Out of Synch

Today, I’m out of synch.

The words don’t quite flow right,
                I don’t quite flow right.
And when I get up to dance at the end of the day,
It’s all slightly off
                                There’s not that rhythm to the sway.

As though there’s this natural rhythm
A shared pattern
A heartbeat, if you will
That determines when we speak in conversation
the track of our thoughts
the dance of two beings when we meet
And on any other day, I could be up there with the rest of them
Swinging through some jokes
A salsa through a flirt
Even a waltz through something more serious

But today, not today
I’m off.  A different time signature, or a faulty metronome, just a fraction of
                a second behind   everyone,       everything
else.
I can find the flow.
I’m just behind the beat
My tapping toes are at odds with that communal heartbeat.

And when I speak
And I try to make an impression
I try to spark bright  but not too hot
I’m just
  not quite
in the right
tempo.
I answer a question that wasn’t asked and was never going to be.
I make a joke based on a frame of reference familiar to no one in the room.
And I wonder if I’ve caused offence or just bewilderment and I assume the worst and I retreat and I hide behind a forced twee smiling shell and I worry and I shake and I stay silent for fear of anything and everything that I say and haven’t said and then it’s too late and too much and I just have to go.

Instead of this...

At the moment, my life seems full of minor existential crises.  What am I doing?  Why am I doing it?  Would I be happier if...?  My techniques of dealing with this are varied, weird and possibly unhealthy, but that’s not the topic of today’s brain splurge (mmm splurge).  Today, I thought I would just share with you a list of some of the varied occupations that I keep convincing myself would be a better idea than what I’m doing.  Like my list of reasons to procrastinate, I’ll post them in instalments of ten.  That way all of you, my wonderful readership of 2.3 people, will hopefully not be too bored by an enormous block of nonsense.

Anyway, enough gushing (ew) and on with the list. Enjoy.

1)    ...be a palaeontologist.

2)   ...be a human evolutionary anthropologist.

3)   ...be a librarian.

4)   ...be a trophy wife who is secretly Indiana Jones/Adèle Blanc-Sec.

5)   ...blog/vlog/art for a living (haha)

6)   ...be a make up artist.

7)   ...open a tea shop.

8)   ...open a bakery.

9)   ...open a wool shop.

10)  ...open a shop where I serve tea and cake as well as selling knitting and knitting supplies.

If you enjoyed any of these or feel you have something (really, please, anything) to say about them, don’t forget to leave a comment!

Lament/Torment (My best dreams)

My head, my heart, they are no longer in accord.
All because of you.
We don’t speak. I dare not even utter a hello, for fear it might upset that gentle balance that seems to have been constructed. 
I barely hear from you, of you, about you.
And yet still,
I can’t give up that hope.  When I’m walking alone or there’s a chill in the room all I can think is how wonderful it would be to be near you again.
The terror that I might see you.
On the bus.
On the street.
On the tube.
Consumes a trip to the centre of town.  Makes me quiet, but not calm.  With a twitch in my neck to see who is around.
The marvel and anticipation of you at a party held by a mutual friend.

Maybe we’ll mend that bridge
Maybe we’ll fight, rip out each others hair like we’ve already ripped out each others hearts, but we’ll feel better for it.
Maybe we’ll just exchange greetings, like the adults we’re pretending to be.

Because my best dreams are of you forgiving me, feeling your wirey, sure arms around me, the soft heat of your cheek and maybe, maybe if I’m lucky, if I’m good, then I’ll catch sight of that smile.

I don’t think I ever did justice to that smile.

The party happened. We saw each other.
 We were mature.
 I think.
 Maturity is a strange concept to me these days.
 The sight of you holds such splendid pain and yet still just sitting next to you holds an instinctive comfort.   I’m sorry it’s not the same way for you. I resolve to be better, better than ever, because I’m still in disbelief at what I have done.

But my better is never going to  be right for you. 
Just look at you. 
You’re flourishing without me.  Had I been holding you back all this time?  When you were so sad, so worried, so much in need of help that I disgustingly didn’t give, was I at the source all along?

You tell me about how you felt before seeing me. 
Crushing small objects,
                            ripping your thumbs.
I hope to whatever powers that be that I never tell you my side.   You don’t want to hear what my heart has to say to you now.
You’re healing.
Keep on with it.  Keep going forwards and upwards and for Pete’s sake be happy.
Be happy
     be happy
          be happy
               be happy
                    be happy
                           be happy because at least if you’re happy then that part of me that still, still punishes me for what I have done will let me get to sleep at night.

Because it’s not peaches and sunshine over here, my dear.  There are so many strands of different lives I’m trying to lead going round and round and round in my head that I’ve lost the ability to shove them together into some semblance of being me.   I’m losing my memory and my words and my willpower and my loyalty and my ability to think of the other people in the room without stopping still in order to do so.  So much of my  time is taken up with things that just fill the time until I can respectably try to sleep and escape  into that dream again. 

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop  saying:
I’m sorry.

And the winds just howls.

There’s a chill in the air.  A frisson, a frenzy.  A tension that creeps up through your muscles until you are poised to strike at nothing there.  And the wind just howls.  There’s a drop of rain on my window.  Another, then another, like arrhythmic drums, until they blur into the white noise of a car radio between towns, between lives.  And still the wind just howls.  There’s an emptiness on the street.  Everyone retreated to safety, to warmth and comfort and psychological fortress of a locked door and curtains closed.  And the wind just keeps howling.  There’s a glint in my eye.  I worry about windows not quite closed, about a house just old enough to be a question.  I feel a feral anticipation towards the crashing and the clashing and the raucous joy of the elements.  And the wind howls and howls and howls.

Procrastination - 5

41)      Find the powerpoints online of all the lectures I plan on doing today.  Then find all the notes.  Work out the appropriate order in which to do them.  Realise there’s not enough time left to do all of them and leave it for next time.

42)      Look at hilariously titled books in the library – end up reading a book on “cumaceans” and feeling ridiculously immature,.

43)      Doodle on everything.

44)      Unclog the shower.  Wonder how it got so bad.  Feel slightly nauseous for the rest of  the day.

45)      Learn BSL. (badly)

46)      Reorganise your friend’s DVD collection.  Not even your own.  SOMEONE ELSE’S

47)      Sit on the sofa in a pile with your friends, talking about anything and everything.

48)      Stretch out ALL of the kinks in your back. ALL OF THEM.

49)      Have silent rants in the library at your friends about that girl sitting near to you who just won’t whisper.  No seriously, do you have trouble grasping the concept? I THINK THE LIBRARY MIGHT NOT BE THE RIGHT PLACE FOR YOU.

50)   Make a list of all the things you do to procrastinate.

Procrastination - 4

31)      See how many blog views I have.  Blogger tells me all about your operating systems and where you’re from.   I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. (only to the country though)

32)      Make a Google Plus account

33)      Try to do everything you can do with a google plus account.

34)      Link my google plus account to my blogger.  Not be sure this is a good idea.  Unlink it a few days later to be on the safe side.

35)      I DON’T UNDERSTAND GOOGLE PLUS OR THE INTERNET.

36)      Spend forever choosing exactly the right music to revise to.  Then change my mind.

37)      Dance like a silly. I tell myself it’s exercise.

38)      Sing along to music, realise I’m singing the words of the lecture I’m reading in time with the music, wonder if it helps, then realise said words have lost all meaning to me.

39)      Look up all of the lyrics to what I’m listening to.  That way at least my procrastination is accurate.

40)   Stick things on my wall.  Like tickets, receipts, leaflets...you name it, if it can be stuck using white-tac then it’s probably up there somewhere.

Procrastination - 3

21)      Plan all the things I’m going to do after my exams.

22)      Plan all the things I’m going to do over the summer.

23)      Plan what I’m going to wear to every event I could possibly go to.

24)      Plan my next five meals.  In great detail.  Then end up cooking something else because I wasted all my time planning and I don’t have time to do anything fancier.

25)      Think about how exactly I’m going to tidy my room.  And then not do it.

26)      Contemplate cleaning the kitchen.

27)      Unblock the sinks down in the kitchen.  Well, slightly.  I think.  I’m kinda terrified  that my attempts at unblocking will end up in a worse problem later on.  If they do : I’M SO SORRY GUYS.

28)      Play Mahjong/Solitaire/Spider Solitaire/Freecell. As in, the games that come free with the computer.

29)      Look up things on Wikipedia.  Then follow links.

30)   Reorganise my Bookmarks bar on Google Chrome.

Procrastination - 2

11)      Giggling over the things in the weird and wonderful world of Ann Summers.  Particularly the reviews of sex toys.  People say really the weirdest things.

12)      Searching things in an incognito window  that I knew that I didn’t want to search, that I knew would leave me feeling weird and losing faith in humanity, but thought that I might as well look up “in the interests of thoroughness”  And no, I won’t tell you what I  searched.  Believe me, it’s for your own good.

13)      Looking up symptoms that I have on medical websites.  I’ve found that since starting my medical course I tend to either come to the conclusion that it’ll sort itself on its own, or that I have a brain tumour/gallstones/some sort of heart conditions/most mental disorders.  Never underestimate your own ability to hype things up in your mind.

14)      Mourning what could have been.  What I could have been, what I could have become, what doors are now closed off to me. 

15)      Looking up things that I could do other than medicine.  Currently the plan is wait tables or an equivalent until I have the money to start a patisserie.  I will bake and cook and sell my knitting and other crafts and I will write in my spare time.  Either that or sexy librarian.  Or maybe switch to a palaeontology degree.  In all seriousness, I really like dinosaurs.

16)      Doing my make up/my nails.  This is made more ridiculous by the fact that I currently live in a house on my own since everyone else is at with their families.  THERE IS NO ONE TO SEE MY BEAUTY.

17)      Play viola.  Try to get better at the bass.  Sing.  Not really relevant at the moment because the house is too cold for my fingers to do what I want them to.

18)      Decide to go to the library in the afternoon.  Get ready for the library – this involves showering, packing your revision, putting on appropriate clothes, packing different revision because you don’t need to cover what you’d originally decided on, finding snacks to take with you and filling a water bottle, repacking your revision AGAIN.  And then oh look the library closes in an hour not that much point going after all.

19)      DRINK ALL THE WATER.  I have started drinking more water than can possibly be necessary.  I don’t understand why.

20)   Make coffee.  Drink coffee.  Remember why I try not to drink so much caffeine.  Try to sit still and fail.

Procrastination - 1

     Why do we procrastinate?  What is the point of it all?   There’s a part of me that thinks that maybe it’s part of my brain’s way of giving itself some time off, so that it can...I dunno...do some sort of background processing.  If I’m being honest though, I think it’s just my innate laziness.

     I really am one of the best people I know at procrastinating.  Maybe that’s just because I know me best, but I do genuinely believe that I spend more time procrastinating than a lot of my peers.  Heck, I’m so good at it that I find myself procrastinating during my procrastinating.  As in right now, I should be revising.  I have some pretty major exams in a couple of weeks.  As in “I need to pass these exams so that I can stay at Medical School and follow my dreams” sort of major.  However, here I am, writing this.  Not only that, but after allowing myself to start writing this (the idea’s been in my head a few days), since I’d fulfilled my initial (albeit low) expectations of what I’d complete today, I thought I’d do half an hour on this.  And yet, after letting myself start, I found myself looking at possible laptops I could buy a sentence or two ago.  Now, I should be looking at them at some point - my laptop currently rattles when I hold it the wrong way, is losing its keys and occasionally freaks out for really no reason.   Much though I’m rather attached to it, I think this might be the beginning of the end.  I don’t want to be left suddenly without my portal to that wonderful and disgusting place that is the internet. However I consciously told myself that I’d let myself get a laptop for my birthday.  My birthday is AFTER my exams, so I can fantasise about laptops AFTER my exams.  But do I?  No.  I decide the time to look at them is during the time that I’ve allowed myself in order to do something else that isn’t revising.  It’s like some sort of meta-procrastination.  It’s not the first time and it’s getting pretty annoying.

     Recently, I watched Jenna Marbles’ video on Junk FoodConfessions.  Now aside from the fact that she’s pretty damn awesome, I want to be her friend and I have really an awful lot of respect for her for doing what she does, I thought that I’d take a leaf out of her book and start writing down all the things that I do to procrastinate.  I’ll publish this after exams, and maybe it’ll help me to stop doing the things I shouldn’t be doing and start doing the things that I should be doing.  I’ll put it up in instalments, so that you can fully appreciate it all. 

So...here goes. 

1)       Checking  facebook, stalking anyone who I haven’t seen/talked to recently.  Facebook has since been deactivated, which is way harder to keep up than it should be.

2)      Going on funnyjunk/icanhazcheezburger and not only looking at top uploads, but looking at the newest uploads and then ending up comparing the two and looking at everything twice because I saw everything in top uploads when it was in the newest uploads.  Also getting really annoyed at a lot of internet peoples.  Let’s not go into why.

3)      Looking at pretty dresses.  Again, something I justify to myself on the basis that  I have a ball  coming up and want to get a new dress for, since I don’t think I  have anything quite formal enough.  However this ball is months off.  I have time.

4)      Obsessively finding new webcomics  and reading their entire archives.  I’ve done this for enough so far that  I’ve added 7 new comics to my list of things to regularly check.  That’s just the ones that I particularly liked.   And some of their archives went back over 5 years.   THAT’S A LOT OF STORYLINE NOW IN MY BRAIN

5)      Doing the above with blogs/tumblrs/fanfictions.  

6)      Reading over old skype/facebook/email/text conversations with my friends.

7)      Feeling bad about what I said in those conversations/realising that the friends were actually being kinda harsh.

8)      Trying to reconnect with old friends (this happens at random, if you feel we need to reconnect and I haven’t tried it with you, it’s nothing to do with you, more like to do with when you’re on facebook/skype and how long for)

9)      Skyping everyone I know.

10)   Watching youtube videos about things that are irrelevant to me  and that I don’t care about. SO MANY MAKE UP TUTORIALS DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO LOOK COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TO ME IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Trichotillomania

Run your fingers through your hair, searching for the right spot.

It might be where there’s a patch of odd skin, an itch.

It might be where there’s a thinning of the hair.

It might be where you’ve done this before.

When you find the right spot, you’ll know.

Work your fingers around it.  Get to know it, the feel of it under the tips of your fingers.

Close the tip of your forefinger and thumb around the base of the hairs.  Compress – not so hard that you’ll pull them all out, mind.   You’ve got to find the right hair.

Move your fingers gently away from the root.  You know what you’re looking for; you’ve done this a thousand times before.  A thousand times that shouldn’t have happened, a thousand times that will happen again.

Really feel the texture of your hair.

Some strands thick, some strands thin.

Some strands smooth, some oddly rough.

You’re looking for the one that stands out amongst all of the straight, normal hairs.  The one with the tight, strong, rebellious 2mm wave to it.

Is that one?

Your grip tightens

              you pluck it from the root with a deftness that comes with practise.

You look at your catch.  Not this time.  These are all normal, straight.  You feel a pang of regret that you pulled them when there was no need, but that thought is quickly overtaken by the compulsion to find and remove what you think you just felt.  The hair that you just pulled won’t have been lost in vain.

Maybe five more times, maybe ten, you pull out perfectly normal hair.  You lose count because now you’re in the zone, in a kind of obsessive trance as you seek that one hair, that for no logical reason to you now needs to be pulled.

Sometimes you give up.  Move on to a different spot, or get on with whatever it is you’re meant to be doing.

Most of the time though, you don’t. You will finish what you have started.

Eventually, you get the right hair.  Sometimes it feels the same as the rest as it comes out, sometimes it has a certain pain, a particular discomfort, and yet with it a feeling of victory that you’ve done it, you got it!

Researching in a fit of self-centred navel-gazing you learn that each hair that gets pulled causes the brain to release a small dose of dopamine, in theory to help you cope with the pain.  In practise, it leads to a sort of addiction, an addiction to slow, sure but steady self-mutilation.  Your hair used to be thick, straight, full, shiny and strong.  Now it’s thin, brittle, irregular, prone to breaking.  You notice that you can track stressful events by strange layers that develop in your hair.  You can no longer grow it to be long and flowing as was your pride and joy when you were young and carefree.  Instead, you chop it short, to minimise the visibility of the damage. 

Your reading also turns up a piece of horrible beautiful irony.  The small-waved, dark, stray hairs that you focus in on?  They’re characteristic of the regrowth that occurs following plucking.  Self-obsession driving self-mutilation driving self-mutilation.

And yet still, you continue.

     This is a recognised condition, that only becomes a problem for me when I'm stressed.  Like when, y'know, you have exams in just over a week.  If you want to find out more, these are a couple of useful websites :

NHS choices

UK-based support and information group

US-based support and information group

In your arms

In your arms I am safe.

In your arms I am warm.

In your arms I am the only one.

In your arms we are together.

In your arms I am a king.

In your arms I am a queen.

In your arms I am a joker.

In your arms I am everything in between.

In your arms I am lovely.

In your arms I am cruel.

In your arms there is the comfort of the well-known.

In your arms there is the excitement of something new.

In your arms I am yours.

In your arms you are mine.