So there's been a bit of drama lately, as I've mentioned. The pre-med bullshit, bit of a blowout with Ryan, hurricane Warren is back and I'm having a hard time processing that...shit's crazy. This is NOT where I sorta saw myself Friday and Saturday. I figured I'd be moping about Ryan, rambling about some inane facet of my life to try and block out Ryan being gone, I'd even half started some posts for Monday and Tuesday, well had some topics jotted down for both, even left space to paste some of the sappy crap I was sure Ryan would email me...
Yeah. NO. None of that happened. Shit went in a completely different direction. One I could not have predicted under any circumstances. I don't like being caught off guard, because that means I am NOT the one with the advantage. And I get kinda spazzy when vulnerable. But I'm not spazzy this time. I'm just confused. This is so far away from what I thought this week would be like that I can't get a grasp on it. Every time I think of this week and some of the crap that entails, I'm just like "What. The. Fuck." I'm seriously having some issues grasping this as my reality.
I think and remember in very vivid pictures. There's this moment where I heard my Droid go off, picked it up to check who it was from, and I damn near passed out after having only seen in green the name who it was from. My whole body locked up, and I remember looking at my phone while dizzy and since everything was blurry and dark, thinking this was a dream. Besides the whole not believing it aspect, I am fascinated by how surreal everything was at that moment while I'm dizzy and feel like I'm gonna puke. Also rather intrigued at the neutrality I felt then, not upset or unhappy but also not bouncing with joy. Just kinda wtf-ish. I still check my damn Droid once in a while to see if that really happened. It did.
I don't have any answers for any of my questions yet. This does not frustrate me. It summons a few lines from a song:
"Look into the wall of my mind's eye, I think I know but I don't know why, the questions are the answers you might need..."
It's all pretty applicable. The last part is the part that has me in deep thought. The questions are the answers...I am fairly convinced that's exactly what will happen. I just don't know if the answers are my questions or other questions. I'm pondering both ways. The initial realization is the idea of would I be happy with solid answers or more questions. I don't know how much, if any, of either I want. I'm heavily mulling that over. I STRONGLY suspect questions.
This is a prime example of me dumping some of the mind traffic so I can think a bit clearer. I've been staring at the ceiling for 2 hours completely lost in basically these thoughts. How my pattern of reactions has been does not match with what I'm going through now. I should be, and could justify, being REALLY upset. But I'm not. We're far enough removed timewise from my lowest emotional point that wild elation isn't an option either.
My favorite question is why. I think that's kinda obvious sometimes. Now would be an interesting time to ask it. But I'm not. Actually, me completely upset/distressed emotionally asking why is how I would assume I react. That's not this. My calm is kinda scaring me, even though I know it's a good thing. I couldn't even guess my own reaction to this. Thoughtful, curious, and calm. Where'd emo Aeris go? My mom told me to not talk to strangers. :( Do I really not know myself that well? If I can't even predict me, then who the fuck else would be able to?
I think shit like this all day. Obsessive introspection. And I change trains of thought like this too. I seriously do write like I think. Which says volumes about my mind and what it is like.
I just had the thought of maybe my answers to the reflective of my questions are the answers I want. I'm going to go test this while staring off into space looking like no one is home upstairs. But there's plenty going on upstairs, they're just too busy to keep the lights on all the time for your convenience.
Calm and patient, yet strong and understanding. I don't think I'm doing so bad taking things in stride now.
~A.
Song by The Beatles. None of the songs I could think of fit this very well. So, I just googled songs about doctors and chose that one. For two very specific reasons. First, I happen to know someone who is a bit of a Beatles fan so it's a nod to them, and second my dad's name is Robert so it's a nod to him too. :)
When the hell did I get a life? I just realized I have one while syncing Alexandroid (so fucking clever), Thunderbird my email client, Sunbird my laptop calendar AND my Google calendar. The mere fact I have to sync all my shit tells me I have a life, and a lot shit to keep track of that my memory just can't do. Crazy.
I have one less thing to take care of I was going to explain about before but totally forgot. I resigned from my position as the chair of diversity in medicine for the AMSA pre-med student org. Here's the detailed reason why I did.
Ever since the beginning, our directors have been irresponsible and absent minded. But they were nice, so I just thought they were new to this and needed time. Yeah, no. For national coming out day we were supposed to have been funded to hold a small event with the queer straight alliance (QSA), you know that whole diversity thing. we had our budget in on time and we asked what's up they said they're looking at it...at least a dozen ignored texts/emails later, me and my co-chair wound up funding it our damn selves. They made a BIG DEAL about AMSA supporting diversity and about how we needed to be there. Not one other damn officer, and they all knew where and when, EVER showed up over the two day event. Not even the directors.
I'm kinda peeved at this point, it was a month or more later they even acknowledged they'd just forgotten about the budget and event. You know, these are the same fucking people who were riding my case about how important it is for us to be there, my co-chair is an officer in QSA (intentionally picked for that reason) and he was kinda pissed off, so he tied us up to QSA to save at least some money on this super important event no one gave a shit about. We could have not been there and they wouldn't have known. This kinda pissed me off, but I let it go. One mistake doesn't hurt.
Next up was a person on our committee who made all these promises of showing up to meetings, getting involved, helping out and so on. She wanted to work with the mission statement diversity in medicine (DIM) had, she was super enthusiastic and seemed willing to get going on stuff. So our directors gave her some small, but goddamn important, stuff to do. We stopped hearing from her daily 2 weeks into the semester, we think she's busy with new classes, blah blah. We stopped hearing from her at all, no text, no email, no phone call replies, 6 weeks in or so and she was in my french class, but showed up very rarely and completely ignored me when I tried to talk to her. So DIM was a bit behind in getting this shit done because we thought she was on it, we eventually went on without her. The directors, who so nicely assigned us this flake BITCHED US OUT FOR BEING LATE ON THE SHIT SAID FLAKE WAS SUPPOSED TO DO. DIM as a whole, not just me and my co-chair (who I was so very glad was a reliable person and I definitely couldn't handle all the shit DIM had to do alone at this point), I'm talking officers down to just general members, we all got bitched out. I am pissed off once again and fire off an email that explains in no uncertain terms why blaming us was the wrong thing to do and how I didn't appreciate getting bitched at for something wrong that I didn't do. So here's time two they've horribly fucked up. I'm not really confident on their leadership at all at this point. They also don't respond right away to emails, but expect everyone else to. There's some bitching about that from them too.
I am VERY AWARE that most of the other officers are friends of the directors. This means I will never get a vote of no confidence passed, because I won't be able to get a majority fucking ever. I'm also VERY PISSED OFF. At this point though I'm working on the autism awareness events, so I stay because, you know, that's my cause. That was important to me. DIM won a $200 grant from national HQ for our idea to start an annual awareness day at UNM. This is pretty fucking cool, and I'm busting my ass working on donations, sponsors, fundraising ideas, etc., and I am so excited.
So, I had promised a local elementary school of particular importance to me (:P) a discount on tickets to the healthy halloween carnival another committee was holding. Said discount had been cleared with everyone on both sides. I get a count from the school of how many tickets to buy, so I try to contact the chair of that committee to get this done. No answer. Not calls, texts, voicemails, email...not shit. So I go to the directors to try and get this done. They tell me to ask the chair of the committee holding it. I inform them I have been trying for about a week. They swear they'll take care of it. At this point, I'm just pretty sure I'm about to look bad to these elementary kids and their parents. I had 300 people signed up. I lose sleep over this bullshit.
I wind up having to go to the school, apologize profusely, explain what happened, and they made the announcement over the intercom that the carnival trip was canceled for those who had signed up. See, I'd even gotten the school to agree to acquire us the use of some school buses to bus everyone over there and back, just as a matter of safety and parking. Angry hate mail to my officer mailing address and email ensued, how dare I say I can get the tickets, how could I let all these kids down...I was doubling up on anti depressants for at least 2 weeks. Even people who worked at the school called me and told me off. I felt awful. I still get shitty comments at the grocery store sometimes.
Starting slightly before the halloween bullshit and the ending happening right along with me dealing with hate mail, me and a friend design AMSA a new flashy website since the current one was looking geocities craptastic. He did artwork, I did layout, it was pretty fucking slick and we were proud of it. 4 weeks and still no one ever emails me the login info so I can have access to modify the website. My friend deletes all the artwork he did and said "fuck them". I delete my layouts and think the same thing because I'm now getting hate mail from 8-10 year olds and their parents, we go through the trouble to design this fucking website that we spent hours on, and then all the previous shit. I'm beyond pissed. I'm trying to hold on for my autism event, but it's getting damn hard.
My final breaking point was that recently they decided my team working on this autism thing needs TWO MORE co-chairs. Me and the one I picked don't have that much to do, how the fuck do we need two more people? So there would be a total of 4 co-chairs. This team had 3 non-officer people and me and the other guy. Are you fucking serious. I start feeling like my position means nothing and I've lost any semblance of authority. Fuck, let's just make EVERYONE an officer. I wasn't the only one who got some more helpers we didn't need, I think all committees did and special projects did. We had ~20 officers when I came on board beginning of fall 09. We had 45 when I said fuck this and quit last Thursday.
The new co-chairs pissed me off, but weren't what sent me over the edge. They, being the directors, did officer interviews AND PROMISED AND SWORE the current chairs would get to evaluate and yay or nay the newbies. They, of course, didn't. They'd already promised these people the position, so they "couldn't" revoke it if we disagreed. I got the excuse we didn't have time to check with you guys. Ok, first they had more than enough time to send an email and we send one back with our thoughts. Second, THEY FUCKING PROMISED TO DO SO. More of their friends come on board so said friends can put down they were a pre-med officer on apps and shit to look good. These people couldn't handle being a greeter at Wal-Mart, let alone be in charge.
That was god damn enough for me, thank you. The people I had to rely on as leaders were dipshits and kept fucking me over. I couldn't get shit done/organized/planned because of said dipshits. After the hate mail, I said to myself they have no more strikes, if they pull bullshit again, I'm gone. I can embarrass myself quite well as it is, thank you very much. And if I wanted hate mail, I'd put my address on my car while driving around churches blaring obscene rap music about bitches and hoes and pussy and tits and whatever. So, in a text message they responded quickly to for the first time EVER, I told them off and told them I quit, and I quit because they are dipshit leaders and this is not a student org I want to be affiliated with because with them in charge we were getting a bad rep as an org.
So, I have some more extra free time. :P I'm actually pretty happy about this. I didn't have to stress this bullshit or that they'd even give us the clear to buy shit for the autism thing. I had a feeling that wasn't going to go well. Can't imagine why.
Besides, I'm going from here to my PhD instead of MD. I'd have to read and write and do research working on a PhD. OH NO! What torment! What torture! I'd have to use SPSS (or my preferred open source PSPP)! I have no experience doing any of that so I'm not very good at them either!
Yeah, you all know I'm THAT student who lives in the library and has a good time doing so. I'm the nerdiest motherfucker I know.
But damn do I look good doing it.
~A.
And it's not the one I thought it'd be either. I thought I'd be crying over Ryan. Not so much, and life also got way more interesting as well.
So, as time went on, I started showing more and more of myself and my life on my blog. Even when I felt I shouldn't say anything or worried what will people think, I did it anyways. This one of those posts. My radio silence was because I was unsure on if I should say anything or nothing. However, considering I have been losing sleep and feeling really conflicted yet curious about my current situation, a certain degree of it goes here. Also since my dad and belle-mere use this pretty heavily to keep up on me, I feel a need to at least say something.
So, this little mental hurricane has two parts. Well, many parts but they stem from two sources.
First off, I'll address Ryan. Saturday night we had a massive fight and that's the last we've spoken. He was talking of and almost pressuring me to make a heavy commitment to him after he got back. I basically told him "No, hell no". He wasn't thrilled by my reply, I was not thrilled he went there even though he knew I couldn't go there and I told him from the outset I would not go there. There's also that whole seeing each other about a month thing. He was talking about moving in together. I don't think so. So considering what was said and how things ended, I don't think I'll hear from him anymore. Especially since he left on Monday for Japan. My usual rule applies, don't bring him up to me unless I say something first. I'm kinda pissed off about the whole deal and how his jumping the gun, WAY jumping the gun, ruined a perfectly good friendship at the very least. In that whole dust up I realized that I was trying to use Ryan to fill some of the holes W left behind since they shared some similarities. A band-aid to try and cover a complete evisceration. I've said before W was not even remotely replaceable to me and my world. It's true. A lot truer than I sometimes care to admit. Regardless of all the other progress I'd made personally, both mental and physical, I was NOT the same person after him. I've been called out on that by at least 5 different people over the past few months. If you can't understand how bad it will fuck with you having someone and losing someone who means that much to you, who holds that much prestige in your world, then this will merely sound like I am waxing poetic. I'm not. There's a reason I keep saying things like this about him, they're true. Even after all the bullshit and moderately childish (VERY childish) remarks I made regarding him, he was still my number one. Maybe not in the same way, but he was half of me regardless of anything else.
I'm haunted by phantasms of the past. The break from W was not even remotely clean, and ever seen those 3 sided daggers? They're like that because they make a wound that is difficult to heal. Think the place for your straw on the plastic lids of drinks. Once you put that straw in then take it out, that shit is not going back to the way it was. That's the wound W left behind. It was very slow to bounce back from that, and I can't say at all I've completely done so. But I was making slight amounts of progress, and any step forward is still a step forward. When shit went south around midterms of last fall semester, my grades went to hell. I did not have anything higher than a C. I was a mental and emotional disaster. Somehow I managed a 3.75 GPA at the end of the semester, and that in and of itself is progress to me. But everyday he haunted me, and I couldn't break the tie that bound me to him. We'd said before nothing could break whatever it is that binds us two, and I surely thought we had in that whole...mess. Or at least he had broken his tie with me.
WRONG.
Sunday night I'm laying in bed reading for class, and I hear that "Droid" everyone around me fucking hates but I love. :P Blue blinking light, that means an email. So I opened it and began to read. And I got dizzy and about passed the fuck out, plus my heart was racing. For hours after I swore I was dreaming, that this couldn't be. The careful although incomplete image of myself I'd so painstakingly created after W fell to the floor, shattered. I didn't care, it had been missing pieces anyways.
Those pieces returned.
It was an email from W, and I remember seeing his online name I knew so well in my inbox and almost falling over and passing out. Instead I was dizzy for hours, in a state of disorientation and disbelief. This couldn't be. I was lucid dreaming, I had to be. But I wasn't. So I emailed him back.
I'm not going into any detail the email conversation that follows. It was awkward for me though. I didn't know what to think, what to feel...or even what to say. But that email told me in non-direct terms he couldn't break his bond to me either. I could start from there. And I'm trying to.
Remember all the goddamn times I've said I've forgiven him for what happened and I have zero bad feelings about that mess? That got tested. Was I really THAT big of a person to just let bullshit in the past stay there? Or would some of the hurt trigger one of my rages/rants about how things went down? Was I really everything I thought I was...did I really feel that way...
Yep. I felt no anger, no hatred, no pain, no negative emotion along those lines even. Not once in our email back and forth did I ever feel any of that. I'm not going to paint the picture I was overjoyed to hear from him. But I wasn't unhappy to hear from him either. I mention this partly because before, I would have felt one of those two extremes. And acted in such a way. But here I was, Ms. Emo, completely fucking chill about it. Another sign of progress, however small it may seem to others.
What I DID feel was confusion and more than a bit of hesitation. Once burned twice shy kind of mindset. I really wondered if I could even let him back into my world, was it worth it? Would I be left decimated again? Here he was at the doorstep to my bizarre little world, and I honestly didn't know at first if I really could let him in. However, I absolutely could and did. Things are weird and awkward, I guess our dynamic has to be re-established. We're both kinda being cautious, me concerned he's gonna hurt me and he concerned I'll lash out. I didn't expect much in a day. Time will show how this plays out.
I know some of you (P) don't exactly approve of all of this. Which I understand is based out of concern, since some of those same people were the ones helping me pick my pieces back up. However something is very palpably different. There's been some intense and difficult realizations on both parts, and I go into this with some hesitation but also with a smile. Especially now that I know we weren't so wrong about being bound to each other and not being able to break it. Whatever happens from here, happens. It won't be a smooth ride, but I suspect once this whole awkwardness dissipates, it'll be a fun ride. I also go into this not being an emotional time bomb and rather laid back. I learned after all of this how to take things in stride. So I will. Besides, he has a Droid. You can't be that bad of a person if you're smart enough to own a Droid.
It's funny, both of us have tried in different ways to break the other away from their life for various reasons good and bad. But we can't. Neither one of us has a damn clue why, but we've realized we just can't. The other person is so entrenched in our respective selves...it's kinda like trying to kick yourself out of your own life. You can't do it, you're just in a state of denial until the absence of the other takes a heavy toll on you, and the obvious becomes obvious to you. We haunted each other because we couldn't shake the other from some core part of our beings. Once again, I'm not waxing poetic. This is just kinda how things are and you either get it or you don't and it doesn't matter to me either way. I'm sure outwardly he was far more stoic than I, but I think we both had a very similar struggle mentally over whatever the fuck happened. You'd think a large blowout that affected me so deeply would be seared into my mind, every detail clear and precise.
I don't even know what the fuck we were arguing about. And that's the way I like it.
~A.