I haven't written lately because I don't know what to say sometimes...and it's the same with my personal journals. I think it's been a long time since I wrote in my handwritten one and I don't think it's just laziness. I think it's also fear of being found. 

Even with my dairies from my mid-20s to late 40s, I worry about discovery. There's something very vulnerable and scary about your deepest thoughts and feelings being exposed to someone else who not only wouldn't understand, but might even judge you. 

I used to only half joke with a longtime friend that I would want her to come over to my place and gut it of all my journals if anything happened to me...the thought of my parents, or anyone really, reading years' worth of words that only mean something to me leaves me feeling bad about myself, if that makes sense. My longtime friend (of twenty five years) knows everything bad there is to know about me so I guess I wouldn't worry about her as much as I would anyone else.

On the other hand, though, I think of a line from an old Three's Company where Cindy explains that her mother found her personal diary and read it from the very first page to the last. When asked what happened, Cindy says her mother fell asleep because it was the most boring thing she had ever read.

Because I struggle with nightmares so much I do keep a dedicated dream diary. It helps a little bit, but I write in that more because my dream life is so much more interesting, no matter how troubling.

 

I am finding great comfort in re-watching "The Incredible Hulk," which aired on CBS from 1977-1982. Bill Bixby, who played kind David Banner, is hypnotic and his character, despite turning into the Hulk, is one of the least toxic men I've ever seen on the tv screen. (And, really, so is Lou Ferringo's character).

During its original run I watched it almost every Friday night. Recently I discovered it on the streaming service Tubi and it amazes me how well it mostly holds up, especially emotionally. Modern technology might make the tv series' special effects seem quaint or archaic, but I much prefer it to CGI.

One of my favorite episodes is "The Beast Within," with this part being absolutely my favorite and also kind of downright adorable, especially since the cub tiger is real and it has been said that they did not want to leave Bill Bixby's lap:

"Hulk Makes Friends with a Tiger"

One thing I haven't been able to give up in gutting certain things from my life is black coffee. I buy a specific kind of coffee to help with my acid reflux and it is amazing:

Boomi Premium Single Origin Instant Coffee Powder - Medium Roast, 100% Arabica, Mold & Mycotoxin Free, Low Acid - 3.5oz Tin 

If alcohol had a way of shutting me down so that everything inside of me started blissfully mumbling, coffee has a way of waking up every thought I have and making anything seem possible. The price that comes with it, though, is amplified anxiety and a self-awareness I'd rather not experience. But, at the same time, there is a smattering of joy that, in those moments, I am very much glad to be alive. I am not hungry, I am not a disaster, I am not all the things I used to rely on alcohol to help soften…in those moments.

My beautiful boy turned 14 in June and I love him so very much. I often wish I had known him from his birth, but I'm still so grateful he came into my life when he was four. He is such a sweet tuxedo cat and my soulmate and he's helped me with certain things in life, like giving up drinking and deciding to live a much healthier lifestyle. 

I've had times where I returned to bad habits before but I think this time I'm sticking to changing, both because of my cat and because you can get away with a lot when it comes to your health at 20, 30, 40, even 50, but once you hit your mid-50s it's not such smooth sailing. I never really rebelled as a child or teen or even as an adult, but my mom's philosophy towards food and other things held on so tightly to me that I wanted to let go in college and then when I moved out on my own. 

But it turns out that sometimes mothers are right about a lot of things...not ALL by any means, but a lot. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in her late 30s and that changed how she saw and treated life. We had always had healthy meals and things like that, but after her diagnosis she locked down completely on the best ways to eat and she became more religious and more serious. 

My parents are super conservative and I'm super liberal and that makes for some really challenging times. But as I have gotten older I realize that even though their views shock me sometimes, their advice and attempts to help me come from a very good place. 

They take walks every day, eat impeccably and live quite austerely. I'm not sure I can go quite that distance, but I do know I don't want to play around with my health anymore. I also want to work on being a better daughter.

 

There are some books you feel like you could have written yourself (under different circumstances and with talent and skill) and Thrall by Rebecca Mahoney is one of them...oh my gosh: it is so good and surprisingly creepy!

My favorite passages so far:

My mother always said I’d get eaten alive, out here in the world. Of course, every time she said it, “the world” meant a different thing. The bus stop. The crosswalk. College, eventually. When I was little, I always thought reassuring her was just a matter of proving that I was  capable of navigating the wicked snares of the grocery store parking lot. But what my mother was holding on to was deeper, like it so often is. What she was afraid of was never bus stops, or crosswalks, or campuses. To her, they were all the same: a lottery wheel, always turning. And every time she or I left the house, it turned again and again.

I was never afraid of the wheel. Maybe it was the fact that she’d raised me in a layer of Bubble Wrap, but I’ve always found it romantic that there’s no real life without chance. And if all the terrible things waiting for me—in the grocery store, at the crosswalk, or here, on our campus—if all of them came down to bad luck, then that was more comforting than scary. There’s no real malice in that. Whatever could happen to me, it would never be personal. 

I tried to tell her that, once. But that was never how she saw it. To her, the wheel had intention. It had teeth.

And this passage too:

Lucy was miles away from anyone who would know this about her, but there was nothing that could stun her into compliance quite like a beautiful*girl wielding a certain, effortless competence. She had, rather famously, fallen for her ex after listening to her order a sandwich.

I'm continuing to thoroughly enjoy this book and the fact that it doesn't romanticize vampirism (though I've never turned away a good vampire-ridden novel if everyone involved is doing so willingly). 

The author is, at least up to where I'm at, addressing the side effects of being bitten as well as the predatory nature of a vampire (or at least, this one) and the results are chilling, both literally and figuratively. 

This in the third dark academia book I've read in a row and it's interesting to see how very different it is from the other two.The isolation the main character in Thrall is experiencing is way too familiar.

(*I would like to add that 'beautiful' is relative and I'm thinking here the word could be used shallowly, but I don't think it is. I have never been overly smitten by someone just because of their looks...once you get to know someone better, their looks change sometimes...a beautiful on the outside person can show they are not so much that way inside and someone who is unconventionally attractive can outshine everyone else in the room. I will say, though, that I can be easily overwhelmed by someone I find attractive and want to bolt out of the room like the character Nate in the first episode of Ted Lasso when he encounters Hannah Waddingham's character).