Adventures I used to have

When I was 13 I had my first job. I worked a few days a week, enough to keep me in video games. I'd stay up and write all night. 2008 was my first summer without a job. I didn't know what to do with myself. I had plenty of adventures though. I longed for something more to fill up my time. This summer will be my first summer without a summer vacation, except for maybe 3 weeks of break. I'm totally done with this.

OK, so that didn't explain a lot.

So now let me explain. I'm severely bipolar but even I'm deluded about it. I know people who are bipolar who are in less good shape than I am. I feel like I don't deserve to be called "severe."

I've always been like this so I don't really know anything different. I've been told that it becomes more evident as a person gets older, but I always did have this sense of inner turmoil, the mood swings, delusions in intense manic states. The violence, the outbursts, the punched-out picture frames and boxcutter thrown into the wall.

It's not normal, even if it was the only thing I knew.

I guess it's getting a little clearer that I'm severe. I take lithium now. The first day I started my dosage it made me so blank and slow. I could barely walk a straight line. I thought "If this is what normalcy is, it's way overrated."

But I kept with it. I fought the nausea. It got less and less. I could think more. More importantly, I could still create.

My mom, who once said "It is SO DIFFICULT to live with you!" remarked on how calm and even I was.

But I don't think I'm taking enough. I feel like it wears off around 5 or 6. I'll figure it out in time.

The success of destruction

I remembered. to work so hard on something, throw yourself into it so fully that you lose yourself. The end result is satisfying and beautiful but you have nothing left of yourself. Burned out and hating what you did for taking you over.

I don't know why it should come to me now. perhaps it's the subject matter of a final project--Beauty and the beast. Beauty undergoes a change that turns her into a beast. Maybe I made it too reminiscent of my life.

Brief rememberance

I started looking at apartments today. When I used to be bored I'd look at shoes, clothes, electronics, games, but never apartments. Shoes and clothes, I could play grown up Ms. Corporate (pink half-shaved bob and sexy black patent Dior pumps included). Electronics and games I could whisk off into a world and roll everything up into stars. Apartments though. That's the last frontier. Striking it out on my own, for real this time. I don't know when, but when the time is right it will happen.

The Wilshire Royale said hello to me. Instantly summer came rushing back, full of heat waves and iced coffee with shots of caramel sauce and hours sunning my bare unemployed ass and reading stories, beautiful stores about God and wholeness. I was learning to be whole after finding out my parents were divorcing, albeit amicably. I realize how blessed I am that my parents get along so well. They consider each other friends. The wholeness I saw in them inspired me to heal. To stop throwing knives at the wall. to stop drop-kicking lawn furniture clear across the yard.

Wilshire Royale. A gorgeous 1920s building in Los Angeles. I never met you but I saw your pictures online. I measured out your studio apartment against my room and tried to live in it. I pared down everything, anticipating the move. I had dates set aside to tour a few buildings I liked. I thought and thought and made plans. Inside I nurtured this idea of "my own place," my little studio apartment.

I interviewed with FIDM a few weeks after my imaginary nesting. The support I felt just from my first visit made me waver. Was I sure I wanted to put it off that long? So I changed to Fall (2010) Semester, Los Angeles campus instead of Winter (2011). In the meantime, I had lunch with a friend. Each step I took down Montgomery sealed my decision. This is what I have to do. I just have to feel it was right.
"Are you sure you want to move to LA?"
It'd been the first time I'd heard that from a non-family member.
"Yeah, it's a lot less expensive down there. I got a studio lined up, 750"
"But you don't have any family down there, do you?"
It hit me in perhaps the goofiest way possible.

In the video game Earthbound, homesickness is a real status condition. Alone, reachable by a phone call, but just not the same.

"I have some friends down there."
But I knew that their lives and mine wouldn't sync.

Why LA? A friend of mine moved down there. LA... a city I hadn't been to proper since I was 5 or so. LA. to start anew. To live an an old Hollywood building. Dinner parties with imaginary friends served Martinellis clustured around my bed/table/surface.

Come the second interview, I knew that San Francisco was the place. It wasn't indecisiveness. It was the right thing.

So why am I looking at this old sign now and feeling a twinge of sadness? Sometimes I just can't help but think what would have happened if I'd chosen to move there. I was enamoured with the idea of my little studio apartment. A little place to take care of, to own. The little prince and his flower.

What I've been doing

I got a job back in October. If I'm not working there, I'm working on projects. Life is busy, but good. Part of me misses hanging out every weekend but the other part of me enjoys having an income again. I'm definitely better off than I was a year ago or even three months ago. I'm sleeping a lot better, though I keep waking up briefly every morning at 5. Luckily I fall asleep again.

I need to cut back on the caffeine. I'm always up up up and trying to slow down, but sometimes I need a burst of energy. Too much too much. I didn't "get" adderall, amphetamines. I can't focus. I'm vibrating, I'm generating heat. I'm scrubbing a spot on a dish. Too much coca-cola. Lightheaded. Feeling "spicy," where all the blood rushes to my face. Too much caffeine and sugar tends to produce feelings that are almost like a panic attack. The worries and the spiral down into a path I thought I left behind. I need to hang with my friends because I'm sitting alone and when I'm alone I'm doing the same things over and over but sometimes it's okay and I need to get gummi worms for an art project and I need to do this and that and think about what to bring to LA and to finish my work in Illustrator and my InDesign newsletter and sleep better and talk to this person and fix this and...

I almost fell out of my chair. When was the last time I forgot to stop breathing?

Well, I can't complain too much about life. I'm busy, but it's the good busy. Unfortunately the 365 fell by the wayside. Between closing in SF, taking BART home, and then working on my own stuff I started to fall behind. I still love fine art photography and now that I'm in a place where I'm working on art every day, I don't feel so directionless.

Ready to Roll

Wednesday I go to campus to register. The 4th I finally get to pick up my bigass totebag (hello, shoulder strain) and get my new ID (I can finally stop feeling like a slimeball when I use my old student ID), and head back for a job fair on the 5th.

Where did time go? I can't wait to start. What an area to be attending classes in--right in Union Square!

Today I got some bento boxes and chopstick. All are a matching pink. I now have a fancy neoprene lunch sack, too. Spam musubi, here I come.

I'm excited to be doing what's relevant to my life. I will be doing stuff I want to do. Memories of senior year--working on my internship project (sewing a dress from a muslin, which then turned in to sewing another one from scratch because I finished so early), pushing myself to not miss school at the detriment of my own health, even subconsciously holding my breath as I embroidered Saul Bass' golden arm on the back of my dress (and subsequently falling out of the chair when my lungs couldn't take it any more).

Junior year of high school I was a horrible student. I skipped a lot of school. I was depressed in a way I hadn't been for years. The kind of mornings where it just hurt to move. Everything looked bleak, including college. I was on academic probation for the majority of the year, but somehow, I swung it. I passed all of my classes and got out of the funk. I was determined to make senior year great.

Around July something felt weird. Like a lump in my abdomen. It hurt. I paid it no mind. It slowly grew, but since it was on my lower left I didn't do anything. I overate. It's a muscle. People can think up some awfully interesting explanations for something serious. I stopped wearing jeans because they hurt to zip up and button. And four days after my 18th birthday, it ruptured. By the time I got to the ER there were no cysts showing up on the ultrasound but an abdomen full of fluid was an indication that one had indeed ruptured. After a few very unfun hours in the ER I went home, worrying about an english paper I hadn't finished.

I didn't even take a whole week off. By Thursday night I was so bored of sitting at home, drifting in and out of sleep watching Miami Vice and Spongebob that Friday morning I more or less snuck out of the house and went to school.

I enjoyed my little summer extension but now it's time for me to do work again.

Birthday!

Here's to decade of life number 2!