weather that i most love and that makes me most homesick. i'm having problems with some of my friends here and it's leaving me feeling empty and abandoned. i miss being around people i can just be with, without having to be anything in particular. i miss malden and boston and the sense of people moving freely from one spot to another. i miss the T. i miss beth's kitchen, with it's warm bright colors and red teakettle and utter familiarity. i miss the smell of fall and the feeling that comes beneath the wind on autumn days. i even miss stop and shop. on days like this i'm tempted to get back as fast as i can, damn the assistantship and the money. that third year of being here in florida weighs heavily on my mind and i just want to get out and get going. i start yearning to look at the want ads and find a job for next year, safely near boston. i only have one and a half years to go but on days like this it seems like absolutely forever. i don't want to miss another whole four seasons. i just want to get done and get out of here as fast as i can.
1) i get to walk by the ocean whenever i can get the time and feel the waves splash up against my legs. 2) it is almost always windy here and i love the wind more than almost anything else. when i go away from here to visit other places, i miss the wind deeply. 3) i finished my ten page science fiction paper! 4) i had a delicious dinner tonight- bean burgers, potatos, chard sauteed with onions and garlic and a brownie. :) 5) i have a nice place to live with a big screened in porch i can sit on to do my work when it's nice out. 6) the banana tree in the back yard has a big clump of bananas ripening on it and the starfruit tree has fruit ripening on it too. 7) J 8) i had friends over for lentils and didn't stick my foot in my mouth even once the whole time- and made lentils again this weekend so i have lots of leftover food for the week. 9) this friday i'm going to go maybe get new glasses and get my car window fixed. 10) it's raining.
sad