About Me of the Past

Below the cut is the old version of my “About Me” page, which I want to keep logged away for my own benefit.  It’s a little treasure, really: an insight into who I was five years ago.  I really haven’t changed all that much, but it’s been enough that the page no longer describes who I am.  And I’m truly all right with updating my own understanding of who I am in comparison to who I was and who I will most likely become.  So you can ignore this.  Goodness knows that I really haven’t posted much of anything here in years.  But this will be my own hidden snapshot of past-Missi.

A Year: 2012

In years past, I’ve made an effort to make one last post each December that recounts some of the achievements, discoveries, and challenges of the year before.  This usually comes out as a long post that is filled with bullets that I doubt anyone cares to read, so this year, I’ll be writing a shorter one that really gets to the point.

So, what happened in 2012?

• I started RPing on tumblr in the Fullmetal Alchemist fandom, which meant that I made some absolutely amazing friends and improved my writing of fiction immensely.  I’ll admit that starting to RP seemed like a giant waste of time.  Sure, I was having fun, but I kept wondering what else I could be doing.  I grew worried that I had gotten into something unhealthy, but it ended up working out.  I took breaks when I needed them, went on hiatuses but kept up social contact with the friends that I had made.  I sent baked goods and Christmas cards to the friends that I had made, added them on Facebook, spent hours on Skype laughing and crying with them.  I can’t regret any moment of time, as it was never time wasted.
• I had my first boy-friend, and I broke up with my first boy-friend.  It wasn’t working out.  We’re still friends.
• I came out as being somewhere on the asexual spectrum.  There are days when I don’t know if it’s asexuality or greysexuality or demisexuality, when I look at something and just think it’s whatthefuckIdon’tevenknow-sexuality.  It’s strange, and even after a year of thinking about it, I don’t know exactly where I am.
• Life moved on after Grandma’s death, as it does after any death.  We miss her, of course.  But I promised her that I’d keep living and thriving and loving.
• I got really sick in March until June with mono.  The mono brought out full symptoms of POTS, which is a secondary illness branching off from having EDS.  I never fully recovered, and I don’t expect to.  Instead, I’ve been learning how to adapt to the life that I now lead.  This has led to many things: diet changes, decisions about delaying grad school for a year, taking life slower, working less over the summer, and knowing my limits so that I don’t push them.
• I’ve been finishing off the last courses of my psychology major and printmaking minor.  I’m going to miss them terribly–especially art and all of the friends that I’ve made through the art department.
• I got to see Chris Thile in concert with the Punch Brothers, and I gave him a hug after the concert.  This was a legitimate bullet point on my bucket list that I could cross off.  Do remember that I’ve been obsessed with this guy’s music since he was in Nickel Creek and I first heard their music TWELVE YEARS AGO.
• I went to Florida over the summer and visited with my dad, brother, both sisters, and their families.  It was a pretty good time, and I wish that I could see them more often.
• Last, and most importantly, I met Alexander this year.  Words cannot fully describe what this means, and I won’t try too terribly to explain them, either.  Just know that I’ve never loved someone so much in my life and that this is a seriously big deal.  I expect him to be in my life for a very long time, and I’m his as long as he’s mine.

So there you have it: a year in review.  This is about as short as I can make it, but I think that it covers some highlights.  Enjoy; though this list is really more for me than anyone else.  All of my writing is, really.

Things Change

We already know this as humans that things change.  Everything changes.  Sometimes it’s gradual and occurs so slowly that one day you open your eyes and feel your breath catch at the sight before you.  Other times, it’s so quick that no matter how many times you look at the change, over and over again, you can’t bring yourself to fully understand how much it’s not the same.

Summers are like that.  Each summer has its own flavour and its own unique changes that make it what it will be in your memories.  You sort through each of these archetypes that you have built and ask yourself what each summer is and how they changed from one to another.  Did you adventure on the train to Kansas and Colorado?  Did you go to nerd camp and Kansas City?  Did you leave on a whirlwind trip that took you half of the way across the world and challenge every preconceived notion that you had of another country?  What did you learn in that summer when you stayed home reading 500,000 words of fanfiction and planning a zombie-themed dance?  And what did you learn when you got your first summer job and spent two weeks trying to hide?  Or when you realised that it would be the last summer with her and last cruise and last anything?

This summer is met that flow.  It’s a question of what I’ve learned and what has changed.  Between friends being more or less scattered because of university, to the family dynamic completely changing from Grandma’s death.  From feeling more grounded in Saint Charles due to my job and having broken up with my boy-friend (and here I didn’t even tell you that story, and it has already ended).  There’s a natural progression that is both frightening and welcome because it is the meaning of what it is to live.

Living can be difficult.  Feeling can be difficult.  Waking up in the mornings to a task you don’t want to do can be difficult.  Taking pills, testing your heart, doctors visits.  They can drain you slowly, but they can’t slow down what a summer can do to the body.  How much more alive I, personally, can feel from the rest. I can feel the change, feel my joints go out of socket less and need less sleep.  Slow moving, but there.

It’s strange how I forget about this place.  I forget that I can write here because I’m so busy writing on tumblr.  Granted, it’s not personal writing but fiction, but nonetheless, I’ve become amazed at how much I’ve written in the past few months.  Thousands upon thousands of words with some truly amazing people. And there were some questions upon writing yesterday that reminded me of this.  Reminded me of Germany and the Roessles und die perfekte Welle und der perfekte Tag.  All of it came rushing about again, which brings back all of those memories that, if you’ve read anything here, you know that I still hold dear.  Scarcely a post goes by that I don’t at least briefly mention Germany. 

Things change.  They truly do.  But some things stay fairly static inside of their change.  And maybe that’s Germany.  Maybe that’s what it is to remember and hold on to something so tightly.

Das ist die perfekte Welle
Das ist der perfekte Tag
Lass dich einfach von ihr Tragen
Denk am besten gar nicht nach
Ich bin hier
Ich bin frei

–Perfekte Welle, Juli

House of Tom Bombadil

Did I tell you all that I lost fifteen percent of my body weight last semester within three months?  Did I forget about that?  No…  No, I briefly mentioned losing weight, but I didn’t mention how much.  Twenty two pounds.  That’s how much.

You know, when I tell people about this, it doesn’t matter how negative my tone is or how upset I look–they congratulate me.  When I explain that it was stress and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome related, they still congratulate me.  When I say that I have never felt more weak and more tired in my life, that I’m blacking out more and not able to finish what I need to for uni, they keep on congratulating me.

There’s a major problem when health is pushed aside in favour of lost weight.  My weight has become more important and worthy than my own wellness, and it sickens me that shape is valued over substance.  I’m chronically ill with EDS, most likely POTS (I’m getting tested this summer), and now mono for the past two months.  I just can’t get well, and I’m dropping weight again, even though I’m already right at the line of having an underweight BMI.  And yet, I’ve never been told more in the past few months just how good I look.

I feel like I’m dying.  I need to be sleeping over twelve hours per day.  I am dizzy.  Tired.  Weak.  In pain.  Scared.  And I’m told that I look beautiful.  It doesn’t make any sense at all.

I guess that all I’m trying to say is that, you can compliment my looks all you please, but if I tell you that I am unhappy about losing weight because I’m slowly succumbing to some terrible diseases, please don’t tell me that my looks are more important.  I would gain back all of that weight and be pudgy again if it meant that I felt well.  I’d gain even more to feel like I wasn’t some elderly folk inside of a twenty year-old’s body.

Sorry.

I’ve spent a lot of the past month spiralling into another depression from health.  It’s caused me to re-evaluate a lot of my life, change future plans, and start doing some things for me.  I’m tired and upset and causing permanent damage to my body, so I’m taking a year off after I graduate from uni so that I can get an internship and then travel before starting grad school.  I’ve dropped tumblr recently since I think that an hiatus will help me focus more on my health and course work.  I’ve stopped trying in some of my classes. I haven’t turned in online French homework in a month, and I don’t even care any more.  I’ll have to find some time this week to finish it amongst all of the other things, but I just…  I don’t fucking care.  There’s so much else in my life right now.

This is so rambly.  Es tut mir Leid.

Last time that I spoke with you all, I was writing about my grandma.  I still think about her so much, but things get better with time.  They always do, emotionally speaking.  And I mentioned a few things about losing and gaining people.  December…  Well, I got a boy-friend.  Which sounds like I caught a Pokemon or something, but I assure you that’s not quite the case.  Our story will probably be better saved for another time, but at least I’ve finally mentioned it (only four and an half months later, tralalala).

No really.  This has just about been the shittiest post I think I’ve ever made on this blog.  But call it free-writing.  Train of thought.  Just some things that I need to get out.  I listened to Miho Fukuhara’s “Let It Out” one too many times this morning; blame that.

Anyway, this summer, I plan on getting better.  Lots of rest, working three days per week until I feel a little more human, seeing doctors to get diagnosis and help, going to Florida to visit family.  That sort of stuff.  I’m looking forward to the end of the semester so incredibly much.  Sleep.  It’s all I need and all I want.  Just sleep.

Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

As usual, a lot has happened since we last met.  More than a lot, actually.  Life changing things.  December in and of itself was one of the most life-changing months of my life on so many levels–extremely negative and extremely positive.  To start, I lost someone.  And as I lost her, I gained someone.  That’s the simple version.

It was Christmas morning, and my mum popped in to my bedroom far too early with eyes full of tears again.  She was going to the hospital to see her and asked if I’d like to come along.  Of course, yes.  I would never pass down the opportunity, especially when things had been so bad.  I showered quickly, gathered my laptop and a good book, and we left to go to downtown Saint Louis on that beautiful, blue day.

I navigate our way to the waiting room, walking quickly in my high heeled boots to see everyone gathered.  Katie has her roll of toilet paper instead of Kleenexes.  Tammy has brought along Grandma’s peanut butter and chocolate cookies that she had made a few days before.  Cathy is texting.  Larry and Gary are chatting.  Avis is to the side.  Grandpa is there, and I give him a hug.  We sit there, chatting because there’s nothing else to do.  I send a couple texts along as Merry Christmas.

I’m sorry, I’m shaking.

The doctor runs in.  He’s so young; it’s probably why he’s here on Christmas morning.  He asks for Grandpa to come now, and Cathy and my mum run to follow.  Avis runs out.  Katie and I and the men are left in the waiting room.  I can’t remember it.  I don’t know who came back.  But my feet are walking too slowly behind Katie.  I’m entering the room.  I can see her feet, but Tammy says we may not want to move forward.  I can’t.  I can’t move.  I can’t cry.  I can’t breathe.  I can’t move.  Katie is falling into me, sobbing.  I hold her as tightly as possible, wrapping my arms around her and holding on to her for dear life as my knees start to tremble.  She’s crying into my sweater.  And it takes me minutes before I’m crying too.  I hold on to her like a life-vessel; make me cry.  Please.  I can’t handle this all.  What do you do?  What do any of us do?

I don’t remember how I got back to the waiting room.  But I sat there in the corner chair completely still, staring straight forward, tears still pooling in my eyes but otherwise overly calm.  They’re all still in there.  I can’t be.  I just can’t.  I can’t.  I pull away to my bag to find my mobile.

“I’m sorry Marshall.  It’s over.  It’s all over.”

“I understand.”

“I’m so sorry.”

I pull out the book that I had brought along ‘A Great and Terrible Beauty’, and I rip out the flyleaf containing my name and number should the book get lost.  With the school pencil still left in my bag, I start to write.  I write everything.  I tell her how it’s beautiful out.  That it’s her favourite day of the year.  I tell her that I can’t feel so I left them cry for me.  I stare out of that waiting room window and just write down everything that I possibly can and ignore all of the voices around me.

I try to ignore the doctor saying that she’s trying to breathe as a reflex even though she’s gone.  We say not to recessitate.  Her mind is gone, and she’s told us too many times not to let her be like that.  I’m suddenly pulling all of these neurological facts out of my silly stupid brain because I’m such a cognitive psych nerd.  We tell them to give up.

And she finally does at noon.

We leave.  We go back home, and I tell my mum that I’m driving and don’t give her any other option.

We leave without her.  How do we do that?  How can we just leave with one person missing?

Christmas is at our house.  All of the family is there, and we spend a good deal of time just telling stories about her.  Remembering.  Crying over the presents that she got us and wrapped two days before when Katie, Shelly, and I were over to help her.  We laugh, too.  Everything.

And finally, I’m in the corner of the living room, eating that cookie that she made for me and had wrapped along with a fifty dollar bill and Christmas orange, and I’m crying and smiling up at the ceiling because I have so much hope that things can be okay.

I lost one of the most meaningful people in my life that day.

I’m sorry.  I’m shaking too much.

This will be continued at another point.  I’ll tell you how I gained someone at the same time.

It’s been a while, guys.

Hey, guys!  I know, it’s been a long time.  I’ve written maybe three things in the past six months, and that’s pretty not cool.  But if you were wondering how I’ve been doing, I feel that this picture pretty much sums it up:

Basically, I have traded in my blood for coffee.

This past semester has been the most difficult that I’ve had yet, and I find myself missing the relatively light workload that I had my freshman and sophomore years.  Junior year is tough!  I basically haven’t been sleeping, and I’ve completely lost motivation to actually get work done and study.  Because of this, I definitely am seeing lower grades than normal.  Granted, low grades for me means that I’m getting more Bs than As, but it’s still two more Bs than normal in a semester.

I’ve just felt like I’ve been rushing with no breaks.  The moment one exam or paper or print is finished, I’m starting another because I’m already behind.  Plus, all of my classes have been more labour intensive than usual, which adds an extra element that I hadn’t really been expecting.

I also moved off of campus for this semester, so I’ve been adjusting to living in a house with Noah and Jess.  Not that it’s a major adjustment, though.  We get along marvellously, I love having a room to myself to decorate and be introverted in, and I’ve enjoyed doing my own cooking.  Sure, I miss the conveniences of living on campus, but all-in-all, I’m satisfied with the change.

This is where I spend the majority of my time not sleeping and instead studying, reading, and wasting my life on tumblr.

Meanwhile, I’ve been having a lot of trouble keeping level-headed and maintaining my weight since August.  I’ve been under a lot of stress because of complications with getting my fake tooth, where everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong, and it put me into a mini depression that ended up rearing its ugly head once course work got rolling.  I spent a lot of August, September, and October absolutely hating myself, and it only started to get better last month.  With every wrong move I’d make, a little voice in my head would just whisper I hate myself. or I hate everything.  I’ve never been the type of person to put myself down in this kind of way.  Sure, I’m hard on myself, but I’ve never felt such a hatred for myself.  It was getting absolutely unbearable, and I’d begin to beat myself for beating myself up.

In the end, I probably needed some sleep.  I needed time to find a sense of self that was healthy.  I needed Thanksgiving break.  Things improved over that time.  I didn’t get ahead on coursework, and I didn’t get a long list done that I needed to in Saint Charles.  But I did get my tooth (finally!), and I picked up a few more articles of clothing that would fit me better, and I finally had time to just sleep and day-dream.  It was such a relief.

I’m feeling a lot better now, but, coming back for the end of the semester is still difficult.  Last week contained most of my finals and papers/projects due, and there were some nights where I literally didn’t go to bed and had to squeeze in an hour around midnight so that I could work during the early morning hours when I feel most mentally awake.

Sunday night: 4 hours
Monday night:  3 hours
Tuesday night:  6 hours
Wednesday night: 2.5 hours
Thursday night: 1 hour

It’s been a bit rough, but I’ve found that I can get a lot done even on very little, if no, sleep.  I know that it’s not healthy.  I know, I know, I know.  It’s just how I operate as a procrastinator and some-what perfectionist.  They go hand in hand, really.  You procrastinate because of the fear that you won’t reach perfection.  But when you don’t have enough time to reach perfection, you self-handicap and say that it’s all right that you didn’t reach the point you had wanted.  After all, you’d had so little sleep last night, how could you have gotten higher than a B on that exam?  (Oh, poor baby.  Bleh.)

I mentioned earlier that I’ve been having a lot of trouble keeping my weight at a stable level.  For the entirety of my life, this would mean that I’ve gained a bunch of weight and am feeling all self-conscious about it… until now.  I don’t know how, but I’ve lost twenty pounds in only three months.  I went from being near 160 to 142.  Everyone I’ve told gives me some type of congratulation as though I’ve been working so hard or something, but I just stand there thinking, But this is not what I wanted!  I haven’t tried to lose weight.  I don’t like that I can’t fit into any of my clothing; I figured I’d be a size twelve for years, so I’d started buying my clothes to last and cost more.  Suddenly, I don’t fit into any of my skirts or pants or bras.  My shirts aren’t tugging in the same ways (hell, I can now wear shirts that I haven’t been able to fit into since I was fourteen).  I look at photos of my face from earlier this year, and I literally can’t recognise myself (okay, this may be because of the prosopagnosia, but disregard that) because I’ve lost so much weight from my face.  My arms look different, my collar bones show more, my cheek bones seem a bit  higher, my legs more defined, my stomach flat.

I am beautiful.  And I am completely frightened.

I can’t stop losing weight, and I don’t know what to do.  I don’t know if I believe the people who have told me that it’s from walking more with living off campus or because I’m cold all of the time and using more energy to keep warm.  I feel bad every time I look in the mirror and think I look good, because this can’t be healthy.  And then I argue with myself because I shouldn’t feel bad about being happy with the way I look.  It’s just an odd situation that I’ve never been in before, and I don’t know how to deal with it.

I don’t really know how to deal with anything, actually.  But… that’s okay.  It’s been okay for about a week now.  Between panicking and extreme euphoria and an excessive amount of work, this past week has been interesting, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  I wish I could tell you more at this point, but I’m still trying to find my footing.  Just suffice it to say that something is going really, really well, and I can’t remember the last time that I was this happy.

So, while I leave you on a note of mystery, I hope it was positive.  Because I’m feeling positive, even with all of the stress that I’ve carried for the past few months.  Sometimes, life is pretty good, and there are blue skies, and you can’t help but smile.

Films

It’s odd, but I get some kind of enjoyment out of watching films alone where I’m able to just sit there and sob all of the way through.  Now, it’s not as though I just literally cry at the site of a film, but I’ve found that I’m unable to cry in front of others when something really beautiful happens.  When by myself, though, it’s so easy to just let myself have emotion, and I end up feeling some kind of satisfaction in being sad.  As though all of those years keeping things pent up are finally over, and that I can be free to just let go.  I’m free to see beauty and realise that sometimes beauty is sad and that there’s nothing wrong with that.

Official Summer Tidings and Ramblings About the Northwest

I officially booked my trip to Chicago/Denver. After wanting to cancel and take an aeroplane instead, I realised the difficulty of that and decided to just stick with my original plan and head out to Chicago before getting to Denver. Booking my hostel was the last step, and now it’s all finished up. To those that I’ll be seeing in Denver, I’ll get to see you just as much with either plan, and I’ll be there from Thursday, the tenth, until the following Sunday or Monday. I’ve already forgotten which.

In other news, summer is going… all right, I suppose. I’ve been working a bit more than thirty hours per week at my summer job down on Main Street. It’s hot and sweaty work, but there’s a lot of it that I really enjoy. I wasn’t expecting to feel so stressed about it this summer as I am, but I’m attributing that to the increase in hours and the bizarre weather that we’ve been having. It’s far too hot for June. This weekend has been the first time in three weeks that it’s been even remotely nice outside. Sorry, but I’m so sick of constant 37 degree days over and over again. I need to be in the Northwest stat. I’m pretty sure that I’m far too Irish to put up with these extreme weathers from the Midwest. It’s just not suiting me any more.

It’s all that I can think about any more: how much I don’t belong here. I used to only get upset about the Midwest because of the lack of culture and things to see and do, but now I’m finding that it’s far more than that. Even aside from the fact that I am meant for cool and rainy weather (oh, hey Northwest), the personality of where I live just doesn’t fit me. It’s been difficult to explain this to my mother who doesn’t understand why I’d ever want to leave. This is, after all, the place where I have grown up. But I just can’t stay here any longer; it’s like trying to fit a puzzle piece where it doesn’t quite go. Sure, you can keep it there, and from a distant it won’t matter, but in the end, you know that piece doesn’t go there. That’s the best way that I can describe it.

I’ve started looking into grad schools, and I’m so sure that I want to go to the Northwest. Everyone asks me why. They tell me that it rains constantly there and that people are depressed. I tell them that there are book stores and coffee shops and interesting people there. I tell them that I avoid the sun like the plague to begin with, so this would finally allow me to live freely. I’ll keep searching in other locations, too, but I can’t deny that I’d like to spend some time there. At least for the five years of grad school. After that’s all finished up with, I can decide for sure what’s right for me. That, or I can take my doctoral degree and get the hell out to some place else; sometimes these things take experimentation.

I’m just a little torn between the fact that I want to go to the Northwest, yet a large university near my home town also offers the degree I want (family and marriage counselling at SLU). Everyone wants me to go to SLU.

Well, everyone except me, I suppose.

True Words

I’m fairly certain that truer words were never spoken when dealing with online stalkers/trolls.

Simple and Clean

There’s music playing in the background that I used to yell out back in middle school with my neighbour, music from an old video game that we used to play.  It feels like such a long time ago, standing in my backyard by the pool in our long skirts and singing together.  Looking back, I wonder if I should miss it.  She’s no longer a part of my life, and I don’t really mind.  She moved away, we were never much alike, and in that younger kid sense, we easily drifted apart.  But I’m still listening to this song, wondering how it could possible have been six years ago.  Part of me feels like that it was so terribly recent and that six years isn’t an incredibly long time, but the other half of me feels like that was an entirely different life ago.  Like a past life.  Sometimes, things are very hidden away in memories, and when you find yourself catching them, it throws you back into the wall.

I still haven’t figured out whether I can put up with that feeling and feel intact afterwards.  Strange how you encounter your old thoughts and behaviours by losing your breath.