Winter: Time and Reality Disruptions

Many people suffer from seasonal affliction disorder come the winter months. The lack of sunlight and outdoor times brings them down. I personally don't suffer from that kind of depression. Instead what I experience is a problem with time and reality.

The Christmas break has a history with my sometimes insatiable imagination. Most winters you can find me curled up with a book, and that's been my tradition for many years. One of my favorite Christmas breaks was in the seventh grade. I was part of a book club at my school (I now run my own book club as an adult), we were allowed to check out four books instead of the regular three our library allowed. That was the year that I gave in and read Harry Potter. I didn't just read Harry Potter, I finished the first four books in five days. I ate and breathed Harry Potter, no sleep happened because you can't read when you're sleeping (I really need science to figure that one out). It's also the year my parents gave me a copy of Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' album and was the last year I got one of those Lifesaver "books" of candy. I also read "Sword-Dancer" by Jennifer Roberson. (I should interject here that my parents did not censor my media intake. Not because they were super progressive artsy types, but because they just couldn't keep up with all the books I was snagging at the used book store with my allowance. I find it weird when I talk to people that are "traumatized" by movies they saw or books they read against their parents wishes. I turned out to be a horror junkie and haven't feared for a creature under the bed since last night. So really what was their problem?)

A few years ago winter was defined by Haruki Murakami's "IQ84", a book that deals with time and alternate realties. Don't get me start on that damn chrysalis, it's still got my brain keyed up on mystical feels.

Another year I sat down in my old home (we technically had two homes at one point but they were both trailers) and I read straight through "Little Women" cover to cover. It was the first time I had read a book in one sitting. That's not so much a feat these days but it was that day that I learned of the curious way time and reality slipped.

The cool air brings the memories of a first kiss with a boy who I hadn't yet had the courage to admit I liked despite the obvious mutual feelings. A friend encourage me and we ran across the school until we found him walking home from band practice. The leaves were swirling and it was the last day before winter break.
It brings the scents of traditional Mexican stews and big loafs of bread.
It's the beeps and blips of hours of 'Star Wars: Pod Racer' on my computer. It's also just hours of marathons of the original trilogy on TNT because we didn't own the movies. Princess Leia taught me to rescue myself at all the right ages every winter.
It brings back Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B. album because we all got it that one year it snowed in my South Texas home through Christmas Eve night so we woke up to a white Christmas (that shit was bananas).
It's me begging my husband to let me open my presents early because I'm excited for him to open his and see what I got him.

You can find me standing still for no reason at all, taking in deep breaths as the cold air pushes down into my soul and takes me away. In those moments I'm somewhere in the desert with Tiger and Del wielding a sword. I'm waking up to a Weasley sweater and Mrs. Weasley's homemade fudge. It could be the nineties in my mind and I'm listening to Janet Jackson with my sister on cassette tape while dad sets up my brand new telescope. Maybe I'm fifteen again running through those swirling leaves.

Time slips away from me and I'm living one-hundred different lives all at the same time. When the moment stops I feel both sad and joyous at the experience. To live so many lives, to have been in so many places and to be standing still in one place while it all happens; it's like having to go home as a kid because the street lights came on. Just five more minutes, please.

8-Bit Purple Heart Tattoo

I’ve always loved video games. From the get go I had access to the Nintendo Entertainment System. I was too young to really fully appreciate the story lines of games like Zelda, but I enjoyed watching my sister play. I think I also really enjoyed when she’d leave the room to go to the bathroom or get a snack and I’d pick up the controller to lance a few Octoroks. There were marathons of Bubble Bobble and notepads filled with codes for later levels. We grew obsessed with games that the titles were lost to us through the years. It was the memories of close calls and joyous celebration that kept those games vague in our mind, over shadowed by the time spent together.

Bulky Gameboys too large for our hands kept us company on the road in our parents blue, inside and out, Chevy pickup. We’d strain our eyes as we played Metroid for the first time, stretched out along the back seat. Dead or dying batteries meant a desperate search from more double A’s and the deconstruction of every portable electronic device we could find. Usually only enough to power one of the two handhelds, forcing us once again to take turns.

There were arguments over computer time. Lemmings, Hover, Pitfall, discs with 150+ low budget games, filled our days. Even Mavis Beacon could leave us desperate for a spot at the keyboard.

But it was the Playstation that cemented our roles to one another. Borrowed from a then boyfriend of her’s, in the overly curtained room of a teenager, sat the Playstation with our boxy little television. The graphics so iconic to my adolescence that decades later they’re still what I see in my dreams over today’s super high frame rate blood spatters. (You try dreaming in low-res, I promise it’s creepy!)

I’d be called into the room at all times of day. We played Tomb Raider together, passing off the controller taking turns shooting at wolves or solving puzzles. 100% inspired by Laura Croft’s dual gun skills, strength and brains. Hours with bags of chips and sandwiches as we finished every story mode from each Tekken 3 character. Most important to my memory was our hours playing Resident Evil 2. 

For years I wondered why my teenager sister would want her six year younger little sister in the room. Now as an adult I get that she was scared of the game. That was the point! It was a horror game filled with zombies, rabid dogs and monsters. So she shared it with me, her little sister there to offer comfort while zombies took over. She’d play it cool of course. We’d leave the lights off and she’d never show the adrenaline pumping through her, unless of course a jump scare got us. Being a cool kid myself, I too did my best to hide my fear as we played through. I never once turned down a chance to play. It was a huge let down then the Playstation returned to its owner.

As we got older and our problems became more pressing than zombies, we stayed in those roles. My sister diving headfirst into the fray of fear, anxieties and later surgeries and countless days in the hospital. Me invited to keep company in uncomfortable chairs for hours of snacks and brave faced solidarity. What I would have given for her to be able to pass the controller to me during those times she was hurting. So we talked and watched terrible television instead. Big sister there to brave the scary parts, little sister there to quietly comfort. The roles we never spoke aloud but easily fell into when needed. All because of a scary video game.

That’s why I have an 8-bit purple heart tattoo. For you.

Call a Professional

One of the most frustrating things is seeing something or hearing something that triggers your mind into high gear. One seemingly insignificant thing tailspins your brain into a million possibilities. This is great for detectives, who then have to sort out the facts and reason their way through those million possibilities. In fact I sometimes feel like I might have missed my calling.

But then I remember I grew up in a house of lies. Then I remember that my general nonchalance probably makes me a victim and target for deception. Top it off with being generally unlikeable because I've got a rampant infection of, "Fuck, I shouldn't have said that." and you have the perfect storm of painful anxiety that will quickly send me into depression.

Oh yea, I was also raised by a master of passive aggression. Why hello tree! I'm your apple and I didn't even fall to the ground. I got caught in your branches and I'm stuck here to rot.

Can we also accept that being reasonable and acting reasonable is tough to do at the same time? Seriously, who fucked that circuit up? You don't even get a choice in which "reasonable" circuit is going to get fried during the "Emotional" voltage surge.

Being passive aggressive is like trying to throw a bunch of resistors in line to keep the "reasonable" circuits safe. However we usually don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with the residual heat and eventually the resistors burn up and cause bigger problems ("stewing over it").

If you succeed in placing the appropriate amount of resistors and account for heat dissipation then you get a a nice big heaping dose of apathy!!!!

You know what people hate more than unreasonable actions? No actions. 

Why is that? Well when you went through the passive aggressive stage they can generally tell something is wrong. *points to top of post* Yup, you've just triggered THEIR tailspin (though likely on a smaller scale, unless they've really got reason to worry - which is one of the reasons you're already accounting for. Worst. Case. Scenario. It's probably at the forefront of your tailspin too).

Congratulations! You've now fucked everything up.

Are you looking for advice and answers on what to do next? Call a professional. 

To He Who Shall Not be Named Because He'd be Mad at me. Again.

Dear ----,

I dreamt of being seventeen last night. It was so real. I could tell that teenage me was looking for you.

Rebellion for teenage me was being almost late to class because seeing you for four out of five passing minutes, always, was more valuable then being in my seat extra early.

The older I get, the more I realize what our teenage relationship taught me. Loneliness, annoyance and that I generally have a lack of patience or ability to separate my own logic to another's decision making.

See I'm still annoyed that you'd get caught smoking at school. I'm still mad at ----- for giving you cigarettes and I'm still made that ------- was your confidant despite his clear psychological issues!

Youth is terrible. It's this horrible time that we learn to lock away. The moment we get a peak into the teenage box... it all floods back. It's a dull ache that can't fully manifest anymore though. We're too old, our emotions too dull from experience to truly ever feel that deluge of the first time.

I accept the dull ache, I am thankful to be less susceptible to the past.

Some how though your voice is still there in the box, clear as a day.

Sticker burs in my hand and sweaters. Old Spice still makes me turn to see if you're there.

There's a lot I don't miss. But I do miss talking about everything with you. Even though now I realize your teenage humor is my biggest annoyance with pop culture these days. (I swear to someone's god the next time we speak if you quote Super Troopers I will strangle a cat).

The point is you helped define me in a way that can be seen everyday and that's kind of cool when you think about it. I may have some dull and dusty residual sadness but it's still important to me that we happened. Sugar is my favorite. See? Ruined.

Anyway there's probably some Van Wilder quote that could wrap this up nicely, but let's not abuse the memory of how we felt about Ryan Reynolds (Which we should re-evaluate these days).

Back to adulthood.

-Blai.

PS. What the fuck I wrote you a letter.

PSS. I hope you see it.

Post note: I actually did get up and write this letter. I should be doing homework but that dream was busy destroying my mind scape this morning. I guess I could have just made coffee instead of writing. This person and I used to write letters to each other a lot as teenagers. It felt right to do it this way. For some reason I wanted to share it. There's a million more things I could say but I wanted to take a stab at writing in my teenage style. As you see it's still pretty similar. Humor as deflection and personal references only me and the intended audience would know (assuming they remember of course). Oh man do I have a lot to apologize for too. Maybe I'll save that for another letter, but it's not something I'd share.

"everybody's got their way I should feel"

For the vast majority of my life I have often felt like I am not really a part of it. Things happen to me and that's it. For the most part everyone around me just decides how I should feel, or how I seem to feel. They forget to ask me how I actually feel. I can't help but think that they don't want to deal with how I feel. I am no the most graceful at feeling, and less so at expressing those feelings. So the times they do come out often include tears and scathing comments because by the time I get to have my say, I am so hurt and torn up that I need just that one little comment to cut someone else.

This is a theme, it's not new to my life by any means. My parents did it to me my whole life. Twenty-one years of living a lie before they were so mad at each other that I finally got dragged into some of their "secrets" that everyone else in the family knew but me. Don't tell the baby, she'll always be the baby. From full on lies, exclusions, gas lighting, white lies... more exclusion, lots of fucking assumptions. God if I could slam this keyboard right now I would, but because it's the only thing keeping me in a chair and not scratching at my skin it gets to live. 

I am the audience. 

Sometimes I really wish my problems were bigger, so I could be more grateful for me. 

Qualms About Nothing

There's something people often say to me that annoys me. They're always talking about how much they enjoy, "turning off their brain".  What does that mean? No really, what does that mean? Have I been unaware that there's an off switch for my brain? If you had told teenage me, or twenty-something me that there was an off switch, I would have flipped it a million times. Sit through a few hours of graduation? Flip. Breaking up with a boyfriend who's not taking it well? Flip. Customers? FLIP. Boss who's trying to tell me about their personal life when I really couldn't care less? Flip.

Depression? Flip but only after I got some kind of artistic value out of it on my blog.

During completely mundane moments in life I find myself asking, "Will I remember this later? Is this tiny moment of nothing going to come back to me? Or will something more noticeable take up it's space?" You can not imagine the amount of time I've held in a deep breath while nothing is happening, trying to burn the moment into my memory. The most recent one was as I rode in my husband's convertible (don't get me started on how I really feel about convertible vehicles). We were waiting under an overpass, and it was possibly the first time I had been in an open top vehicle while under an over pass. Across the road on the other side were two kids all punked out. They looked like the British punk scene. I looked up to the concrete and I felt like I was floating. I took in a deep breath and held it while we drove through. The sunlight hit my face and I let the air go. It was like the sunlight pushed me back into the seat and the air I let go was helping the moment write itself into my mind. Air as ink, that seems pretty useless.

I'm not someone who wants to be able to turn off my mind. I think of all the terrible painful times in my life and no matter how bad it was, I don't want it to not be there. When I have a terrible day, when I'm incredibly frustrated and feel like I can't possible handle thinking anymore, I grab a book. My brain doesnt want to turn off. It wants MORE. The simple wants just as much of my attention as the complex. I really don't have the best memory when it comes down to it. Yet I find myself wanting to experience every second I get. Not in the tacky, "Live life like every minute is your last." way, but in a liquid all around me way. I want my life to press up against me, surround me like I'm in a Bacta-Tank.

 I want to be a cold, calculating bitch that has no qualms about using the word qualm. - That isn't going anywhere for now, but I wrote it and liked it.

Wine. Chocolate. and Charlie.

One of the best parts about being an adult who is rediscovering blogging is that I can drink. Legally. A lot. Also I'm an adult who understand that "a lot" is two words and not one, so that's a vast improvement over the last time I was on this journey.

With that in mind I am currently on my second glass of wine and now eating comfort chocolate. The wine is to fortify my forced social interaction I will be making here in an hour and a half. The comfort chocolate is because I need an excuse to take in extra calories. Not that my adult waist line needs it. If I could tell teenage blogger me that I'd weigh more than I ever imagined I would, I'd tell her to suck it up and learn to enjoy running. Or get a breast reduction because someone our height doesn't need much to work with anyway.

Is this where this post is going? Ugh. I should have gone straight to the gin. How about we go for the cheap and easy points? Let's talk about the things I do like.

As the url might have hinted at, I like gin and tonics. I like books and I even run my own book club that I'm trying to dodge tonight because I'm feeling extremely anti social. I enjoy the road less traveled because there's less people on it, obviously. Big fan of Star Wars. My joke is always, "Ask me about Star Wars!" but the truth is that you should NEVER ask me about Star Wars unless you want a rant about something, usually about how unfair the hatred towards 'Attack of the Clones' is (Fight me).
Cacti and pineapples are my spirit botanicals. I really enjoy 'The Flash' both the comics and the CW tv show. (Grant Gustin is MY Flash)

At this point if you're still reading WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? I am not funny. I am not interesting. I'm skeptical about every friend who's ever given me that "LOL" face react on Facebook. Yes, I am judging my life from my Facebook reacts.

Segway into Honesty Paragraph:

All I've ever wanted is to either be left alone, or be the absolute most stunningly funny and entertaining person in the world. I wanted to have the same gravitas as the character Charlie in 'High Fidelity'. Magnetic. The truth about Charlie is that she's an unoriginal hack of a human who's just banking on her good looks to distract everyone from noticing she's a fake with no real opinions at all. A Charlie is a person who read a single article on an subject and adopted it's view to sound like she had come up with her own singular guiding principal on what ever topic was hot. Fuck Charlie. She is the most self centered, pretentious bitch of them all.


So here I am with a keyboard, a now empty glass of wine and a half eaten chocolate bar. What did we learn today? Being me sucks, but it's better than being anyone else at this point. Really that's not such a bad thought to keep.

Your Flight Will Go On Without You

So in the past week I got on four different planes to go visit a friend in another state with my husband. The seemingly mundane task of sitting at the airport each time had an impact on me that hadn't happened in the last couple of times I had been on an airplane. For some reason these few times caught me.

The week before my sister died, our mom got on an airplane for the first time to go visit my dad in Maryland where he was working at the time. We were so excited for her! Natalie and I thought of a few little gifts to get her for her flight and the day of I took my mom to the airport. My sister was supposed to take her but she had been having fainting spells (a warning sign the doctor's wrote off) so we decided it'd be best for me to take our mom so Natalie didn't have to drive.

Sunday October 2nd 2016 my sister died from a pulmonary embolism. Basically that's a blood clot that forms somewhere in your veins (usually your legs) and dislodges it's self until it gets physically stuck. Once's it's stuck it limits the flow of blood. Sometimes causing numbness in the area it's at, coldness of the limb it's at and cutting off blood supply. If that clot dislodges and makes it way to you heart the odds of survival aren't in your favor. Your body becomes deprived of oxygenated blood. If that happens for too long you die. It's a tricky thought experiment to think of how science hasn't figured out a way around the human dependency for blood.

Looking back the warning signs of that time bomb in her veins are all over the last few weeks with her. By no means am I a medical professional. But after years of dealing with my sister having major operations and having a shared love of weird medical cases and medical dramas.... well I should have been paying more attention. The great irony for me is that a week after we got the autopsy report, I started re-watching "Grey's Anatomy". My sister had spent years watching reruns of the show. Honestly she should have been writing for it she knew so many weird medical cases, she herself was one weird medical case after another! If you ever stopped by to visit my sister at home while she was in too much pain to live a normal life, you'd join her watching the show. I too had seen the show extensively but no where near her replay count. Here's the ironic bit that Shonda Rhimes herself couldn't have written(Even though she did write the episode, she didn't know how it'd impact one of her biggest fans): Episode one of the entire series has their main character, Meredith Grey, diagnose a pulmonary embolism that would have killed the patient because the doctor on the case was too lazy and stubborn to test everything they should have. I think my sister would have found that morbidly funny. Why? Because after years in an out of the hospital you learn to laugh at some things that terrify you.

My mom was supposed to board a plane to come home the next evening. Instead after a few very painful phone calls from myself and my brother-in-law, her and my dad got in his truck and drove all the way from Maryland to south Texas because they just couldn't sit still. They stopped only for gas and made it back in record time.

So here I am in three different airports over a few days, six different times between the trip to and from home. At any given time someone is missing their flight. The airline employees are doing their best to get the attention of the missing passenger to let him or her know their flight is boarding. Final call, your flight is boarded. The doors will be closing by the end of this message. Please come to our counter to get assistance rebooking a flight. This is your final call. Flight #---- has left.

I kept thinking of my mom's name being said over those intercoms to board her flight. How many times did they ask her to get to the gate to take her seat? How many people got on that flight she missed and wondered what happened to the women who didn't make it on? Did the airline employee making the announcement wonder where she was, what could have kept her from getting on the plane?

It's a tiny moment in time that takes you away. It sucks the air out of the room and creates an ache in your chest that takes much too long to loosen. Here's a tacky thought: the ripples of our lives reach further than expected.

I had some other drama I wanted to dissect when I got home but my mom's name over an intercom hadn't left my mind. It's strange how life changes how you react to other's. My sister's death hasn't stopped having this weird ripple effect on my life. Small waves that hit me when I don't expect it change a moment in time to something more. Surely this must be what the sentiment, "They'll always be with you." means.

Do I Have the Patience?

Fifteen years ago there was a girl who lived in a small town. Everything about her was unremarkable despite the teenage attempts at expressing herself. So she found her home online with the other outcast. Between dodging the heavy handed ban hammer moderators of the MSN days, and wielding her keyboard in overly worded journal entries, she found a safe haven. As with all homes, she out grew her space and left her online home. For years her palms itched to say something, anything about her life. But the truth was she had become even more reserved. Her words, once an ocean of nonsense, had become small and puddled up only to dry out. Fifteen years later that girl realized she'd been placing one hundred - forty character bandages on her wounds.

Alright here we go. Blai Starker returns! 2008..... wait, I mean 2018. This is going to be one hell of a process for me. The real question is though, do I have the patience?

I am now thirty years old and a lot has changed since I spent endless hours with the Hybrid Theory album on repeat while tending to my Neopets. (Please no one call the internet police on me. That Aisha lived a posh life full of fairy food and games. The fact that I let her fade into useless internet code should be evidence of my inability for emotional attachment. More on that later.) I am somehow married. If you survived my teenage online journal days, you'd be just as impressed by that fact as I am. We own a house and live a pretty typically, socially accepted life. Aside from me working on cars as a profession and being a feminist that has a huge hatred for gender identification and the social implications it's forced on us all who doesn't want to deal with  each social political tide turning is just not worth the meh I'd have to give.... are you still breathing? Me either. That's one of the points I wanted to make about me having the patience.

I tire my damn self out just being myself. Where once writing gave me an out, it now gives me complications. I feel like as an adult I really want to impress people more than I did as a teenager. However I have an avoidance personality so instead of making the attempt I just shimmy my way off stage. Where as once I'd be making up my own dance to Billy Jean in the grocery store as my mom pretended to be a random shopper who's really interested in that package of noodles. May someone's god bless my mother for putting up with my mood swings. See? I'm deflecting. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid and try to think of something that might be funny.

So do I have the patience to make myself sit down and talk about it?  The answer is really simple when it came down to it. I have to do it. I have to do this. I have to start talking again. Even if it's into the void of the internet. Because if I don't I might just die of writing dehydration. I'm not sure that has any profound medical studies attached to it, but for the sake of this blog thing, we're going to pretend Shonda Rimes covered it in a Private Practice episode. I can say that because I haven't watched Private Practice so I can life my lie happily.

Welcome back alter ego who's doing a bad job of altering my ego. It's time we become friends again even if it means being totally annoyed with ourself. Nobody use the words "Borderline personality disorder" in the comments.