I Don't Think The Crazy's Gone

Throughout my life I've had one major goal: Don't disappoint people. I've joked often about setting expectations low so that you can always meet them but this isn't what I mean. In how I live, how I think, how I work, and how I make my decisions there's always an element of who will be disappointed by what I choose and who will be glad. Even while I'm in times of turmoil I don't do the things that I really want to do or need to do because I'm afraid of who it might disappoint.

A few weeks ago I got drunk for the first time. It wasn't a big deal and I hated most of the experience but it was also so freeing to do something and not think about who was going to be disappointed in me. Until later. When I told some of my friends about that party, they were, in fact, disappointed in me.

I want to be a Christian but I also want to process things and do things in my way, not the mainstream way. I know we're all supposedto be good and well behaved but trying to fit in these bounds have been suffocating me. There are some things that I just seem to see fundamentally differently from other Christians.

Yes, I know God hates drunkenness but Jesus provided wine at a party where people were already drunk. Yes, I know that we are called to modesty but the definition of modesty is culturally determined. Nudity doesn't bother me, small amounts of clothing don't bother me. Maybe it's from nine years as a dancer but I just don't see it as immodest unless you are dressing to bring attention to certain body parts and flaunting it. Yes, I know there are so many things I'm supposed to do differently than I do but I'm just not there yet.

Maybe I have trouble believing because I'm too busy thinking about what I should be thinking, doing, believing, saying, etc and not allowing myself to actually think, do, believe, say, etc.

I'm sure that some will understand and others will think that I am a bitch. I feel a little of both. I've been frustrated with my family and it's gotten worse in the last little while. I know that we're all a little screwed up and I've had my momemts too but I'm wondering if my burnout with them is becoming unhealthy apathy. I just watched my fall down drunk dad... well... fall down drunk. I watched. He struggled to get up and I watched. He fell again and I watched. He laid on the floor and I watched. He pulled himself up on the couch painfully slow and I watched. I didn't want to help him, I'd done it enough times.  He got himself to his room and is in bed now but I'm still feeling guilty.

A few days ago I called one of my sisters a perpetual mess. She is a perpetual mess but I know I shouldn't have said that. Some of it is her fault but some isn't. No one realized for a long time that she had bi-polar disorder. Things have gotten so much better since then but it feels like we are still always picking up the pieces.

Another sister who is my "Responsible Sister" is also having problems. I've never really minded helping her because she's helped me but by the end of this time, it made me a little angry. First it was needing $400, that's fine, I can help. Then it was another $300, still fine, I know you're trasitioning. Then another $300, okay, lets get through this. $140 so she can register for a test for a certification so she can get a really good job, alright, study hard. She needs $300 more because she didn't pay attention to her spending and overdrafted her account several times over. Now I'm a little mad.

My mother's husband keeps taking my car without asking. Now, I have let them use it a few times and I work and park right down the street from their apartment. I've had them keep a key just in case of emergency but I think that's not such a good idea anymore. I don't live with them, they do not pay for my insurance or gas, they did not buy the car for me.

So there it all is. Am I a bitch or just burnt out?

I haven't actually abandoned this blog but I have been focusing mostly on my weight loss blog instead. 30lbs later, I'm thinking about some of the bigger issues in life. Yes, there are things out there bigger than my ass.

The nature of truth and reality, just to name one, is of course much bigger. I've been in a existential meltdown for roughly the last three years and it got worse this year. Maybe I'm making progress though. It hit me this morning, the point at which I am now. I believe again but I'm not ready yet to actually call myself a Christian again. I believe the word view and the theology but I'm just not ready to give myself up. I want my life to be my own. I guess that this is really a trust issue. Deep down I still fear the cruelty I have been through in my life and that God will deal with me with that same cruelty. I don't want it.

Sempre Libera has been my motto yet Sempre Fedele has been the cry of my heart. I haven't been able to reconcile the two.

For the last week and the next two weeks I have been working on this balancing act of weight maintenance. I have chosen a start date for my experiment and I don't want to skew the results. I don't want to gain weight because that would suck and just plain be counterproductive but I also don't want to loose weight yet because I am set on the idea of a structured experiment with a start date (though no particular end date). I want to track and measure my results in a determined and methodical way. Sure, I could start generally eating a little better, but then it would mess with the data. Although I really want to just start now, I am making myself wait. I am trying to keep the good habits that I usually have and still allow some of the bad ones even if I don't feel any particular desire for them anymore. I might just be a tad bit insane.

I did discover that sugar seems to contribute significantly to my anxiety levels. I know that many people out there are slapping their foreheads and thinking, "Well thank you Captain Obvious!" but firstly my superhero name is totally Sarcasto Girl, not captain obvious, and secondly, I had long suspected the connection, but had never been sugar free long enough and then back on sugar to see what a HUGE difference it really makes. Being anxious makes me want a soda…

Behold, the cycle of fat pants doom.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. – Aristotle

In other news, I received a letter from my insurance today stating that I had won the Great Battle of Kendra got run over and needs her medical expenses paid. They paid up! I can now go back to my physical therapist. He has a hot French accent. There was also a super hot black guy there who was an assistant and who I got to work with frequently. I hope that he's still there. I had a secret crush on him.

"Beep Beep Beep… CRASH"

This is precisely what I heard yesterday at roughly 1:00pm. I of course knew what was going on and tried to search for the site of the car accident. It couldn't have been a very bad one but I find that I have a little more of a strange fascination with seeing the damage ever since I was run over. Yep, run over. I found where the site was but couldn't actually see the damage. I couldn't bring myself to walk down to where it had happened because I didn't want to be "one of those people," so instead I decided that I would go get in my car and drive around the block as if it were the most normal thing in the world and then park in the parking garage under my building.

It was a bit of a letdown. There was no cool rubble on the street or anything else, just two very slightly crunched cars. I don't know why I do this, it isn't as if I like to relive the experience of my tires crushing my flesh and feeling the weight of my car on my legs and then torso. I used to wake up from nightmares of it happening again and I even get skittish when I am outside moving vehicles. Even when my own car moves slightly from inside movements of a passenger or something similar I have the urge to yelp. I don't anymore, but I still want to.

I really think that we should judge a book by it's cover. That is the point of a cover after all. Publishers use the cover as a marketing tool. It lets you know what the book is about and the general feel of it. It's true, sometimes they don't do a very good job of portraying what is between those covers, but I still think that it is generally safe to judge a book by it's cover. If we weren't supposed to all books would just be white covers with the name stamped on the front or something like that.

I don't, however, think that you should judge a person by their bookshelf. I'm guily of this. The first thing that I scan when I enter someone's living space is their bookshelf. It is very educational. I then make the stupid mistake of making judgements about the person by what the bookshelf contains. Not mean judgements persay, but still I categorize them in my mind. (Bad Kendra!)

I was looking at my own bookshelf the other day thinking about how most people have dozens and dozens of books that they haven't read and will never read. I am prod to say that I am not one of those people. This is because most of my books are in storage and all that is actually out on my bookshelf are the books I have bought in the last few months. They are the ones that I am working my way through. In storage is another story. I have a general rule for my books that says that I must have read at least half of them before I buy a new book. Normally I am good with this rule and obey it, which means that I am constantly counting my books, which I have read, and which I haven't... (obsessive much?) Right now I am not following that rule because my favorite book format is in danger of Barnes and Noble deciding not to print them anymore. I have been buying as many of them as I can and am now trying my best to dig into them.

So why in the world and I talking about this today? I went to Half Price Books two days in a row and STRUGGLED not to buy several books that I really wanted. I didn't do it, but it was a close call.

Strange to see things from the other side…

Today was my first day back in classes after a year of hiding in my Hobbit Hole and relearning how to live and function. The only two classes that I have in a classroom this quarter are choir and private lessons for piano and music theory. As I was walking into choir today I had a very strange feeling that I'd been there before but things seemed a little different this time. Things were different. Today I did something I've never done in my life. I went and sat in the soprano section.

I've spent my whole musical career as an alto, and then a mezzo (still first alto sometimes on loan as a mezzo soprano in ensembles), but never a soprano. I have to admit I liked it. I never realized how much easier it is being a soprano because you get the melody, but it is also a better place in my range and it just felt good.

After class I had lunch with my mother and we discussed that year I mentioned at the top. I told her it was like kicking down my castle made of blocks so that I could start again and build a better one. I like that analogy and I think that it's true. I spent so much time just trying to keep things together and functioning that I didn't realize that I didn't actually have to do that and that I would be much happier not doing it. I am allowed to live where I am and not at the point where I should be. Life is so much better these days even if I am not where I always wanted to be. It's okay. I have time.

I need to start saving a little money, though, because today reminded me of how much I need to start working with a voice teacher again. There is some serious work to be done.