Argghh I don't need sleep!!

Dear electronic diary,

I've been up working on homework. I'm now feeling accomplished and tired, but I am stubbornly holding off on bedtime.
If I try to sleep now I wont wake up on time to make it to my important class (which, is inconveniently scheduled at the start of my day).

A recap:

Today has been one of the best days so far.

V and I went to Guitar Center to pick up a pretty PA system. The Fender 300 (while being convenient in its portability and an essential tool to her trade) is super freakin snazzy. Everything folds up into this weird rocket ship looking hunk of machinery. It was just so great to see her that ecstatic about something. It's the face I make when I can officially claim some awesome new lens or flash unit as my own. She just had the biggest smile & was ready to start doing backflips. We were, fortunately, in my car, so flipping of any sort wouldn't have been possible.

We also got her kick ass merchandise stuff in the mail that I designed & ordered as part of an early Christmas present. I think I was more excited than she was as we opened the package, but it just made me feel like I did something right when she was admiring everything & when she was showing her mom. It made all those hours I spent designing everything completely worth it just to see this person that I absolutely adore so happy.

I don't think I've ever put in extra effort for anyone I've been in a romantic relationship with to that extent and without actually wanting anything in return. It is the strangest thing. I mean, I don't know what happened. I usually only do stuff if I know I'll get something, usually tangible, for my efforts, but I just wanted to see her act like a little kid on Christmas morning opening presents under the lights & plastic pine tree (cutting down real trees hurt the environment).

On top of that, when she was happy I felt some of that joy. Not as much as her, but enough for me to forget any of the usual feelings of doubt, anxiety, & sadness I usually carry around. It was like that bag full of rocks I carry on my back was put down for a second so I can stretch & take a deep breath. I'm starting to think that maybe if I do more nice things for other people this depression will start to go away. Maybe if I keep making peoples day in some minuscule, insignificant way I could leave those rocks behind in the dust of my footprints. Who knows, it could be worth the try just to one day wake up to find that I wont be weighted down by those metaphoric rocks that I've had all my life. We will see...

Anyway, those were just some minor items. I can't wait to see her reaction when I give her the much cooler stuff I plan on making when the holidays come around :)

Pass the eggnog

The semester is almost over and I have never been more relieved to be finished.

The past few months have been a torrential downpour of research papers & essays & even more research papers. I can honestly say that when I am done I will have earned every single point in my statistics class.

I'm also glad to be able to hibernate during the holiday season. Stupid retail job aside, it will be a good time to just retreat. I will have deserved some time to be a bum during the winter.

It also worries me a bit, since my mood just starts to worsen as it gets colder. Seasonal Affective Disorder seems to be lurking its ugly head, waiting for me to think I'm doing fine. I'll enjoy free time so much that I slowly start to isolate myself from the outside world. I'll make excuses to not go anywhere because it will be too cold out & stay in my home for weeks on end. At first I'll really enjoy catching up on my reading. Then I'll clean the house, organize everything, and maybe do something new with my hair. I'll teach myself new things on photoshop & watch movies all day.

Then I'll slowly start to get moody & not want to be around anyone. I'll no longer enjoy any quiet time to myself because I'll be bored, but I will be too fearful to leave the house because by then I would have talked myself into distrust & anxiety from the thought of having to interact with people.

I'll become just sluggish and bummed out because of my mental state & because I would have gone several weeks without sunlight on my face. Soon after that, I will be absolutely nuts.

This seems to happen every year when it starts to get cold, and I don't get back to living my life until it warms up & people force me to get outside & do things. The holidays are a blessing in the form of rest & a curse in the form of me sinking into a deep depression.

I remember 2 holidays ago I was at one of my lowest points when I was completely alone & just felt sick in every sense of the word. I spent Christmas Eve barhopping, surrounding myself with other strangers who felt completely alone. No one in that bar came in with someone else. People were all staring into their drinks & I felt so disgustingly similar. I hated how I fit in with this group of sad people. Drinking to drown out everything on a day when everyone else is at home with friends & family. Feeling completely alone because I had worked so hard to isolate myself. I felt out of place at family holiday parties & I didn't exactly fit into the rock bottom bar fly scene. I remember just wanting to literally go jump off the bridge over 75/85 in midtown. So I got in my car, started the engine, opened the door & puked on the sidewalk, & took a 5 minute nap because I was just too scared to end things, as miserable as I was.

I drove home & thought about the bridge that night, promising myself that I would never end up like the people in that bar. I would either have that friends/family holiday kind of life or work my ass off at my career. I would not stoop to that point again, because that would be the end point. If that were to be my only option I would not be driving home, but letting myself fall off a bridge. I decided that I'll either have a family or a career (maybe both, if I'm ever that lucky), but I wont end up with nothing to my name.

My holidays are usually miserable. I dont really recall any of them, since pointless memories shouldn't be held onto. It makes perfect sense to me why so many people kill themselves during that time of year. You just feel like there is nothing better to wake up to the next day and there is no other hope for you to live a meaningful life. Worse of all, you have nobody to express that to because you are alone, with no one to remember your name once you're gone.

I really hope this holiday won't be like the rest. I'm going to try to force myself to do something with my time instead of hoping I'd have the will to live to start spring semester.

Maybe I'll try a new approach this year. Work on my career stuff, volunteer, or go out shooting cool pictures. I haven't decided. I just dont want to get too comfortable with having alone time so I won't want to isolate myself.

One starts to wonder...

I have this problem.

It will probably never be fully resolved, hard as I try. And believe me, I've tried. I'm still trying.
Every single day is a struggle.

I try so hard to push out all the negative thoughts, the horrible feeling of someone sitting on my chest & pushing out every breath I have, the feeling of vomiting burning poison from my insides. I have to remind myself hundreds of times a day that everything will be okay and that I am okay, but I only partly believe myself. I've never been able to fully believe that I am a decent person. It feels like I'll always be this damaged, broken thing made up of countless individual failures that will always define who I am and it will never be any different. No matter how hard I try I always see that person in the mirror while everybody else sees someone who has it together. They see someone who is confidant & social. They see someone who cracks silly jokes & has no qualms about working hard to get things done. They see this persona I've built up for as long as I can remember and they will all leave in disgust the day they discover that I am a fraud.

Tomorrow I will try again

I've taken things for granted.

Specifically, I've taken my new calmer and doped up state of mind for granted, so I will start taking zoloft again tomorrow morning.

WIthout it I have started to slip back into a weird cycle of depression and everything is starting to feel horrible again. Everything is falling apart in my head again, even when they're not actually.

I hate that this medicine makes me normal and almost whole. I hate that I am a broken person with too many individual failures to ever forgive myself with the only thing keeping me from feeling okay is 100mg per day.
However, if that's what it takes to be even be close to being a normal person then beggars can't be choosers.

Tomorrow is another day. Another start to what I know can only be better.

leaving the church to find God

I have been so against organized religion for such a long time. I've been full of distrust & resentment towards any form of organized religion, believing (to this day and possibly for the rest of my life) that all organized religious bodies are corrupted by a lust for power, money, and control of the brainless masses.

It has taken me til recently to understand my original intentions for leaving the church: I needed to find God for myself.





So here's some back story. I was raised in Catholic and Buddhist settings in VN. I came over to the states & attended a Methodist church with my family because the only Vietnamese people we knew in America were affiliated with that church.
We moved down to Atlanta and my family went to a Baptist church.
For the most part, my father sat outside in the car & waited for us to be done.
I never knew his reasons til now.
He probably had the same beliefs that I do. That this is all fucked up and we were all being brainwashed.
I admire that he decided to humor us instead of forbidding church attendance in general.

In my teens (12-17) I attended an Assembly of God, which is like Diet Pentecostal, aka Pentecostal Lite.
I sang along with the shitty, mediocre, unimaginative songs. I raised my hands during their praise & worship because everyone else did too and I honestly let myself believe that if I tried things their way it would help me to get a little closer to this faceless god that everyone so blindly follows.
They fed us political BS about what it truly means to be a "good Christian" and live a life that is "right with god", and like many of the other attendees I ate it up til I could vomit their rhetoric back at anyone who doubted.

The only thing that accomplished is losing many friends and making myself out to be a complete jackass.

I passed their righteous judgment. I refused to budge from their belief system even though it makes no sense. I turned into a hateful little drone intent on doing what they, and I, believed to be the work of this god.




But then I realized many things.

1. They couldn't answer some very simple questions. How are we going to make the world better? Why do we raise so much money to expand the physical building that we call church but we rarely talk about raising money to help out the local neighborhoods? What the fuck does sitting around a bonfire on the shores of Panama City singing crappy songs have anything to do with being Christian?

2. The church body (it's people) would love and accept me unless I >>> a. am not hateful & judgmental about Muslims, b. ask the sort of questions that revealed how little everybody knew or cared about what following Jesus really meant, or c. flat out fuckin' flaming queer and loving it!

3. I felt more like an outcast with these supposedly loving individuals than with the "heathen nonbelievers" they so vehemently despise. (Yeah, that love the sinner hate the sin bit is total bullshit. What gives any of us the right to determine what is sinful in another person's life, eh?)

4. I was becoming more hateful & narrow-minded, completely missing the whole point that this Jesus guy talked about.

5. I'm too fucking smart for this shit.

6. Everyone, including me, put on the sickeningly sweet, polite face on church grounds. We all acted and spoke like complete douches when we were anywhere else. Nobody was comfortable being themselves at church. WTF!



So I ditched the church.

And I was angry & resentful with what I thought was God.

I realize now that I don't want to run from God. I had to leave the church, cleanse myself of their indoctrination, and reject every belief of what this god that they brainwashed us with is. So in a way that makes me an atheist, if I reject all the notions of THAT god.

I had to leave the church to find my own salvation and to find my Savior wherever He is really hiding.

Because if I have learned anything in all these years, it is that Jesus is rarely found at church.

vietnam

i gave my mom money yesterday in an envelope labeled "mom-vietnam".

i've been saving cash hoping she would not have to feel the burden of paying so much for a plane ticket. vacations shouldnt start off with financial stress. it should be a break from all the stress.

it hurts my heart that this is the only way we can say 'i love you' to one another is through money & materials that cost money, but i think as i get older it just makes it easier to accept that it is the only way she knows.

zzz

losing my balance upon trying to walk into my apartment, tipping, and nearly falling over before i caught myself on the door handle, has made me realize how important sleep is.

i am about to try and rest now. my hands are tingly and numb from being so tired.