The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Brian is here. I went to a reunion. I’m exhausted and feel useless.

This isn’t happening today.

Tomorrow, maybe.

Sorry.

I can’t do this tonight. I’m too tired.
I can’t do this tonight.

You don’t know how much this frustrates me. Supposed to write something every day. But it’s not worth the struggle. It’d probably take me like an hour to put something together that I would consider coherent enough to post, and I just can’t spare that time. I need sleep. Like, for fucking serious, I need sleep. I’ve been falling asleep at the wheel constantly while driving. I can’t focus on my work because I’m exhausted all the time. I need sleep.

So I’m really sorry. I’ll write something tomorrow, promise. Just give me this, okay? I am begging myself to be okay with skipping a day here, basically. Please be okay with that. I’m going to bed.

Hi. Here’s a boring post.

Today I almost drove off the road driving back from Sikeston. Like, seriously moments away from running my car straight off the highway into a ditch. Already I was exhausted today. I was kind of spacy in my classes. But driving home, I was just so tired, I was nodding off.

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

I figured up how much I work on a daily basis now. If I’m being conservative, on a normal Tuesday like today when I have ad set in the evening, I work… 12 hours? Not conservative, probably more like 14. Many of them are late at night, and the hours the next day start in the morning, where I get up around 5:30 to get shit done. I have more time off MWF, but often that’s when I need to do chores around the house, run errands, drive to St. Louis for an appointment, and so on. I take time off on weekends, and be lazy as fuck, but that just means I have more to do come Monday, in a shorter period of time.

I don’t know, I feel like I’m trapped in this thing, and I am just kind of tired. Even with time off, I feel like I just break even, and soon enough I get burned down again. It’s enough to make me want to return to caffeine.

The solution is to dump Kohl’s, but it’s a solution I can’t take. I need the insurance, as shitty as it is, and I need to have a summer job or I’m going to go broke. I hope after this summer, I can dump it, but then I’m just going to be worrying about next summer… I’m not sure if it’s all going to work out. I mean, hopefully Brer is here by then, and then I have more roommates, thus less expenses, and that will be nice. Or maybe I’ll have a full time job before it’s an issue again, and I won’t have to worry about it! I can dream, right?

Seriously, though. I’m fucking tired. I’m going to try not to be cranky but it’s hard! It’s hard.

I feel like I’m always writing about moments nowadays when I talk about this sort of stupid stuff. It’s never shitty days, or weeks, or years. It’s just one moment where all of the sudden I’m shaken. I doubt like I used to. A moment where I want to fall apart. Sometimes I do. Often I don’t, because I can’t afford to.

It’s nice to be able to fall apart, though. I’ve been doing it in front of CJ lately. A thing leads to another in my head and then I’m back to my old self, my depressed self, who basically can’t accept that nice things are happening to her. It’s stupid. It’s frustrating. It makes me cry and hide and generally want to smack myself. But he listens and has understood, which just… it’s nice. I mean, I’ve fallen apart in front of Brer before. He’s had stupid phone calls aplenty. He’s seen me fucked up too. But in person, it’s just… I’m way more vulnerable. I can’t hide. I can’t get out of the situation. Online, I can just step away. Even on the phone, I can just hang up. But there I am, a stupid fool, and I can’t get away… and it’s okay. He’s still there. I always worry that if anyone knows about my little episodes, they won’t want to be around me anymore. They won’t want to be here. I’ll stop being a positive influence. But it doesn’t work like that. I let it out, and I can move on. Bottling it up is bad shit… I’m glad I don’t have to.

Still, those are big moments. Those are big deals. The little stuff is just as upsetting, perhaps, but I have to just move on from it and keep going.
An example: Mike, a man I worked with long ago, stopped by Kohl’s. He greets me by my old name. I panic. There’s just this wave of remembering. It’s a link back to how things used to be. It shook me.
I recovered real fast. I told him my name was Alexis now, and asked him how he was doing, and then got back to work. But just these stupid moments. Stupid moments.

I’m fine. I’m great. It’s just unfortunate when I stumble. It bothers me to some extent. It shouldn’t be like that.
But oh well. I’ll get the worries out, on this blog or with those I trust or whatnot, and move on. Things will keep being cool. Cool? Cool.

Is it okay if I write about this, blog? I’m going to write about this, I think. Just don’t… you know. If it’s uncomfortable-making, don’t read it. As the title suggests, it’s about sex. So, you know.

Aesa and I were laying together in a bed, as people in a relationship who live together at times do. Then things started happening and he started doing things to me as someone in a relationship with someone else often does. Then everything fell apart.

Okay, so we’ve done sexy things before, and it’s been wonderful. Totally wonderful. It’s not like this is the first time. But for whatever reason, this time… this time I couldn’t get over it. I couldn’t get over the reality of what he was doing, of what equipment I had, and how who I was clashed with that. I couldn’t focus on the nice feelings, and the fact that he’s all involved in such things because he cares about me, wants me, not this body I’m stuck in, and things like that which have been the cornerstone of getting over my stupid self in the past.

Instead, I ended up just kind of asking him to stop, curling up, and just sobbing for awhile. He clearly didn’t know what to do. He was trying to be helpful, comforting, but it just wasn’t a thing he could do anything about at that point. I couldn’t stop myself from crying. I felt terrible, like a freak, and I couldn’t shake that feeling. When I started calming down from that, I got onto the idea that this breakdown was going to somehow keep him from wanting to do this sort of thing again in the future, and I cried even more.

I get into this state where I think I’m alright, you know? Life is going fucking fantastic, and everything is going my way. Seriously. I’m over my issues, I tell myself. I’m happy, insanely happy, for the first time in my life. And it’s true. But then there are moments like this where all of the sudden that doubt, those issues, just burst forward and ruin everything. I feel like I can’t help it. I feel like I don’t have control over it. It’s terrible. Fucking terrible. Even today this shit gets in the way. It’s no fair.

Aesa understands. Brer understands. It’s not like there will be a problem. It’s not like they’re going anywhere. Nothing is really ruined. But fuck. Just… fuck. I really wish I wasn’t so fucked up.

Today I had this amazing moment where I’m like “WOAH, I was thinking about this housing problem all wrong! The solution is so stupid simple!” so now I know how to move Aesa into the house without issues! Although it still requires some remodeling and building, though nothing as insane as my original plans. So that was cool!

But then I was back to just being alone in my house.

I have been so overwhelmingly lonely. It makes me feel amazingly and stupidly lame. I have so many wonderful people in my life. SO MANY WONDERFUL PEOPLE IN MY LIFE. But I never see them. My schedule sucks, and it’s never in sync with anyone. I rarely do anything social. I talk to my boyfriends and online friends all the time, and that’s nice. I wouldn’t give that shit up. Never, never. But let’s face it. It’s not the same. It’s a good substitute, but I can only run on that for so long before I want something more substantial to supplement it. And when you had this wonderful time with one of those people in real life and see how much better that is, it’s just… ugh.

Just feeling like that feels so defeatist. I am being pretty darn successful at life. I should be able to plan things, and make things happen, right? I should be able to make all this work. Right? Probably? I’m not doing a great job at it, though.

Ugh. Going to sleep. Going to try not to worry about it.

I really need to get some shit done.

Classes start tomorrow, and I need to do some heavy duty teaching then. I still have a bunch of prep to do. I mean, I don’t doubt I’ll get it done. I’m not stupid or whatever, and while I hope I get more done than the barest of minimums, the barest of minimums, being prepared just for this week of classes, is not going to be hard to achieve, given what I’ve already gotten done. I’m not really worried about it.

But goodness, I feel lost.

I feel disconnected from what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. I feel like pointlessness to my actions, where what I’m doing doesn’t matter. Is it because I’m out of plans and am just in a holding pattern waiting for Brer to get here? Is it the pills? Is it because I’ve been on forced “vacation” for so long and haven’t been doing much I would consider constructive? Disconnected from friends? Swamp gas?

I’m not sure.

It’s kind of extra demoralizing though. I dunno. I assumed most of this shit would stop when I transitioned and, for the most part, it totally, totally has. But then I have days like this, where I feel so lost, even when I’m working on projects, alone, even when I’m talking to my boyfriends and friends, and floaty, even though I’m interacting with my family in physical space for dinner, and I just worry that I’m just kind of wired naturally to feel like shit. I fixed a lot of it by giving my brain the stuff it needs, but not all of it, you know?

I really don’t think that’s accurate. Everybody has off days, sadness, and things like that in their lives. This shit happens. It shouldn’t be happening 24/7, like it was before, but it does happen. That’s life. I think all this worry is really more like… I worry that I won’t snap out of it. Now that I’ve been more happy, and more stable, I do not, in the least, want to go back to how I felt before. Feeling that way, even for an afternoon, makes me scared that tomorrow, things won’t be better. I won’t cheer up, and I’ll go back to how things were. I’ll feel like I’m unable to get out of bed, and continue living. I freak out about that happening again. And that freaking out would, in the past, cause me to get even worse, and continue to spiral downward, again and again, into that black abyss or something less cliche.

I guess that is the difference, now that I say it. I’m not getting worse. Feeling like this is not making me sing songs about killing myself, or about how much of a disappointment I am, as I go about my daily stuff. I’m not falling down where I can’t get up. I don’t feel great, but I’m not doomed. That helps.

I’ll get some sleep. That’s probably a bit part of it. We’ll see how things go, and we’ll see how much I am overthinking what will probably just end up being my normal apprehension to change, namely changing to this new teaching schedule, which I’ve felt basically every year I’ve been in school before school started. We’ll see.

It’s late, I’m exhausted, so you get to hear me bitch. Sorry about that.

Today sucked.

I don’t currently have the best job in the world or anything. Far from it. But I hardly ever hate it. I like most of the people I work with, and I enjoy being useful and doing my thing. I’m respected. It works really well. But some days, like yesterday, I really just fucking hate my job.
Let me just go over what happened.

I got up really early to go to work. I was tired, but work called! I got there, and apparently my shift had been moved. A note had been left in my mailbox, which I never check because it’s less a mailbox and more “where I keep the ad set supplies,” and there hadn’t been an ad set in awhile. So there was a big fuss about me showing up at the time I was scheduled instead of the time they moved me to without telling me. This wouldn’t be a huge deal, but it just bothers me that, if I had been anyone else, they would have called me, and there wouldn’t have been this stupid issue they were making such a big deal about.

Because I was there early, they moved me onto the truck, which I was not dressed for. I had dressed up kind of nice, wearing a new top I had bought the night before. I felt like this was hindering me, as I was trying damn hard not to get black from the boxes all over myself. Still, I didn’t slack off or anything. Things were happening. The shift was long, though, and I ended up unpacking freight in an area I had less experience with than most, away from all my friends to help the time pass.

After this, I ran straight home, took care of the puppy dog, and did work for class. I basically had time to figure that out before running to class and teaching. Class went okay, I guess, but shockingly, nobody in my class was familiar with Harry Potter. I had brought in an essay about Harry Potter, and they just did not get it at all. Phrases like “Cedric Diggory’s death in book four” completely confounded them. I didn’t expect them to be encyclopedias, but when you have plenty of context clues, shouldn’t your memory be jogged enough to at least go “Oh yeah, someone died in Goblet of Fire, right? Must be that guy.” Heh, I don’t know, I just figured everyone younger than me would be familiar with it. It was a shock.

I went home and ate then. This caused me to keep dozing off on the couch. I was pretty exhausted by that point already, but I had work to go to. I got up and went.

Work took forever. It was a huge ad, and we were being audited, so it took even longer than it should have. What’s worse, the store started playing Christmas music the moment we closed. This is even before Halloween was technically over at midnight. It was insane, and it didn’t add much to everyone’s demeanor. We eventually finished, very late. I was tired and cranky, but on the way out the door, it was pointed out that my new top has a hole in it. Fantastic! Fantastic. I tried to get some food from the drive-thru to eat my woes away, but I got trapped there for like 20 minutes waiting, so that was time well spent.

And now I’m here. Complaining. I didn’t much care for yesterday. Boo to you, Halloween. At least I have off today.

It’s times like these when you have to look at the good things in life. Like links on the internet.

Today was pretty shit. I had to take action about a lot of things and stand up for myself. I don’t like that. I like being positive. But when people are being assholes to me, what are you supposed to do? Sometimes you just have to call a restaurant you were at and tell the manager about the awful experience you had of people making fun of you within earshot just so you can not let it ruin your whole fucking day, you know?

Anyway, links, motherfucker, do you have them? I have them. Well, some.

Been grading to the Napple Tale soundtrack recently. Damn, that’s just so good! Here’s a new favorite track from it. Just so excellent.

Great cosplay picture? Or the greatest cosplay picture? You decide.

Someone is really serious about the writing in Oblivion. I found this pretty impressive.

Here’s a nice interview about Poison. I personally would like it if they just embraced Poison as transsexual, of course, but at least it looks like they’re making sure they treat her with respect, even if they’re keeping her in a vague space. Also, she looks fun to play.

I should probably write more, something fun, but I’m not going to. I’m sorry. Today is all out of whack… sorry. I just don’t know how to deal with this. How did these completely assholes decide to come out of the woodwork all in the span of two days? It makes me feel a bit paranoid. I mean, people can think what they want about me. That’s fine. I think many things about many people. But I don’t understand why you shove that in someone’s face. Why do you make a big deal out of it? Why is it a problem, especially when you’re working and it’s a simple transaction.
I don’t even know what I’m saying. Sorry.

Today I was prepping for my class. I wanted to bring in another article to discuss, you know, to expand the discussion from what the book has. Standard stuff. I was looking for things at places I know that writes entertaining things, and I stumbled upon this column. I couldn’t pull myself away. I had to read. I read two articles before I was nearly in tears and I forced myself away. It was good stuff, but… but I just couldn’t handle it, even though I also couldn’t ignore it.

I want to read stuff like this. I want to know I am not alone, and more importantly, that there are other people out there, making it, and being successful. I want to be able to give people something more well-written than these stupid blog posts and say “Look, it’s like this. This is what’s going on.”

But it hurts me to read this sort of thing. It makes me want to cry almost immediately, even if something happy is being discussed. I almost feel like I’m punishing myself. I can’t handle it.

I’m no stranger to empathy. I try to be that kind of person. I try to understand people. But with this stuff… I know this pain too well. I know the situation too well. I’ve lived it, or am living it. Trying to feel what they feel, my own pain, my past, it mixes with it. It amplifies it. It overwhelms me. If something bad happens, I remember all the times something similar happened to me, and I just want to collapse and give up. When something good happens, I am just so overwhelmingly thankful that there is good in the world that I can’t express it. I can’t keep it inside me. Either way, I cry.

I have probably said this before, but I try to think back a few years ago, or even a few months ago, to how I felt. The person I was, the depression that ruled my life, it already seems like a dream, to be honest. It’s hard to believe I was ever that much of a mess. I don’t know if anyone else sees it in me. I may seem mostly the same. But there’s no mask anymore, and I’m not hiding my emotions. It feels so right, I can’t believe I used to always be hiding. I have already come so far. I am so fucking thankful.
But when I read these things, I do remember. I remember how terrible I felt. I remember how trapped I felt in my own life. I remember how pointless going on living seemed. It all rushes back to me, and it makes my current problems, like trying to get everyone on the same page with pronouns, feel even worse. They’ll never call me the right pronoun. They’ll never accept me. I’ll never be me, and I have been foolish to try. Just like that, I can’t escape these thoughts. These people I’m reading about are successful, but they aren’t like me. I’m too much of a tomboy. I’ll never pass. My parents will always think it’s okay to call me by my old name. Or even worse, these people have problems, and aren’t successful, and I will, of course, be just like them. I can’t win.

One of the articles I read talked about how little she talks anymore, and how she no longer sings because she’s worried her deeper singing voice will give her away. Suddenly, I’m worried. I sing all the time. Like, all the time. Am I giving myself away? Should I stop? I have a higher voice, but not that high. It probably is a problem. But the idea of not being able to get into music like that is extremely depressing. I have another thing to stress about, on top of everything else, now. When I click on another article, what else will I suddenly be worried about?

I read these articles looking for something to bring to class right before class, thinking my lesson plan was a little light. There was a moment there, about an hour before, that I felt so terrible, I didn’t know if I could teach. I didn’t know if I could really do it. Could I have the enthusiasm? The energy I needed? I felt like I couldn’t. I felt like I did when I used to skip every single one of my classes as an undergrad, and just curl up under blankets and hide. I went to class, of course. I taught fine. I am past the point in my life where I give in to thoughts like that. I just didn’t feel like I could. I really considered giving in, staying home, and feeling sorry for myself.

I just can’t do it. I can’t handle reading this stuff. Maybe I’m not strong enough. Maybe I’m still too much in the middle of it, and in a few years it won’t be a problem. Maybe I’ll never be strong enough, and I’ll always be scared. I don’t know. But I can’t do it, as much as I want to. I just can’t do it.