Trypping

I was getting really low there, for a while. Like, really low. And kind of angry. I attributed this to rejoining the prestigious field of fast food services. Spending all day surrounded by the energy of hungry-grumpy customers and rushed, haggard managers probably does a number on the subconscious.

...then I accidentally self-medicated with milk.

Like from a cow.

Moo.

I was just doing the warm milk thing to make myself sleepy, but it turns out tryptophan does more than induce cozy, sleepy feelings. It is also a key ingredient in seratonin production.

Now tryptophan, while essential for producing sleep and mood regulating chemicals, is inhibited by a whole bunch of other amino acids—so the best way ensure you get a good amount of the stuff is to either isolate a single tryptophan-rich food and eat it on an empty stomach [or similarly take a suppliment].

So the byproduct of my drinking warm milk before bed, well after dinner, was a slightly increased production of seratonin.

I'm not suddenly up for joining glee club or anything, but it sure took the edge off.

Small Voctories

Been “dating” this guy...I put 'dating' in quotation marks because I dislike all the weird stigmas and dogmas that ride in on the coattails of labels like that.

Anyway, we had one of those 'boundary defining' conversations that are quite necessary when both parties tend to put labels in quotation marks...and it was a most peculiar experience.

Knowing that this particular conversation was inevitable, I already had a statement prepared, neatly folded into the back of my brain, ready to go when the moment came. But I never got to say much—or, more accurately, I didn't have to. It's unusual to hear your own thoughts tumbling out of someone else's mouth almost verbatim, but there they were, practically plagiarized from my very own brainfiles.

The only notable difference was that he likes his alone-time because he has an established set of solitary routines, and I need alone-time because I seem to have forgotten what I enjoy doing alone.

My skill-based hobbies are...diminished and rusty. I enjoy them less now because it is apparent I have come to suck at them. I still do them, but it is exercise; a thing I do for my own good. Eventually I will relish the burn, but until then—like a big, fat guy really determined to fit into those size 32 pants again, I can only huff and puff and sweat and cry into the treadmill of my old hobbies.

While I whittle the fat from down around my creative muscles, I have to settle for the small victories of self-rediscovery, and that brings me to whole point of my story.

Eating microwaved top ramen from a mug in the middle of the night is apparently something I enjoy doing by myself.

Firestarter

Having one of those "burn it all to the ground" days.

Don't misunderstand me, though--it's not an angry thought.

It's just that I'm thick with old growth, dead leaves and branches, vines over-stepping their bounds.

I need a wildfire to tear through it all, and wind and rain to clear out the ashes. Winter will come and flatten everything under ice, and when it thaws, new things will rise out of the blackened earth.

I threw out a 3rd of my old clothes--things between four and ten years old. Who would keep those things? It is largely because I keep promising myself that I will "use them for something". But there is no excuse, I wasn't even around for the great depression!

I think they're ugly now anyway. My taste has evolved considerably since their acquisition. My closet is full of hideous anachronisms from a point in my life where I only wanted to wear either black and red or green and brown.

Next might have to be my fabrics. My vast collection of "Ooh, only one dollar a yard? I'm sure I'll totally find a use for this".

So many tools and components I just don't remember how to use anymore, serving more as reminders of how epically useless I've become. A frustrating monument to my own personal decay.

Just need a little spark to catch in the tinder and turn it all to ash.

A Balanced Diet

...I had a good day. A normal day. The kind I see portrayed in everybody else's facebook photo albums at one time or another.

You know the kind; where everybody seems to really be in the moment--all goofy-faced and candid.

A simple dinner party with good food and a well-balanced social dynamic. We ended the night talking about our favorite books.

I felt like a real person again.

It was nice.

:)

My Chemical Romance--might as well'a face it, we're addicted to love!

At some point, I experienced a kind of "Blank Slate Phenomenon", where-in I have ceased to believe in anything; love, god, and the assorted personal beliefs I have accumulated over the last 24 years of existence have all evaporated into an ethereal haze. Or would have, if I believed in the ethereal.

Feeling thus detached and emptied, I now turn to science and occasionally, the avant garde viewpoints of my quirkier friends.

My tentative plan is to collect bits and pieces of facts and findings, viewpoints and theories--and retain just the bits that ring truest to me. Then, I suppose I shall cobble them together into a haphazard, hackneyed personal belief system.

More on that later--for now, let us discuss the first challenger I face on this philosophical quest; 'love actually'.

Everyone experiences 'lust at first sight'--it takes under five minutes for your brain to utilize visual and aural cues to determine a person's genetic compatibility, current state of fertility etc.

From there on out, it's all about chemistry--literally!

After your brain has determined that the person you're looking at is genetically compatible, it encourages you to make a move by significantly increasing the levels of your respective sex hormone [estrogen or testosterone]. These chemicals are the basis for lust.

If the object of your desire is receptive to your advances, then you just might move into the attraction phase, which triggers a new set of chemicals.

Adrenaline makes your heart race, makes your breathing a little strained as you attempt to stop from giving yourself away, and gives you that "hard swallow" problem--your mouth is constantly producing saliva, so you reflexively swallow every now and then--but next time you find yourself alone with someone you're attracted to but haven't made an advance towards, try to pay close attention to the way your natural swallowing reflex has changed. If you are even slightly nervous or anticipatory, it will be a more noticeable gulp.

You can also look for these types of body language in the other person to determine if they might be attracted to you as well.

Dopamine triggers an intense rush of pleasure. When Robert Palmer said we were addicted to love, he hit the nail on the head. The dopamine response triggered in the brain during attraction is basically indistinguishable from the reaction triggered by use of cocaine!

And then we have good ol' serotonin, helping you fixate on the other person and make you a little more daring and impulsive.

Apparently, the heightened levels of the three aforementioned chemicals are also present in equal measure in the brains of people with Obsessive-Compulsive disorder.

Production of b-Phenylethylamine is also increased, and causes a prevailing euphoria that somewhat distorts perception [making it that much easier for you to ignore or justify your lover's flaws]. This can also attribute to compulsive behavior.

Because of the way attraction chemicals visibly alter behavior, psychologists will note that love bears a striking resemblance to substance abuse!

After 2 to 4 years, the hormone levels present during the first stages level off and lead into the final stage: attachment.

Though some might say it is more like chemical entrapment. In fact, orgasms are booby-trapped!

By now you may be feeling like the excitement has gone out of the relationship--you lust after each other less, your heart might not race when they step into the room. And yet, still, part of you wishes to remain with your partner. Why?

Oxytocin, also deemed "the cuddle hormone" is an attachment hormone that facilitates bonding. The more orgasms a couple experiences together, the closer they feel. Unfortunately, this can end up a little one-sided, if one partner does not experience orgasms for one reason or another. I imagine a good amount of relationships go south due to sexual dissatisfaction/dysfunction.

To further demonstrate the power of oxytocin, it is also released in women during pregnancy to allow the mother and child to bond.

Vasopressin is also released after sex and helps cement and upkeep the attachment.
An experiment was conducted on prairie voles, which mate for life and are one of the few mammals that have sex just for the hell of it. The males were given something to suppress vasopressin and almost immediately lost interest in their partner and did nothing to keep other male voles away from the female.

Having a lot of really great sex with the same person lately? Congratulations, you have or will soon be shanghaied into pair-bonding!

Surely then, any couple who engages in enough satisfying sex ought to last forever, yes? This would be true, if only we were prairie voles, or penguins or seahorses.

I feel that chemicals are only half the equation here, because otherwise, we'd be like penguins and seahorses and life, love, etc would be quite a bit simpler. If it were just about the chemicals, we'd mate, stick around just long enough to get the kids into middle school and move on to the next genetically suitable partner with no hard feelings.

But we're a complex and egotistical species who have cultivated a great deal of stigmas, taboos, pet peeves and preferences. In other words, while one side of the relationship coin is chemical, the other side is social. Infuriatingly, chaotically social.

Physical attraction is easy enough; size up your potential mate, and let your subconscious calculate their genetic compatibility. Done and done. If you're the love 'em and leave 'em type, this is as far as you go.

But if your brain just happens to be hardwired to 'mate for life' as it were, you've got a longer road ahead of you.

It becomes a game of 'social go-fish', where no one wins if either player doesn't have enough cards in their hand to match what the other person is asking for. Say "go fish" too many times and you'll find yourself stuck on the proverbial docks looking for those 'other fish in the sea' you've heard so much about.

Too many clashing social and personal beliefs create conflict, and conflict is a stressor. Your body's reaction to stress is a 'fight or flight' response. It shuts down your body's 'unnecessary functions' to devote more energy to getting out of the negative situation. These unnecessary functions are growth, the immune system, and most notably, reproduction.

So all those warm, fuzzy streams of lust-inducing and pair-bond enforcing chemicals get shut off. As we discussed previously, love can strongly resemble addiction--so now that the conflict has cut off your supply of hormones, you start going into withdrawals.

Now you're confused and irritable, and maybe a little ill, as your brain and body beg for another fix.

At the end of a minor conflict, or a singular instance of great conflict, the 'kiss and make up' method will reform or stabilize the pair-bond by uncorking a fresh bottle of hormones.

Repeat conflict, however, will act in the same way a nicotine patch effects a smoker. Your brain will slowly get less and less of the bonding chemicals until you are effectively weened from your partner.

So if you could just find your genetic and philosophical match, you'd be set for life, right?

Not necessarily.

With every generation comes more and more open-mindedness, acceptance and availability of information regarding foreign cultures, beliefs, scientific discoveries, etc. It allows us to consider many viewpoints, and for more flexible people, it allows us to change our minds about nearly anything.

As we grow and change with every passing day, month, year, we risk incompatibility with our partner. This is not to say that we should endeavor to stay the same--by no means do I advocate stagnation. This is merely pointing out a factor in relationship conflict. In other words, shit happens, and people change.

So people who can stay happily married for 60 years are either very solid in their matching belief sets, or have, by chance, grown in nearly identical ways.

Perhaps, though it is also possible for two people to be flexible, accepting and non-argumentative to the point that their individual growth dynamics wouldn't arouse conflict at any stage of the relationship, thus never compromising the pair-bond.

That would take two very, very emotionally mature people, I'm sure.

So what key elements really make up a perfect relationship--is there even such a thing? Or are we all destined to burn out like a spent candle somewhere around the 2 year mark?

Being that I'm neither psychologist nor biochemist, I can only speculate, conduct personal experiments and share the findings with you, my readers.

What conflicts have caused your relationships to burn out? What has kept you together? How do you feel about relationships in general?




Information referenced from the following articles;

http://www.youramazingbrain.org/lovesex/sciencelove.htm
http://samvak.tripod.com/lovepathology.html
http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/stress.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4669104.stm

Dream a Little Dream

Another Saturday night watching my kid cousin watch cartoons, perched like a gargoyle on his razor scooter.


Yeah.


Livin’ the dream.

The Point of It All

I think a person’s ability to achieve their dreams depends entirely on their ability to obsess over something and be fairly well oblivious to other things; distractions, alternative callings, demoralization, etc.

I don’t have that.

I don’t know if it’s because I struggle with depression, and the resulting apathy gets in the way of my ability to be consumed by something or if I just haven’t found that one thing that really drives me.

If I was more obsessed with sewing, it wouldn’t matter that there’s not space to cut fabric or that I have to give up the ability to move around my room in order to set up a sewing table. I would sacrifice comfort and space, and I would just sew.

But I get distracted by the fact that without adequate space, cutting becomes inaccurate; and inaccurate pieces fit together poorly, making an ill-fitting, ill-made garment that I consider to be a waste of time and fabric.

If I were more obsessed with drawing, it wouldn’t matter that there isn’t space; it wouldn’t matter that the room is dimply lit; it wouldn’t matter that I have no desk.

But again, I get distracted; poor lighting affects your color choices. What looks good in the dim light may look awful in day-light or under a good craft light—no one is going to look at your finished product in dim, crappy lighting all the time, and you run the risk of ruining your art and wasting resources.

I could draw on the computer, but drawing on a laptop with no desk [or chair] starts to really damage my neck, arm and shoulder. Plus, I prefer sketching on paper, scanning in and then coloring digitally.

If I were more obsessed my comfort wouldn’t matter, or I wouldn’t notice.
I obsess over a boy sometimes--but I can’t really make a career or hobby out of being a girlfriend, at least not without sacrificing personal ethics and my sense of dignity.

Sometimes, I try to write—but I lose the story about halfway through the 3rd page when whatever first sparked the idea just suddenly blinks out like it never existed at all.

And I look out over my piles of fabric, my boxes of beads, my markers and Bristol board and thread in every color—and I feel lost in it; daunted. It’s all piles of bright, hideous chaos and nowhere to put it all, no space to add a touch of method to these great heaps of madness.

It would be nice to obsess. It would be nice to feel driven.

But things slowly begin to feel like a waste of time. I question what I’m doing; for what purpose? To what end?

What, exactly, is the point?

Alien Nation

I spend all day by myself in an empty cafe, feeling progressively more useless; then I go home, too tired to do anything but sleep. People invite me to do things, and I have to reply "sorry, I don't have the energy", and go back to my constant half-coma. I don't see anyone or speak to anyone, except in passing or online.

I was thinking about this moment from last week, where my friend and her mom came into the cafe. She was telling me what I should do with my art and I started talking about how I've been having somewhat demoralizing issues with inspiration over the last couple years.

And then my friend's mom cut right through my sentence with a piece of advice. I feel that this is one of the most alienating things you can do to someone who's been feeling down and out.

I think this might be why some people blog. You can't interrupt text with advice or dismissal. Well, you can--but it's just that much harder.

This is also why I don't talk in real life.

People assume that if you're talking about a problem, then you're asking the listener to fix it or give you advice.

But mostly, sometimes exclusively, I just want to feel heard...and not so alone.

On the other hand, though, I suppose a person's pain is their own and if we were meant to be there for each other we'd have evolved telepathy by now.

I don't mean to make such impositions.

I guess I'm still learning how to cope with the reality that I must just shut up and deal with it myself.

Fat Chance

Do you ever catch your reflection and think "god, is that what I look like?"

Some days I just don't recognize myself. It's like looking into a shop window and catching stranger staring back at you.

I had a dream that I looked good. My hair was cut, my skin was clear--and I had the perfect lipstick color. my hair was dark, too. Black. It matched my shirt, and that weird dream way where textures collide.

I think I'm vain, but my chronic apathy gets in the way of me bothering to look really good.

I'd like whiter teeth, better breath, a haircut, the ability to fit back into my pants again. Mind you, I'm not anything resembling over-weight, but I don't fit into any of my pants or skirts suddenly and that's really what bothers me.

I. don't. want. to. buy. new. things.

Or at least I cant afford to do it in a leisurely way. or any way.

And my other chronic issue--fatigue--really gets in the way of moving things around to make space for my sewing machine. Or looking for a job that actually pays me, so I could bypass the sewing machine issue and buy a fucking pair of pants and some whitening strips, cause I'm starting to look like those people nobody hires outside of a fastfood job fair.

more later, as I'm technically supposed be doing my job as a faux-barsita who's boss pretends to pay her.

disHarmony

So I was bored and went over to eHarmony.com because I know they have this questionnaire of epic length and I just wanted a little mindless multiple-choice action.

Then I got to this section:

"Please use the scale below to rate how often during the past month you have felt the following ways."

On a scale of 1-7 where 1= rarely 4= occasionally 7= almost always

1.Happy [2]
2.Sad [7]
3.Anxious [7]
4.Confident [1]
5.Hopeful [3]
6.Fearful about the future [7]
7.Angry [4]
8.Calm [1]
9.Fortunate [1]
10.Out of control [6]
11.Fulfilled [2]
12.Depressed [7]
13.Energetic [1]
14.Tired [7]
15.Successful [1]
16.Unable to cope [7]
17.Satisfied [1]
18.Misunderstood [3]
19.Safe [1]
20.Plotted against [1]

Miss Mouse will probably not be rejoining the dating scene any time soon...

If September is good to me, I'll fill it out again in Oct and hope most of these numbers can be truthfully reversed.

I think I'm pretty comfortable with #20's answer, though.