Summer is here in four weeks.

Waffle stretches languidly on the carpet.

There are as many categories as sentences.

not ugly; poorly formatted photos series cont’d

(Recording the asymmetrical bangs I cut for myself.)

I’m not freakin’ ugly!

Angela: 3

Demeaning: 0

Still, I might get a new url

It seems that I have a curse. An internet titles curse.

lasfraises@yahoo.com <– before I knew French, including its articles

saites_vous_el_greco@hotmail.com <– was pretty sure “savoir” had an irregular vous conjugation

l_ucello_della_luna <– thought back to picture of swan in Rosetta Stone software and got switched around about Italian rule that makes “c” sound like “ch”… It’s “l’uccello” for loochello, bird; “l’ucello” for loosello, not a bird, I think not a word.

frollickingponies <– I sent my housemate whose birthday is today a text message that said “You wannna frolic any cuz of your bday?” I used the plain verb form, and the gerund form in my WordPress name tugged up into my consideration. One L.

Faced with a tinge of uncertainty about how to spell things, I consistently choose to go by my memory rather than – not and – look it up.  First I felt stupid, but now I’m delighted! THERE’s my humanity. BAM.

It also answers a sort of worry/prayer I’d had floating out there, that I’d gotten into the habit of choosing knowledge over faith. But cleeeearrrrly not! I recall feeling the leap o’ faith when I typed in those various names, and I preferred that feeling to just knowing.

How old are you? Millenia, sir.

I wish that actors lived in caves, emerged to act, and then went subterranean again, never revealing their names or actual identities. Or that they walked around in disguises most of the time (or acted in costume and make-up that made them look drastically different). Something where nobody knew who they really were. I guess this idea is the banishment of celebrities. I suppose I can’t really enforce this to the entire earth, but I thought of it today like, “If I were an actor, this is what I would do…” I would be a mysterious woman, invested in the study of life and its people, embodying that beauty in pieces (plays, films, whatever…), and preserving my art, my self, from the public eye. This is to say, “Hey, you, you who watches me… This art is about you, not me.” So I would shun fame.

~and unrelate~

My Counseling professor (Counseling is a course, I’m not being personally instructed in one hour weekly sessions)  makes the priority of his lessons self-reflection. I like that partially because I could use that in deciding what I do with my life next, and also because it makes it, well, an easier class… Last Wednesday, he commenced the class by asking us to imagine where we would be in 2013. I wondered what he thought looking at us as we all sat there with our eyes closed.

I first registered slight surprise that I would have a future. (see: slightly faulty serotonin receptors.) After moving past that, I started to imagine myself living in a flat in London with Waffle. Flannery lived nearby somewhere. In the morning, I worked at counseling practice, overall part-time. I would be out by the afternoon to grab lunch in Covent Garden with Flann and then go to band practice. Walking home from band practice, I’d pick up Indian for dinner and be greeted by a tail-thomping Waffle at my flat. I’d take him out for a walk in a park. Back home, darkness falling, I would work on writing and drawing up graphic novels. A few hours later, after a soak in the tub, Waffle and I would curl up and fall asleep in an enormously cooshy bed. The bed was a real luxury imagined in there, since I’ve mainly slept on rather monastic things throughout my life. I imagined more forward into that life, where Bible studies and gigs and ballet classes would reside. I could suddenly tack on a conclusion to this… But I just made some brownies from scratch for the first time ever, frosting included in the ‘from scratch’, so I want to leave. I guess I mentioned the imaginal exercise, because it joined in the tide of my restarting. I’m going to keep consciously imagining happy futures instead of settling into the faulty serotonin receptor wasteland. And it’s not that I ever lost optimism that the entire universe would work out okay… It’s specifically myself deemed purposeless in a world full of purpose… so in fighting, I want to imagine specific futures for myself.

COMPULSIVE SKIN PICKING

Dear readers,

This entry isn’t entertaining.  In fact, you might find it gross.

 

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The primary characteristic of Compulsive Skin Picking (CSP) is the repetitive picking at one’s own skin to the extent of causing damage. Usually, but not always, the face is the primary location for skin picking. However CSP, also known as dermatillomania, neurotic excoriation, or chronic skin picking, may involve any part of the body. Individuals with CSP may pick at normal skin variations such as freckles and moles, at actual pre-existing scabs, sores or acne blemishes, or at imagined skin defects that nobody else can observe. Individuals with CSP may use their fingernails, as well as their teeth, tweezers, pins or other mechanical devices. As a result, CSP may cause bleeding, bruises, infections, and/or permanent disfigurement of the skin.Sometimes skin-picking is preceded by a high level of tension and a strong “itch” or “urge”. Likewise, skin-picking may be followed by a feeling of relief or pleasure. A CSP episode may be a conscious response to anxiety or depression, but is frequently done as an unconscious habit. Individuals with CSP often attempt to camouflage the damage caused to their skin by using make-up or wearing clothes to cover the subsequent marks and scars. In extreme cases, individuals with CSP may avoid social situations in an effort to prevent others from seeing the scars, scabs, and bruises that result from skin picking.

As demonstrated above, CSP has obsessive-compulsive features that are quite similar to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Trichotillomania. It is sometimes found in individuals with these disorders, as well as in patients with certain medical conditions. In fact, a recent study found that 23% of those with OCD, and 27% of those with BDD, also had CSP. Though not currently listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) published by the American Psychiatric Association, some researchers believe Compulsive Skin picking merits distinction as a separate diagnostic entity.

The primary treatment modality for CSP depends on the level of awareness the individual has regarding the problem. If the CSP is generally an unconscious habit, the primary treatment is a form of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy called Habit Reversal Training (HRT). HRT is based on the principle that skin-picking is a conditioned response to specific situations and events, and that the individual with CSP is frequently unaware of these triggers. HRT challenges Compulsive Skin Picking in a two-fold process. First, the individual with CSP learns how to become more consciously aware of situations and events that trigger skin-picking episodes. Second, the individual learns to utilize alternative behaviors in response to these situations and events.

There are a number of other therapeutic techniques that can be used as adjuncts to HRT. Among these are Stimulus Control techniques and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). Stimulus Control techniques involve utilizing specific physical items as “habit blockers” to restrict an individual’s ability to pick at his or her skin. ERP, which is the primary treatment for OCD and many OC Spectrum disorders, is most valuable if the individual with CSP is already aware of the specific situations and events that trigger skin picking episodes, and has already made significant recovery using HRT. To learn more about ERP, click here. Also, medications that are frequently used to treat OCD may be valuable adjuncts to CBT in the treatment of Compulsive Skin Picking.

 

 

…It’s not the first time I’ve realized it, but finding something so categorical  and scientific drives home that I’m not the only person who does it.  I think I do have above average self-awareness about it, but not enough to stop yet, because of the cycle of repeating thoughts (anxiety) that is obsessive-compulsive disorder.  They crowd in until I have no other option.  I don’t want to be in denial about it anymore, and I don’t want to be in denial about a lot of things anymore for that matter.  It’s been years… I started when I was eleven.

Dangerous self-diagnosis?  I think not.  When what they describe is so exact…

Not just vague like the depression commercials that irk my abnormal psychology professor: “Are you sad?” “Yes, I am!  Oh no!  I’m depressed!”  I thought it was funny how my teacher described it, “You have a bad day and come home and see that commercial…” and then it’s like an Onion weekender cover I saw one time: “Parents Use Internet to Radically Misdiagnose Their Children”. 

This entry seems to be a patchwork of other’s words today.  Sometimes others help me see what I’m thinking and feeling where before there was a cloud with tenuous emotion attached to it.

The article talks about exposure therapy, which is a word that has often been drawn out when contemplating what I need.  I feel like I’ve been pushing myself that way, to exposure, for years.  To walk as a free woman without secrets from myself and feel no shame…

And to be twenty and tenacious.  Not resigned.  Not over.  Not twilight.

Shellfish

I think this year’ll get better though.  I’ll be living with Sara, Ashleigh, and Elissa.  A winning combination!  As far as I can tell.  Plus, Michelle will be moved out, so she can be more like a friend I see and do friendy things with rather than a roommate who sometimes stresses me out with inconstancy.  Although lately I’ve probably been the inconstant one.  Hm.  Our conversation last night felt a little like there were shards of glass in it.  We don’t see eye to eye on some things… I feel a little wilder, kinda.  And in some ways not.  Okay, this paragraph isn’t saying very much.  I just keep writing because I can’t turn off the string of Smashing Pumpkins songs on iTunes… 

I’m pretty hungry.  Gotta forage.

Toniiiiiiiiight

Kinda happier

Thought you might like to know

Whoever is reading this

Continuing Observation

If you haven’t noticed yet, whenever I write an extremely negative entry, a few hours later optimism usually strikes back.  This is the cyclical nature of my personality.

 

I do like Michael and Mary and their daughters, my cousins, Sarah and Rebecca.  They can be sort of blunt with each other, but they are pretty gentle in dealing with people outside of their family, and I can have a decent conversation with Sarah and Rebecca.  Some sort of caring if unorthodox family nucleus exists for them, and it translates to how they treat others.  But Mom hardly knows her oldest brother, who is a good fifteen to twenty years older than her, so we’ve hardly ever seen them.  I suppose now that I’m gaining independence, I could forge my own acquaintance with them, and that might be something worth doing…

Aunt Annette is pretty oblivious, but she can have an appreciation for strangeness that I appreciate in turn.

Uncle Doug has pretty much always talked to me like I’m an equal.  That’s the way to go if you would like to be in my good graces.  Or, I would think, anyone’s good graces.  It just seems like such a plain fact to me, to speak to each person you encounter on a simple and unpretensed level… although the more insecure you get, the less you are able to do that, which I think is a problem with most family members on my mom’s side (I see its seeds in me; I want to uproot them).  You gotta fight and claw for self-esteem in that pack.

Grampy is THE MOST oblivious.  Grammy is nice, but she has such a need to serve others that it can make you feel horribly guilty.  Aunt Beverly usually has something critical if reserved to say… very, very dry sense of humor.  Connor is all right, although he’s mostly interested in sports, which knocks me out of the ballpark of conversation. 

My cousin Buff (who is not at this gathering, studying for the bar exam, good for him) once said that something monstrous happens when you get our whole family together in a group.  Viewing the people singularly, I can’t find anything inherently or insurmountably offensive about them, but I have to agree with Buff… when put all together, trying to function as a decision-making fun-having body, something goes terribly, terribly awry.

Then Again…

There was a lot of unrest at the place.  People were constantly talking behind each other’s backs about how things should be different.  I can see complaining helplessly in a large, ill-functioning corporation, but I don’t think there should be talk like that in a business that is so incredibly small.  What are there, like seven employees holding the place together.  The communication sucked.  It stressed me out so much.  I had an ominous feeling when I applied there; the entire dressing of the store and the people I met (except for Bob) made me immediately dislike it, but I thought I could tolerate it for a summer.  Thought the animals could help me keep my sanity, but it turns out the job had very little to do with them in a comforting sense.  The people were not my kind of people.  Maybe if I were in a better place myself, I could have existed there observing and learning about them and appreciating their differences, sort of like what I did at Smoothie King.  But I am not a running watermill of humanitarianism at this point.

If I had thought to say anything other than “I’m sorry”, it would have been “I’m glad to leave”.  I am glad that I’ll never have to go there again.  I guess I wish it could have been on my own terms, but I gave those away.  Next time, I won’t.

:: weeping ::

NOOOOO

I just deleted my My Music folder from my computer, thinking that I had it all transferred to my new removable hardrive, but whatever I have purchased from iTunes in the past was apparently not backed up in that.  Nooooooooo  Damien RIce…. the opera Dido and Aeneas… White Stripes, Elephant….. Optiganally Yours….. The Shins… The Radio Dept…… that one Neil Diamond song I didn’t just buy……

No, no! Nnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooo….. waahhhhh whyyyy this is not that big of a deal, I know, but at the same time….  There’s a small hole in my heart now.

This is a journal, one visited consistently by only one person even, so I can whine here!

I WANT THAT MUSIC BACK!

 

Oh my goodness.  A little bubble just popped up saying “Neil Diamond: Essentials has just finished downloading”.  Oh my.  This is like the time I was sitting out in a marsh with my dad in his boat, and it was mostly a nice day except it was very cloudy, and I thought, “This is a nice day, God, and I appreciate it, but if the sun were shining, that would make me so happy.”  And then the breeze started blowing and the clouds rolled along and the sun warmed my face.  The song currently stuck in my head, that would have made me craziest being without, has been returned almost immediately at loss’s touch.

 

Cool!  Thanks!