Have I misspelled the names of these colors? Nope!

Maybe I’ll get hits from the gay community! Just kidding, gays. Don’t hate-crime me.*

*If you are a gay person who stumbled upon this blog from a Google search or whatever, please know most things I say are facetious, and I’m not making light of your social and civil hardships. Peace out!

I’m on a rising wave of transformation anyway. I can still feel terrified of everything, but I’m gathering, incubating, and learning. I spread orange-white Mexican cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, cilantro, and feta cheese on tacos today at the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival (Fuzzy’s Taco Shop booth!) I got there feeling relaxed. Then the anxiety scrunched up around me. Then I concentrated on what my hands were doing. I felt what it was like to talk to other people and feel safe in yourself; it’s like throwing a rope out and they choose to catch it, most likely they will (optimism). After the first conversation I had with a pre-nursing major from Orange, Texas… what was her name. Aw man. Well, as we were talking about majors, hometowns, and Denton panic started. What if a new conversation topic didn’t come up? What if she became really attached to me and wanted to be friends and hang out after this? It seemed like I would have to keep being polite and try to be amusing for the years of our mismatched friendship… What? What is this, Angela? Not all relationships are either BFF! or Nighthawks stranger. Such strong black-and-white thinking presides in me. I can see it and reside in it simultaneously…

Later at home today, I looked at Joe’s Facebook page, and then I looked at his intriguing hipster?/anti-hipster?/beyond-hipster? friend Tess’s page and found this website called adbusters.org. Oh lemme do that linky thing. This site. This site hosts the kind of thought that is blanket wrapped around me.

Waffle sends sad eyes my way to be petted. New blog coming!

97 VIEWS???? HOW??????

Cool

Waffle stretches languidly on the carpet.

There are as many categories as sentences.

I don’t want to be a rational architect.

Wishful thinking is symptomatic of anxiety. okay. I think I’m ruining everyone’s life. No. Stop generalizing just so that you don’t have to make any particular person feel any particular way. I might have ruined my family. No. More specific. Today I called my mom, because a woman at the Bible study talked about her daughter who had Aspergers’ Syndrome (high-functioning autism–trouble reading social cues or understanding social behavior), and I had thought, when I met this woman’s daughter… She reminds me of my mom and my mom’s family! Probably more along the lines of.. Aunt Annette? And sometimes my mom, I dunno, she gets so fixated on houses, building things, productivity… And I got inspired that maybe if my mom figured out that she needed help with social things… or that maybe I wouldn’t feel like I was the crazy one for thinking people’s behavior abrupt/rude/abrasive… So I called her, but I chickened out in saying that I thought she might have it, so I said “your family” and she said, “No.” And I kept prodding around, mentioning Aunt Theresa and Aunt Annette, and she said, “No, you don’t get to find diseases.” Then I was like, “What do you mean by that?” And she was like, “I don’t know” kind of coyly. Then I was confused and halted, and I felt like she’s got this thing built up around me that I’m a hypochondriac. Her and Russ: it’s in your head! Well, you know what I thought of saying after I had hung up and my altruisitc attempt had failed:

Hey Mom, remember that time I thought I had lice and you kept saying “No, you don’t. You’re just imagining it. You’re a hypochondriac.” And then you finally believed me when my entire head was itching and you saw a bug run across my hairbrush???

That’s because I was RIGHT. I was good at deciphering what was happening to me. I’m not a hypochondriac. And admitting that something is a problem is not DEFEAT. Such tight denial.

I sat on a builder on the premises of The Yoga Hut and some thoughts breezily unfurled.

Acknowledge that her words led to me feel hurt, manipulated, and misunderstood. The misunderstanding of my intentions perhaps hurts the most, being treated like my curiosity needs to be extinguished.

Don’t suppress the feelings, but now… the most freedom comes from knowing my own freedom of choice, that I don’t have to let pain ripple through my cells and out into my actions against others.

I dunno how I feel about blogs and the internet now. It seems like the maximum in social scrutiny. Maybe I could check out of all of this. Maybe that’s avoidant. Hey!

But I think my big push away from people is because I’m not setting identity boundaries. Meaning: whoever I’m around, I feel at their mercy, whatever they believe, whatever they’re doing, whatever their opinion about a CD or a shirt we passed in a window, well, disagreeing can’t be as important as our relationship, so I don’t need voice it! Or I chatter incessantly, I say things outside the realm of my good discretion, projecting other people’s opinions because mine aren’t sharply and quickly formulated. and Silence is not. allowed.

BLECHG so much garbage in my mind. Who’s operating the gas grill beneath me? Maybe this is what they mean by Hell. Oh yeah! My theory of God. The kingdom of God is within you. The Bible is a metaphor for the entire inner, emotional/spiritual journey of a single person, and each of us can use it to exquisitely calibrate our inner lives with the richness of wisdom. The infinity stretching out before us is within us. Right now.

The passive-aggressive note-leaving has begun. I almost texted her “We are not going to begin passive-aggressive notes. Talk to people.” But that would be like another note. It’s true that we mainly see each other in passing. Still, it seems to me like talking face-to-face is much healthier; it’s a dialogue, then, and not someone taking presumed command of what needs to be done then getting angry when others don’t comply. She pretty much threw a Helen Keller fit on Monday. Only at that point did I get any inkling that Waffle’s chewing old, moldy loaves of bread from the compost really bothered her. And that was a guess at what was behind it. Because she never said anything. And still hasn’t. And yeah putting Waffle’s bread bones into words does sound disgusting, but it honestly hadn’t crossed my mind and obviously didn’t bother me (and still doesn’t). And it’s not up to me to troll the waters of every roommate and deduce how she feels, even though I try to do that anyway. But ultimately, if she’s not going to bring something up, what do I do? Suggest, “Hey, some of my actions seem to be bothering you. What can I do to modify them to please you?” Already that seems unequal. There’s no opening left to decide whether it’s something I change, she changes, or both of us, or someone else in the house, you know.

I developed tolerance from interactions early in my life, well, like from twelve years old onward… I realize  that when I see roommates go through this anguish because not everything in the house goes their way. I’ve already passed through the shock and seeming violation that other people live in different ways from mine. !

But golly gee damn, I wonder if I need to get out of Texas.

I took a black Sharpie last weekend and wrote down everything painful I have retained from others in the past. It was twiggered I mean triggered from turtle and I visiting Uncle Paul. Uncle Paul’s bitterness/negativity/tension/perseveration was at a high tide, and in a new person’s presence (turtle’s), it really stood out. We traded observations in the car, and I thought of how much time I’ve spent with Uncle Paul in the past two years… and what I might have absorbed from him in his words, his choices, his actions, his attitudes, his emotions… and  how some of it did cause me pain, but I glanced down at the wound and did nothing, kept staring at him and listening for his sake. And I’ve borne others’ pain for a pretty long time. A pretttty long time. This is what deters me from counseling–too strong of an empath. 

So last weekend I wrote down all the scorching words and burned them in my bathroom sink. I know that’s not the end. I’m going to yoga again today. Transform-a-thon!

^I feel these words

“Writing for Television. Like SNL.”

He squinted at “SNL” and interpreted, “Savings & Loan?”

“Saturday Night Life…” I said quickly, then played along, “Savings & Loan is my passion.” The class laughed. I wasn’t trying to be “funny”, but they laughed.

Tina Fey also took classes at Second City, which I have totally contemplated since high school. I don’t mean to obsess, I’m pretty sure this doesn’t qualify as obsessing… I don’t really idolize people so much as desire to look at them and learn.

Speaking of that, my friend Ruth – I love experiencing things by her side. She gives you a constant update of her thoughts and emotions as they come. “What’s happening, Angela? Why aren’t they talking. I want them to talk. This is creeping me out. Okay, I’m getting a carrot. I’m going for the carrot.” Her eyes are this luminous pale gray/green and her features are finely detailed. I can tell she’s not just spouting empty chatter. I get to see her grasp each detail of reality as it comes to her. I saw her, Chelsey, and Lindsay yesterday. They invited me over for dinner and saved me from spending Easter entirely with my dog.