I miss you more than I should, than I thought I could.

So I was thinking about the problem I have with touching, hugging, holding, being physical with people. It, contact that is, has always made me feel really really uncomfortable unless it’s agreed upon in a specific way…like a hug is usually a quick thing and both people intend to pull away at a certain point. Knowing when you’re going to disengage the physical contact is part of it. With most situations like that I don’t know when it’s going to happen and I worry that I’ll hold on too long and make the other person feel weird somehow, or if I disengage too quickly or react to quickly and make them feel rebuffed. That always runs though my head, and I try to relax and be natural about physical contact but I still always have this tension in me.

Also, physical contact is very shocking to me, especially bare skin to bare skin. Like it is unpleasant to be bumped in a subway, but it’s REALLY unpleasant for someone (anyone really) to suddenly touch my bare hand. I realize the social cues for things like that…to reinforce communication and familiarity, to emphasize a point. But to touch me is to invade my person. Also really touchy people I tend to misinterpret as people interested in my sexually, which is often false, and I make this assumption because it’s often a flirtatious thing to touch someone, but also it’s not sometimes so it’s hard for me to tell.

This is all in direct contrast with how I feel about touching animals, which I love to pet and sit with on my lap and I love to feel the weight of a dog or cat against my back as I fall asleep. I love the different shapes of dogs and cats faces, and to touch the strange contours. I know how wierd that sounds, but it's true. So but I can fall asleep with animals nearby. That’s nice, even comforting. But I can’t sleep in the same bed as someone else, I’ve found, because I listen to their breathing and think about the sounds my stomach makes and how maybe my nose whistles while I try to lie quietly beside them. So I don’t sleep. Except with Caitlin in the room…for some reason, I learned to let myself be and I loved to listen to her gentle sleep sounds…but then, I was in love with her, so there’s that. We had very few bounderies between us, in the end.

I want to find a way to let myself be as other people are, and be less sensitized to touch in these ways. It has been true for as far back as I can remember. I’m not as sensitive to sound anymore, but I still cover my ears or leave the room if there are sounds that are too loud, or if there is a sound that scratches a nerve inside me I react in a physical way. I used not be able to sleep with music or ay sounds at all. The loudness of my friend's cars, the sound of their music especially base (which still bothers me sometimes) would make me feel physically sick. There are so many ways, I find, that I am terrifically different from others, from everyone I know. A lot of it is neurosis (or possibly psychosis), tied to my brain being...off.

I wish I were like normal people. I was thinking about this as I was trying to sleep tonight. It's really lonely sometimes.

gnomes on my brain

And seriously, here's a cool idea. I would love to design and sell garden, home and work gnomes, of varying sizes and degrees of detail. Some for mass production made with plaster cast molds, and some individual and unique pieces. I spent the last hour drawing sketches of different gnomes I'd love to create and sell. And fuck, I could sell them in Tammy's shop!! Could it get more awesome? I mean, lots to pin down. I don't know if I could sculpture as well as I'd need to for such a grand undertaking. But how awesome to be the gnome lady. People collecting my gnomes.

The home and work ones would be of particularly small size, since I'd want them to be able to sit on a desk or on a bookshelf. But never plastic, I like to work in ceramics too much, but I don't know if I should use porcelein or some kind of earthen ware...for the smaller ones probably porcelein if it's going to be so small, right? I need the detail, but a lot of that can be the painting.

The designs I've come up with so far are just awesome. Portland is such a ggreen place, and it should be totally overrun with gnomes in my opinion. Vancouver and Camas too! And if I'm in luck, Mom will hate gnomes. =)

ok, so.

I bought a scale. It was hard for me to do, I hated having to ask for where it was because I have to resist the urge to assume other people care whether or not I'm fat. I'm just some random customer to them, passing very briefly through their lives, making no major impression really. The question remains if I really can change. IF it's possible. What I want to believe is true is manifestly not always true - I believed I could complete my internship. I believed I could graduate on time. I believed I could pass my classes. None of these things were true. Caitlin love that movie "what the bleep do we know" all about how believing in something helps to make it true. If I don't give myself a chance, if I don't start out believing I can make it, I do doom myself. I want more out of this life. I want to be thin, confident, have a good job, spiritually prepare myself for my religious life, try out that dating a girl who actually cares about me thing…Go to clubs and meet people.

But with the weight thing, I do want to lose weight. I do want to be skinny. I need to make a plan so that it will happen…and I need to stick to it and not let myself grow frustrated and quit, or over-reward myself, or cheat because I don’t feel happy.

Problem areas with my losing weight:

I use food to counter-act boredom, and every time I feel any kind of hunger I immediately eat. I think, other than one snack in the afternoon, I should drink water when I get these cravings, or tea, or gum. All good alternatives.

Exercise is a real problem. I hate doing sit-ups, not because they exhaust me but because they hurt my back and my ass and my neck…everything BUT my stomach. I need to find exercises that work the stomach muscles that are nicer to the rest of my body…or maybe I’m just not doing them right. That’s something to find out tomorrow I think.

But I bought the scale. That’s for weekly weighing. I need to print out a calendar so that I can keep track of my weight and what I eat each day, like I was gonna do with Dom but stopped doing. I did weight myself tonight…no, I can’t even type it. I’m ashamed that I’ve let my weight problem get so out of control. I don’t want to be one of those morbidly obese people on tv who have to get a gastric-bypass surgery or they WILL die. I don’t want to be using food as my comfort in this world. I have a better comfort, a deeper strength, a stronger hope. I forget so often.

A big frustration is my situation with learning how to play go. Obviously it is a life passion, and perhaps I am pushing myself too hard to become better. But the software I aquired is too much stronger than I am, I don’t understand it’s tactics, I rarely get more than one of two stones, and never finish a game with more than a few living stones. I think I don’t understand the rules well enough in practice, so I’m hoping to talk to my prof after class and see if I can play a few games against him, to make sure that I’m ACTUALLY understanding it. I wish I could convince one of my friends to play with me. I don’t know anyone in the class…I’m afraid to talk to them. I don’t think they’ll like me. But I’m sure they could use practice too. I fear I’m not analytical enough to be a good player of this game. I want to be really good player of this game very badly. I know that will take time, but I want it, and I want to do what I have to do to make that happen.

I want to get A’s in both of my classes this semester, and so far I’m doing well. I’m keeping up on the homework, I’m participating. It makes me sad that I don’t have any real friends in any of the classes yet…but then, people can feel intimidated by me cause I’m so…me. I can be loud and brash and opinionated and that can really annoy some people.

Nothing feels quite right. Being home…it’s too comfortable. I’m back in all my old clothes, and I’m lulled to sleep by the sound of the fan and dad mowing the lawn outside. I should be trying to move on, to stand on my own feet. But I’m still comfortably in the nest. Because I don’t believe in myself, and I don’t want to fall on my face again.

Maybe just until Fall, I can give myself time to heal. It was really hard for me, this last year. I’ve never hated life more, struggled more just to wake up and keep living. Every day was this disjointed, painful experience that brought with it lots of self-loathing and humiliation. And losing my internship…I definitely haven’t recovered from that. IF I could just remember how valuable I can be…

so that’s some of my thoughts right now. Class in the morning so I need to go to sleep.