There comes a point during the night when your clock seems to mock you. Do you keep hoping you'll fall asleep or finally get up and do something? Here's what Web MD says:

www.m.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/cant-sleep-when-to-get-out-of-bed

 

 

Two things helping to calm me today are Carola Dibbell's debut novel The Only Ones (a really good read so far) and Billie Holiday. Though, obviously, I don't want the apocalypse to ever happen, I find fiction dealing with that theme is something I'm especially drawn to when I am going through odd times. And Billie Holiday's voice is one of the few I want to hear musically when I'm like this...

 

 

from Baltimore magazine, April 2015. Billie Holiday was born on April 7, 1915
 

There was a time in my 20s I loved food and had absolutely no issues with it. It was after I left home and before I hit my 30s and started noticing how easy it was to gain weight if I didn't watch my intake carefully.

Food has never been so trying as lately, when my anxiety has been so high I can hardly keep anything down unless I eat very small portions. But ever since I've been experiencing anxiety I just cannot eat that much. My stomach and my heart just are not into it.

I have been researching ways to get past this because I know part of me still likes food. I love, when I have time, to read cooking magazines, but lately it's in a more clinical way, less passionate.

There is a lot online about anxiety and appetite...

Anxiety and Appetite Problems

"Stress and appetite have an unusual connection. Each person responds to anxiety differently, but many people find that their anxieties cause them to develop appetite problems that affect not only the way they eat, but also the way they enjoy food.
Appetite problems from anxiety may not seem like a serious symptom, but often the way people change their diets as a response to anxiety ends up having a significantly negative effect on their long term anxiety outlook. If you have anxiety related appetite issues, you need to solve them." more here>>>
http://www.calmclinic.com/anxiety/symptoms/appetite-problems

Other helpful articles:

http://www.mindpub.com/art456.htm

http://www.patient.co.uk/forums/discuss/zero-appetite-and-chronic-anxiety-145014

Sometimes, I think, there are two kinds of sadness, the kind that numbs you to the point of nothingness and the kind that digs so painfully deep you could only wish you felt nothing. I can never listen to music when I'm the first kind of sad. Nothing helps that.

The second of sad, though, the sadder the music I find, the better. Usually, Bread helps. The sooner I start crying listening to "If," the less emotionally strong I know I am. So I keep listening until I almost feel cleansed and come full circle.

I also like to research things when I'm grasping for straws in a sea of unrest. So I look up more about the things I feel I know have a factual base...if only everything we felt was based on fact or we solve all our emotional problems with fact checks.

Anyway, these two articles are rather interesting and talk more sad music and healing broken hearts.

http://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/can-sad-music-heal-your-broken-heart.aspx

http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/05/15/sad-music-can-help-mend-broken-heart/54857.html

I went out with a good friend last night and felt pretty nice for a while, forgetting almost everything, even a fight with my mother. My friend is like a sister, closer to me than my own biological sister and I almost felt like my old self. We went to see the 30th anniversary screening of The Breakfast Club.

I had forgotten had sad and sincere the movie is, how true to life it is and I left feeling kind of down because I am so much more like the teen I was then the adult I should be now. Physically and emotionally I worry I haven't changed much and the scares me very very much. If anything, I am more emotional now than I was then.

I just want to get over this, that is all. I have turned into someone I don't like. I have never ever been a very eloquent person, even at my best, but these past few months I can barely talk at all without rambling or just completely trailing off into nothingness.

I've had crushes before, but nothing like this. And, except for high school, I've never messed up things with the person I liked before.

I think (generally) in life, if you're lucky, you might get a second chance to make a fresh start with someone. But you rarely get a third chance. And so...if you really muck things up, you're left in a very awkward place, even more awkward if you're in a situation where you have to see this person a rather frequent basis.

I'm not a mind reader, but you don't have to be a mind reader to know when someone has lost their patience with you. It doesn't matter how different you are inside from how you are on the out; people usually can't see who you really are, unless they know you incredibly well.

I consider myself very lucky to have my good friend with whom I went to the movies last night. I relax around her like I do no one else except my niece and like I did with my grandmother before she passed away. Tomorrow, my friend and I are going to a pet expo and I'm hoping between her great company and all those animals, it will be a nice day.

...getting past things

This is something nice for a rainy Friday...by poet Kahil Gibran.>>>>

Other quotes about sorrow:

 http://www.livinglifefully.com/sorrow.htm

 And this is just for anyone who understands:

 

Imagining...

I can feel it sometimes, like a vision from a far away parallel universe. A vision of someone to love who loves me back. It feels so real sometimes, but I know better. It's just something from when I was younger and would go to my happy place, something I've never completely been able to shake off altogether. Or maybe it's a guardian angel, though I don't know that I have one and that's a completely different kind of love anyway. But anyway...if you need some love today, this is for you.

...because if you don't laugh, you'll cry

The above isn't really that kind to humans, but somehow it still makes me laugh, even though I probably shouldn't. It's horrible when someone (you think, at least) used to like you enough as a human being suddenly can't bear your company anymore. This week has been especially kind of hard because I'm starting to worry the damage is permanent and we will not only never be good friends, but struggle even in the most basic of acquaintance.

They are too polite to say so, but I can see it in their eyes and the way they avoid direct contact...I feel like I'm back in high school again, only this time (at least I hope not) I didn't make any overtures of unwelcome friendship, because this time around I knew almost immediately they wouldn't be wanted. My feelings must have just come through by osmosis or my inability to put on a good poker face. 

Now, I don't know what to do. It's always been a bit of a challenge trying to balance being nice without being a pain, but I know it's not my imagination these past few weeks. This article below has some helpful advice, though I suspect it's meant for younger people. After all, as a grown woman, I should probably have this all down pat by now.

Here's the article, with emphasis on this (for me):


...but reacting badly to the situation will only make you look desperate.

http://friendship.about.com/od/New-Friendships/fl/When-Someone-Just-Doesnrsquot-Like-You.htm

The thing is, though, right or wrong, I still care about this person and hope things are going okay for her. Since I can't really ask, I'll have to settle for wishing her well within my own thoughts and heart. I don't see the harm in that.

If... If I could, though, I would say, I am so sorry you are going through so much right now. I wish I could make things better for you and your family." But no matter how I wish I could and how sincere I would be, I can never say that to her. She doesn't want my concern nor my friendship and I have to accept that...

I'm reading today's New York Times and I saw these letters to the editor, all of which are good and make valid points. Having grown up in a household where "fat" was a four letter word, I understand (as so many women do) how our self-esteem can be unbearably linked to our body image.

You can read the letters here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/opinion/fat-talk-damages-people-and-society.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

The original article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/opinion/sunday/the-perils-of-fat-talk.html

This...

I am getting ready to try and fall asleep and full of worry about people I care about and the way things have been lately and I see this on Pinterest and it helps a little...the part about her personality "always getting lost somewhere between her heart and her mouth"...because it reminds me that others have felt this way too.

and also this (boy, can I relate to this!):

She’s in here, I wanted to respond. But she only comes out when I’m writing. You thought you were hiring Writing Me. But instead what you got was Actual Me. Big mistake.

 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/writing-my-way-to-a-new-self/?ref=opinion&_r=0

If Billie Holiday soothes my sadness, David Bowie helps me channel my outrage. He's just who I need to hear when I'm frustrated or angry with things I can't control...or even with myself. I'm not only upset with the news, I'm upset with myself and the mistakes I seem to keep making in my personal life. Somehow, David Bowie helps.

 

I'm wishing I had gotten my hands on the UK 3-cd set of Nothing Has Changed, but until I can track that down I'm listening to the standard one found more commonly in stores, online and even the library, where I checked out mine.

 

Most of the time, there is music for every mood...most of the time. Right now, this fits perfectly. I've only been following David Bowie since his Let's Dance days, but over the years I've visited his early days and, in his very long and illustrious career, there are very few albums of his I don't like.

 

This review appears, un-credited, on the allmusic website. It doesn't mention "Thursday's Child," which is completely "new" to me and something I really like. Apparently, Bowie named the song after Eartha Kitt's autobiography, a book he loved when was 14.

 

Nothing Has Changed is a bit of a cheeky title for a career retrospective from an artist who is known as a chameleon, and this triple-disc compilation has other tricks up its sleeve. Chief among these is sequencing the SuperDeluxe 59-track set in reverse chronological order, so it opens with the brand-new, jazz-inflected "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and concludes with David Bowie's debut single, "Liza Jane." On paper, this seems a bit like a stunt, but in actuality it's a sly way to revisit and recontextualize a career that has been compiled many, many times before. Previously, there have been single discs, double discs, and triple-disc boxes, but the largest of these was Sound + Vision, a box released in 1989, and the most recent was 2002's The Best of Bowie, which featured slightly different track listings in different territories but generally stopped in the late '90s. The two-CD version of Nothing Has Changed resembles this 2002 set -- there are absences, notably "John, I'm Only Dancing," "Diamond Dogs," and "TVC15," but they're not noticed among the parade of standards -- but it's easily overshadowed by the triple-disc SuperDeluxe set. This version of Nothing Has Changed touches upon nearly every phrase of Bowie's career, bypassing Tin Machine but finding space for early pre-"Space Oddity" singles that often don't make Bowie's comps, and naturally it samples from his fine Y2K records, plus his 2013 comeback The Next Day. This expansiveness alone would be noteworthy, but when it's combined with the reverse sequencing the compilation forces listeners to reconsider an artist whose legacy seemed so set in stone it appropriately was enshrined in museums. Obvious high-water marks are undersold -- there's not as much Ziggy as usual, nor as much Berlin -- so other eras can also enter the canon, whether it's the assured maturity of the new millennium or the appealing juvenilia of the '60s. The end result is something unexpected: a compilation that makes us hear an artist we know well in a whole new way.

 

 

 

Almost every day there is an article on Yahoo about radical Christians or the far (far) right wanting to push their views on other people by punishing them legally. Some of these views include very extreme measures such as killing gay people and making sure women "know their place" or don't have easily available and safe access to reproductive health care, even if their lives are at stake.

I don't know if people like Ted Cruz or (to an even larger extreme) men like the lawyer in California who wants to make it legal to kill gay people have a chance in pushing their power further. I don't even want to think about a world like that, I would sooner die first than live there.

Yet there are lots of people who would gladly follow people like Cruz and even Matthew Gregory McLaughlin (the lawyer who is proposing a bill that would advocate the murder of gays and lesbians) and this scares me so much I can barely type this.

As I often wonder sometimes, both as a lesbian and a woman, how do people like this dare to think they speak for God or humanity? I would think even the most hardened homophobic would agree killing people is wrong.

I am constantly amazed that there is mentality we live in a gay friendly country when you can still be fired in 29 states for being gay and many of us struggle for any kind of relationship with our families simply because they cannot accept who we are...

This McLaughlin guy apparently can go ahead with this initiative so that if it gets enough signatures (365,000 according to news reports) it can be on the ballot in November. The scary thing is I think there are actually those who would willingly sign it (and not just through some kind of deception on the part of the people asking for signatures.) This upsets me so much that I can't begin to describe my feelings.

two recent reads...

 

Off Screen is just a bit short for my tastes, but I love the writing, how sweet the story is and how both lead characters take their time getting to know each other. Becoming friends first, but secretly hoping for more, each woman is adorably endearing in her uncertainty about how the other feels.

Other pluses for me include: a vulnerability and earnestness found both in the writing itself and both women. I love the author's observations on so many things, but especially how writing can heal and the fears of falling in love (and not being loved back.)

What it lacks in length, Off Screen makes up for in substance. Well under one hundred pages, this novella sets things up nicely for what I hope will be a super sequel (see: The Red Carpet).

This is absolutely, positively the sweetest and most adorable tale I've read in quite a while. I'm still smiling from how nice and sincere it is. More lesfic should aspire to be have old-fashioned romance and wonderfully quirky characters who deeply care about each other. I would have paid twice what I did for such a charming read! :)

I sat down to watch "new" tv for the first time in days and soon found myself remembering why I prefer old movies and my "I Love Lucy" dvds.

First, I checked out the latest CSI incarnation, "Cyber."  Then, when I could take no more of the overly slick production values and monotonous vibes (is this the same Patricia Arquette who just won an Academy Award?) of the show I tried to catch up on "Castle."

There, I was troubled by the opening line. An astronaut in training exclaims how badly he wants a "hot girl in a bikini." Even a "ugly one" would do as long as she came with a "paper bag."

Way beyond irritated by then, I turned that off and switched to a "Mike & Molly" rerun, where not ten minutes into it, the running gag is how many quips they can get out of three men being "grossed out" over a topless, much older woman accidentally walking in on them.

This is way much sexism for me in one day so now I'm trying to escape with the Sunday papers, which by nature of its sharing the news of the world is also disturbing.

I know that the word "ugly" bothers me beyond my having a righteous indignation for women everywhere. I heard my share of the world "ugly" enough in middle and high school and it stuck with me for so long that it still hurts when I hear that world used anywhere, about anyone.
 
But personal bias aside, I know there is a sexism problem on tv and that's one main reason I prefer reruns and classics.

Chuck Lorre (who created "Mike & Molly") knocking women over for good laughs should not surprise me, but the "Castle" thing really does. It struck a nerve with me that I should get past, but right now I just can't. Yes, there is sexism in old movies and "I Love Lucy" but it's not as vulgar as today's and it's not as shocking.

I would rather be insulted with a little class and style, two things mostly missing in today's entertainment. Katherine Hepburn may be a bit daft in "Bringing Up Baby" and Lucy may cry to get her way and Ricky may sometimes patronize her, but there wasn't this crudeness, this complete lack of respect for women as people that (to me) seems worse today than ever.

The more vulgar the world gets the more I just want to escape. "Bringing Up Baby" and "I Love Lucy" will never be considered feminist works of art, but they are fun and from a world that didn't pretend to be as enlightened as today's world tries to pretend it is.

Saturday night music

"The Beat Goes On" popped in my head tonight so I played it and realized I had completely forgotten how much I really love it. It's the only Sonny and Cher song I can say I think is essential to pop music. 

 

I have nothing against them (I absolutely loved their tv variety show when I was a child), but was never fascinated by any of their songs like I was this one.

 

And it's mostly because of this:

 

Making the beat go on in this song was Carol Kaye , who played bass at the session. One of the top Los Angeles studio musicians, Carol played on hundreds of records, including tracks for Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. She had recently switched from guitar to bass - Sonny Bono would often use her for electric 12-string fills. This song had a very sparse bass part written, which Carol elaborated into the key part of the instrumentation. She told us it was one of her biggest creative contributions to a hit record. "It was a nothing song, and then the bass line kind of made that," said Carol. She adds that it was only one chord, but its impact made her realize how important a bass line could be and inspired her to play more of the instrument.-- from Songfacts

 

No offense to Sonny or Cher, but I really don't think the song would be anything at all without that bass line.

 

emotional Kryptonite
 

Good days aren't so hard, obviously. But on a bad day I need to remember *this* and, maybe, it might be of use to you as well. I especially like "don't react right away;" that is my most difficult emotional challenge.

 

* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-carmen-harra/controlling-your-emotions_b_3654326.html

Being more decisive and in control of my feelings may sometimes be too much to achieve every day, but I know one thing I can definitely stop doing and that's waiting for (or believing in) things that will never ever happen. 

Waiting is something I've done much of my life and it's time to stop. You don't wait for life to happen. You make it happen.

 

While I'm incapable of being loved romantically (I think it's fact and not self-pity, if you've read your mid-40s and can say this without flinching), I'm not immune to falling in love. I try not to, but it happens; the heart's funny that way, it rarely listens to the rest of you.

 

I don't mind so much that I'm single except I do kind of tie self-worth and love together, whether that's right or wrong, and I feel like I'm just taking up space if I don't serve a purpose beyond existing.

 

They say self-love comes before loving others but I feel like the opposite is true. How can you love yourself if you don't see your own value to others?

No matter what, though, whether I figure out the self-love thing or not, whether I understand the space I take up or not, I don’t wait, I seek...not true love or marriage or a family of my own. Those dreams are just that...dreams. Knowledge and inner peace, though, those are not so unattainable.

 

 

That darn bed! Sometimes I look at the queen size thing and wonder how something so easily constructed and fairly comfortable and totally ordinary can cause so much heartbreak and trouble in the world.

A bed can be different things to different people and sometimes different things to the same person. I wonder if this is why insomnia is such a problem...because, for some of us, we do everything in bed but sleep.

There was a very pleasant time in my twenties when I was sleeping well and had the best dreams you could imagine...where I read there all the time before going to sleep and totally felt at peace. And when I was little I would pretend my bed was an island and I would take everything I needed with me: books, dolls, pictures. No matter what, I always felt safe and cozy.

Now I almost resent my bed because I can't sleep and somehow I blame the poor inanimate thing even though I'm probably breaking every rule of what not to do in bed by taking my computer and books and music with me.

But which came first? The not sleeping or the bringing everything to bed with me? Even my harmless teddy bears are probably on one of those "do not do this" in bed lists you see side barred in sleep problem articles.

The thing is I have tried the only sleep in bed thing and nothing else, many times over the years, and I still don't sleep. It's only knowing a book, or my music, is not far out of reach that I don't freak out if I find myself with another long night ahead of me.

I read everything I can on insomnia and recently saw this>>>The 32 in "The 32 Solutions for When You Can't Sleep" cracked me up for some reason. 32 Solutions? That's a lot of work to do just to get some sleep! But anything's worth a try:

http://greatist.com/health/cant-sleep-advice-and-tips

I have been listening to Billie Holliday most of the evening. I have a 2 disc collection of her recordings and I find such healing in her voice, possibly more than in any other singer's.

 

Her voice...even if I could find the right words to describe it, I'm not sure they would do justice. Listening to her is like finding a balm for your own loneliness, like feeling, however temporarily, suspended in safety.

 

This article from NPR talks, among other things, of how Billie learned from listening to singers like Louis Armstrong.

 

Phil Schaap, curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center, says Holiday "speaks to your heart. She catches your ear. She reaches your mind, and she does this with an emotional power that, of course, is genius and is beyond words."

The emotional power of Holiday's vocals comes from the way she sings the melodies. It's about rhythm and phrasing, which Holiday learned from listening to the best.

 

You can read all of the article here:

 

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/19/131451449/billie-holiday-emotional-power-through-song

 

 

books and people...

So, this post may ramble because I'm so tired to the point of almost being nonsensical. If anyone ever invents a sleeping pill that actually works and doesn't mess with your mind and body, well...it would be wonderful. And if that miracle pill could cause you to sleep and not dream, that would be even more wonderful.

A whole bunch of things are running through my brain...mostly just related to people...like how I wish people would just be more straightforward, no matter if their reasons for not being so are actually good.

Honesty is always better than lies and real hatred better than fake love. And people can lie with their mouths and their words, but never with their eyes and their body language.

And waking up is part of what happens when you finally begin to see things as they really are, not as you long for them to be. And when you begin to see things as they really are, you're less likely to be surprised by pain.

It's not that you prefer hate to love (hate is never better than love) but that you prefer reality to mind games...and, sometimes, books to people. You know where you stand with books (after all, they're inanimate and have already been written), but not always with people.

Personal growth is good and very important, but sometimes it's not so bad to go back to who you used to be. There was a time when I was shy and quiet and always kept to myself and I think I was much happier and more mature then...because I didn't expect much and I found all my peace and contentment from within and not from how I felt about other people.

One of the best places I found that kind of inner peace was whenever I read Charles de Lint's fiction. Somehow I've drifted away from his work, but now I'm back and I'm glad for many reasons, but mostly because (as it says on Amazon):

“His stories are good for the heart and soul…he reminds you of hope and strength and Beauty and Grace that you may have forgotten.”

Memory and Dream is one of my favorite books of all time and I've read it at least five times and am probably going to read it again this weekend. There are some reads you never get tired of re-visiting. And the world of Charles de Lint is always one you want to live in...because it is so often full of love and goodness.

From Publishers Weekly

The Otherworld tends to lurk just out of sight in DeLint's (Moonheart; Spiritwalk) works, waiting for some chink to appear in the facade of his characters' lives and allow its spirits entry. This latest work is no exception; here fantastic creatures gain access to the bohemian village of Newford through the work of Isabelle, a talented young painter. Apprenticing herself to the troll-like master painter Rushkin, Isabelle learns to paint amazing creatures-creations that subsequently take on a (possibly evil) life of their own. When circumstances cause a friend's message to reach out to her from beyond the grave, Isabelle must confront her own delusional revisionist history and decide if she has the strength to use her art, and the courage to do what she must. While Isabelle's delusions and the book's implication that artists are superior beings become somewhat repetitious, DeLint is otherwise in top form here. His multi-voiced, time-shifting narrative (the story spans 20 years) beautifully evokes a sense of creative community, making it almost possible to believe that the rarified aesthetic atmosphere might well be capable of conjuring up a spirit or two.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

And because one review alone can't do Memory and Dream justice, here are some more:

From Booklist, American Library Association, October 1994:
It is hard to imagine urban fantasy done better than it is by de Lint at his best, and this book shows his imagination and craft at their highest levels. De Lint's folkloric scholarship is as outstanding as ever; he never lets it slide into academicism or pretension… Memory and Dream deserves the highest recommendation and the widest readership.

From The Edmonton Journal, October 1994:
Easily Canada's top fantasy scribe…a major international force in the genre. Here is a biped who has steadfastly avoided stereotyping in his work from the beginning…de Lint has developed a considerable talent for injecting magic into everyday contemporary life. 

From Quill & Quire, January 1995:
De Lint takes a hard look at reality in Memory and Dream, especially at the personal burdens we all carry. He seamlessly blends urban landscapes, with all their sometimes ugly complications, with a magic that feels so true it's hard not to believe he knows something the rest of us don't. 
 
http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Dream-Charles-Lint-ebook/dp/B00IA9U7OM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1426883585&sr=1-1&keywords=memory+and+dream

classichollywoodcentral.com

Greta Garbo...it's so tempting to romanticize someone so seemingly aloof and alone, but after reading a recent article in the Boston Globe that referred to her "apartness," I had to read more about her because I hardly know anything about her at all.

I've seen many of her films, but way before that I knew she wanted to be left alone (or to be more specific: "I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is all the difference.")

I have always been drawn to reserved people and not just because of the mysterious air they exude. There is always more to people than meets the eye, perhaps because, as Garbo herself once said, you need to keep some things to yourself>>>

There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.

Both this article:

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2010/04/the-garbo-next-door-200004
 

and this (from Wikipedia) add to the mystique and sadness of her solitude. But as old school Hollywood (when less was more) and mysterious as it might seem, she was still a real woman who did deserve a right to privacy and probably suffered far more than she ever let on...

In retirement, Garbo generally led a private life of simplicity and leisure. She made no public appearances and assiduously tried to avoid the publicity she loathed.^[113] As she had been during her Hollywood years, Garbo, with her innate need for solitude, was often reclusive. But contrary to myth, she had, from the beginning, many friends and acquaintances with whom she socialized, and later, traveled.^[114][115] Occasionally, she jet-setted with well-known and wealthy personalities, striving to guard her privacy as she had during her career.

Still, she often floundered about what to do and how to spend her time ("drifting" was the word she frequently used),^[116] always struggling with her many eccentricities,^[115][117] and her lifelong melancholy, or depression, and moodiness.^[118][119] As she approached her sixtieth birthday, she told a frequent walking companion, "In a few days, it will be the anniversary of the sorrow that never leaves me, that will never leave me for the rest of my life."^[120] To another friend she said in 1971, "I suppose I suffer from very deep depression."^[121] It is also arguable, says one biographer, that she was bipolar. "I am very happy one moment, the next there is nothing left for me," she said in 1933.^[121]

Tonight, I'm just now catching up with last Sunday's papers. This article from the Washington Post caught my eye, mostly because I have a soft spot for the misbegotten and unusual-looking and because I love vegetables:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eat-the-crooked-carrot-save-the-world/2015/03/13/d6899452-c7fb-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html

 

nerves and nightmares

Salvador Dali

I have been having the most horrific nightmares the past few nights so I'm drinking coffee and planning on staying up late tonight because I can't bear to fall asleep anymore, even though sleep is exactly what I want most in life right now.

I think it's all a vicious cycle, emphasis on the "vicious." Not sleeping and being nervous leads to nightmares and bad nerves, which then leads to more not sleeping which leads to more bad nerves which leads back to the...well, you get it.

I am ashamed to admit that I have been having a glass of wine, sometimes more than one, a night to help me sleep. I guess because I don't have much experience with alcohol I didn't realize it can actually cause nightmares, though I've had nightmares since I was a little girl and am not sure alcohol is the sole cause. 

No matter, the cause, though...I'm through with the wine. I don't like how it makes me feel.

Anyway...today I have extremely frayed nerves so I'm trying to go to my Happy Place even more than usual and also using this article to help:

 http://www.wikihow.com/Not-Get-Nervous (with emphasis on the second step):

2

Go to your "happy place" or visualize success. Happy Gilmore wasn't full of it when he used a visualization technique to quell his anger before making a golf shot. You can use a "happy place" visualization to remove yourself from a place of nervousness and visit a stress-free place of happiness, whether it be a shopping mall or a deserted beach.

• Visualize yourself succeeding in the thing that is making you nervous. Positive visualizations can turn into actual successes if you truly believe that you can succeed.
• Remember to think happy thoughts and utilize your imagination to imagine positive rather than negative situations.

As for nightmares, if you suffer from them (though I hope you don't), I found the following articles helpful:

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/nightmares-in-adults


http://www.charminghealth.com/applicability/nightmare.htm


And this really old thing (the copyright looks like 1946) on guilt and nightmares:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19461215&id=bk9QAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Tg0EAAAAIBAJ&pg=2558,564535&hl=en

I am propped up in bed, hoping to fall asleep because I feel like I haven't slept right in ages and sleep (good sleep) can be such sweet relief. It's amazing how something so common is so hard to find.

I'm also not really getting how to actually be lately, then I see this in the magazine I'm half-heartedly reading. I don't follow Dr. Phil at all, but this speaks to me. If fear of rejection is so common I wonder why humans (in general) aren't nicer to each other.

There are days when I'm almost afraid to leave the house, not because I'm afraid of people so much...as I'm afraid of how I will interact with them.

Except for work I really don't go anywhere but to the store and to get my errands done. I don't necessarily like being alone so much, but the worrying part of me prefers that, because it's impossible to unintentionally antagonize or annoy someone if you keep to yourself, by yourself.

The worst thing about good intentions is it doesn't always matter who you really are or what you mean...people often only see what is on the surface. 

A shy person comes across as a snob. A person who is fearful or been hurt whenever she dared open her heart in the past now may come across as cold or uncaring. 

Past experiences or tormenting thoughts can keep us from showing our true selves and we are judged by what we do or say, not by what we feel. So someone who comes across as a stumbling conversationalist or as having no emotions may be the exact opposite...some of us figure it's better to stay hidden than to venture out.

I wish (sometimes), like ET, we had heartlights so we all knew where we stood with each other.

Can you will yourself to stop caring about someone who doesn't want to be cared about by you? I don't know if it's entirely possible, but lately I'm pretty sure it's the right thing to do, even if only outwardly.

When you ask if someone is okay and someone else tells you "this has nothing to do with you," it may hurt, but it really gets you thinking, helps you realize your place and how you need to stay firmly inside it.

Closed doors, both literal and figurative, would be more than enough for me to figure out it's not good to push boundaries as to whether someone is okay or not. I would get that in some instances it's just not my right nor my place to care about some people, even if I hadn't learned that long ago in high school.

Meanwhile, when I tried to Google "what to do when you have no right to care about someone," absolutely nothing came up...surely, other people have liked people they're not supposed to...maybe, it's just common sense stuff, which scares me if I'm so clueless that I have to look that up.

I think it's one reason I'm not very good with people, in general. I am so bad at reading normal social cues and I tend to compensate for my shyness by trying harder to be outgoing and friendly, ending up being foolish instead of pleasantly sociable. 

I feel like sometimes I need an entire manual on how to be a normal human being.

And I've realized something else...once (not if, but once, since I have to!) I finally get over my feelings of unrequited love I am through with all of it and I never, never (never!) want to meet anyone I could like, reciprocated feelings or not. To paraphrase Quarterflash, "I'm gonna harden my heart."

It is exhausting...not the caring about someone, that is pretty much okay...what is exhausting is caring about someone and having to hide it, that is what tires you and your soul out.

But no matter what the situation, I don't ever want to feel so silly and irrational again in my life.

I think something my mom told me (when she insisted I tell her what was bothering me and I gave her the generals of it, very vaguely) might help. She said, "Maybe this person doesn't want you to care. If they did, they would have told what you was wrong." 

I know unrequited love makes no sense at all, but I don't think it's supposed to make sense. My whole life I've been going down a one way street in the wrong direction and now it's time to truly come to my senses.

This is a link below to articles and websites about unrequited love. A lot of the info refers to "pursuing" someone. The only peace I can take away from my experience is that I never ever purposely showed any outwardly interest...nor would have it occurred to me to show any.

If anything I have done everything not to...because that's one of the things about unrequited...it's completely one-sided and you know it's completely one-sided.

http://unrequitedlovehelp.com/unrequited-love-psychology

 

Listening to Chant is the closest I've come to finding any true peace the past few days...a beautiful album that has over 121 reviews on Amazon, 81 percent of which are 5 stars. Below is a review from allmusic.com 

 

 

Decca's recording of chant sung by the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz in southern Austria fulfills the purpose of this type of album: mellow, slow, reflective chant melodies for general audiences. The CD has high production values; the sound is exceptionally clean and clear with just enough resonance to evoke a monastic atmosphere. The singers have light-, pleasant-, natural-sounding baritones, and their voices blend smoothly. Their singing is more expressive than many performances of this repertoire, with a subtle use of dynamic shading that follows the melodic contours of the chant. Two of the most satisfying tracks are simply the tolling of the bells of the monastery with birdsong in the background. The notes, which reflect a Roman Catholic spirituality, don't identify the source or specific era of the chants being sung, but simply describe them as "Gregorian." The volume of the album is very loud, and the listener will probably want to adjust the levels to avoid being blown out of the room. --Stephen Eddins

I wouldn't say the music is loud enough to blow you out of the room. If anything, being surrounded by all its strength is amazingly comforting.

This is the horrible thing about having good intentions: sometimes they are hard for someone else to read and all they can judge you on is your behavior. That's certainly understandable; no one is a mind reader and even people who know us can't always tell why we do what we do.

If you ignore someone, for instance, it definitely comes across as being rude no matter that you're terrified if you look at them, they will see things you don't want them to see. On the extreme opposite end, if you're concerned about someone and express that concern and it's unwanted, then you can come across as having no respect for their privacy.

When you worry about something you did or didn't do, it doesn't really matter what your intentions were because the results are what have to be lived with for a long time. The unrest and worry it stirs up can make you physically ill and have the other person never want to have anything to do with you again.

You literally (whether because of worry or guilt or unease) can feel "beside yourself." I know when I feel beside myself it's almost like the pain is so intense you have to leave your own body. But I was curious as to a more medical or psychological explanation so I Googled the expression and found this:


...So it’s only to be expected that in such an extreme state of feeling, any mental clarity (let alone lucidity) would have evaporated.

It’s crucial to point out that being “beside yourself” is an unusually wide-ranging, all-purpose idiom. For it can refer to almost any emotion at all, as long as in the moment that feeling (another idiom here!) “holds sway” over you. Totally under its influence, it—rather than your reason or common sense—“oversees” or “regulates” your behavior, even though to others your being so overcome with emotion is likely to make them perceive you as not in control at all.

It might be helpful to enumerate some of the emotions, both negative and positive, that have frequently been associated with this familiar idiom. But first it should be emphasized that what links all of these different emotions is that they relate to extreme nervous system arousal—whether it be of agitation (negative) or exhilaration (positive).

So, for example, you might be “beside yourself” (or “out of your mind”) with anxiety, anger, frustration, confusion, fear, worry, rage, grief, sorrow, or depression. Or, you could be “beside yourself” with glee, joy, astonishment, enchantment, awe, or ecstasy (which typically—and secularly—refers to an extraordinarily pleasurable, dopamine-drenching sexual experience). Just compare being “in the pit of despair” with being “in seventh heaven” or “cloud nine.” For in either case, you’d be “beside yourself.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201410/where-are-you-when-you-re-beside-yourself

I found a magazine called Spirituality & Health at Whole Foods the other day. It's geared for all faiths, though I suppose it does have a New Age feel to it. There are a lot of things within it that I find helpful and healing...these are just a few of the highlights.

 

The pictures are a little fuzzy, but if you click them on individually you can see them better. The article these are from covers all kinds of emotions, but the shame and fear ones spoke to me the most...