Sunday, March 11, 2012

Blah blah blah

So daylight savings time has come once again and I find myself out and about this night. Great. You wanna know why? I'm old people, I can no longer hang, so I want to one, stop spending my money and two, go the hell home because it is five hours past my bedtime. I should have been on my third dream by now.

Speaking of dreams, why am I dreaming about work? And not only dreaming about work and my coworkers, but I am dreaming about work and my coworkers on a Sunday. Now I know tomorrow is Monday and all, but hell brain, Sunday is still part of the weekend and I wish my life away for weekends during the week so I may escape work and my coworkers, so why brain are you going all over active work mode on me? You couldn't wait a measly 24 hours? We will be there tomorrow. ALL day. Just wait, stop being so anxious.

So the clocks skipped ahead, jumped forward, whatever it is that clocks and time do, it did last night. Well why is it that even though it means that I got less than four hours of sleep, why is my body still set to the old time and since I didn't have time to move the clocks in the house ahead last night, I wake up this morning to the led lights staring at me glaring a nice red 7:48.

What the hell?! Is this serious? Why does my body feel the need on the weekends to wake itself up at the crack of I don't want to know this hour exists anymore hour? Why can't my body be like normal tired bodies and sleep until it is rested, not until it has been programmed to wake up. Funniest part is that not only does this damn early rising then require me to at some point in the day take a nap aka waste perfectly good day hours because I have been up all morning aka the useless hours because there is nothing on tv and no one else is up, but during the week, I can not wake up to save my life. What is that?!

So I'm going to need a nap and I know that tomorrow when my alarm is the thing that wakes me up and not my body, my body will be on denial mode, in denial that if I hit that snooze button one more time, I will be half an hour late to work. I don't know what it is. Why can I wake up perfectly early on a weekend, but a weekday? No ma'am. That is a struggle. A true struggle.

I feel like it is a really nasty anomaly. Whoever decided it would be funny to hard wire into humans, or maybe even just me (I was hoping not to be quite so special) the internal clock aka wake up on your own thing, well they, they had a twisted sick sense of humor.

I just wanna sleep ok? So maybe now I'll take that nap.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Passion

Since beginning my new position at the health center, I have had to tell a handful of people that the rapid oral HIV tests we offered them had come back reactive meaning that there was a 99.7% chance that they were indeed HIV positive. Meaning that it was a preliminary positive.

I know these statistics when giving these results and if asked, which I usually am, I have to tell. When I say this number and the .3% chance there is of this being a false positive, you see something. You can feel it. I saw lights go out. The one woman shut off completely. It scared me. You could feel hope being sucked from her frame.

I feel incredibly guilty and selfish because whenever we get a reactive and I have to tell a person what this means and what steps need to be taken, I get nervous so much so that before I walk in the room to deliver the news, it impairs my function. I perspire, my stomach knots up, I feel like I want to throw up and pass out at the same time and yet, when I tell, once that person leaves, my part is over. My anxiety and fear is done, but for them it is just beginning. I have just sent them out into the world with a heavy burden that many will carry alone for a week, fearful to tell and not wanting to accept reality.

When I think about the people that I have to tell, the people that we miss from not asking about testing because of a bias we may have, the perception of risk, the people who refuse tedting because they are fearful of the results, I think about the virus and how easy, through ignorance, it is to transmit especially if we as a society, as a culture are oversexed and under educated.

It is accepted to have sex and we have begun to see engagement in sexual activity at younger and younger ages. For those of us who can remember being 13 and having kissing be a big deal, it's difficult for us to be only a generation away, with our younger brothers and sisters and see their ideals their values or rather lack there of.

That's not the point though, we all have free will and we all make judgements daily. I don't wish that people were not upset to find out their status, especially if it comes back something other than expected, but that expectations be different because of the knowledge we have, that has become universal and that you do not expect it because you are white or because you are married or that you are not a gay man because straight married black women become HIV positive. HIV does not discriminate by the color of your skin, your sexual orientation or preference. HIV does not care if you yourself are promiscuous or monogamous. HIV does not care about age. It cares simply about reality and HIV is real, we as humans are real and that's all it cares about. Everything else is perception, different to everyone, but HIV sees us as we are, human, host to its infection.

HIV is not destiny though. Knowledge is the weapon, lack of stigma, acceptance and understanding can soothe the wave of HIV and placate it to history instead of future.

I feel nervous for the wrong reasons, I should not be nervous to tell someone there is a chance to be HIV positive, I can be their tool, their weapon to fight the disease. I have the knowledge to fight the virus and to keep ignorance at bay regardless of status and the beauty about knowledge is that it is just as infectious and it is the one thing you can continue to give and never lose yourself.

Knowledge. Pass it on.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Just talk

Communication isn't really my thing. I've realized that I'm not the best at it. I keep too much inside because I am so desperately trying to please others and those others that I don't hide from, that I'm not scared to be me with, they get to hear me and shrug it off as of it were nothing.

Most people who know me see a happy go lucky girl, either that or they see anger. I don't show sadness because that is weakness to me. Show a weakness and that is an opportunity for vulnerability to flourish and those who have been wanting a way in to charge and conquer. Not everyone deserves a glimpse, but then again that is why it hurts so much when those let in eff about and trample upon that raw skin.

It has taken me awhile, but I am beginning to see that the world is nothing more than what you make it. Movie love doesn't exist unless you let it, best friends for life only last for so long and happiness is fleeting unless you wake up everyday and catch its coattails and drag it through your day. Grab it and drag it. The effort is worth it. The effort is for your peace of mind.

Solitude is a gift. Company a burden. Simplicity a blessing while complexities breed confusion and chaos. Breathe, smile, and keep moving.

I was with a friend today who stubbed upon this notion of a love addict. I think I may be one or I at least have many of the characteristic traits of one. I fall too hard and too easy. I am needy and can become overwhelming. My over analyzing causes me to push away because I am always trying to figure out what is going on in that maze up there. I think I can be the cure for pent up introverts and I can be enough to bring them out of that and in they end thy will love me. It isn't that I'm ridiculously full of myself, it is just something I believe or rather more times than not truly want to be.

I want to be that someone for someone. I want to learn and be learned from. I want to embody desire, admiration, love. Longing for such things places my mind in a near fantasy state and it isn't healthy. I find myself dealing with things and people that are no good for me.

I'm hoping that soon the cycle will end. I'm tired of doing all I can and investing into the bullcrap relationships that are a dead end to nowhere. Nowhere I tell you. Soon enough. I realize my faults and from there I can only try to change and learn and make myself better.

Life is about living and learning because by the time you're 80 it's time to write your memoirs.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Prestige

For Sale
I let people talk down to me because that is how I know love.
I let myself be used because that is how I know love.
I know love in means of degradation and objectivity.
I say that I deserve better and that I will not be the victim of such things,
but that is where I am drawn.
Spit on me and I will think that the clouds have opened up to send their rains to cleanse me.
Trample me with your harsh words and I will think that I did something wrong.
Be sweet and you will confuse me and stir resentment,
but I thought you loved me?
And I will complain that you hurt me, but it is that hurt that sustains me.
I will cry, but those tear stains will be like medals hung around my neck.
The long nights spent alone, badges adorning my chest
and those times where I can push you to make me feel my worst,
those are my trophies that I sit in my room, littering the walls with my victorious defeat. 
And all the while something in me questions 
and as soon as I see my get away, I make myself trip
back into the world of make believe, bruised egos, and broken hearts.
I do it to myself, a sick masochist wanting nothing more than to feel
and I only know love in backs turned, 
in mean words,
in broken promises,
in second chances that turn to thirds.
Demean me and I will fall for you.
Hurt me and I will love you until the day turns old. 
Slander my name and I will never leave you.
Reject me and I will come back for more
Make me cry and you will hold my delicate heart in your hands.
I know love in nothing more than depravity and desolation.
Make me wonder my worth and then I will know that I am loved.
That is all I want.
Love me. No, no debase me.
That is the only way I will know.


My friend told me that it takes 21 days to break a habit. It made me wonder then how long it takes to form one. To quit things cold turkey... doesn't really go well. My friend brought it to my attention that people, we, I need to figure out how things affect us and our lives. As we get older we feel the need to carry our burdens alone and keep things to ourselves when in reality our issues only grow with age and the passing days.


If that is true then soon even the weight of the world will seem like nothing.


People walk around every day and others judge them. I judge them. We are disappointed with angry people with scowls on their faces who are rude and seem to have little consideration for others. How hard it must be for the person who is always smiling on the outside, but cry on the inside. The people with the scowls are just being real with the reality that surrounds them. The cheerful person is special and rare. Smile back.


Such a complicated thing man is. Higher reasoning. Critical thinking. Expressed emotions. Repressed memories and thoughts. None of these things ever have to settle on the visage or pass the lips that hold them. One can never really know what another fellow human is thinking even when they speak. Tricky we are. Complicated and deep. Even those lacking intellectually have a river of emotions swirling through them and thoughts that are all their own.


I had a professor tell me once that if you can't speak it, you don't know it. I'm not sure if I can take that for what it is. Feelings can not always be expressed as they are too overwhelming and too personal for words to shape to bring them into the light of perception, especially by another. Some things are also better left unarticulated. Some things should be kept. Some things are also better left unknown. So if I can speak it, maybe it is better left as a feeling, something unknown, something not meant for the tangible world and my physical senses. 


I've heard that ignorance is bliss.



Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Twilight

So lately I have been dreaming. Like won't stop every night there is a new dream dream. Sometimes I am dreaming twice a night. It started this Sunday. I was on the bus back from NYC and all of a sudden I had this dream. It wasn't a nice dream. That's the other funny thing about these dreams, they are not nightmares, but they are not pleasant dreams. Something is always not right in them. And they feel entirely too real. I wake up with a tightness in my chest because there is always something to raise my anxiety levels in these dreams.

So my dream on the bus on Sunday was simple. It was about real life things. I dreamt that I was on the phone talking to 647 and that at first everything was fine, sort of. It was like before if that makes sense. We were sitting there talking and then 647 mentioned that there was so much to tell me to fill me in on and what not and once those words were spoken I had this overwhelming feeling of what did I do and oh my God I'm talking to 647. Why did I do that. It was like being pulled into a black hole. I ended up hanging up the phone like a crazy person and these texts were flowing in filling me in on 647's life and it was like I opened up Pandora's box. The feeling I had was so strong and I woke up thinking what had I done and I couldn't believe that I was talking to her. The feeling lingered for too long, but I finally realized that it was only a dream.

I blame the reminders and the playlist I was listening to on the bus. The bus was weird all together. It was headed for Toronto. There were too many Canadians on it and I decided to play things like Florence  + The Machine, Stateless, and Ingrid Michaelson. Not something to fall asleep to especially when you have gone the whole weekend nearly to the border of sleep deprivation.

Now I fell asleep later that day, but in a bed and the dream was crazy weird. I was in a car with two other people, one of them my best friend, but I couldn't tell you who it was and we were driving, roadtripping it to who knows where and all of a sudden there are things floating in the air. The craziest thing about these things is that they all belong in Dr. Seuss books. I am so excited in the car and manage to convince the driver to turn around and follow these things and we wind up at this big crazy lopsided house. It is the house from The Cat in The Hat, except it really isn't, but in my dream it was. The house is definitely one from a Dr. Seuss book and the inside, yes we go inside and there are people inside when we go. Two children upwards to ten or twelve and parents. The parents were the parents from Malcolm in the Middle. Weird I know.

All I know is that I end up getting lost in the house and there is another person from the car in the house with me too, but they manage to get out and I am stuck in this awful house and I had found the way out once, but now I can't manage and I am thinking in the dream to think about the book which in real life isn't really how the book goes and so I know that to go out I must act like I am going in, like it is an opposite house. I go up these crazy stairs that are circular and winding, but they don't go anywhere and I end up falling off them and not hurting myself somehow, but in the process I manage to uncurl the stairs and can't get them to go proper again. I am running around this house, trying not to get caught, thinking of reasons to be in the house if I do and taking in all the weird things in the house. Not to mention, nearly everything is orange.

I find myself on the stairs again, but this time I am above the parents room and yes apparently it was a bad time because they decided that they would like to have relations as their children were gone and they didn't know about me. Crazy thing is that although the mom had all the proper orifices, she had an additional one in the middle of her thigh and that was the one used for pleasure.

Then I woke up. Such a weird dream. I never made it out of that house. Just got grossed out,

Last night I dreamt and I dreamt a movie dream. There was a house full of orphans. I wasn't in this dream though, I was just watching it like I was really watching a movie. So this dream is unfolding, I can't remember all the details, but the girls don't like this one girl Rosalie or Rosaline is her name and the house is haunted with these nasty spirits of girls and they want to hurt one of the girls, hurt meaning kill. Rosalie seems so innocent and no one suspects her, not me the dream viewer or the headmasters and not all the girls do either, they just don't like her. I don't know, all this stuff goes on where the ghosts mess with the girls in the house and in the end this big huge fire erupts and teachers and girls are going back into the fire looking for people and they end up on balconies on the sides of the house where the fire has managed to not penetrate and the ghosts are talking through the fire and the fire is huge because the ghosts are pissed and they keep jumping forward, the flames leaping at the girls and the teachers in the front of the house and on the balconies. Rosalie walks up to the front doors and the fire/ghost tries to get her and she has this evil little smile on and it clicks in everyone's head that she is the reason for all this and that innocent people are going to die because of her selfishness. The people on the balconies become engulfed in the flame and die while the ghost screams at Rosalie as she stands there defiantly and tells her that this should be her and how she should have never escaped and she tells everyone who can hear how evil the child is and to stay away from her.

It was more intense in my dream because in my head it made more sense. After the yelling, I woke up, but I felt tight in the chest again because of the presence of evil and the anger of the spirits. It felt dangerous and so real. I can still see Rosalie cute as a button, evil as hell.

So yeah. Those are my dreams. I'm not really looking forward to any more. I like it better when I was so damned tired that I couldn't dream. That's the best sleep when you close your eyes and open them to discover you have been sleeping for 6 hours when honestly it feels like you blinked.

I'm ready for that easy sleep again. I just need my brain to shut off.