A gift from my Aunt a long time ago. A Lily of the Valley teacup for May.
It's been a minute.
Say you stumble in the middle of the night and fall into a well.
And whoooooshcrunch there you are broken at the bottom.
And you shred your hands in the effort to climb your way out.
And it takes a very long time.
It's not until you can look back into the well in full daylight that you realize just how deep it was.
You can't fathom how you were ever able to make it out.
I know I'll have setbacks. I recognize I'll stumble again. The truth is it doesn't always get better. Sometimes it gets vastly worse. All you can do is try to prepare yourself for when it gets bad so you can get better on the other side.
I've had this feeling before. Especially when I've recalled school, mostly 7th through 12th grade, I wonder how I did it. Getting very little sleep at night from anxiety. Early morning. Every day. Overwhelmed by too many people and too much noise and chronic stress and illness and no relief. Objectively, I know I got through it by being a suicidal zombie, which isn't any way to be. But I can look back and awe that I didn't blow my brains out every day. I got to the other side.
Here I am on the other side again.
For the last few months I have noticed, in small ways and big, that my sensory experience is vastly different than it was for roughly the last four years. My 'normal' during that time was to have a panic attack if I felt too cold or too hot or needed to burp or felt hungry or full or from watching a movie or for seemingly no reason at all.
My nervous system was on a hair-trigger for every tiny little bit of stimulation. And every response was a grenade going off in my ribcage, ripping my limbs from my body, sending me in a terrorized scramble to collect them... even though they were right there where they should be, attached to me just fine.
But surely they couldn't be when I felt like I'd been blown apart.
I know things about myself now. I know that when I'm totally fucked up and in a panicked state, but trying to hold it together, my right arm twitches involuntarily. My elbow swings away from my body, pulsing by my side. I know that the smaller anxious moments make me yawn compulsively and grip and massage my collarbones and neck without thinking about it.
I yawn a lot still.
But the grenades are gone.
So now I can eat full meals. And have seconds!
And I can watch an icky scene in Orphan Black and laugh through it.
I can go through the majority of my days feeling stable. The steadiness is so palpable. It's remarkable.
It's so distinct that I know even a year ago I was nowhere near this.
I turn 30 in a week and I'm a total failure by normal people standards.
But hey, for the first time in four years, I can eat seconds!
Win!
Got hired for a temporary little job creating questions for a trivia app... the Kpop section. It pays to be knowledgeable about an obscure niche of a niche bit of pop culture.
Got asked to contribute to a tumblr typography project for Hank Green Out of Context, which will probably be posted within the week. Mine will certainly be the least competent of the bunch, in the typographical sense. It's not something I've studied/practiced. But I did a playful Illuminated Manuscript dealio, which is kind of hilariously stupid.
JUNSU IS MAKING ONE MORE ALBUM BEFORE ENLISTMENT.
Bless goddess Hani for dating him so he would delay military to be with his lady-love for a little while longer. I mostly just want to marry her myself. I usually don't take much interest in female idols, but she's the anti-idol and I love her dearly.
EXID has a similar rapport to what DBSK had back in the day. Their company is less strict though. Would never have gotten a drunken, spastic, performance like this from an SM group.
Hani is fucking precious.
And Solji's voice is fierce af.
Arsenal's season utterly fell apart for the 2nd half of the season. Lol. And Leicester have had this fairytale, planets aligning, prophecy fulfillment of a prophecy that never was. And while most everyone hates little Leicester now, Arsenal fans are rooting for them to beat Tottenham... because Tottenham. If Chelsea beats them tomorrow, I believe it becomes impossible for them to beat Leicester for the league.
That'll be a fun game.
Back to work!
