Lianhua
Countless times I’ve sat at this screen, trying to figure out what I have to say to the world.
Honestly, the last few months have been a complete whirlwind. So many things, good and bad, have happened; I don’t really know where to begin.
My company is no longer a startup, we were acquired and so now I’m working for a big company again — I don’t know how I feel about that just yet.
I went to China with my ex’s mom and sister, which was fun but also sad because it shows how much Miana is growing up.
Derek and I are still together, still in San Francisco, still pretty happy.
The major part of why we’re not completely happy is mostly because of my anxiety, which has come back with a vengeance. It actually started coming back toward the end of last year, but lately it’s gotten a lot worse. I’m seeing my doctor two times a week, which feels honestly like a complete failure to function, but I know it’s for the best. I’m also back on medication (Prozac), which feels even more like a failure, but my doctor has assured me that it’s only temporary. She tells me she knows I can get better and that she’s going to be there to help me. And I’m trying very hard to believe her.
It’s hard to write about this sort of thing. There are some very deep emotions that are coming up during my sessions, and I know if I were to write honestly and openly about them some people would end up getting offended or angry, and right now I don’t think I’m strong enough to deal with that sort of backlash.
The biggest problem, of course, is that I’ve somehow convinced myself, throughout the past twenty-five years, that I only exist as a representation of what other people think of me. If someone thinks I’m stupid, annoying, ugly, etc, then obviously I am, because I can’t summon up any sort of argument against it. I am only the sum of everyone else’s thoughts — from the people I’m closest to, my friends, my family, Derek, to the people I never see again, the people on the bus, the barista at Starbucks, the tourists on the cable car. I am what you all have made me. But I’m not happy about it.
I’m not happy with this existence at all. My anxiety is ever-present and overwhelming. Even simple things like commuting to work are full of worry, doubt, fear. I overanalyze and overthink quite literally everything. Even right now I’m worrying that people will think I’m out of my mind or less of a person when they read this entry, that they’ll slowly distance themselves from that crazy girl who writes her deepest, innermost thoughts and discusses her anxiety disorder and chronic depression publicly on her blog.
But I can’t give in to those worries, I have to keep telling myself that. I can’t say with certainty that anyone is going to read my blog after this. I can’t say with certainty that anyone is going to stick with me at all through this whole process. And somehow I have to be okay with that uncertainty. I know that’s what I have to do, but saying and doing are two entirely different things for me.
I call it The Disconnect. It exists as a wedge between what I know to be true or logical, and what I feel. A great example of this: my looks. I know I’m fairly conventionally attractive — I have an hourglass figure, I’m not overweight by any means, and I look generally healthy. But I don’t feel attractive. I sometimes even blatantly gawk at the fact that Derek, who I find exceptionally attractive, could possibly find me even merely cute, let alone “beautiful.” He tells me pretty often that I am, but somehow I just can’t feel it, I just can’t believe it. Sure, there are moments when I do feel pretty good about the way I look, but those are anomalies to me; they’re not the norm. And no amount of people telling me otherwise is going to help that, honestly. I have to find a bridge over The Disconnect, or a zip tie I can use to cinch the two sides together.
So there’s both of those. The feeling that I’m nothing but how others perceive me, and the disbelief that anyone could possibly see me in a positive way. It’s frustrating and disabling, and I’m tired of it, but I don’t know how to fix it.
That’s where I am right now. I know there’s something wrong here, and I’ve taken the first steps to try to fix it. But it’s going to be a very long process, it seems. (And why shouldn’t it be? It took 25 years for all of this to add up, I can’t just expect it to disappear in 25 sessions, right?) And that uncertainty probably bothers me most of all — I’m stuck worrying even more. Is the medication working? Am I getting better? Am I going to be on medication forever? What if I want to have children someday? What if I’m just overthinking all of this? (That one is terrifying.)
But I’m working on it. It’s going to get better. I’m going to keep telling myself that.
Photos from this post taken at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. More can be seen on my Flickr.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
From Desiderata, Max Ehrmann, 1927.
My grandmother introduced me to this poem (read the full text at the link above) a few days ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
So, first off, things with the neighbor came to a head. I was trying to get to sleep on a Tuesday night and she was talking on the phone – with the phone on speaker – so I knocked on her door. When she didn’t answer, I knocked on the floor. She finally yelled up at me and I went down to explain what was going on. Unfortunately, she was completely unreasonable and yelled at me, so I ended up calling the apartment manager at 1 in the morning, completely hysterical and upset, but she was really nice about it and called the neighbor right away. She also sent a letter outlining the law – which says that sustained, loud noises that can be heard outside of the apartment are not permitted between 10pm and 7am. And since then… we haven’t really heard anything out of her. I’m still a little on edge that she might retaliate, but the manager has explained that she’ll be evicted if she does, and Derek has pointed out that there’s nothing she can do about normal noises that we make between 7am and 10pm, so I’m calming down. It’s just hard dealing with people who are completely and utterly unreasonable. (For example: She complained that she could hear us walking around and any time we drop something on our hardwood floors… uh… duh? We’re not stomping around or making noise after 10pm or anything, so she has no leg to stand on!)
AAAANYWAY… In more happy news, Derek and I spent this past weekend in Napa with his brother and parents. We went to a couple of wineries for wine tasting and had a lot of delicious food. And I took lots of photos!
One of the wineries we went to was Rubicon, which is owned by Francis Ford Coppola, one of Derek’s favorite directors. It was a gorgeous winery and we had a really great time there. The vistas are spectacular.
Afterwards, we had dinner at Auberge du Soleil. It, too, was gorgeous.
And we ended the day with a gorgeous sunset over the Napa Valley.
We can’t wait to go back – maybe just me and Derek this next time ;) – and try more of the great wines and explore more of the beautiful area. :)
This year has gotten off to an exhausting start.
For starters, Derek is down in Los Angeles visiting his friends and his parents, so since about mid-day Saturday I’ve had to entertain myself. This is exceptionally hard to do when it’s rainy and grey and cold outside. I want to out and take photos, but they come out awful because there’s no sunlight to bring out the contrast and color.
Add to that the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well (in part due to his absence) and you have a very exhausted Jess.
I’ve been doing very well with my resolution to take more photos, as my Flickr photostream can attest. And, since you can see three blog entries within the past week, I think I’m doing pretty good with that resolution, too. Tomorrow is my first yoga class, which I’m hoping will go pretty well, and that takes my “good resolution” tally up to three of five.
It’s the other two that are difficult. You know the “being happy” and “cutting out negativity” ones.
The problem with being happy is that I feel like I haven’t quite settled into my place yet in San Francisco. I’ve got the routine down, I’m doing well at my job and everything, but I feel pretty isolated sometimes. In LA, for quite a while, I was working pretty hard at making myself get out of the house, spend time with friends, be independent and have a life outside of my apartment and my relationship (since those were my prison during my last relationship, honestly). Now, up here, I’m finding myself feeling very lonely. I have a few friends that I very much enjoy spending time with, but they live outside the city, and it takes them quite a bit of time and money to get into the city to hang out (and vice-versa). Even more, I feel awful if I ask them to come into the city too often. I’m going to yoga tomorrow and a photography meetup on Wednesday, so hopefully that will help a bit, but at the moment it’s definitely preventing me from truly being happy. I can go out on my own, sure – I went all around Market Street last Thursday taking photos, even – but it’s very lonely doing that, especially when the weather turns and I find myself sitting in a coffee shop with no one to share in my lament.
Cutting out negativity should be easier, since it’s all under my control for the most part… but I keep finding myself in situations that just make me feel frustrated. Take, for example, our downstairs neighbors. I expect neighbors to make some noise, it’s inevitable, especially in an old apartment building in the city. These neighbors, however, have very loud sex in the middle of the night, usually on nights when I have to wake up early and random weeknights, and for hours on end (literally 3-4 hours). The first couple times, we laughed it off. But then it happened several nights in a row, then again on a night when I had to get up early to go in to work early and then AGAIN on a night when I had to get up even earlier to catch a flight down to LA. I was furious, so I called the building manager, who sent them a letter telling them to keep it down. It hasn’t happened quite as loudly since then, but every once in a while I can still hear them, or they’ll get loud for a few minutes. Or one of them will talk very loudly on her cell phone, which she has on speaker. Or they’ll get high or drunk and giggle. Or they’ll leave their new puppy home alone and he’ll whine all day. It’s really annoying, and I don’t know how to escape it. If they are loud for more than 5-10 minutes, I knock on the floor, and they generally shut up, but I’m getting tired of having to deal with it at all. And if that weren’t enough to get me feeling pretty negative, I don’t know if we can afford to move anywhere better when our lease is up in April. And that just opens up a new can of worms.
Is it possible to cut out negativity when it’s literally coming up from beneath your feet? And is it possible to be happy when you’re lonely?
I think I’m ready to take this year on.
I’m ready to take bits and pieces, minute parts of reality (see quote, above), and turn them into digital (and sometimes printed) records that I can share with the world.
As part of my resolution to take more photos in 2011, I decided to join Project 365, as well as Sara’s Flickr group for the project, 24-7 of 2011.
Hopefully, being a part of these will help me to continue with the project and really thrive with them.
I’ve also, more just for fun, started a Posterous blog for my daily Instagram shots called “the daily jess.” At the moment, my biggest problem on that blog is that I keep posting TWO photos a day instead of just one. And one of my photos was a Photo Booth photo, which doesn’t count at all. :P Focus, Jess!
Have you taken any early steps to get on track for your New Year’s resolutions? Do share! :B
