Catharsis

I just finished remembering everything my first ex-boyfriend did to me all in one big thought explosion. I haven't thought about that all at once since it happened. Usually when I explain what happened, I say "Oh yeah, he treated me like shit, called me a bitch, stuff like that." Not this time. I wrote it all down, what I could remember, in as best detail as I could get out. I am not good at articulating myself. But now it is out there.

And I am shaking. I am shaking and my stomach hurts and my head feels funny. Possibly from the two shots of bourbon I just slammed. I do not take shots normally. Also I have only eaten a handful of chocolate today. But I am sweating and sneezing and it is like my body is trying to get rid of everything inside me along with my story, like a mass catharsis of my mind, soul and body.

The worst part is that there is still more of my story I need to get out.

Dog

We have a really really old dog. She's like, 13 or 15 or something ridiculous like that. She is grumpy and hard of hearing. She recently has been packing on the pounds and now is all fat. Her breathing is hindered by her weight, but she eats and drinks constantly. She also has something wrong in her urinary system, because she goes to the bathroom at least every hour if she is not locked away in a crate or sleeping.

All the time for the past several months, my mom goes nuts at her. She yells at her for eating, drinking, snorting while breathing, scavenging for food, not walking fast enough, not responding when you call her name, peeing on the floor, etc. She says she hates the dog, and curses at her. She says she wants to take her collar off and let her loose. She says she wants to throw her out in the middle of the street so she can get run over. She constantly talks about how she can't take it anymore and she hates the dog so much and she can't wait until she dies.

Last night, she threw the dog outside (not actually literally, but if she had it wouldn't have surprised me) and said she never wanted her in the house again. She said she would die out there, because she constantly eats and drinks and there's no food or water outside, and that it would be cold, and that when she was finally dead, that I would have to deal with the body.

Today she calls me in tears because she's made an appointment to put the dog down tomorrow. She tells me to let her inside and let her eat and drink all she wants because she only has a few hours left to live, and she's sobbing the whole time.

I feel like I'm constantly miserable. Either she is screaming about how much she hates and wants to kill the dog, or she is crying about putting her down. She wants to know if I want to go with her to euthanize the dog tomorrow. I don't even know what to do. My head hurts and I feel sick and I am just so miserable here. It is absolutely awful to be around this.

Hope

It has been a few days.

Things seem back to normal. The other day she showed she actually does care, at least a little, when she thought I tripped and fell and smacked my head and died or something. I didn't do anything aside from open the door onto my dog's head so it made a loud noise, but it proved that she actually cared enough to get scared I wasn't okay.

The only thing is, I got off my sleeping schedule because I wasn't sleeping well after that, and now I need to try to get back into it. That is The Worst, getting off sleep schedules. I overslept this morning and could not shower. Then I was exhausted at 5 pm but I am kind of awake not and it is almost 11:30.

Today sucked slightly though. An old friend contacted me, except we are not really friends anymore. He had heard I had a bad week and he wanted to check up on me. There is a lot of back story with said ex-friend that I am too physically and mentally tired to explain now, but let's just say there is not exactly good blood between us. So he is asking me what happened, and I tell him I am poorer than dirt and not making enough money to even cover my car payment and my mom drama, and he offers me a loan. That's nice, kinda awkward because we aren't friends anymore and haven't talked in months, but nice. I thanked him and told him I would keep it in mind (except I would NEVER BORROW FROM HIM EVER). Then he follows up with this gem:

Yeah I currently have a job that pays around a bit over $100 an hour and then Cornell is giving me $4500 and then Fafsa is still giving all the money I would have needed for school and living and stuff...And I suck at having money (I bought a $400 tv last weekend and now i have a tv under my bed) so Im really looking for ways to not have access to my own money.

...

Really? I just told you I am working 5 hours a week at 8.50 an hour, and you tell me you are making a hundred bucks an hour? And that Cornell University is giving you $4500 dollars for free? And the FAFSA gave you tons of free financial aid you don't need while you know I only got loans? Really?


Needless to say, I am not too happy at this point, but it gets worse.

Long awkward silence later, he says he should leave to go study for finals (or rather, pretend to study for finals because "he doesn't like making people feel stupid so he has to keep up appearances that he actually works hard"...), and I tell him bye and congrats on making it into Cornell.

Then, this:

Its just a summer program...that only accepts 12 studnets from the nation...and is all paid for...and then they pay me too... :)

Aside from the fact that he is being a braggart,  which I can roll my eyes at and deal with, there goes the money issue. I have to pay for my fucking books, my fucking parking permit, my fucking EVERYTHING except tuition, yet he makes it into an Ivy League school for an exclusive summer program that is all paid for and he earns a stipend too. Really? Really? You are going to bring up money again?

Then when I told him he was lucky, he says that he is just "mexican, poor, first-generation immigrant, and autodidactic genius."

That is when I told him I needed to leave. You do not contact me under the pretense of being concerned and then gloat about your money and your exclusive summer program you were admitted to for free. What the fuck is your problem, for real.

Aside from that minor idiocy, it has been a pretty good day. I am tired and sore, but I am alive. And I have hope.

She won't even sit in the same room as me. Not even to eat dinner.

She has barely spoken to me since she got home, and ignores half of what I say anyway.

My dog is cowering in the corner, and no one is even talking, let alone yelling.

This house is toxic.

I want to leave but I have no where to go. I don't want to tell my best friend about this because I don't want his parents to try to get involved or something. I want to talk to her but I am too afraid she will ignore me or she will tell me she doesn't care again.

I think I might go for a drive. I can't afford the gas but I need to be somewhere else. Maybe I will leave a note if she even bothers to come out and check when she hears my car start. Maybe I will drive out to the beach and look at the water. I don't want her to get mad though, if I just leave. I am afraid of her, afraid of what she will do if I go, even for an hour. I just feel trapped, trapped in my own house, in my own head. And I just want out, whatever it takes.

Tattoos

I woke up this morning surrounded by used tissues with a bottle of wine and a bottle of Baileys in my bed. Clearly I had a rough night.

I skipped school today and slept. I woke up for real around 12:30 pm. It's 2 pm now, and my eyes still hurt from crying last night.

I spent the last couple hours looking at apartments. I figure, I'll try to talk to my mom today, and if she still insists that we can't live together, then I will move out. It is unfair for her to move into an apartment and leave the house to me. I don't belong alone in 3 bedroom house. That is just silly. I found about four that I liked well enough. They are pretty cheap, all under 900 a month for a one bedroom. It's tough to find them, though, because I have a dog and cat that will be coming with me. I have a guinea pig too, but I may have to sneak him in. He is small enough and his cage looks enough like a dog cage that I might just be able to get away with it.

I never thought I would ever come to a point like this. You hear of those kids who get kicked out of the house because their parents can't live with them anymore. They are usually drug addicts, gang members, badly behaved, etc. I was always a well-behaved child. I wasn't perfect, but I wasn't a hellion. I got pretty good grades and I never did drugs. I guess somewhere along the way, I messed up badly enough to lead my mom to think we can't live together anymore. If I do have to move, I will have to do some serious soul-searching to make myself be a more tolerable person.

I think when all this is over, and I have the money, the first tattoo I am getting is of a phoenix. If I can make it out of this alive, I think that will be fitting. A good reminder that I can be strong. Because I am not a strong person. I will not be surprised if this breaks me. But somehow, if I can hold it together, and rise up out of the ashes of my fucked-up life, then maybe, just maybe, I can conquer anything.

I cuddled a box of tissues tonight

My eyes hurt.
My face hurts.
My heart hurts.
My life hurts.

I just want this to all go away.

When I was little, I prayed to God for my mom to just be happy. It didn't work. It still hasn't.

Sometimes it makes me wonder. Especially now that I am rethinking everything I believe in. Does God exist? There are so many people in the world who think so, and sometimes it seems pragmatic at the very least for me to believe so. But then if I do, I have to wrestle with that. Why were my prayers never answered? Was he just not listening? Did he just not care? Does he just not love me like he loves everyone else? I didn't even pray for myself. I just want my mother to be happy for once in her life. Is that so much to ask?

Sometimes I think if I were gone, she would finally be happy.

Maybe that is the message God was sending me.

Questions

I had something that I started writing out, but I started thinking and there went THAT whole project.

I never used to be such a thinker. I was never one to sit around and "ponder the mysteries of the universe" or whatever the fuck. I still don't do that, but I am thinking a lot more lately. The problem with thinking is, I never come up with answers to my questions. I only ever come up with more questions.

For example, I remember once when I was dating one of my ex-boyfriends. He was a real philosophizer type, asked questions about everything. The only question I ever had during the course of our relationship was whether or not I should break up with him. I would sit and ponder, list the good parts and the bad parts of our relationship (the bad always outnumbered the good), and come to a decision. Except... trying to answer THAT question would bring up more questions, like "Do I really deserve better?" "Why did I start going out with him in the first place?" "Am I really making this mistake AGAIN?" etc.

Over the past few days (months, really, but a lot more in the past few days), I have come up with a lot of questions that are really bothering me.

Why am I so unmotivated this semester?
What happens if I can't pay my car payment?
What if my mom DOES kick me out? Where will I go?
Am I making the right decisions with my life?
etc.

But the one that is bothering me the most?

How do you tell someone you love them if they don't want to believe you?

Headache

Awful pain
In my brain
You left before
Please leave again

I could write kids' books.

Mondays

Have you ever woken up just feeling like you want to punch things for no particular reason? I am having one of those days.

Little things are just bugging the shit out of me. My bird is making this obnoxious noise at the moment and I am nearly shaking with rage and irritation at it. He is like plucking at the bars in the back corner of his cage and it is making the worst twanging kind of sound and it's grating on my nerves because he KEEPS DOING IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

I literally had to stop writing this and go get him out of his cage because I could not handle it anymore. And now he is sitting on my shoulder being all cute to spite me.

He is mocking me by being adorable.

You can tell he's my bird because he rolls his eyes, too.

Okay, now that that distraction is out of the way, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, little things that are aggravating me, like the noise my bird was making. For example, I went off in a complete cursing road-rage thing today (I don't really get road rage normally. I mean, I yell at people, like 'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?' but I don't actually get mad, I just like yelling. Plus I only do that if other people are in the car or if I am on the phone with someone because I want them to comment on it, I guess) over someone who didn't put their turn signal on when they made a right turn. Yeah. It was that ridiculous. And my fucking computer doesn't stay plugged in anymore and it is a constant struggle to adjust it to just the right position that it stays plugged in for half a second upon which it needs to be readjusted and it just gets so fucking annoying. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH I AM GOING TO GO CRAZY TODAY. 

Mondays, man. Mondays.

Pink Floyd

I took a mental health day yesterday, which basically means I ditched work and drove around San Diego for an hour, then I parked at my school and slept for an hour and a half in my car. Exciting stuff.

Anyway, I ended up at Mission Trails Park, which I'd never been to before. It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and the route looked a lot like this:

Pretty relaxing to drive with big hills on either side and nothing but blue sky in front of you.

Which brings me to Pink Floyd.

Pink Floyd is my "every-mood music." I listen to them when I'm happy, sad, contemplative, sleepy, angry, whatever. I think you can find something to support any mental or emotional state in any one of their albums, and their music is absolutely beautiful and unusual, and their lyrics are haunting and meaningful.

Recently, my album of choice is their magnum opus: The Wall, a double album that was made into a rock opera film of the same name. Like most of their albums, The Wall  is a concept album, meaning that it follows a central theme or story. In this case, it follows the tale of Pink (full name Floyd Pinkerton - hilarious, eh?), a fictional rock star modeled after Roger Waters, the lead singer of the band, but also containing aspects, as many of their albums and songs do, of Syd Barrett, the band's original lead singer who, in essence, went insane. Pink had a rough childhood - after losing his father in World War II, he had to deal with abusive school teachers and an overprotective mother. After he grows up and becomes famous, he has to deal with the dissolution of his marriage, the pressures of fame, and an increasingly worsening mental illness (likely schizophrenia, which is one of the diseases Syd Barrett was rumoured to have); all of these problems cause Pink to withdraw from society, symbolized by the titular, metaphorical Wall. Each new conflict that Pink faces becomes yet another brick building the wall of isolation.

Happy happy, joy joy, right? It's not a cheerful album, that's for sure. But it is absolutely gorgeous.

Seeing as it's a story, it's kind of difficult for me to pick apart the album into individual songs, although my musical ADD often makes me skip around to my favorites, some of which are as follows:

(Oh, first, the album is divided into two parts, typically, both containing 13 songs and both about 40 minutes long (fun fact: Every Pink Floyd album (that I know of at least) is around 40 minutes long.) The second album is where it really goes to shit.)

Disc 1:

The first part contains probably the most widely-recognized song from the album, "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. II" Yes, there are Parts I and III which are nowhere near as popular but are incredibly vital to the story. Anyway, this song deals with the abusive teacher part of his life. Most everyone who's ever been near a classic rock radio station at some point in their life will recognize the lines "We don't need no education/We don't need no thought control." Pretty popular song, awesome guitar solo, creepy kids' choir. 

This song leads into "Mother," a very pretty and sad song. It is essentially a conversation in which Pink (sung by Waters) is asking his mother (sung by David Gilmour, the guitarist) if he should do all sorts of things like trust the government or date some chick. It really illustrates Mama's overprotectiveness, especially with the climax of the song coming right after Mama sings "Of course Mama's going to help build the wall." It's pretty sick shit if you think about it. His mother is SO overprotective that she agrees to help her child isolate himself from society instead of encouraging him to be a normal, healthy person.

After that, we come to "Goodbye Blue Sky" which has slightly irritated me since I discovered the true lyrics a few months ago. I thought the little kid at the beginning said "Look, mummy, there's no cloud up in the sky!" but the little brat says that there's an AIRPLANE in the sky. Stupid British accents. I like my version better. Anyway, this song is also composed of beautiful music and especially pretty vocals. And like most Pink Floyd songs with pretty music and pretty vocals, it's about some fucked up shit. This song chronicles memories of The Blitz, which was the period of sustained heavy bombing (76 fucking days) of Britain by Nazi Germany. Something like 45,000 people died. Pretty messed up.

Disc one ends with "Goodbye Cruel World," another pretty and fucked up song. The metaphorical wall has been completed, and Pink has finally isolated himself entirely from society. It is the shortest song on this disc, lasting slightly over a minute, and ending with the final line "Goodbye" that gets half cut-off by the music and sounds almost like a sob. YAY HAPPY.

Disc 2:

Disc two contains ALL THE BEST SONGS EVAR, starting with "Hey You," which is so so pretty (it was also sung by Jesse Eisenberg in the movie The Squid and the Whale, which is an excellent movie, by the way) and, naturally, pretty sad. Pink is regretting cutting off contact with the outside world, and tries to get someone, anyone, to notice him and talk to him, but with no avail. His mental illness also is highlighted here, with the creepy line, "And the worms ate into his brain," followed by a sick sound that kind of sounds like a dentist's drill but muted, which I guess is to symbolize the worms boring into his head. Fun stuff.

The next song probably contains one of the most beautiful and heart-wrenching instrumentals I have ever heard in my life, "Is There Anybody Out There." It starts, again, with Pink asking if there's anybody out there (outside the wall), but proceeds into the gorgeous instrumental containing a classical guitar solo which is later overlayed with violin, which, if I were to pick the most emotional instrument, the violin would be it. You can convey so much through the sounds of a violin. The instrumental part starts at 1:25.

It's so hard for me to cut out "Nobody Home" because it is so beautiful and sad, and also deals a lot with Syd Barrett, but what I really want to get to is considered one of the greatest rock songs of all time, and contains a guitar solo that is widely recognized as one of the top five, if not THE ALL-TIME BEST guitar solo EVER. Taking a moment to think about all the great guitar solos, such as those in "All Along the Watchtower" (Hendrix), "Stairway to Heaven" (Led Zeppelin), "Eruption" (Van Halen), "Sweet Child O' Mine" (Guns N Roses), etc, that's a pretty fucking big distinction to have, but I do believe it deserves it. It is fucking powerful and so emotional. I have heard plenty of renditions of the solo but I've only heard one that truly captures the emotion there. It's very difficult to play. The song is "Comfortably Numb," and the solo starts at 4:30. There is another part of the solo, which starts at 2:05, but the longer, more emotional one is the second. Seriously, any "best guitar solos" list that does not include this in at least the top ten is absolute rubbish.

I'm going to skip a couple goodies here to come to the climax of the album, "The Trial." This song is basically one big mental breakdown. In it, Pink is on trial for "showing feelings of an almost human nature." It contains testimonies from a prosecutor, his schoolteacher, his wife, and his mother, and then a judge who sentences him to have the wall torn down, interspersed with Pink singing in a manic voice about how he is crazy. Remember, all this is going on INSIDE HIS HEAD. It is a trip and a half. Don't listen to it when you are sleeping/falling asleep. I made that mistake once and it freaked me the fuck out. It is effing nuts and totally worth a listen. 

The album ends (or does it begin? The beautiful thing about Pink Floyd albums is that they end where they begin. The whole album is one big circle. The song ends with the words "Isn't this where-" and the first song of the album starts with "-we came in?" Personally I think that is the coolest thing ever.) with the final song, "Outside the Wall," which is very pretty but also creepy because he sounds really happy, and it's mostly spoken word, and it doesn't even resolve the story. No, really, there's no resolution. We don't find out what happens after the wall is torn down. "Outside the Wall" is more about what happens outside the wall while it is still built, rather than how Pink reacts once he is outside the wall. I like it better this way, though. Maybe Pink died. Maybe he went completely insane and got institutionalized (I lean towards the latter, especially given the cheerful tone of this song and the fact that it leads into the first song of the album, illustrating that there is no end to the story of Pink). We will never know, especially since Roger Waters refuses to give any explanation to the meaning of the song. 

I could write books about Pink Floyd. I think what I love so much about them is that I take a lot of their albums like literature and really enjoy analyzing them. I could discuss Pink Floyd songs/albums all day, same as I could discuss literature all day. I am a dork, for real.