On love.

Someone on the INTP list* asks:

If Life is like a box of chocolates, what is love like?

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Tic Tacs

Upon further reflection, I'd have to say sometimes TicTac, sometimes Pez.

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Love is like a wharf rat in a mist that smells of an old olive drab canvas tarp, the rat sliding through the midnight shadow of your life, part of a baby bird which fell from the eave of a warehouse on the pier clutched in its teeth.

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A sack of potatoes?

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Love is like a lit matchstick.

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Love is a box of chocolates filled with little un-pinned grenades.

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Love is like drinking a creamy refreshing milkshake through your nostrils.

Love is like swimming in a lake and then feeling something touch your leg.

Love is like buying a stock and then watching it drop down to zero.

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Love is like the ebola virus: at first you feel hot and dizzy and have to lie down. Then you have trouble breathing, your kidneys shut down, and blood pours out of various orifices.

Okay, so I'm not a poet.

A fairly large segment of the population claims to have experienced what they call love, but sometimes I wonder if most of them just had a touch of indigestion and mistook it for love, or if they are so cowed by the frequent mention of love in our popular culture that they have convinced themselves they must have been in love once, or will be soon - it's a given. Having never been in love to the best of my knowledge, I am skeptical that there is such a thing. When you ask others who say they have fallen in love what it is like, all they can do is come up with flaky metaphors. I am not convinced.

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Someone you can be quiet with.

Next: someone you can be quiet with over the phone.

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* if one of these quotes is yours and you want me to put your name with it or remove it, drop me a line.

In the words of the immortal AJ: I want to be a conformist when I grow up.

Why is it that everyone assumes that what you wanted to do when you were young is what would make you happy? How many people really have the faintest clue as to what they even like and don't like in their teens or twenties? So maybe you wanted to be a wandering minstrel growing up, and maybe you never got around to it because you couldn't sing to save your life and you didn't like going from place to place or you were too damn lazy to look the word "minstrel" up in the dictionary. Oh horrors! Maybe you lived your life anyway and did what everyone else did, and went to parties and school and got a job and a wife and kids and a house in the suburbs, where, contrary to what the United Nonconformists of this world and rabid American Beauty fans will declare in unison any chance you give them, some people are happy without having the life sucked out of their souls. And maybe, God help us, you're one of those people, poor you with your house and your job and your family and your routines and meals and outings, and still dperfectly happy to just fit in. You'll never be alternative enough, you'll never master cool, who gives a shit? Stop whining and making yourself feel vaguely guilty for something you've never wanted. Stop making excuses. Maybe you have just what you want.

Maybe it's all you need.

[the length of my sentences is inversely proportional to the amount of sleep I've had]

So, rheumatoid arthritis it is. I was really depressed over it the day I was told--like I said, I knew it was coming, but hearing it made it much too real. It felt so strange sitting at the Dr's office and listening to him talk about dealing with this not for a month or two or for a year or two, but for a decade or two. I spent the rest of the day moping around the house and then met up with CJ, who did a good job of cheering me up. So, that's that; I was given some medication and am supposed to go back in a couple of weeks to talk about more long-term treatment.

As is always the case when I don't want something to be real, I put getting the medication off for five days and was in a lot of pain and discomfort, which was, of course, just fine by me. I don't know whether I take pleasure in making myself feel like shit or simply don't care. Whatever it was, after a few days of feeling sorry for myself, I finally went and got it, motivated in no small way by people asking whether it was helping and RF getting quite annoyed at me after realizing I still hadn't gotten my prescription filled. I was able to bend my knees without much pain last night, and this morning I tripped all over myself hopping down CJ's stairs.

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I feel like I'm running out of things to talk to my therapist about, not because suddenly everything's good, but because I don't feel so confused about everything. Like everything else in my life though, I can't just leave this alone; I wonder if this is a temporary high brought on by not being in so much pain and having CJ around, and if it isn't, how will I fill my days without being always confused and in pain and making plans to kill myself? What happens if all I was was my problems, what happens if I'm but a brittle and empty shell without them?

What happens if, all of a sudden, I'm happy?