Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons...

It's been approximately 32894032890 years since I posted anything here. Oops. So.... hi? I'm not even sure who's still around, tbh. That's fine. It's like going back to the beginning, where posting on a journal site was just screaming into a void. :D I'd make excuses for my extended absence, but I don't see much point. And a lot of it comes down to the one thing, really, which I'll stick under a cut in a bit for people who maybe don't want to read possibly triggery depression crap. XD So. Obviously I'm not going to update you guys fully on everything ever because we will be sitting here for a million years, but I can attempt cliffsnotes?

⚡ Graduated college with my BA in 2016. Have not continued on with my education because, tbh, there's literally no reason to get a masters in English unless you want to teach, and I most definitely do not want to teach. Also I don't want to have to write a thesis. XD Sooooo yeah, why waste the money?

⚡ But yanno, getting a job in your field is hard and so I've ended up at the same company I was at before I went to school. Go figure. But I'm a supervisor now, and I'm making about $5 more than I was before, and it's not the same store, so yay? Also, school wasn't completely pointless, because in my last semester I ended up making a connection that let me move into the apartment I moved in after graduation and am still in, so there's that. It's a roommate situation which I *hate*, but it's a roof. Mostly still here because I hate moving, and also renew-the-lease time always seems to come up at really terrible times for me where moving is just a giant nope.

⚡ There was drama around my graduation, and I now haven't talked to Erin (older sister) since 2016 except for, at first, quick birthday messages on facebook or whatever. So yeah. I can elaborate if someone's around and asks, but I might just save that for another day, because this entry is already going to be a million years long, I can tell. I'm not really talking to my mother at this point either, for separate reasons, and anyone who remembers my mother and my relationship with her is probably not surprised at all by this development.

⚡ But yeah, that's pretty much it for cliffsnotes. Work makes a lot of things difficult because my schedule is all over the place and there are a couple of extremely unreliable people who should've been fired ages ago, so it's hard to do things like make plans or have a social life or whatever. I've also gained a bunch of weight- partially because laziness, but also partially because when you're working a 12 hour shift, chances are you're just going to get some takeout. Or when you close and then open, you're not going to want to go home and cook, so you either get takeout or get something fast, which is generally not the healthy option. You know? But yeah, keep needing to work on that, keep not doing it, we'll see what happens.

( Now down to the depression stuff I promised in the beginning, not that I haven't mentioned it in passing in the rest of this entry anyway. )


Time will obviously tell if I keep going with this or if I abandon it again, but meh, we'll see I guess. Now I have to start thinking about getting ready for work for the tenth day in a row. Nothing like working 80 hours between days off. At least I get the next two days off finally, so I just have to make it through tonight. I swear to god, if anybody from work calls me on my days off, it had better be because the store is on fire. -_-

6. Your 5 senses right now
Uh, the same five I always have? This is a dumb question.

As far as non-meme stuff, here we go:
☁ My certificate of residence for school has been acquired. I had to spend more time dealing with my mother than I would've liked in order to accomplish this, but whatever, it's done. Now I can pay my bill for school. The plan is to deal with that tomorrow.

☁ Saw an apartment Saturday. Good location, big room, roommates are not super neat freaks, gay friendly, super cute kitten (who spent most of the time pretending that I was a good climbing tree. Good thing I wore jeans. XD The guy was like, "wow, she really likes you already.") It's at the top of my "I can afford this" range, but I'm not sure I'm going to get much better because rent is freaking ridiculous here. He's still showing the apartment, so we'll see what happens. I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm going to text him tomorrow and see what's going on. In the meantime... I should probably make some more phone calls tomorrow too. Ungh. I want to do that about as much as I want a hole in my head. I fucking hate calling people, and of course most of these are like "phone calls only!" YOU GUYS SUCK.

☁ Need to go to old work and talk to Dave about saving boxes for me. Even if I wasn't planning on moving, I would probably still do this, because I'm at a point where I just feel like I'm moving things back and forth to and from the same places in my room, and getting stuff put away in boxes would at least let me put things away neatly in an orderly way instead of haphazardly thrown everywhere.

☁ ( TL;DR- Family bullshit )

☁ Oh yeah, and did I mention that classes start again on the 26th and I'm both freaked the hell out about it and can't wait to go back? Need to get sleep back in order. It was better and then it wasn't, sooooo. <_< It's not nowhere near as bad as it was at one point, but still not terribly good.

☁ So basically, long story short, I'm super stressed/anxious about EVERYTHING and trying to keep up with my daily cleaning sessions and mostly failing, so. On the upside, it does look considerably better just from what I did today?

☁ I've also been working on a random fic bit I found in my bunny folder. I... don't even know how this happened. But yay writing?

Not that you guys will be able to tell with how little I've been posting lately, but I'm going to be hermitting. No, I'm not really okay, and no, I don't want to talk about it right now. I may be overreacting to everything... I do that sometimes... but maybe not, and sitting here staring at the computer isn't helpful right now. The truth is, I've been swaying between being okay and really depressed the last few weeks, and a couple of days ago there was another down swing. I'm not going to disable comments, just so you guys have a way to get a hold of me if you happen to need anything, but I'm not looking for comments on this.

I'm just waiting for the other shoe to finally drop.

1)I had the shock of my life when I came into work today- my boss John told me that they put in a raise for me! Considering I just had my yearly in November/December… so this would be my first ever merit raise (which CVS isn’t actually supposed to do, and John told me as much). He was like “I just want you to know that I appreciate everything you do… I know you work really hard.” -- This will give me roughly $50-$60 extra a month, which I know doesn’t sound like a lot, but being as my rent just got upped by $100, that’s going to help considerably. This will make the difference between making it and drowning every month. Unfortunately, the only thing the raise is going to do for me this month is fill in a little of the hole I dug myself from overdrawing on my damn bank account yesterday… but it’s something.

However, I have a nasty feeling that there’s an ulterior motive for this… like with Walgreens coming up across the street in a few months, they’re sort of trying to bribe people into staying. Like, “Look, we can act human for all of five seconds, and in that five seconds we’ll give you a raise!” I don’t know, a raise isn’t a bad thing… it’s just… I have this gut feeling that there are strings attached to this sucker.
2) I just remembered that my friend Dave’s birthday was today. Whoops. Then again, considering that there hasn’t been so much as an e-mail between us in the last couple of years, calling him a friend might be a bit of a stretch. I guess… you never really get used to losing friends. We used to be close (though not as close as we probably could’ve been, thanks to me holding back and never completely trusting him with the stuff that really mattered, like I didn‘t tell him that my dad left until almost six months after the fact… though he held back with me too, the only thing I don’t know is whether he did that on his own or just because that’s what I was doing)… and we just… drifted apart. Somehow I allowed that to happen. No, actually, that’s not true. I’ll admit that my drifting apart from Lynn was half my fault for not stopping it when I had the chance, but I’m not taking credit for this one. I tried with Dave. I tried to keep in touch, sent e-mails and cards and whatnot, and I would get an e-mail that was two sentences long at most, and he NEVER took the initiative to write to me when it wasn’t in reply to something. He showed absolutely no interest in continuing a friendship with me, so eventually I just… stopped trying. Stopped putting myself out there, because really, what was the point? I just wish he could’ve had the balls to tell me that he didn’t want to be friends with me anymore. I mean… okay, that would’ve really sucked and I would’ve probably hated him for it, but at least it would’ve been over. Done. No more of me wondering why he still talks to Stef but not me. No more of me wondering “Is he really that busy that he can’t spend five minutes and write a fair sized e-mail, or is he blowing me off?” You know? I just hate being strung along… and I hate this fucking feeling that I still have even now, this… loss. The feeling when you lose somebody (no matter the means- a fight, death, moving, etc.) like some part of you is missing because they took that piece with them. I guess maybe that’s the person you were when you were with them- the part of you that’s missing, I mean. They’re gone, so that part of your personality is gone too.

Okay, I’m rambling now and I probably make absolutely NO sense whatsoever, and I need to go do laundry and stuff. So I think I’ll shut up now.

( work rant )

Kelly finished Kingdom Hearts... I’m so pissed. My almost non-gamer sister, who has previously only ever finished Harry Potter games (and that was about the hardest she’s ever played, to add insult to injury)(let me clarify that... I like the Harry Potter games, I do. But they’re far from challenging for a real gamer and pure entertainment as far as I’m concerned.), finished a game before I did. I guess to a certain extent I shouldn’t be mad. I haven’t worked on it in about a month, and I’ve been working on three or four other games in the meantime. It shouldn’t really piss me off... but it does.

I just realized something... I was listening to "Because of You" for about the billionth time, and when it got to the part of "Because of you I am afraid"... I kind of involuntarily thought "of getting hurt again", but then a voice in the back of my head piped up, "of being like you". I was thinking of my dad when I was listening to that part of the song, so... alright, I'm rambling. My point is that I realized that part of what's keeping me from getting in a relationship is that I'm afraid of becoming my father. I'm afraid of just getting up one day and walking out on my partner, no explanation, no regard for any children that may be involved, nothing. Of becoming this heartless bastard that doesn't give a damn about anyone or anything but (her)self. Of course, now that I've said that it sounds completely irrational. I mean... it's not like I wouldn't have a choice in the matter, you know? And just because I share some traits with him that doesn't mean that I have to end up like him, or do what he did. I'm not condemned to his fate just because I'm his child. At least that's what I keep telling myself. There's a part of me that remains to be convinced that there's not some emotional bomb somewhere in my brain waiting for the right time to explode, that I'm not dangerous to be in a relationship with because of that. The truth is, I am seriously fucked up in some seriously important ways when it comes to dealing with people... especially ones I care about. We all have emotional baggage, I know that, but... this just reaffirms my belief that I have to be extremely careful of who I allow into my world, of who I allow myself to care about... and that I should never, ever be in a relationship (even if there ever is a chance for that, which I seriously doubt).

Waiting... why is it that it feels like I'm always fucking waiting for something? Anything? Everything? Right now it's a cd I'm burning and the clothes in the washer, in general it's for my life to kick into gear... but it's always SOMETHING. Why is that?

I just now noticed that there's a little line on top of the entry box that says "Autosaved draft at..." and then updates itself every ten seconds. Is that new, or am I really that oblivious to have never noticed that before?

Found yet another good Harry/Draco fic today (well, good so far, anyway)... I've really got to stop this. The pairing is really starting to become an obsession, and... JKR is never going to make it happen except for maybe in an alternate universe, and I'll just be disappointed when Harry and Ginny get married and have a gazillion babies, even though I knew it was coming. Kinda like how I was pissed that Lupin is with Tonks even though I was convinced that he and Sirius were together all through the fifth book (maybe the fourth too, who knows). *Kicks self* Maybe I should just get back into my little Suikoden Tir/Gremio thing and just forget about the other. Maybe. It'd be a lot easier if Harry and Draco weren't so fucking perfect together. Grrr. *Kicks self again*

My CD is finally done, so maybe I'll go read or something. I still have another hour and ten minutes roughly for my clothes, so yeah... should go do something.

I got the Fall Out Boy tickets in the mail today. Wheee! (And there goes my completely irrational paranoia about not getting them in time).

The other day I was talking with this girl I work with, Desiree, about children, when I finally realized something for the first time: It doesn’t really matter that I don’t want kids, because I can’t have them. Ever. Well, no, I shouldn’t say that because TECHNICALLY, I could. Let me specify that in the statement that it will be a physical impossibility for me to conceive a child with my (future) partner. Sure, we could use a sperm donor or we could adopt- but that’s not really the same thing, is it? I knew all of this before, of course, but I guess the implications never really hit me until now- after all, I’ve never wanted to have children. It’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve changed “I’m never having kids” to “I don’t want children, but there’s a slight chance that could change in the future”. Probably because it’s been in the last couple of years that the pangs started (otherwise known as a woman’s biological clock going “uh, yeah, you know you only have a limited amount of time to do this, right?”). I think most women know what I’m talking about to some degree or other (and most of them to a much higher level than mine), but let me explain it for the men. It’s when you see a particularly cute baby, or you’re holding a friend’s or relative’s baby and they’re playing with your fingers and giggling, just smiling, or something equally adorable- that even women who strongly dislike children will think “Well, maybe having a kid wouldn’t be so bad.” This is where a woman who likes kids would go “OH MY GOD I WANT ONE!” They generally don’t last long (about as long as it takes the thought to cross your mind), but they’re intense little fuckers. Not that I would admit to actually having these pangs to anyone I know, of course, but they’re there. And that, more than anything, is why this whole thing depresses me so much. When you think of having children, you think of you and your partner having a child. Together. That kid is the combination of the two of you. Just the thought of… having a kid but it’s not mine, or not hers, or not ours anyway because we adopted… it’s fucking depressing. This is nature’s ultimate joke, I guess: “Not only will you be a social pariah and be denied rights that 90% of the population gets just for being born, you will be unable to reproduce with your partner. Ha!” Because apparently nature thinks this is immensely funny, and we all know that Biology loves to fuck with our minds to begin with. I guess… you don’t realize that maybe some part of you DID want something, until you find out that you can never have it. As cliché as that is.

In the past week I’ve gone from being reluctantly interested in the Harry/Draco ship to being completely fucking obsessed with it, despite the fact that a large part of my brain is still fighting it. Figure that one out. Anyway, I put all the blame on pir8fancier for bringing the interest into an obsession. Too good of a writer, dammit.

I still feel like crap, which probably has a great deal to do with the fact that I haven’t really been eating. I always turn semi-anorexic during my period out of practicality- why eat when it’s going to make my stomach declare war over a sandwich? During this time I usually eat something small about once a day, and I’m usually sorry for it later, but hey… you’ve gotta eat. The good news is that I usually lose about five pounds during this whole ordeal- bad news is that I gain it back almost instantly once I actually start eating again. Bah. Well, it makes me feel a little better about my weight for a whole five minutes.

Funniest thing yesterday: Paul and I were looking through some of the old sample greeting cards/borders, and we came across the picture of Shawn (kid that worked there like two years ago, sixteen, cute, I'm not sure if he knew that he was gay yet but he definitely is)- Paul was like, "Who is THAT and why does he not work here anymore?" He he. I spent the next five minutes trying to convince him that Shawn was too young for him anyway... don't think it worked. Paul seems to have a thing for the just-barely-legals. Okay, well, it was funny at the time.

“We tend not to change- or get out of life’s potholes- until we hurt intensely enough.”

I know perfectly well that the things I hate most about myself are things that are changeable. Well, the three main ones, anyway. Yet… I choose not to do anything about them. Why is that? Apparently being reminded of these things every single day of my miserable life isn’t enough to prod me into taking action, so what IS going to? Why do we, as humans, procrastinate until the very last second to do things that we need to do for our own well being? Honestly… is that rut we’ve dug up for ourselves really that comfortable? I guess so. I guess some of us are just so terrified of change- even change that’s good for us- that we dig our nails into the dirt around us, unwilling to let go just at the mere mention of moving somewhere else. Some of us have a comfy little cot set up in that rut and are wary of leaving this set-up that could leave us considerably worse off. Some of us… are simply too lazy to do anything else. The big question is: which is it for you, and what’s going to make you get up off your ass and do something about your life?

My answer for this, personally, is that I don’t have a fucking clue. As far as reasons- the first two are definitely me. Fear of change and an unwillingness to leave a place I’m used to (not necessarily comfortable in, but used to) in exchange for the very scary unknown. Yep. That’s me in a nutshell. But I don’t have the slightest inkling of what’s going to force me off my fat ass, so to speak. Alright, so going back to the three most hated things about myself and how I can/need to change them.
1. My weight. First and foremost. I try to act like this doesn’t bother me, but it does. I look in the mirror and I can’t even recognize myself anymore. The solution to this is… rather obvious. Eat better (I don’t really eat that much, so the amount isn’t an issue for me. But 99% of what I do eat is processed meat, cheese, white bread, and so on.) and exercise. Unfortunately, I’ve never been one to put in the effort to do either of these things for very long. About twice a year I’ll get into a “let’s get healthy” kick, and it’ll last all of two or three days before I decide it’s too much of a pain in the ass and give up on it. But hell, if my mom can lose all the weight she has, I definitely can. If I can motivate myself to do it.
2. School/CVS/Living at home. These are tied together in my mind, because my brain makes the connection that going to college equals leaving CVS, and going to college also means that I will no longer be living with my mother. A win-win situation all around. It’s not so much the leaving CVS part I’m having issues with, or the leaving my Mom’s house thing, it’s the school part. Not that I don’t like school. I’m just terrified beyond terrified of failing. The twisted thing about me is, I’d rather not go at all than to go there and fail. I’d rather die than fail, actually. Failing would prove my worst fears about myself to be true, and that’s just… so frightening I can’t even tell you.
3. My tooth. This is merely cosmetic- I’ve had a chip in one of my front tooth since I was 14. My parents never had the money to get it fixed. It makes me look like a redneck hick and I completely hate it, and even though I actually have insurance now (alas, it’s sucky insurance, but it’s there), I still haven’t gathered up the balls to go get it fixed. The point is- as much as I hate the way my stupid tooth looks, I hate the dentist more. Besides… I need a lot of dental work done. I don’t need them to tell me that because that’s just common sense. I went through a considerable period of time when I was extremely depressed and honestly didn’t give a damn about anything… including, I’m sorry to say, hygiene. Dental hygiene in particular, considering you can only go so long without taking a shower before you start becoming a distraction in classes. To this day, I’m still struggling to get back into the whole “brush your teeth twice a day” thing. I find it highly unlikely that a dentist wouldn’t realize this and comment on it, and I really, really hate being criticized for shit that I know I did and already feel bad enough about, thank-you-very-much. Like when I went in for my senior year physical, and my asshole of a doctor gave me a ten minute lecture about my weight. It’s like… yeah, thanks. I totally didn’t know that I’m about 70 pounds overweight. I never noticed, because it’s not like I get reminded of it every single fucking day in some shape or form. Anyway, that’s just not something I’m looking forward to with the dentist. In addition to my considerable FEAR OF PAIN.

There are other things, of course, but less important in my mind. Not to mention some of them (like a breast reduction) require a WHOLE bunch of money that I don’t have. Will probably never have. Ironically, the three things I hate the most are also the three easiest to change. Go figure. But again, I guess they just haven't stung me enough to motivate me to do something about them. When the hell did I get so lazy....