March 24, 1999
Randomness
Sheri read my entry from January 23rd, the one about her father's funeral. I wasn't sure what sort of reaction I was going to get from her. I wasn't even sure if I should tell her that it was there. I'm worried about her. I want to be there for her, but I'm really not sure how. That's been a recurring thing lately. It's odd. I'm usually so empathetic, and I have a good idea of what to say and what to do... lately, I can still feel what's going on, but I can't seem to figure out what the best thing to do about it is. I think I need to stop worrying about what the right thing to do is and just do something.
At any rate, Sheri's reaction was... surprising, but gratifying in a way. She sent me a long email telling me how much it meant to her to see that day's events from someone else's perspective. She also told me she printed the entry out and put it in her scrapbook. That meant a great deal to me. I mean, I write this thing for myself, but it's still nice to know that something I've written helped someone else.
And as a sidenote... I'd love to know who's out there listening. I mean, I know a lot of my online friends check in every so often to see what I'm up to, as well as a few family members, but if you read this and you don't think I know... email me? Make me feel like I'm not just talking to myself here.
Another sidenote. James gave me a hard time about calling myself a pagan in my last entry. So just for him, I'll state my off-the-cuff, un-thought-through opinion on the matter. 'Paganism' is not a religion. If anything, it might be considered a loosely related group of religions, much like the term 'Christianity'. By that logic, for example, Wicca is to paganism what Catholicism is to Christianity. The religious and philosophical notions that I'm slowly (VERY slowly) gathering and collating in my mind, thus far, have more in common with a non-Christian, 'pagan' mindset than with the Christian mindset I grew up with. If it matters to anyone. As far as labels go, it fits me as well as anything does right now, and better than most.
Me, In a Nutshell
Well, this is my first collaborative journal entry. The way it works is that each member of a journal webring (in this case, Speak Freely, a ring for journals hosted on free web space) writes an entry on a chosen topic for the month. This month, it's me, in a nutshell. I have to throw in a gratuitous quote:
Oh God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii)
I don't usually have bad dreams, actually, but I do like Shakespeare.
I'm twenty-six, female, and I live in Michigan. I married at age nineteen in 1991, and left him at age twenty-two, and the divorce was final January 15, 1996. I don't have much more to say about that, really, except that we might have worked out, if we'd both been older. I'll mention my ex from time to time, although I haven't spoken to him in years.
I was always one of the gifted children in school; you know, the kind that would always blow the grading curve. I remained near the top of my class until I started college, where I kinda lost it. As of right now, I have two completed years of college and about three half-finished semesters under my belt. I plan to go back whenever I figure out what I want to be when I grow up. If I grow up. Past majors have included English education, music education, theatre education (sense a trend here?), psychology, and early childhood education. My thinking currently is that I'll most likely major in social work, unless my friend Brand talks me into an English major with a view towards post-grad work in culture criticism. ;)
I'm also one of the not-so-few, not-that-proud mentally-ill. For several years I was in treatment for major depressive disorder. That's where I picked up the habit of keeping a journal, actually. I was in treatment actively from about 1995 to about 1998, including medication (Zoloft), individual therapy, and two hospitalizations, one inpatient, one outpatient. I'm proud to say that I haven't really had a depressive episode since spring of 1997, and I consider myself to be in recovery. I feel like I've come through the fire. Fire always brings about a change. Sometimes it can burn and scar. In my case, and with this particular fire, I feel as if I've been tempered. It changed who I am, and I dealt with things that a lot of women don't deal with until they're much older than I am. As painful as it was, I'm almost thankful for it.
Religiously and philosophically, I'm searching. I have been for several years, pretty much since my marriage broke up. I was raised very strict fundamentalist Christian, but I've wandered pretty far afield from that. I guess you could say I'm pagan, if anything. I believe in a Supreme Being, or Beings, but I haven't personified them, really. Well, sometimes I do, but nothing is carved in stone. I believe in the power of life, and thought, and will, and I believe in the supernatural - to an extent. This is not to say I'm a UFO chaser or anything of the sort. I've just seen and heard and experienced many things that tell me "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Sorry, another gratuitous Hamlet quote.
I have long brown hair that is fairly unkempt most of the time. I have blue eyes that many people think are actually colored contacts. I'm fairly tall. I'm fat. Yup, you heard me. Before anyone gets all uptight about me using that word, let me say two things: first of all, it's the truth. Second, I believe in reclaiming words whenever possible, to take a word that has been given a negative connotation and take it back. (This is why I'll also call myself a bitch on occasion.) Now, if I'm being coy or cute, I'll say that I'm 'Rubenesque', or my current favorite, that I have the body of a Willendorf goddess (see picture). The running joke among some of my friends is that women such as myself encourage the production of "Willendorf-ens". If I had time, I'd probably be a fat activist, but for now, I'll leave it to people like NAAFA (National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance). Fatness is our last acceptable prejudice, and these people are working to change that.
Ahem. Lemme get off that unexpected soapbox there. Where was I? Oh yeah. I'm a writer, a gamer, a singer, a poet, an Internet addict, and a night owl. Gaming, oh, I didn't mention gaming. How could I miss that? I adore role-playing games. I prefer games from White Wolf's World of Darkness, especially Changeling, but I've been known to play in the Hero system and sometimes in various game master designed hybrids. My biggest gaming outlet currently is online, on various MUSHes. I'd go into that, but it's already covered here.
I guess that's me, really, in a nutshell. At least, I can't think of anything else. Funny, this is probably the longest entry I've made. I wonder what that says about me?
