just wanted to say hey
Sometimes, I wonder if I should spend more time writing here about more practical things. Although, practicality was never really the underlying motivation for this space.
Maybe I could get more serious. Make some posts about this disease. About how it makes me feel isolated and crazy most of the time . . .
I had an adrenal crash yesterday -- over something as simple as getting a bottle dropped on my foot in the shower. I've still not fully recovered. I'm still confused and having trouble with my memory. Eating whole bags of crisps, even though I'm not hungry.
I worked out for an hour yesterday afternoon, but that's all I'm going to say about it.
Calories burned: aprox 200
Then, afterward, in the shower, my partner crashed a bottle down off the shelf onto my foot and created quite an injury. I'd post pictures, but my toes have cold seductive qualities. And I'd hate to unintentially damage anyone.
yesterday, a good friend of mine tried to convince me that i have a serious effect on men. i'm not exactly sure what he means, honestly. he called it cold seduction. but i think he's just plain got the crazies.
in my pocket stowed they ride me through the day keep forgetting to cup the damned pills left at the end with dusty inseams and a life less easy to swallow
I've managed to extract my body from the sheets. Not just now in the middle of the day. But since mid-morning, I've just been rambling about the apartment. Washing up. Reading and sending emails. The television blares in the other room, even though I've no patience or intention to watch it. I ate cheerios from a blue bowl sitting on my blue couch. All the regular sized spoons in the dishwasher that isn't yet full enough to run. I'm so boring. I've become lazy and tired all the time. I haven't even yet made the coffee. My brain feels like it's been replaced by steel wool.
so, after my 10 minute walk there
i ran two laps on the track for warm-ups
and decided to do the 30 minute circuit
1 minute for 1 set each.
alternating to 1 minute on the stationary bike between each station.
Tricep Extension -- 12x30
Nautilus Abdominal -- 15x50
Arm Curl -- 12x30
Lateral Raise -- 15x30
Flys -- 12x15
Rowing -- 15x40
Leg Extension -- 15x40
Shoulder Press -- 12x30
Leg Curl -- 15x40
Lateral Pulldown -- 18x30
Leg Press -- 15x80
Chest Press -- 15x30
free weight follow-up
squats -- 15x10
lunges (right and left) -- 8x10
post-work-out burn cardio
stationary bike -- 25 minutes @ THR (target heart rate)
10 minute cool down walk home
I've been drinking more diet soda than usual. And constantly plotting how I can drop 10 or more pounds to get down to my destructive relationship pre-medicated and constantly ill state. Those things aren't really related. I never drink Earl Grey tea on Sunday mornings, anymore. Or eat meat. I'm finding it hard to write. About anything. To do my work or put words here. Nothing seems to make sense anymore. Not the jargon that used to fly out of my head late nights or the self-reflective letters of love I used to construct without effort and mail away for mornings alone. With you. Sure, I still drink a lot. I still get fucked up and long to smoke cigarettes on the porch after everyone else has gone to bed. But I'm not unhappy. And when I go to bed, I'm never alone. And when I have something to say -- there's always someone to hear me. My old boyfriend used to always tell me, and he honestly believes, that people have to be alone--truly alone--in order to sort out their thoughts and to understand themselves completely. That anything done seriously for the mind and soul can only be done alone. I think that's a load. A lie that people who like being on their own tell themselves so they don't end up feeling bad about their own desire for alienation. Or feeling responsible for making other people in their lives feel bad by turning them into chronic outsiders. Journeys of growth and development whether spiritual or of the relationship kind are always at the same time individual and communal. We are influenced by others in thoughts or deeds or emotions and in turn we impress ourselves against others. That slow interchange of experience is what makes continual change even possible. Nothing ever really happens in isolation. Nothing, maybe, except habitual hiding from being responsible for yourself at every moment. And in honesty, we all have trouble with that. Time to time. And I still want to make words pretty. To make them slither into your ear like wind across flat spaces in Fall. But they're never coming out that way. All clunk and no funk. I'm wearing my boyfriend's jeans right now. Which are baggy and cinched up at the waist by a belt. He's in the shower getting ready to head to the gym. Where I've decided that now, since it's late, I can't go. Because I still haven't gotten any work done. No words on the page. Nothing read or researched. Even for the hours I wasted crying and sleeping this weekend. There's not one thought to turn into something interesting. I hate diet soda. And showering. And this time of day when the sun blares into my eyes. I have over-due library books on loan from another library in another state where no one probably wants to look at the stupid thing, anyway. I'm wearing a black shirt that's a small, but is still slightly too big for me so I usually wear it on the weekends when I'm in the house just working. And wearing baggy pants and drinking caffeinated beverages. And listening to my mate react to the football game he's watching in the living room where we just had sex on the floor. I'm not sure who's winning. Thank christ I did the laundry yesterday. The way things move is so weird. Before, I never even drank soda.
it's raining here. now. most of my childhood days rolled into one blank sky. i don't wish the mourning glare of it all felt less comforting. instead, i sit in the window sill. clasp coffee mug between chest and lips. like some kind of practiced prayer. i haven't spent time on this edge in years. to watch trees prostrations. silent untongued languages. as if the repetition might make something clear. to look out.
reading articles trying to prove to myself that i'm not a sex addict
and that it hasn't been the problem that's caused most of my relationships to break up
right
has started having the dreams
about how i'm going to kill myself
i'd be shocked if it weren't common
for my partners to have dreams about me dead
it usually means we're going to break up soon
and that it's my fault
if someone has seen the huge gap that should exist between normal even tempered behavior and super hysterical psychotic behavior, i'd really appreciate a tip on figuring out how to get it back.
the sickness is back. so that working days result in long useless hours navigating the uncomfortable angles of the couch and fighting for consciousness. through the fever, i can't make words stick to sense between the page and my mind. where images are supposed to unfold like childhood pop-up-books. instead they constantly get lost in the constant ringing in my ears. and i want to scream. to make this all fucking stop. the way my joints ache. or the way these flashes come of the way it was in the bad days. i wanted to believe this was over. i could lie for hours against the cool porcelain tub. let water lick me like cat's tongues. but the stinging never really goes away. like running through rain made of broken champagne bottles. and when it comes. the adrenaline. and i can't make it stop. i drink and drink until drunk. because that's the only way to come down. to stop the shaking and the way malignment makes me want to tear down the world like picture postcards an old lover left behind. taped to the god damned fucking fridge in an apartment i moved out of months ago.
i can't believe this fucking disease is getting the better of me. again.
sick. stupid. and tired.
this imogen
at home sick and taking care of myself
[scoff]
attempt heating up left-over soup in pan on stove
burn the soup and spill it all over stove top
cry
stare at the cottony rose blooms in the galvanized bucket on the living room table to feel better
and watch an experimental polish film that ends up not having any sex in it
[feel disappointed]
realize the world revolves around the color of my partner's eyes
[and the exact weight of his right hand on my forehead
and the measure of his voice anywhere near where i am to hear]
when he comes home from work
with the perfect cookie i wouldn't have ever known was my favorite if someone had asked me
he cleans up the mess in the kitchen while i lilt on the couch in crumbs
smiling
sometimes, everything is. and is-not. at once. and the stain on the couch that we left from the last time. remains. where i sleep and hold your shirt against my face like undisclosed secrets about in-comings and other things that beg for permanent tissues for tired eyes. the mark is. and i am. and when the rain falls or doesn't. or when i hear your key in the lock when the world goes dark and i've forgotten to cook or eat and breathing forgets itself because of the word respiration. the world isn't covered in tattoos hidden behind clothes we tell stories about at bars that smell like urine and pesticide until we really believe in what we say. and the world is. and isn't. because then we are. and i start combing my hair. again. mornings. and writing underground notes like letters to jesus. to get in-between. the point is the stain. no the point is the remains. that it remains. to stay.
jeff of fancy coats wonders what imogen looks like
i wonder, sometimes, too
maybe andre will draw a picture of how he sees her
or a photo
or something
he's good at those kinds of things
shrug.
there's no conversation, here. he thinks. if he screams loud enough. wrenches every last cheap window covering from the root of the sill. to let the light seep. every clotted corner. like broken blood vessels and the way tears get caught in the back of the throat. might stop the pressure. invisible hands around his neck. blinds don't undress themselves. and time rocks. creaks like chairs in a memory on a hard wood floor. this story isn't true. he thinks. i am not here. without you. in a room without a view. and my voice doesn't crack every time you appear and i want to squeeze love. like lemons. until the sour caustic moments stop burning my eyes. so much. and her skin doesn't turn and fold like buttery blank sheets of worn paper. all he wants, he thinks, is a safe warm place to lay his head. to see clearly out. just for awhile.
This whole thing is like sand, she says. In that unstable boyish way she gets when she's trying not to sound serious. Not a question or a pronouncement. But he knows this look. Well. When all of her consonants are full of too much teeth. And any noise between them feels exactly like fists through plate glass windows. Who knows what she means.
He lights matches. Flicks them to the carpet where they glow themselves out. Like secrets between friends. Between his bare naked feet. And he doesn't want to talk about sand or the way the intermittent drip of the faucet, nights, makes him want to run. Suck air and vomit blood and memory into pavement. Until he's forgotten his own name. And when she slides out the window and down the street with the last of the money and all the cigarettes in the house. He's dreaming of salty skin. Oceans. The way his mother always smelled of strong coffee and lavender oil.
He doesn't hear. When she goes.
