April 26-27 The Agony, the Ecstasy, the In-between in 2017

It’s from a good song. Ignore the drama.

I didn’t get as much accomplished as I had hoped. I fooled around too much after getting home rather than getting right to something. I’ve discovered that this is a bad idea, and that when I get home, even if it’s just a matter of taking a dump or getting beaten up, I cannot let plopping down in front of the computer to be the first thing. I think that I’m realizing now that this is a mental trigger for me. I’m used to sitting in front of the computer, and then sitting for long periods of time. Once I start, it’s difficult to stop and change gears without some other thing to trigger another routine. Just like how Grandpa quit smoking by quitting coffee, maybe I’ve got to just find something to do until it’s computer time. Not that it generally needs to ever be computer time, really. I guess that next week, it’ll probably be swimming. Or a bit of cleaning. Or both. Or something.
Eikaiwa was pretty dull. Only four ladies showed up, and two of them got there after the half hour mark. The Thin Mints I brought were pretty successful, which was a nice surprise. Still, there were hardly any people and we barely finished half of the box (I believe that I had two). Then, it was off to laundry and Kitchen Inoue. Dinner was dull, of course, and presumably healthy. I don’t know about the calorie content of the dressing, but there wasn’t much. I wish that I had any clue how much I was eating. Still, the sheer quantity of leafy greens that I get has to count for something, and volume does do wonders to fill one’s stomach.
Finally, I went home, late, and didn’t do exercises. Instead, I took pills and went to bed.
I woke up a bit after midnight in the most excruciating pain that I have been in for quite a long time. It was awful. It felt like bone, muscle, and nerve pain all together, and mixing, dividing, and reforming in the most terrifying ways. There was no way to get comfortable. I’d been in elevated pain all day, which was to be expected (see yesterday’s entry), but nothing prepared me for what I woke up to. According to FitBit, I was awake for three and a half hours. It seems both longer and shorter.
I got up, for good, at around 6:40 this morning. I was shocked. There was almost no pain. I, of course, didn’t have time for a bath this morning (nor did I have one last night), but that was fine. I had a good sit in my chair, and I listened to a lot of music. I’m trying to listen to music rather than listening to political rantings. I’m not sure that those political rants are doing me any good, but I think that maybe the music is. It’s terrifying to see how quickly one can get addicted to having a constant political rage boner. I think it’s time that I calm down.
I had three partial classes today. All with Inori. In two, we talked about Japan’s influence on western art in the Meiji period (my favorite thing to talk about, pretty much ever). In the last, we talked about Japan’s international pop culture impact.
My low pain level lasted through recess, at which time I did my exercises and things got worse. The pain isn’t as bad as it was last night, it’s not as light as it was this morning. It’s in between. But, I can deal with it.
My mood isn’t great today. It’s been slipping a bit, as discussed yesterday, but it’s a bit rocky today. I suppose that this isn’t a fair thing to say as, compared to my default mood prior to my departure to the US, I’m doing pretty darned well. I think that it’s mostly just being very tired, a bit sore, and the fight that I’m fighting off a migraine. I just popped three Advil, so, let’s hope for the best. The weather here has been consistent for the last three days: Sunny mornings, cloudy/scattered showers in the afternoon, rain at night. Not good migraine weather. Well, excellent migraine weather, not good weather for those of us with migraines. But, such is life. Not much that can be done about it. I’m also hungry, I’ll admit it, and the sadistic joy of yesterday didn’t quite fulfill me today as it did yesterday. Though it’s still present. I really see how sleep is so critical to so much of this. I hope that I sleep well tonight.
Tonight will be Higashi’s going away dinner. I’m dreading it from a practical standpoint (diet at a big dinner) and from a personal standpoint: I’m going to miss him. I adore that man, and it’s going to be sad to see him go. However, going to his going away as a slight zombie isn’t really how I want to say goodbye. However, I don’t seem to have much chance. I was hoping that Eitoku Sensei would tell me where the party is so that I could drive (excuse not to drink). I suppose I’d best text him, that way he won’t end up driving me (and therefore inconveniencing himself and making me drink). I also need to remember to bring my seiza stool if it’s a Japanese style restaurant. (Just texted Eitoku.)
I feel very sleepy, and it’s hard to reconcile that with any thoughts or feelings deeper than a desire to sleep. It’s pretty well all consuming. I even kind of want a smoke, but I also realize that it wouldn’t really help this low level of a headache. Also it just really doesn’t sound appealing. I’d do Hookah, but, whenever I stop cigarettes for more than three weeks, I don’t really ever want to go back, unless I’m hit by something which requires nicotine. I need to thank Tris for getting me vape fluid so vile that I didn’t even want to continue with it. I know it wasn’t on purpose, but, it was better than if he’d gotten me good stuff.
A funny story from today: Last year’s 2nd years are, obviously, this year’s 3rd years. As 1st and 2nd years, they were famously terrible. As third years . . . well, Inori keeps a firmer hand on them than Ebihara did, however, they’re still pretty well useless. So: They had to talk about, “Japanese cars are used all over the world,” but, as the kids can barely speak, it came out as, “Japanese girls are used all over the world.” I was giggling so hard that I think that the kids were kind of offended. Everybody noticed. However, it was hilarious, so I can’t regret laughing. In writing this, I realize that it’s a you-had-to-be-there moment. Oh well.
So, yeah. That’s that. Not a great deal to report. I suppose that I’d best study a bit of kanji. Beyond that . . . maybe I’ll read? I think that lessening my dicking-around-on-the-computer time is probably really good for me, though it’s something of an adjustment. The fact that my desk got moved to a place where it’s less of an option is also good for me.
I need to do more to make a Pathfinder character for Tris’ new campaign, but . . . just, nothing sounds good. Nothing at all. I don’t really like the group that I’m in, and I don’t especially want to play, BUT, I can’t quit without at least having a go of it. They want roll playing, I want role playing. But, who knows?
Well, I suppose I’d best finish up. Nothing more to say here, really.

Post Script

Having finished the entry, put my computer away, and finished a section in my Kanji workbook, I remembered something worth sharing, though I wish that I had shared it sooner as it’s lost some detail. (Just interrupted by a very sweet Tateishi asking me about what I’m writing.)

I dreamed that somehow Joel and I had reconnected. Amanda was involved somehow. But she was kind of to the side of affairs. Joel was bigger than he actually is, he seemed honestly semi-heroic. And he was full of a kind of sincerity that I’ve never actually heard him convey. He had waited for me to reconnect, and I’d waited for him. But I was being proud and standoffish. I was still upset with him for some reason or other, or I didn’t trust him, or some such thing. There was a lot going on, and a lot of subtext, and I can’t remember most of it. Which is frustrating, because it was an incredibly VIVID dream. The feelings, the emotions. I think, though I could be wrong, that I dreamed about the dream in subsequent dreams that morning.
Of course I miss Amanda, and of course I wish that she and I could still at least be friends, though I recognize that this won’t happen (though her blocking of me post engagement makes me wonder to what extent there’s still that odd feeling of connection that she and I have. Well, if she can’t beat the odds I’ll get that chance in a few years, at any rate). With Joel, though . . . he’s come up in conversation a few times with Tris and me, I mean, he has to: he was a huge part of our lives. Even when I was back home, mum brought him up. Neither of us especially want to see him. He was just kind of miserable and pathetic through the end of when we knew him, and we didn’t hear anything to give us any more confidence in the guy after our friendship ended. The last I knew, he had to leave when Amanda threw him out for Craigslist escapades revealing previous cheating, and he had to drive up to Michigan. Whereupon, a while later, we heard that he was waiting tables. Apparently he graduated top of his class from the famous radio school near us, but, after not holding on to his first placement, went down to Florida to do remarkably little. It’s not really a promising sounding thing to reconnect with him.
This dream, though, has piqued my interest and curiosity. However, much like Courtney with her Steve outreach, I don’t know how I’d begin. And, moreover, I’m almost entirely certain that this would end badly. I hadn’t felt, or hadn’t realized that I’d felt, conflicting things until very recently. Joel was one of the few people in my past who really felt gone. I spent years not liking him, but tolerating him out of a sense of duty and obligation. Somewhat it was to honor who he had been and who he could have been. It was complicated. I hadn’t trusted him in ages, and I didn’t really respect him. In a way, the fact that he didn’t talk to me after the breakup with Amanda is the only real indication I have that he developed some kind of proto-spine. Telling him that he’d come crawling back to me to fix his life was probably the only inaccurate prediction about him that I ever gave him. Of course, I also ratted him out to Amanda (later did the same to myself, hilariously). That probably didn’t endear me to him. Still, that seems pretty remote, whereas our last argument, the last time we spoke, remains oddly vivid, even if it only seems like a TCM drama that I turned on half way while flipping channels, watched a bit haphazardly, and then gave up on. I remember drinking the mostly empty bottle of vanilla vodka to get myself suitably emotional to deal with it. Oh those days, when I looked for feelings in a bottle, rather than avoiding the bottle for fear of the feelings.
Really, maybe what I feel for and about Joel is a more normal thing than I usually feel about people? He and I were, in reality, only especially close for five years. Nominally close as small children (something we’ve both heard about but don’t especially remember), we didn’t get on too well in our meetings together until we became fast friends during Brigadoon in 2001. By August of 2006, we were done. Yet, those five years were some of the most important in my life. And he was there for so many critical milestones. He was critical in so many of them. I can say, in a lot of ways, that without Joel, there is no Oz. He was the basis for the constructed personality which later became me. Partly because we were so similar. And maybe, that’s why his weaknesses are so disgusting.
In my bizarre, overly associative memory, I get a distinct feeling (and I mean this in a physical sense) when I think about him, and it’s the same feeling that I get when I think of my brother Collin. It’s just a kind of specific aversion in a repulsive way. It’s physically uncomfortable and makes me think of spiders on my skin or nails on a chalkboard. These relationships should be good, and should be salvageable, and should be a lot of things. But they’re not. I told my mother that the reason I won’t acknowledge Collin when I see him is because he’s never once apologized to anybody for the hell he caused us. I seem to remember thinking that I wanted something similar from Joel? But did I? And if I did, what was it? Did my memory just fill in some blanks because of a feeling of some kind of deep betrayal linked the two of them together somehow? I really don’t know.
(On a side note, I kind of want to get tested for synathesia (sp?) as I do tend to get a lot of physical sensations that seem to correlate with emotional or other sensory sensations)
The Joel in my dream, I want to say, does not and cannot exist as he seemed like altogether too good of a man to exist. But, to be honest and fair, I really don’t know that. I don’t know what he became, and I don’t know how I’d find out. I doubt, I sincerely doubt, that he’d care as much about me as I do about him, even though I wasn’t aware that there was anything left until this dream. Even if this is just a temporary fixation brought on by bad weather and a lack of sleep, he’s still somebody who remains oddly important, for a figure I don’t especially ever want to talk to again, and who figures in a lot of my happiest memories. Of course, he’s tied up in the various Amanda sagas, and those sagas will, likely, be among my greatest regrets for as long as I don’t find anybody better. To be frank, I may be able to find somebody better, but we won’t both be 18, idealistic, smart, and growing. So, in that regard, she’d have to be pretty damned special.
As I write this, a lot of the optimism of the last few days is leaving me. This is unfortunate and should be avoided. I’m fairly certain that most of it is just the weather as well as the lack of sleep. The pain is also a factor. Back pain is fine, but when it’s down my hip, or when the nerve pain creeps down my leg, it’s hard to look at things in a pleasant way. I’m trying to remind myself about the mutability of my feelings, and my feelings, and to not judge too much from short periods of time. I’ve got to stay optimistic. It’s imperative for my health. Without optimism, then there’s no point in doing my rehabilitation. And without that, I won’t heal. So . . . staying optimistic is critical.
Related to that, I found myself having a rather interesting discussion with myself yesterday. I wanted to go over my ration of peanut butter M&Ms (I did, at around 1 AM, but that was due to altogether different circumstances). So, I took Scott Adams’ advice: I tried to make myself a deal. I could eat the M&Ms OR I could . . . and then it struck me: There was no little thing that I wanted to do that I didn’t just do. And few big ones. And the big ones that I wanted to do were so out of proportion to the M&Ms that the exercise was just silly. I thought, “Well, you can smoke or you can have M&Ms,” but even I knew that I didn’t really want to do that. Besides, even had I wanted to, that linked in to another deal where if I want to smoke, I have to get the cigarettes from a distant convenience store. So, I tried to think about other things. Pop? More calories than the M&Ms, so a meaningless gesture. Buy that Yukata? Sure, this is reasonable. Don’t eat another ten M&Ms and suddenly you deserve a $50 outfit. Were this the case, I’d make that deal with myself ten times a day. I had nothing that I could reward myself with besides calories. Eventually, as I debated, I ran out of time and had to leave anyway. But I felt bad because I kind of suspected myself of running down the clock, though I realize that this wasn’t my first intention. It just kind of happened, but, reveals something which may or may not be critical: There are no small things which I can obtain (not counting food) or do which I do not already obtain or do as desired. I don’t know whether this means that I’ve made it, to some degree, or whether it means that I’m living a pretty disgusting life. Quite possibly both, as I think about it. I’d like to think about some little things that I can indulge in when I cut deals with myself. This morning, I said that I’d allow myself to have three peanut butter eggs (spread throughout the day) if my weight had gone down, and it had. Now, I’m fairly certain that this is entirely arbitrary, but, I took it. Maybe I offer myself the same deal tomorrow? But this is a pretty limited thing, and it ends when my supply of eggs ends. I need to think of little rewards to give myself. Not big ones, I have those. Little ones. I miss being a kid and having a million dollar toys which seemed to be the most appealing things in the world. Or, it’d be nice if there were a single decent video game in town that I could treat myself with. Or . . . well, anything, really. Again: I can’t go to the Miyanojo Ryokan and get a massage every time I don’t gorge myself. However, there’s not a lot between 100 Yen shop and Miyanojo Ryokan to do around here. There’s the Karaoke box, but that takes a lot more time than I have. What’s a small thing, without calories, to reward myself with? No freaking clue.
The only things that I can think of that I want to do, but can’t/won’t/shouldn’t are vices that are on the chopping block. Replacing one thing with something else equally as bad isn’t progress. For instance, I just thought, “What about afternoon internet time?” Well, that makes me feel worse when I do it, and I need to cut it out. That’s a pretty nonsensical reward.
Also, as full disclosure, I’ve been on my cell phone after lunch using internet, but it’s for chat programs as I work out the details of my schedule. I figure that’s fine, but wanted to include that as a note indicating that it’s pretty reasonable.
The case of the late night M&Ms. . .
I was bothered by the fact that I ate the rest of the bag (about 15 M&Ms) last night as I went downstairs to get water to take pills to help me to deal with the agony. Slip ups are going to happen, they happen to us all, and it certainly was a moment of weakness. I feel more as though I should be bothered by it (feel, you’ll note; I don’t think that I should be bothered by it) than I am. I just have to be careful. To that end, even though my breakfasts could be healthier (breakfast bar and yogurt), I refuse to keep any food in my house (beyond the stuff that I was sent back with; can’t get rid of that). Temptation is a thing, and I could see myself, in a painful moment, eating fruits and vegetables until I vomited a smoothie. However, this is Adams style thinking again: In the short term, I’m not doing something which is optimal, but, by refusing to eat anything but what’s determined for me, I save in the long term. So, breakfast is identical, lunch is identical (5x a week) and dinner is identical (5 or 6x a week). Or, at least, lunch and dinner are determined by people whom I cannot control. Though Kitchen Inoue is giving me healthier food and I’m fighting harder and harder to get smaller and smaller portions of school lunch. Saturdays will remain tricky. I think that I can satisfy myself with breakfast and dinner (hopefully I can skip lunch), and my general plan for Sunday is to go out to Rara once, eat there, and thus get all of my calories for the day. Though, seeing as I don’t plan on moving much on most Sundays, it still may be a net loss. I’ll have to see.
I also read a very interesting thing in Slate Star Codex: When body weight drops below a certain point, people become insufferable foodies. This may explain Rachael.
I feel as though there’s more I want to say, and, possibly, more to say. It’s been so long since I’ve written that this all feels very good. I also still have thirty minutes to kill and have a headache sufficient to preclude me from doing much of value. I did my requisite “Kanji thing” for the day, though it wasn’t much. It was still something, and that’s the deal that I made, and I’ll hold myself to it. Oh, that’s an interesting thought:

Looking back, maybe I did a lot of my best thinking when I was dealing with things dualistically? Whether it was body/mind, or emotion/reason, or person/person, or personality/personality, I tend to have an easy time viewing things in terms of a dichotomous rivalry. I’m starting to refer to myself as more distinctly two these days, and I wonder, to what extent, it’s good. It seems to be useful, but I remember that in the past there were consequences. I’m also relatively certain that, philosophically, it’s not a reasonable position to keep up. Still, it’s probably something worth noting in here.
On the one hand, I’m glad for my readers, and this diary is, to a small extent, theirs as well as mine. At other times, I wish for more readers and a kind of collaborative experience/experiment dealing with my life. Other times, I wish that I were writing this entirely to, for, and by myself. They all have advantages, and I can’t seem to work out which is best. Probably things as they are. If I were young, it’d be an altogether different thing to have lots of people reading about my life. They used to. Tolstoy-like, I’d force potential girls in my life to read my diary. Looking back, this was a disaster. However, this connects to another thing which has been on my mind.

I seem to suffer from the dualistic problem of wanting some kind of resurrection of my old, happy, Starlight days, but, at the same time, there’s a desire for something altogether new and different. Especially where women are concerned. Sometimes, I think that the notion of wife husbandry may not be so bad. I think that Courtney has opined, a few times, that I should just find somebody young and impressionable and train them to be my perfect wife.
There’s something in being young. In being dumb. This has caught my attention: When we were growing up, we didn’t have answers. We didn’t know. We couldn’t look things up. On the car ride back from Quaker Meadow, as we listened to Queen, we wondered whether or not the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody, at the end, were actually referring to Freddy’s death. Of course, none of us knew (and none of us could look up) that the song was a decade and a half removed from that eventuality. We didn’t know things, and we relied on what we heard. And we experienced, and we explored, and we groped, and we moved forward. We learned, bit by agonizing bit, and we argued and we fought and we tracked down rare and beautiful people who actually knew things. There was great beauty in it. And relationships, when you’re young, can be like that too. Was Amanda truly so special, or was I bound to discover, with any relatively clever eighteen year old, what I discovered when she and I were eighteen? Would Rachael have been Rachael had I been two years old or younger? I miss the trembling caress of a first kiss. I miss the electric tension of removing the shirt of someone who can still count the number of times it’s been done. I miss the shared joy of the time when you can walk in on them, naked, and there is a profound sense of, “I feel comfortable like this. Around you.” when that still means something, and then she stretches out like a cat in the sun and sleeps to show you the depth of trust and relaxation. I used to want firsts, and I suppose that I’ve had a lot of them. I don’t need firsts anymore, but I’d like something to mean something. My last few physical relationships have been disastrous. Also relatively meaningless. Even the brief reunion with Amber was more about finishing something that I was pretty sure was doomed than any actual belief that I’d keep things moving forward. My awkward teenage fumbling, such as it was, mostly ended up Lee’s problem. Maybe there’s something about a girl at that age (at least, in that era) that gives them the perfect blend of experience and significance. Maybe that’s why my memories with Amanda are so special. It was a discovery, every day a discovery, and every new ounce of comfort was something shockingly sweet. Similar with Rachael. Everything has its season. Maybe I’m looking for spring flowers in autumn.
So, what do I need to do? I need to try to hang onto this sense of optimism. I need to believe that there’s something more than what I’ve had. That there’s something beyond it. Just what it could be, I don’t know. But the old things which made me happy are not likely coming back. I have to find new ones. I can cherish the past, and this kind of reminiscent has felt more sweet than painful, will feel sweeter and more beautiful with each recalling. But I’ll be content to leave it as a memory.
I wish, I desperately wish, that I could relive my life a thousand times, to try the decisions I didn’t make. Removing Lee’s towel. Removing the bra of the girl in her cheap teenage kimono. Letting Evangeline go. Kissing Sarah that evening I should have. Staying in Japan. Telling Rachael how I felt. I wish that I could do that, but, if I did, surely after a thousand times things would lose their meaning. Surely after one visit, things would lose their meaning. We can’t keep the emotional intensity and purity which comes from these new and life altering experiences if they are the mere living fantasies of time traveling dilettantes. I’ll never see Lee out of that dress, or that towel. The bra stays on the kimono girl. Amanda is gone forever. Rachael will never hear what I feel when it could have done something. Sarah has kissed a good many boys, but never me. And that’s why these memories have meaning. Even if it’s only to me. Even if, ten thousand years from now, nobody remembers any of this, but by some chance these words are preserved, that moment will last longer than any of us because it meant something. Even if its meaning was caused by a tangible, and gut wrenching, nothing.
I have to imagine that there’s still more of me, and more of the world, to discover. I have to cling to the notion that there are joys and sweetnesses yet untasted. I have to believe that somewhere, there is something that will make me feel complete, even if that something is nothing. I have to believe that there are experiences in the future which will make everything quaint, happy, distant thoughts. Otherwise, what’s the point? And, you know, this may be the case. Who can say that it isn’t? I don’t know.
Part of this is connected to my notion of parenthood. Are so many people unhappy, aimless, and drifting because they have no children? Obviously children won’t solve this for many, but, for some it could. Possibly. And for those whose lives are ruined by children, maybe they weren’t ready to give a child its due. Maybe life progresses. From the fumbling teenager to the sprawled twenty something to the jaded thirty something to the smiling parent, re experiencing long forgotten joy in the eyes of a child. Or maybe there is, within me, something of such brilliant value that, if I dig deep enough, I will be able to live on it for the rest of my days. I don’t know and I can’t say. It’s an idea, and it’s worth thinking about.
I am fairly certain, as I think on this, that my level of malnutrition may have something to do with the nearly religiously ecstatic state in which I find myself typing so much. Be that the case, then good. Maybe it’s artificial. I don’t know if that means anything. However, this means something. And though as I wrote that, I hesitated and nearly deleted it (so scared was I of declaring ANYTHING to have meaning), it does. It does because it must.
And so we go forward.