It's been awhile...

It's been awhile since I last wrote.

Let's see, nothing has so much changed as it has just felt different.
The High Holy Days are coming up and I am very nervous about it all.  A coworker is taking me with her for Wednesday night services, but that doesn't alleviate the nervousness I have.  I feel out-of-sort.  Reconciling oneself with all of their misgivings and achievements, merits and sins, for the last year is rough.  Realizing you've been a dick to someone and you really need to apologize, because God will not forgive for wrongs against another unless they are made right with that person first, and trying to remind yourself of things you have done right is not an easy task.  I am not a particularly confident person, so saying I did something good or right or graciously is not my strong suit.  Not to mention, I have a plethora of tattoos and traditional Jews just don't really appreciate that.  There's no covering the one on my wrist completely (the silhouette of a feather), so I have to resolve to myself that these are part of who I am and if others do not like them that is their right and prerogative and it is not a reflection of me.  Crystal, pay attention (yes, I am lecturing myself), their disapproval of your personal expressions ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF YOU.

Another tough thing about this time of year is my faith being on display.  Taking time off of work for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (if applicable, but not this year, thankfully) is something I am squeamish about.  I don't like to discuss my faith with people I am not really, really close with.  I always then have to answer the inevitable question of "why is your rabbi in California?"

My rabbi is in California and I am in Oregon because when I began this process 18 months ago, I was travelling all over the west coast.  I conducted sessions with my rabbi from hotel rooms in Washington numerous times.  I did a session from a hotel room in east Oregon once, too.  I would not have been able to conform to the schedule a typical conversion program would require of me.  Thus, I have my rabbi in California and we meet on the phone, or we can video chat, or what have you.  It was the ideal set up when I was never home for more than three consecutive days and the dog and I were travelling so often.  I think I have received an amazing conversion program from my rabbi, coupled with counseling and character development that I don't think I'd have received from a typical program.  My experience has been more than meaningful and has never been half-assed.  My rabbi is amazing and appreciates my situation and the situation being a Marine wife put me in during the deployment/mobilization period. 

I have been given instruction to journal over the next two weeks (two weeks from today being Yom Kippur), so I guess this is a good avenue for such.  Today, I feel pensive and analytical.  I don't know that it's much different from how I normally am, but it is at a deeper level.  Righting wrongs and asking for forgiveness is not a simple task, as I am learning.  I don't remember last year being like this, but I am much, much further along in my Jewish education than I was last September.  I am Jewish for all intensive purposes.  The rest is simply formalities.  I have been living a Jewish life for several years now, but because of where I am this year, compared to previous, the Days of Awe are something completely different now.

For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream...

It's been awhile since I last wrote, hasn't it?

Spring term of school was a bitch, but I managed to get decent grades.  No C's to report this term!  Some days I wish I had gone to a trade school, where I could keep straight A's every term with virtually minimal effort.  Yes, I said it. I know that by keeping my grades up at the university level, though, that I will be able to get funding for my graduate program (which I will begin next fall -- that is fall 2011). I am taking summer courses, which will keep me fairly primed and ready for fall, but I will have a one month break between now and July 12th, when I start summer term.

In two and a half weeks, Kris will be here for a best friends weekend!  I am so fucking excited!  We're going to go camping at Beachside (down by Yachats) and Casey will actually be there for once.  This is the first summer we've had together in a couple years.

I've busted out my old plumeria hair clip from our days in Hawaii (ABC Store for the win!) and have been sportin' it in my hair for a couple weeks now.  Interestingly, the weather around here has been less than summery.  This last weekend we had some low eighties temperatures, but now we're in the high fifties, low sixties.  It's very chilly, for June!  I am ready for summer weather, though I am sure I will be tired of the heat by the time fall comes around.

In preparation for the swimsuit season, however, I have been working out five days a week. I feel better, in regard to energy and mood, for the most part.  I am fatigued from PMS, but meh...girl junk.

It's weird to feel somewhat bored.  I haven't felt bored in the slightest in well over a year, overwhelmed was a daily occurrence.  Now, I actually feel bored on occasion.  I have Torah study and my continuing education stuff with my rabbi every other Friday, but that doesn't keep me as busy as I am used to.

In August, I am going to see Missy, Jen, Melly and some other girl friends and going to see my rabbi.  I am looking forward to it immensely.  Aside from all of these little things, nothing incredibly interesting is going on.  I am not really pondering the meaning of life or anything intellectually stimulating or deep at the moment.  I am at peace with myself and who I am, for the first time in my adult life.  It's lovely.

"...blow the rest away."

Make me feel...

There is nothing wrong; things are going fine  However, I am finding that infrequently, I wake up and I am instantly saddened.  The kind of sad that makes you feel like you don't exist, despair.

I am certain it is another amazing facet of my ongoing battle with depression, but it makes it hard to communicate with the outside world.  It makes me feel like I am slowly disappearing.

You cannot explain these things to people who have never dealt with it.  Most think you are being dramatic, or that you are just looking for sympathy.  Anyone who has been afflicted knows that this is untrue, but nevertheless, that is what people assume.

Perhaps my meds need to be increased, or perhaps it's the veritable lack of sunshine in the valley from October through March.  Who knows?!  In any event, it makes pulling oneself together in pursuit of going to work or accomplishing tasks quite difficult.  It makes the idea of being sociable mind-numbing and paralyzing.  It makes the normal, healthy human interactions that are part of our existence sometimes unbearable.

My grandmother and my father believe that anti-depressants and behavioral meds are for fictional illnesses, for the most part.  My dad has begun to come around, but my grandma still seems to believe that we can control these things -- which are really quite out of our control.  Why would I choose to feel this way?  Why would I choose to exist in a world where everything is difficult and depressing?  It's not logical.  Nevertheless, I know she means well and it is just due to the time frame she grew up in.

Perhaps it's an affliction of being a vulnerable artist type?  As much as I try to understand what plagues me, it becomes further convoluted, further distorted, further lost.  Maybe it is just this lonely, depressing time of year?  Maybe the weight of everything that has happened during the winter months of past years makes it too much for my soul to bear (read: Fallujah in 2004-2005 and Casey's lengthy disappearance because of such) .  I wish I could understand it. 

The only light in such a state of darkness is to have a partner who will be patient as you navigate these shades of grey.  Without him, I am not sure I would be able to make it.  Not to mention having a best friend who is impossibly amazing and holds that self-analyzing mirror in my face to force me to realize.  With these two, I know I can get through anything, even this unexplainable, intermittent crippling depression.

I have been blessed to know some of the most amazing people in the world.  I am sure of this.  I say this with absolute certainty; my friends are the most amazing people I have ever known.  It is unequivocal, unwavering.  I am steadfast in this.  I don't know how it is possible, but I just know that my friends, all of them, are the best people in the world.  They are kind, funny, cynical when necessary, normal, amazing people.

I say this because over lunch today, as I lamented about how I felt today like interacting with other human beings seemed impossibly difficult, Tiffany lamented with me.  She made me feel like I was not so different than the average folks and like those days when the weight of the world feels like it is on my shoulders, like the sky is coming down around me for no earthly reason, that it is just okay.   It will pass and I will return to my normal state again, whatever that may be.

When you're in the midst of it, it is hard to see an end to it.  That is compounded when the episode is brought on by absolutely nothing conceivable, simply waking up that day or looking out at another overcast and rainy afternoon. I am looking for ways to make my internal sun shine.

Mr. McQueen...

Alexander McQueen died last night!  I am crushed.

I have been lusting after one of his amazing scarves for eons now, and in a weird case of irony -- I was just browsing Net-A-Porter and Zappos last night looking for one I liked (I am was trying to get Casey to buy me one for my birthday or Valentine's day).

Oh, Alexander, you will be missed! 

I like the fact that you talk incessantly...

"I like the fact that you talk incessantly..."

I have a paper due in political science this evening, but I cannot seem to muster the energy needed to write the remaining 800 words I need to conclude it. Not to mention the fact that my political science instructor seems to very much dislike me. It wouldn't be the first time, and likely won't be the last. While I don't strive to make people dislike me, I am realizing it's fruitless to fight some of them. My personality or my goals, or my hair, are all enough to incite feelings of negativity toward me, apparently.

It's been awhile since I got on here and updated. I hardly have posted in this journal since I revived it from the purgatory deleted journals go. Incidentally, nothing too interesting has happened.

I have recently downloaded the Amazon Kindle application on my iPhone, after seeing a post from my dear friend Missy about it on her Facebook. I am currently re-reading Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, which is one of my very favorite books. I now spend far too much money and time on my iPhone. I should be doing much more productive things, but cannot help it. Since I haven't been able to meet with my rabbi recently, it has helped fill the holes as I can read some of my assigned reading in my spare time at campus or at the doctor's office or what have you, without packing an arsenal of books in my handbag.

It's February. I cannot believe it's already February.

I am married to a veteran, officially, now. I am not sure how I feel about that. To quote my favorite book about teenage angst, "I am both happy and sad and I am still trying to figure out how that could be." This articulates my feelings about it very well. The last 6+ years of my life have been dictated by the Marine Corps. Even with the reserves, it was still all about the Marine Corps. Will he have to reschedule his midterms to work around drill, will we be able to take a trip because of drill, will A/T come after or before finals...

He has spent half our marriage gone, someplace or another. Three deployments, and countless training operations, schools, etc. and now we're free. And I am...numb. I realize that part of my identity lies with Casey being a Marine. I have been a Marine wife since I was 19, just barely an adult, and probably not an adult in maturity. I suffered through an eleven-month deployment to hell (Fallujah), during the worst part of the war thus far (Phantom Fury and the second battle for Fallujah), and now I am free. He is free! Why aren't I ecstatic? I am sure it will come in time.

I am thinking that as I get closer to becoming a librarian that this will come, four terms left of my undergrad! Then I just have to get through my 1.5-2 year MLIS program.

I am just rambling now. That political science paper is staring at me from the task bar, heckling me. I best get back to it...

My loss of anonymity...

I have come to the conclusion that the reason I dislike my current locality has to do with the none-existence of anonymity.  While it is an area of roughly 100,000 folks or so, the "six-degrees-of-separation" phenomena is in full force.  Everyone knows your childhood friends from 400 miles away and everyone who works at the university knows your supervisor, or the former administrators and continue to still know the "gossip" of your specific department.  In the end, it leaves no element of anonymity in place.

You run to the store for a half-gallon of milk in your yoga pants and Uggs, and of course, (much to your dismay...) run into a friend (and neighbor).  I have to wonder why I can't run into people I know well when I'm looking presentable.

Alas, once college is through, we will move to a more populous region and enjoy living in anonymous bliss.  I look forward to those days greatly.

Our neighbors are moving out soon.  Hallelujah!  My gratitude is credited to their extremely hypocritical ideas about living in small quarters.  Whatever their neighbors do is too loud and bothersome to them, but nevermind them doing laundry at all hours of the night over someone's bedroom.  Or that their dog runs across the hardwood floor quite frequently, disturbing those below -- but ours is chewing on her bone too loudly.  Fortunately, our landlord is quite possibly the most amazing landlord in history.  We have lived here for 2.5 years now, so she knows our habits and knows what kind of noise level we actually produce.

I find it interesting that they started to complain about their neighbors as soon as my husband returned from deployment.  I think that was the damned of it that I was so irritated about.  A guy comes back from deployment (and the months of training beforehand) and his neighbors greet him with complaints about noise?  What kind of people do that?

I think they don't like us because we're not Christians, but I don't really care anymore, either.  All they effectively did was get my stress level up and cause me to severely dislike them.  The rest of the tenants in our building are really laid back, kind, nice people.  I like that, and that is the good in the situation.

Today I am going to get some fabric and make a hooded scarf (in the idea of American Apparel's hooded scarf, but I know I can make that on my machine at home very easily, so I can't bring my-very-frugal-self to pay $22.00 for it...).  If it turns out okay, I will post pictures.  If it doesn't, then I will buy AA's version.  LOL

I am dreaming of big cities today, exposed brick walls, and steam rising from manhole covers in the roads as people walk by.  As soon as the husband is finished with his degree, this will be a reality!  No more rural existence in non-anonymous solitude. I will be able to be who I really am, instead of this watered down version of the very eccentric me.

Dreaming big, huh?!

"How can a body withstand this?"

To love life, to love it even when you have no
stomach for it, and everything you've held
dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat,
thickening the air, heavy as water,
more fit for gills than lungs;
When grief weights you like your own flesh,
only more of it, an obesity of grief,

You think, 'How can a body withstand this?'

Then you hold life like a face, between your palms,
a plain face, no charming smile, or violet eyes,
and you say, 'Yes, I will take you, I will love you again.'

- Ellen Bass♥