ascending peculiarity

May, why such a hateful month? It seems so counterintuitive that spring should be the worst time of year for me, but that doesn’t keep it from being true: my mental health is never worse than it gets to be from April through June. There are plenty of people who suffer less when the sun is back out and everything is new and growing. I seem to do best when it’s grey and rainy and cozy.

I have other reasosn to hate May besides the physical, though. May 2007 was when I had my big breakdown, and had to quit school for months and crawl back home to my parents, when things were so bad I couldn’t even make myself leave the house alone. May 2007 also was the month we lost my paternal grandmother; my maternal grandmother died in May 2003, on Mother’s Day. All those associations are stuck with me now.

So I’m definitely slogging through this month. School is frightening me a lot. I need to pass all my classes in order to graduate in June; right now the situation is iffy in my syntax class, and it’s a lot easier to panic about how I’ve screwed things up than it is to actually do the work to fix it. The idea of what will happen if I don’t graduate is pretty much a black hole in my head: I can’t imagine anything whatsoever. “My entire life will be ruined” sounds a little extreme, but I don’t know.

Only a month, though, and then school will be over. I can survive another month!

I spent the weekend up in Cornelius, which really helped my stress levels a lot. One of the more difficult things about the last few months has been my lack of people in Eugene; I have more social skills than I used to, but that’s still a matter of friendly acquaintances, rather than actual friends. I can’t remember how people actually make friends, to be honest. When I think of most of the people I’ve become close to in the last five years, pretty much all of them were cases of already being friends with Person A and getting to know Person B through them. It’s an excellent system! But it doesn’t help when you realize you’re in a situation where you have to start a whole new chain.

But, yeah. I spent the weekend at home with my sister and mom and it was a lovely break from everything.

This weekend, I:

+ had more hugs than in the past month and a half combined
+ slept a lot
+ watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and the new Doctor Who with Kelly
+ got a really cute haircut
+ convinced my mom to buy me new clothes
+ saw my brother for the first time in ages
+ played Mario Kart on the wii for the first time and found it unexpecteldy awesome
+ spent the round trip to Eugene belting out every song on Kelly’s ipod ridiculously loudly

And Susie is coming down the weekend of the 24th, and then I’m probably going back up again the weekend after that for my family’s big barbeque.

I can do this.

Sometimes crappy supermarket sushi is the yummiest thing in the world.  Sometimes it is the grossest.  I really wish there was a way to tell which one it was going to be before I buy it.

I’ve been in a really weird mood all this week, which I blame mostly on my sleep schedule.  It’s getting worse as time goes on, and I’m not sure what to do to fix it.  I’m working on giving up both naps and caffeine, which has to help a little, but not enough.  According to everything I’ve read about insomnia, the most helpful thing is to actually have your bed be a place devoted just to sleep, but that’s really not possible for me.  When you live in one small room, the bed works overtime as place where I do homework, place where I read, place where I watch movies, etc, along with place where I sleep.

Yesterday I attempted to register for my classes for spring term; this was not completely successful.  In order to graduate in June, I have two more linguistics classes I need to take.  One of these is a phonology class.  One is a syntax class.

I can say with some confidence that all of the following are true:

a) Both of these courses are required for all linguistics majors.
b) Both of these courses are ONLY offered spring term
c) Very very few people who are not ling majors will be taking either of these classes.

Given all these facts — who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to make the required discussion session for the syntax class take place AT THE SAME TIME as the lecture for the phonology class?

HATE HATE HATE ARGGGGGGGH.

There’s another discussion section listed that supposedly doesn’t have the conflict, but it was already listed as full when I registered yesterday (and, dude, I’m a senior with too many credits, I have a pretty good registration time!) and it’s still full now.

Ugh.  I guess I’ll have to go see the linguistics undergrad advisor next week, because seriously.  Ridiculous.

Like I mentioned the other day, one of the main things I am working on in my ongoing campaign to Be Less Crazycakes is getting out of the house.  This is harder than it might seem to normal people, I swear!  I mean, as of last May I wasn’t leaving the property without somebody else coming and taking me out, so I’ve made leaps and bounds, but it’s still something I have to work on consciously — whereas I get the feeling it’s something that, you know, most of people take for granted.

So far I’ve figured out a number of things a number of strategies that seem to work pretty well.  The three things that consistently work to motivate me to get out are a) classes b) meeting up with people and c) running errands.  Something that <I>doesn’t</I> work at all, apparently, is just telling myself that I should go out and take a walk.  I need to have a goal in mind, and a clearly defined plan, all set up in my mind.  (CONTROL ISSUES AHOY.)  And for whatever reason, just going out doesn’t fit into that structure in my head.

So the next problem is, of course, what can I use as a motivator on days when I don’t have class, or a friend to meet up with, or important errands?  Because right now my instinct is to make up new errands, which … ends up with me spending money when I shouldn’t, which is unacceptable.

Today I went out to buy mechanical pencils and to check if the comic book store had the issues I wanted in.  I got the pencils, and they were sold out of the comics I wanted, so I was halfway successful on those fronts.  But I also ended up buying a book, a frappucino and a sandwich, not one of which I needed.  Why do I fail so hard at financial responsibility?

The weird pseudo-spring continues outside.  It’s a little too warm to be wearing my hoodie around, but not so warm that I don’t feel weirdly awkward without it.  Surely this is unacceptable to all reasonable people.

I spent this weekend feeling just oddly out of sorts. It’s always annoying, every single time I have to admit to myself that my body really has much more control over my mind than my mind has over my body. Of course, not being in control is where so many of my frustration really come from, and it’s not like it’s something that’s going to go away. I need to learn how to just deal with it. I’m a lot better at it now than I was a year ago — thanks, therapy! — but still far from ideal.

Yesterday I was feeling seriously anxious for the first time in a while, and since I had neither work or school, I went ahead and took some of my anxiety medication. It wiped me out completely, which was actually pretty nice. Sometimes a weekend of sleep is exactly what you need.

I have delivery food coming right now. That’s not responsible money management by any means, but it’s the last time for the forseeable future. Tomorrow starts new twin goals for me: a) don’t spend money on food unless you have no food whatsoever and b) stop drinking soft drinks. I’ve tried the giving-up-soda thing many times before, but who knows; many the umpteenth time is the charm!

My favorite song of the moment is definitely “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You” by Black Kids. They had their EP up for download for free for a long time, but it seems to be gone now. Still, you can probably find the song somewhere on the hype machine.

I’m missing people a lot right now. Not anybody specifically, but just … people. I like Eugene a lot, but it’s not home. Knowing there are dozens of people I can cling to on instant messenger or email doesn’t make up for the fact that I don’t know anyone in this city I can just go to for a hug when I need one, or call up to go out to lunch and play Uno with afterwards.

I think the thing I love best about this term is just how gorgeous my class schedule is. Four day weekends every week! In an ideal world, of course, this would be good mainly for allowing me to work decent hours at a job and earn money. This is far from an ideal world, and I have neither job nor money; still, a four day weekend is nothing to sneeze at.

Today I slept in rather late, and then I got dressed and walked down to Safeway. It’s that weird part of February where it doesn’t feel like winter anymore, more like spring. It’s sunny and bright and the air tastes fresh and I walk through town squinting and wondering what happened to my Oregon rain. Which is silly, since it will be back within a few weeks, either way. It’s too warm to really wear my hoodie for the walk, but after all these weeks of cool weather I feel rather naked without it.

I really like the walk to Safeway, anyway. Between my various mental illnesses, getting out of the house is in and of itself a pretty big goal for me. Even though I know from experience that going out and taking a walk and doing something improves my mental state everytime, I can never quite make myself believe it. I have to prove it over again every time. I dragged myself outside today and went “Oh, yeah! I like this!”

(one of the things I really like about this room is its location; it’s pretty much equidistant from campus and the grocery store, which is all sorts of convenient.)

So I picked up my crazy pills (and also a few odds and ends: a slotted spoon, some mayonnaise, a Coke) and came back and got to feel like I had made something productive of the day. Most of the evening, on the other hand, has been devoted to watching British television on my laptop.

My sister Kelly and I had watched the first few episodes of Torchwood last year, when it began playing on the Sci-Fi Channel, but I gave it up pretty early because of how badly it sucked. Kelly stuck with it, though, and apparently it actually developed into a decent show by the end of the season, which she showed me last weekend. Today I caught up with it all the way to the last shows broadcast, and: yes. It is very enjoyable! John Barrowman is pretty, and there is goofy ridiculous science fiction; as long as it’s not mind-numbingly horrible, I think that’s all you can ask for.

I also have been watching QI, which is made of charm, cleverness, and cute. (Triple threat of alliteration!) Quiz shows, you are always the way to my heart. If you can be snarky and British while doing so, all the better.

If nothing else, it introduced me to The Moonwalking Bird, which is a thing of joy forever. You honestly do not want to know how many times in a row I have watched that clip.