Sometimes the Clothes Do Not Make a Man

There’s been something hanging over my head, delving inside and out of my mind. A twitch. Something that’s burning my fingertips, sending spasms down my body. Shivers when it’s warm. There’s a turtle’s race in my thoughts, and a shadow I can’t peg down. The air is too thick. I inhale like the consistency of mud. That twitch, it’s always there. My throat wants to close, my heart beats too fast, too light. My apathy seems to gain momentum with each tick. I keep forgetting something. Jigsaw pieces that drift away on the mind’s current. I find them, sometimes, but by then they’re out of arm’s reach. They make me long for my younger days, when everything held its proper place, and I could figure out what the hell was going on.

Simply put, I am dissatisfied.

What ever happened to us? We used to be a man of principal, a man of moral value. We used to stand against the unjust and puff out our chest when we knew we had done right, and no one had seen. Our successes were always in private, as all true success is. Our failures were taken with grace and humility, but in full view, as all failure should be.

Now you just wallow. You seether. Your lips are too loose, and you track dirt back to your home. You hold your shoulders a little higher, but your face twice as close to the ground. You let the unjust do as they please, and can’t be bothered to sully your business for your own morals. In fact, you never feel them anymore, do you? You just get mad, like the adults you pitied. You must be growing up.

She tells me that I am not as strong as others. She told me that I have to set my own limits, subpar to the average, and hope for success within it. I have found more disappointment, more failure, more sadness in her advice then I ever did pushing your bar. I have experienced all the same illness regardless.

You used to be strong. Now you are weak.

And I don’t feel like being weak anymore.

I want appreciation, and respect. Selfish, sure, but it’s what I want. I want to reclaim the frustrated parts of my teenage counterpart and utilize his mentality with a mature understanding. I’m tired of working for these people. I’m tired of only hearing my mistakes, every day, of what I did wrong the last. What another person has done wrong. What is wrong. Everything about the store screams wrong to me, and thru me. It’s wrong to be there. And it’s getting me upset.

I feel appreciation only comes for the hardest worker, the one that essentially can out-work others. I am physically incapable of that; I know my limits are reached. Every shift, if a person hears of their mistakes and failures, over and over again, they will no doubt be disheartened. Some even begin to believe it. Is that really what we’ve come down to? Easier to criticize than to compliment?

I have lost all interest in trying. What motivation does it hold to me to push my body’s limits for no acknowledgement, and if a mistake were made, to be brought back to have it focused on? This goes in more than just the workplace it seems. Why aim to please the one that only has negative things to say?

Logic tells me you don’t.

Worst yet, the only reason I don’t leave that I can think of is that every place I will go to will be this way. Every job environment in my past has orchestrated itself in this perverted fashion of only picking up on the flaws of your actions, never the well-preformed. One of my last jobs knew of my medical problems, and that I could not work on the same level, and more importantly, speed as my coworkers. He later evaluated me and wrote that I work too slow. I am on disability. You get that for having a health condition that impedes with your daily life. Obviously if I have this, I can’t work at the same degree as someone ‘average’. So how am I supposed to feel appreciated under this kind of system?

I miss my psychology. It’s a jigsaw piece I’ve just found that I was missing. I want understanding, and I’m the fool for not trying to understand. I am not able to be on-par with others, and I get frustrated for not being understood. Perhaps I should be the one that understands that the one accessing is unable to understand because they have their own deficiency?

I digress, and I ramble. So, in layman’s terms:

I’m unhappy, and feel unappreciated.

I do not like my job.

I want to quit, but can’t figure out how to not fall into the same trap.

I want to be able to deal with this maturely, but lack my own way.

I felt the need to bitch. So sue me.

Perhaps school will bring me the satisfaction and the respect I’m craving.

Birthday

It is mine. And I cannot stop coughing.

To Weyard we go!

Life is getting great.

Lots of good things have been happening.

I will speak nothing of them.

Instead, I shall leave nothing but a picture to show one of the few things that has reborn passion into my life.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I miss my Gundams.

It’s… been a rough, eventful couple of weeks.

Qualicum was bittersweet, in the best possible way, I would suppose. The second the car stopped, we ran into the person I wanted to see the least of anyone in the world. Apparently he was coming up because it was his girlfriend’s birthday. I was just annoyed with the timing.

Otherwise it was wonderful. It was interesting to see how different some of my friends looked, and it was incredibly refreshing to have the nerdy debates again… It was wonderful. We didn’t talk about anything incredibly vast, just the same nonsense we usually do. Video games, anime, whether Goku could defeat Cloud in a fight or not. We told story after story about the days of high school, and all the shit we got into.

And it makes me miss it.

I don’t do enough immature, risky things down here. I generally don’t get into trouble with citizens like I used to, and when I do, it isn’t fun. I miss adventuring. Not incredible expeditions of a Legend of Zelda feel, but random acts. Getting a call at 11 in the morning saying “We’re running around Nanaimo, come catch the bus.” If we didn’t make it, no big deal. If we did, we went around and did dumb things. You’d be surprised how much enjoyment you get from a two dollar water gun, or a couple logs and a junkyard.

My leg was bad then, and it got worse when I went up. I bought a cane, and it’s actually rather classy. I stopped using it today, because I finally healed enough not to need to limp (though I am a little still), but it was necessary for the time being. My body, however, isn’t holding its own, and I think that means I need to make some serious lifestyle changes.

I saw the shrink today about that too. We analyzed the stress I’m receiving from my illness and interactions. I never felt that people understood, but at least they tried. It’s when people don’t bother to attempt to understand what’s happening to me that I become stressed out. I get caught between thinking if I wanted to, I could do it, and knowing that it would only worsen my condition. In that regard, I never know my limits.

When I talked to her about this, she asked about my career history. She asked why I’m seeking so much grunt work. I didn’t really have an answer. I like to keep moving; keep busy, but that’s hardly an excuse, I think. I think this means that Nursing is out of the question. I need to prepare myself for a career that can still be maintained even if my body goes under. Something that requires more mind, less movement.

The situation at work for me has grown tense, and my anxiety’s been hard to cope with. They put me back on cyclosporine at my own request to avoid prednisone again, but cyclosporine and the welbutrin don’t mix. I dropped the welbutrin quickly. I wasn’t supposed to. I went into work with full signs of withdrawal, and am still combating it to some degree, though significantly less. I couldn’t cool down, and I was panicked. I still can’t think straight. It’s been a trying period.

Going back on the cyclosporine also puts my kidneys back at risks. I’ve been getting blood work and other tests all week long to monitor the creatinine in my kidneys so that they don’t shutdown. If they do, I’ll need immediate dialysis. If this happens and I’m lucky, my kidneys will reboot. If I’m not, they’ll be permanently shutdown. If I don’t take the cyclosporine though, I either attempt prednisone and bloat up and lose all control of rationality and proper thinking, or I go without and let my body destroy itself all over. My leg may be on the mend, but the damage has been done.

So I’ve not been thinking right. I don’t know what I should blame, or if I should place the blame on anything. Was it the withdrawal? The lack of proper sleep? Was it not having medication to control my anxiety? Was I just thoughtless? Regardless, I got in a lot of trouble at work, and it has been bothering me. I’ve been bumped down to one shift a week, which, though that carries immense positive results, it still irks me. If this is my only source of income, then it won’t be enough to sustain me lest it change. But after this, my thoughts of wanting to quit has come back. I mean, it’s a dollar store, and I was enjoying the job because of the people and the environment. If the people and the environment are starting to feel venomous, what benefit of is it to me to stick around if there are other ventures to exploit?

The benefits to working one day a week are phenomenal though, and I do need to focus on this to avoid negative thinking. I actually felt kind of good about it. 6 days off sounds very nice. I feel like my hand has been forced as well, which I needed. I haven’t been writing, but when my Grandparents came to pick me up, I started again. Now if I’m finding physical work to be too much, it’s become inspiration to seek new career paths that I can continue should my body cease to work. It feels like I’ve been pushed to get to work, and to get published.

My sister and I also played around with the idea of an eBay business a while ago. I was doing it playfully. Yesterday when I found my schedule, I felt like that became a seductive choice as well. In fact, it may be the best short-term income I can do. Problem is finding a product though. I want to be more original than following my friend’s lead in selling shark jaws, but I’m also trapped for ideas. My therapist promoted this idea immensely saying ‘the easiest way to make money is to think outside the box’. She said if my body can’t compete with others, then I can exceed them in creativity. Now it’s just a matter of finding a readily available resource to make money on. Quite intriguing really.

Yesterday I felt guilty that I was disappointing people. After I talked to the therapist, I stopped caring. In fact, I feel selfish about it because I feel fuckin’ great that I don’t have to worry about it right now. I don’t think I can be more apathetic to the job, but after feeling like it was my morally indignant responsibility to improve the store, it’s highly welcomed. Maybe I just need new meds.

The last few days though, they’ve been wonderful in retrospect. I bought the DLC’s for Fallout 3 and started a new file. Bloody hell it’s fun, but the DLCs didn’t work immediately, so I made some poor talent choices. I’m not sure if it’s worth making ANOTHER new character for or not, considering I’ve invested another 40 hours into this one, but it’s been a blast, and I’ve only touched Operation: Anchorage, which, I must say, I was a little disappointed in. I’m all for Arctic combat, but I don’t play Fallout for the combat or the gore. I play it for the environment. If you’re not worrying about some Super Mutant with a fire hydrant trying to swat you, or trying not to make your piss glow from hanging around nuclear waste, it kind of winds up becoming another half-assed shooter, which, Bethesda doesn’t exactly have fluid-friendly controls for. However, at the risk of sounding like an obsessive gamer, the Gauss rifle and Chinese Stealth Armour has convinced me that the DLC was worth it. Every time that I crouch, I go invisible, and every time I fire the rifle, I get the satisfying little “ping” as it rips someone’s skull off and sends the body five yards flying. Magnificent. Worth every penny.

I guess this forced vacation’s kind of cool after all.

*Grumbles*

I’ve been frustrated the past while.

I believe it started when I got back from the therapist. I don’t think she helped. Actually, I felt more patronized and aggravated then before.

She speaks of being content with the person you are in the now. I speak of enjoying the now, and working towards the future. She becomes frustrated, because working towards a personality-driven goal instigates pursuit of the ideal self. I don’t see the harm in liking the person you are, but holding the idealized self as a goal you never intend to reach.

If I could be my idealized self, I would be able to shoot fucking laser beams from my palms and become the hero of humanity, and probably not waste my time in a therapist's office.

Superman, Goku, and Sarah Palin could fucking suck it.

Today, I went to work to volunteer. Not because I wanted to, but to absolve my own guilt. Or to prove something. I’m not entirely sure. Last weekend was a disaster, and I was in charge. People didn’t do their jobs. Money went missing. Things were placed in the wrong spot, slacked off, boxes unchecked and unpriced. That’s just the top of it. I took responsibility for the things that I knew I did wrong. I didn’t realize at the time, that being in charge meant you took responsibility for other’s mistakes too however.

Needless to say, I was, and am still not pleased. I’m in charge again this weekend. I’m going to make it different.

But today, I went in, and I felt the strongest, most clear signal I’ve had in a job. No fuzziness. No confusion. I wanted to quit. I wanted to never, ever work there again. Not because I was inadequate, because I’m not, but because I simply didn’t want to put up with the shit anymore. I’m not going to be hardcore-worker-extraordinaire every bloody day. Somedays, I’mma gonna be lazy. I guess the expectations may be getting to me a little.

Still, I couldn’t believe how much I wanted to quit today. It was painful.

Went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicoloured Dreamcoat today though. Very happy with it. It's resparked an interested in live theatre. I think I’m going to stalk actual theatres to see if they’re going to have any plays I’d enjoy going. I wouldn’t mind seeing a real production of anything Andrew Lloyd Webber does. I’d probably pay through the nose for it too.

I need to eat more. Calorie counting is nooot a friend of mine. I’m barely hitting 1000 a day.

Either way, tomorrow will be a good day. Sushi and booze!

Parenthood

I’m very aware right now that I write blogs that don’t have the nicest tunes to them. So for that, I apologize. I think I’m just going to keep writing where I am in life when it comes at me.

No pictures today.

I’m severely divided whether I like therapy or not. I feel better, sometimes, once it’s done. It’s as though I found answers – like someone said just enough to make everything from your past and present click and ignite in some fiery blast of brain chemistry.

Other days, I’m broken.

I hate losing people. I hate being discarded. I didn’t really focus much on it until we started talking about it. This weekend, I asked a friend if I was disposable, because it was… unsettling to me to think that I was. I’ve always wondered what was worth fighting for. What’s worth risking for. Striving. War. What has meaning?

I’ve been the one to fall one broken knees, and turn that hurt into motivation. To strive for improvement. To get stronger. Better. I’ve always wanted to be something unmatchable. Something successful. I’ve wanted to prove, that even though I’ve taken my blows, I could still throw down with the rest of them.

I’ve turned my greatest weaknesses on their heels, just to pull myself out of my hole. Recent months, it’s been harder. Circumstances don’t work in my favour. Sometimes it’s not what’s inside that can be improved. Sometimes it’s external.

I let her know that nothing in my life is bad, persay. Nothing was wrong, and that was the truth. I told her that it felt like I had no passion. I have no motivation, or drive. I’m existing, not living. I can go day-by-day, but it’s without meaning. I told her I didn’t want that to be my life, which is why I came to her in the first place.

She asked me what brought meaning to my life. I didn’t have much to answer with. She wanted to know why. I wrote her a litany.

You don’t get strong from being in a hospital, or broken down. I hated people telling me I’d be alright. I hated hearing that everything would be over soon, and that I’d be healed. I hated it, because it was the most… arrogant, naïve thing a person can say to someone. They had no idea. I told her all of that. I told her you weren’t given the option to be brave. You either develop a headstrong desire to conquer your next challenge, or you give up and die. You don’t get an in-between.

My leg’s gotten a lot worse. I’ll have permanent scarring. I told her that this is something I live with each and every day. I don’t even factor it in when someone asks me how I’m doing anymore. You just get used to it.

She wanted to talk about my childhood, so we did. She wanted to know almost everything there was to figure out. So I answered her bluntly.

She asked me if I loved myself.

I almost laughed at her. I like who I am. Enough so that I’m not the kind to change for others. I said I just wanted to be the best of me.

She brought her hands apart and said that they both represent a scale. The left is me in my peek: the charismatic, the happy, the satisfied. The meaningful side of me. She said that this side is how I think I should be.

She raised her other hand, and said this is me at my worst. She said that I’m not able to handle anything but the best. That I hit depression when I fall from that grace. That I’m dreaming of being that ideal person, and I’m not able to accept that I might not be there.

She said it comes because I don’t know what it’s like to be loved unconditionally.

I cried. I just… had to. Finally. A few tears, here and there, haven’t been what I needed.

She said children who receive love when they’re exhibiting certain traits learn only that they have to be those traits to be loved. She said that it sets a child to expect themselves to be this person if they want to be loved, or accepted. She said that inside, I’m ignoring that part of me that just wants to find that acceptance.

And everything just clicked in my head. One united, brilliant flash. Then nothing.

She said the difference here is that I ignore the voice, and work overtime with my mind to protect myself. I don’t parent myself. I don’t treat myself with that unconditional love, unless I’m hitting that peek. Odd… description.

She said I’m burning myself out. My… child, thing. It’s sitting inside and screaming, because it keeps losing people it’s trying to trust. People that leave. People I make leave. She says that looking for love is fine. She actually was the first person to say I’m not making a mistake in doing so. She complimented me for it. But she said if that’s the only place I find unconditional love, then I will falter as I’ve done. As I do.

She told me that I need to be the parent to my child. I need to provide for myself, the love that I want from others. And… I’ve been confused. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean… but I feel like I’ve lost my urge to fight…

She said I’m pushing myself, to be something I don’t have to be to be loved… and that I need to love myself even when I don’t hit that pinnacle. And I feel like I don’t need to fight. My child cries, and I don’t know how to show it love.

How does one become their own parent?

Gundam Review #1

This was actually the inspiration behind me getting a blog in the first place.

Ooo bubbles.

Two Gundams arrived today, bound by familiar green wrapping paper and scribbles I don't dare to translate. Basically, I got new toys.

First up is called the Strike Noir. It's from a small promo from Gundam SEED. This is my second time buying it now; the first being in AE as a present for my ex, since she gave me one of my own. I let her have them both, but I always missed the Noir. So my little sister got me this.


The Strike Noir has ridiculous flexibility, which is one of the reasons I wanted it again (other than the fact it has little handguns >>). Plus, it's just plain badass.


No, really, it's awesome.

I don't really have much to say for review standards, because I know it's subpar to the Damashii series they're releasing now, and I'm a little tainted from it. But as far as its predecessors go, this thing is very pleasing, especially for armament. If I had to complain, I'd say that you simply can't balance this thing easily. It's very, very top heavy, and takes a lot of manuevering to stand right.

If I had a stand, this toy would be my favourite.

Next is Nadleeh, the "femme" version of Virtue.

I don't really understand why she has white shoes when Virtue has red... or why her penis is bigger than his.

Again, there's not a whole lot I'm able to review here, because I'm very biased due to the new Damashii line. However, I wasn't all too impressed. Actually, in honesty, I was pretty upset with it. It's a neat toy, if you're a collector, or you like to relive the anime scenes. Then it's fine. But if you're like me, and see them as toys to be, y'know, played with, it falls short. The gun is really under-detailed, and doesn't feel like it was made from quality plastic. The suit is also pretty stiff, thus why I've only taken pictures of Nadleeh in one pose. Honestly, she'd either fall over, or fall apart otherwise..

I wanted to make an over-compensator joke here, but I don't think it's valid...

The Virtue's cannons confused me as to why there were added to the toy when I first saw it. Nadleeh uses them for all of 3 seconds in the anime. Now I know why. This is a toy only for people who collect. It falls apart like a house of cards. I grabbed my Virtue and compared, and it's not even the same plastic. And the hair? It does NOT stay on. Whomever says otherwise is lying. Nadleeh fired each piece off from her head when I removed her from her box. I've been wrestling trying to keep them in place, but she's a dyke.

I hate to say that I like the look of the suit more this way.

It's a little disheartening, considering how interesting she was in the anime. The shield is my favourite part, and that frustrates me. I wouldn't recommend personally, unless you intend to shelf her for life, or have a LOT of krazy glue and don't care about the hair.

Without exaggeration, I spent 13 minutes trying to keep the hair on just for this pose, and it's not even that interesting...

Nadleeh does make the Virtue look pretty cool though, so it's worth it for that factor. Hopefully I'll get my hands on a Damashii piece to have some fun with later.

I just wanted to take pictures, lol