Kat with a K

Giving thanks

Things I am thankful for this year...

* My family. They may drive me crazy, but I love them and I know they love me and that means a lot.
* My roommate. Not to be overdramatic, but the past year would have been much harder without him.
* My "real life" friends. I seem to have more of them than I think. It's nice.
* Especially the friend I spent Thanksgiving with... she's actually an online friend who seems to be crossing into "real life" territory.
* Which brings me to online friends/bloggers/e-mail lists/etc. Quite thankful for you all as well. (And then of course there's Erica, who also manages to straddle the real/online barrier, to sometimes interesting results...)
* Knitting. It has also done its part in saving my sanity.
* Books/music/movies. In all the relationship drama, I'd sort of... forgotten. Not had the mental energy to read/watch "hard" stuff. And I'd felt like I shouldn't, for various convoluted reasons. But I'm loving getting back to it.
* My job at the bookstore, because I love it.
* My other job, because it provides financial security.
* My lovely apartment, even with the bizarre shower.
* And now we get to the hard-to-define part... it has been an incredibly hard few months, and I can't really say I'm thankful for getting my heart ripped into a million pieces, but I am thankful for how it has made me take stock and think about who I am and what I want and how everything in my life was wrong. Um, I seem to be failing with the "positive spin" concept here. Sorry. But... I guess I'm trying to say that, even though I'm still fairly miserable a lot of the time, at least I'm getting better at letting me be myself. And that deserves thanksgiving.

The bad place.

One of my new blog addictions, a little pregnant, has a category of entries that she calls "Welcome to the bad place. Population: You." I have been, um, rather enamored of this category name recently, because it seems to fit how I've been feeling so very very well. (I am also wishing I had some more interesting category names, especially now that I'm writing more personal stuff. Hmm. Perhaps a project for tomorrow. Because I have, you know, so much time.)

Anyway. The bad place. I feel like I've been getting rather familiar with it the past week or so. Let's just say that, if I were to take one of those "Which Serenity character are you?" quizzes, I would not be the least bit surprised to get a resounding answer of "River." Why? That's not so clear. I mean, I'm not the most happy-go-lucky person to start with, certainly. And a lot of it is the break up. Yes, it's been two months or so, but you don't get over five years in two months. And yes, I was doing very well for a while. But now I'm doing not so well, which is probably good, because it means I'm not suppressing my emotions as much. It's not that I'm pining and wanting him back (most of the time), so that's good, at least. I'm just still dealing with the fallout.

The fallout, more particularly, is a sort of identity crisis. An old college friend recently said, mostly joking (I think), "I don't even know who you are anymore." It sort of hurt. But. There it is.

I don't even know who the heck I am anymore.

Welcome to the bad place, indeed.

Now that I'm here, though, and I've recognized I'm here, it's sort of comforting. The eye of the storm, perhaps. I am letting myself be sad, happy, insane, miserable, euphoric, distracted, scattered, and obsessed as I need - or all at once. I am not doing the "la la la it's all great" thing because, well, it isn't. I am letting myself think about who I am, what I want, and what I don't want. I am letting myself think about the past, and the future. (And, of course, Thanksgiving.) I am, periodically, trying as hard as I can to Just Stop Thinking. Oh yeah, it's been fun.

At the moment, though, I'm feeling pretty stable. I spent the evening eating Indian food at a new (to me) restaurant and then sitting around the living room drinking wine and listening to music with my roommate. I'm actually feeling slightly relaxed for once. (Don't worry, I'm sure I'll wake up stressed.) My aunt was supposed to visit this weekend, but she wasn't feeling well and decided to stay home. Now, I am sorry that I won't get to see her, but I am not terribly upset about the prospect of an unexpected free day.

So, my new and improved plan for tomorrow:
1. Sleep as late as possible.
2. Madly clean room.
3. Do homework.
4. Finish the gorram baby blanket.

I have made a deal with myself that as soon as I finish the blanket, I can knit whatever I darn well please. For a while, at least. So watch for a severe case of knitting ADD with a side order of existential angst, coming soon to a blog near you!

Reality Check

So it looks like I'm not going home for Thanksgiving.

This in itself is not necessarily all that odd. Of the past four Thanksgivings, I have spent two away from my family, with my ex-boyfriend and his parents. That, in fact, is part of the issue. This Thanksgiving, I will not be with the person with whom I spent the past four Thanksgivings. I know, I know, Thanksgiving is about family... but still. This year will seem strange, regardless of what I do.

The reasons I'm not going, though, are more practical.

Here's how I think Thanksgiving should go:
Everyone should be relaxed and getting along. There should be snow flurries. I should be cooking yummy things with my mother. We should all be watching the Macy's parade. Dinner itself should all come off flawlessly and conversation should manage to be interesting while avoiding any dangerous ground. The rest of the weekend should be time to relax and have a bit of family bonding.

Here's how this Thanksgiving would actually go:
Wednesday: Work all day, go to Boston for class. Leave class at nine and head to Connecticut, arriving perhaps around 12:30 am if I'm extremely lucky. Try not to fall asleep driving. Try not to go crazy because of the inevitable traffic.
Thursday: Get up to watch parade. Argue with brother, who will think the parade is stupid, about use of the TV. Try to help my mom with whatever we need to cook to bring to my aunt's house. Head to aunt's house for fun family excitement! Try to figure out who's mad at whom. Get interrogated about my ex, school, my job, etc. Listen to comments about my, and everyone else's, weight and appearance. Be the good little peacemaker and try to keep everything running smoothly. When we all sit down and go around the table listing things we're grateful for this year, try to figure out how to appropriately phrase "I got dumped," "I hate my job," and "I am so beyond stressed right now. Why am I here?" Try to make conversation with my cousins. Try not to think about the in-jokes and whispered comments my ex and I would have been making.
Friday: Mom goes to work. I drive back, panicking about finishing my final project for class, due the next week and trying to deal with more inevitable traffic. Try not to think about last year, when my ex and I had a lovely (really) time at the day after Thanksgiving sales.
Go to work at the store either Friday or, at the latest, Saturday morning. Wish I had time to sleep or, you know, work on my final project. Try not to think about last year.
Now doesn't that all sound like fun?

Nevertheless, I had planned to go, mostly because I was worried about my parents' reaction if I didn't. And I was worried about my parents getting flack from the rest of the family if I didn't show. But then I talked to my parents, and they both seem to think that doing all that driving for so little time home, when I have all this other stuff I need to be doing, is, well, insane. So. Everyone seems agreed. No need for me to go home for Thanksgiving.

Now, of course, the question is what to do instead. There are a few possibilities. Plan A involves going with my roommate to his parents' house. Plan B, which is perhaps more likely, involves spending the day in my favorite pajamas, knitting and watching the parade and Christmas movies, and then having some sort of celebration with my roommate later in the weekend. Really, either sounds okay. I think. Of course, I'm not sure how I'll feel when the day arrives, but I'm trying not to worry about it too much. I'm sure some variation of sad (re: loneliness) and/or guilt-stricken (re: filial duty) will be in there somewhere... might as well let it be a surprise so I have something to look forward to.

Aren't holidays fun?

Pulling myself together

So, um, sorry about yesterday. I'd been thinking about including more personal stuff on this blog, and I guess in my madness yesterday I decided to go for it. Hope no one minded. And a very big thank you to Folkcat, Lauren, Kat, and Kristen for all the support and virtual hugs in the comments. It really did help.

So I wound up leaving class early because I was feeling worse and worse, physically, and was having trouble concentrating as well. At points, I was struggling not to fall asleep, so I was worried about driving home if I had stayed for the whole class. Of course, due to power problems or something, I ended up waiting about an hour for a train to take me back to my car. Waiting outside. In the cold/wind/occasional rain. Yes, I'm sure this did wonders for my cold. Anyway, I finally made it home, only a bit earlier than it would have been if I'd just stayed in class, but still. I put on my jammies, talked to my roommate for a while, went to bed, and actually slept quite well.

Today I'm feeling emotionally better but physically yucky. (Of course, they are related; I need to teach my body that "hey, bronchitis!" is not a good reaction to a little stress. Not that I have bronchitis now, but that's where things have generally headed in the past.) I have a full-fledged cold now, with coughing and intermittant wheezing and chills. Fun. So, the plan for the evening:

1. Put on favorite pajamas
2. Do enough from my to do list to decrease the stress level a bit
3. Eat soup and drink tea
4. Curl up in bed with a Netflix DVD and knitting
5. Take some Dimetapp around nine to knock me out and read myself to sleep

Sound good? I have a pretty full weekend planned, so I need to get better. I am also afraid that this cold is the start of the long-running illness I seem to get almost every winter. It's a combination of stress and the weather, I think: as soon as the cold and finals and the holiday season hit, I'm vaguely ill for months. It comes and goes, of course; most of the time it's more annoying than actually debilitating. But yeah... annoying. I'd like to break the cycle. I think it's a combination of not taking very good care of myself and not having very healthy ways of dealing with stress. So this year, I'm formulating a plan. What I have so far:

1. Get enough sleep. No, really. Yes, with two jobs and class, there are nights when I just can't get to bed early enough to get eight hours, but these nights are not the majority. The problem is that there are way too many nights when I stay up late for no good reason. I think if I can improve this, it will make a huge difference - at this point, I can barely imagine not being tired all the time.

2. Remember to take my vitamins. I'm getting better, but still not remembering every day.

3. Eat better. I don't eat horribly, by any means, but I'm sure I don't get enough protein. (Suggestions on easy protein??) And some more fruits and veggies wouldn't kill me.

4. Stay hydrated. Another obvious one that gives me way too much trouble.

5. Actually wear some of those scarves and hats I'm always knitting. Well, I don't know. You don't get colds from being cold, right? Is there any relation to having your body temperature drop or whatever because of weather, and getting sick? In any case, the cold aggravates my asthma, so I should make some attempt with the scarf thing at least.

6. Find some other way to deal with stress, darn it. This is the hard one. I get stressed, my body acts up, I ignore it until it gets so bad that I have to stop everything and stay in bed for a few days. Which, subconsciously, may contribute to the cycle: the implied "reward" of getting to stay home sick. Argh. This is the one I really need help with, and I'd love to hear any input.

Any thoughts/suggestions on any of it would be much appreciated, actually...

Well, this is fun.

Apparently the "Aaaaaah"ness of the previous entry led to a total meltdown in the car on the way from work to class. (It's about an hour drive, NH to Boston.) I spent the time alternating between fighting tears, wondering if I've finally just gone mad, and debating whether to just turn around and go home. Yeah, fun stuff. Now I'm in the computer lab at school getting ready to face a three-hour class. And then the drive home.

If I didn't actually have stuff that needed to get done at work (for once), I would be seriously considering a mental health day tomorrow. Ah well. I'd also sort of like a hug... but there's really no one around to get one from. I'm not comfortable hugging people I don't feel I know very well, but most of my friends in NH are not huggy types, so it's a problem.

Aaaah. It's one of those days when I feel like I'm too messed up or damaged to ever have a "normal" life and I don't deserve one anyway. And I don't know what I want. In practically any context. And I don't know how I'm going to face three hours of sitting through class and the requisite small talk with classmates, and then walking to the T in the rain and then taking the T and then driving home. And my brain won't stop and I'm just driving myself crazy at this point.

I'm trying to convince myself that this is all fairly normal post-breakup stuff... right? Help!

Aaaaaaaah.

I am now undoing all the data entry I did yesterday, because they gave me the wrong information. This is hours of work. And then I have to redo it all when they figure out the correct information. One of the people involved called to apologize, but really, couldn't they bring me chocolate or something? I was having a vaguely off day anyway. I don't feel good, but I have to be at work and then go to class. And work is being frustrating, and it's been raining for days, and I do like rain but enough is enough. And there could be some of what Cate is talking about going on, too. Actually, now that I reread Cate's entry, I'm identifying with a lot of it. Especially if you substitute "messy house" for "demon-possessed children." But yeah... cold/coughing, PMS, work frustration and overwhelmsion (WHAT is the correct form of that word? My brain is obviously gone at this point), contemplation of Big Life Changes, knitting frustration... check, check, check.

I'd like to say I'm going to go curl up in my comfy bed and drink tea and read and knit now, but, well, I can't. Which may be part of the problem.

Hope someone out there in Blogland is having a better day... send sunshine and cough drops.