Suicide Dreams - It's Not What You Think

Last night, I had a dream I self-euthanized with the assistance of a medical professional. In my dream, I was in my father’s old house in Ukiah, California - only everything was white and sterile like a hospital.

There was something wrong with me. I had no idea what it was except for the generic sense that there was very little hope. Society had come out with a euthanasia pill for human beings and it had become common for people in my situation to take it.

I was just doing what was normal - what the doctors had told me to do and given me a perscription for. I had the pill and it was a big chalky horse pill looking thing that was white and flat. It kind of reminded me of the little water chestnuts in Chinese food, or a communion disk/cracker. (I'm not Catholic.)

Zy (my husband) and Francis (one of our mutual friends) were there; I'm guessing because they're the people I turn to when I'm in need of non-biased advice or support. Their presense was kind of comforting. Neither said a word though. Zy was standing in front of me looking at me while Francis was standing off to my right.

I was scared, but only the kind of scared you get before a shot. It frightens me now how I was treating it like ripping off a band aid then. I closed my eyes and thought, in my head, "do it; get it over with, just do it. Doitdoitdoitnow!" Then, like jumping out of an airplane, I took it. Once I took it, I became aware of the fact that I had just taken a pill chemically designed to cause the human body to die and the passive fear became consuming panic. I told Zy it was a mistake, I didn't want to give up on my life. So what if there was "no hope"- it seemed like ending it myself was the truly hopeless response.

I ran in the bathroom and caught my reflection in the mirror and my eyes were dilated all weird and I freaked out and tried to make myself throw up. I thought that if I could get most of it up, maybe I'd just get sick and go to the hospital and not actually die, but my throat was all dry and I couldn't make myself gag. I knelt by the toilet trying so hard to get my fingers down my throat, but my throat was closing around my fingers because there was no moisture and nothing happened. I started thinking, "oh god, oh my god this is real,” over and over with this mind shattering mentality of acknowledgement towards what was happening in what I can only describe as a traumatic response to shock. I was completely shocked that I’d actually put myself in this situation and traumatized by the fact that I was about to sit around and wait to die and I had no idea how long it would take or if it would hurt.

I woke up in a start and had no idea where I was for a second. Once I recognized my bedroom and the fact that I was in bed I realized it was a dream and there was just this amazing sensation of relief.

Zy has been sleeping on the floor for a week because his back is out and he blames our mattress. I can't afford to buy a new bed this month so we're going to try the chiropractor when I get paid instead. I crawled down there to wake him up because I needed him. He asked what was wrong and I told him what I'd drempt about. He said I was dead; this was the afterlife created by my consciousness. Then he hugged me. He can be a punk sometimes, but I love him.

I was still kind of disoriented, so I actually had to wonder for a second, but when my brain got a little less fuzzy and I sighed and told him “eh… this isn’t so bad” and went back to sleep.

Almost Fired: People Say Funny Things When They're On The Chopping Block...

Holy Anxiety Attack Batman!

I've complained several times over the past year and a half of the shady business that goes on towards customers at my current place of employment. I've felt genuinely bad for even staying on, considering some of the business ethics around here... I stay because I can't handle working retail along side full time classes right now, and in this rural area / college town, that's all undergraduates can usually get - retail.

A few months back, I had a customer call and tell me that someone from my office had cursed at her (actually used vulgar language) during a service call and she wanted to make a complaint. When she gave me the date and time, and a brief description of the voice, it turned out to be my boss! Great...

Sadly, I wasn't surprised; my boss is highly abrasive and says inappropriate things all the time, such as dropping F bombs and insults at employees (myself included) on a regular basis. I'm just recovering from a bout of enflamed eczema and the doctor at Open Door Clinic asked me if I was under any unusual stress. Hah...

So I did something controversial and flat out told the customer "You need to call corporate because that is completely unacceptable, but we are a licensee and honestly nothing is going to get done; the complaint will end here."

It did not occur to me that this person was dim enough to call back several months later (yesterday) and rub said bosses nose in it, with me being the only other female employee on staff (besides the boss) so "the other girl" is pretty descriptive in this case. Busted.

So I get to work and have a letter saying my betrayal is grounds for termination - um... no it's not, unless someone wants a lawsuit - but knowing that California is an "At-Will-Employment" state there are >9000 other things she could suddenly decide to let me go for, the most generic being "unsatisfactory performance." Stabbing your boss in the back with the corporate dagger is unsatisfactory performance, right?

Regardless, the illusion of trust is shattered and now she knows how I feel, and I'm about to get fired... Since I was 99% sure my ass wasabout to be unemployed, when she calls me in her office and asked "WTF?!" I sighed and folded my arms and told her what my husband has been telling me for the duration of my employment I should:I told her her that sometimes she is -very- harsh, and some of the words she uses -are- inappropriate and sometimes she downright mocks me, and it is not acceptable. I told her that when she lapsed her medication a few weeks ago she became a completely different person - one who was pleasant, civil a pleasure to work with and she really should get it checked out. I took a breath and told her that while I did not intend for my actions to be a malicious act of betrayal, and I was sorry for upsetting her, I did not feel I'd done anything wrong; in fact I felt that because she is so harsh with everyone here but there is no one here to check her, it needed to be done.

Shockingly... I am not fired. I’m not sure what happened, really, but she seems to want me to stay until the New Year, as I had already told her I was moving at that point anyway.

OMG I'm actually doing it...

*Deep Breaths*

... I'm selling my hair. Omg!

http://thehairtrader.com/viewlisting.asp?lid=259995

Holy Crap It's Clean?!

Ruby has been in Mendocino this week visiting her family, and when she left the cleaning bugs crawled out from under the couch and bit me in the ass. I always clean when no one is around to see my "process"... what a funny habit.

The FRIDGE is clean... as well as that space above the fridge. It's weird looking over there and seeing it. I accidentally destroyed one of Ruby's naruto pictures doing so - luckily I was able to find the exact same one online and print it out in color to replace it. I used the highest quality my printer can handle and, honestly, I think the new one is nicer.

I will post pictures of the clean apartment later, as the image belongs in a museum somewhere.

Apartments + No Solicitation - Posted Rules = Fail

Something is not right here...

My multiple run ins with the local Jehovas Witnesses and Latter Day Saints had lead me to put up a "No Solicitors" sign, despite the fact that our apartment complex has banned solicitation, because there are no signs posted to that effect and so they keep doing it anyway.

The other day, the apartment manager stopped by to fix a light fixture and informed me that we're not allowed to post signs, as there are rules to prevent us from needing them. That's nice, Alex, but how are they supposed to know unless there's a sign? There's no sign in the office window, there's no sign on the front of the complex, there's no sign out by the address post, nor are then signs on the fences, stairs, lawns, or anywhere else. How are they supposed to know that solicitation has been banned? Really, I want to know.

The way this system is set up, the only way they can possibly know, is if they solicit, and someone answers the door and tries to plow through their pitch to inform them of the rules. It defeats the point.

Why can't I avoid the whole thing by putting up a little sign? The complex having rules that only tennants and repeat offenders know about is almost as bad as not having those rules at all. If we don't communicate, how do we expect people to cooperate?


As for the sales people that visit me, if they look like normal people I tend to answer - for all I know it could be a neighbor needing help with something or a friend of my room mates, right?

And so just now someone knocked, and when I looked through the peephole it was this cute guy in casual clothes, so I assumed it was a neighbor and I answered. He introduced himself, made jokes, said he just wanted to get to know all the nighbors, then asked me if I'd vote for him... I'm thinking he's running for student councel (college town) or city councle, so I agree to listen.

Turns out he's just in a contest where he has to sell $45 magazine subscriptions and get calls from his customers praising him to win $1000 and some stupid cruise...

The cherry on top is that as part of his sales pitch he told me there's 50 other people in the contest who will likely drop by after him and if I bought a subscription I'd get a magnet to put on my door to let them know he'd already got me and they aren't allowed to bother me. Since I didn't buy one, every god damn one of them is gonna try to pull this song and dance, apparently.

It's almost like a war tactic...

How Would You Describe Me?

OMGz, Identity Crisis!!

Just for fun, as an exercise in self exploration through the perspective of others...

How would you describe me in two-five short paragraphs?

• Can you sum me up as a person?
• What characteristics stand out (or even sometimes glair)?
• What do you find most valuable as a friend, or just in general?
• What do you think my best/worst features are?
• What are my biggest setbacks/redemptions?
• What movie/folklore archetype would you label me as?*
• In D&D what class, race, and alignment would you use to RP as me in a fantasy setting?**

* ** Oh, Pleaaaaaase... I really want to know! <3

This is NOT some silly survey I got from MySpace or chain mail. I’m doing this myself just for fun, because with all the changes in my life right now I’m wondering how everyone else sees me as a person. I really, really appreciate everyone’s heartfelt and thoughtful responses. Thanks so much!

Vata, Minvashi...

When someone becomes lost, it is rare that they have choices as safe as the ones Zy and I are currently facing. Because my own perspective on the issues at hand are too close to the issue to allow me to face them rationally, I've been turning to the wisdom of others lately.

I have a favorite author; Morgan Howell (aka William Hubbell). He wrote Queen of the Orcs and A Girl Worth Ten Coppers - books I was unable to put down until they were done, and as much of a book worm and fiction lover as I am that's still saying something. Quite a lot of something, actually.

If you haven't read Royal Destany (Queen of the Orcs Book 3) this is going to be a spoiler, so back away from the blog...

Dar, or Dargu, the human woman who is adopted into Orcish society despite being a member of the filthy, vicious, dishonest human race, is able to do so because one orc, Koovak-mah, decides to give her a chance.

Through the first book, they build a bond. By the second book, they fall deeply in love despite their racial differences. In the third book, they are forbidden to be together although the chance that Koovak's mother may change her mind if Dar prooves herself worthy is part of the force the drives her to truely learn to be an orc. However, by learning to be an orc Dar learns to accept orcish tradition, and so in the end, when she has to become "thwada" to save the entire clan, she truely accepts what that means and honors it's consequences.

Thwada means "untouchable" and the kind of thwada Dar must become means that she is dead to the orcs, despite being very much still alive. Because of what she did for them all, being thwada makes her a "beloved memory" and an "honored ghost"... but it also means that no member of her clan may ever speak to her, acknowledge her presense, or even look her in the eye and so, she can never be with Koovak-mah.

Koovak-mah, however, is willing to defy tradition and run away with her, but Dar was Muth Mauk of her clan (One Mother/Queen) by the will of Muth La (Mother of All / God) and so she heartbreakingly tells him no, and to leave her because one should not speak to the dead.

At the advice of her adoptive orcish cousen, Zna Yat, she turns to a human man who loved her since the first book, but who's affection she had not returned because she was in love with Koovak, and it is indicated in the epilogue that they buy the farm he always wanted together and have daughters.

I emailed the writer, who I'd conversed with before, to ask him if Dar had settled for support instead of love, as women in midevil times sometimes had to do. He assured me in his own words that she did NOT; that she and Sevren did, in fact, end up truely loving eachother and finding happiness.

What he told me, that really struck me, and I think applies now to my personal life is this:

"I'm also convinced that Dar achieved happiness with Sevren. Kovok-mah was her first love, but it seems to me that often a first love's "job" is the teach you how to love. I believe that was Kovak-mah's lasting gift to Dar. Needless to say, she didn't end up as a Haus Frau. " - William Hubbell, Apr 29, 2009

With the trouble that Zyphre and I are currently facing, I remembered that email and realized that Zy was my first real everything. He was my first kiss, my first "time", the first boyfriend I lived together with, the longest standing relationship I've ever had (7 years this summer) and absolutely my first love.

Now that he's telling me we were too young, and that he feels like there's something he's missing out on that he won't ever be able to be happy without attempting to find on his own, my heart is breaking, but I wonder if it's right for us to just let each other go like that.

I don't want it to be, I love him so much, but thinking of it like that; him being my first love and his job being to prepare me for true love, it makes things sting a little less. I don't know. I really don't know how to feel.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a harsh phycotherapist who many say is much too tough on her listeners and patents. When defending this meathod of tough-love, she quoted Dr. Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University: “…when we get bad news, we weep for a while, and then get busy making the best of it. We change our behavior; we change our attitudes. We raise our consciousness and lower our standards. We find our bootstraps and tug. But we can’t come to terms with circumstances whose terms we don’t yet know.”