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I know that I am terribly remiss on my 30 Days of Narcissism meme-thing and that I haven’t even posted in forever, but I just started back to school on Thursday and everything is insane and I just want to talk about today, okay, STOP NAGGING ME OKAY.
Today was really stupid and horrible. I almost got into a really bad car accident on my way home from school after already having a FUCKING terrible day and I had to get off the freeway and park in some bank parking lot and cry and have a panic attack and I just wanted to lay down on the fire-hot pavement and melt into nothingness.
When I say “I almost got into a really bad car accident” what I mean is, “I changed lanes several hundred feet in front of a dude who decided to change into the same lane after I was three-quarters of the way into it and he got REAL AGGRESSIVE about it and tailgated me and then flew back into his lane and slammed around me in a manner that clearly communicated that he was trying to hit me on purpose.” We could not have been more than six inches from a serious accident at 75 miles per hour and if I had not slammed on my brakes, it would’ve been… bad. It was by far the closest I have ever come to an accident WITHOUT ACTUALLY HAVING THE ACCIDENT.
He then flew across the next three lanes of traffic and cut off another guy to exit the freeway.
And it’s like, man, I get PISSED in the car. I yell at people! I am a twenty-five-year-old adult woman who rolls down her window and yells at people while giving them aggressive middle fingers. I get it. Driving sucks 90% of the time and everyone else sucks at it and it’s just awful. IT IS AWFUL. The personal vehicle is probably the worst thing to happen to any of us in the modern age.
But who has that much anger? Enough to INTENTIONALLY attempt to cause an accident while moving at almost 80 mph? When the person didn’t even wrong you? Who is that angry about their life? What happened to that guy in that black Tahoe to make him THAT FURIOUS? That kind of aggression baffles me. I don’t ever want to make other human beings feel unsafe and after that bullshit today I think I’m going to make that an even more prominent effort on my part.
That said, I could’ve easily punched AN ENTIRELY SEPARATE TAHOE DRIVER (WHAT IS IT WITH TAHOES?!) in the FACE. She parked so close to me that she was actually all the way into my parking stall (The kind with the double lines! THE KIND WITH THE BUILT IN SPACE. SERIOUSLY.) and I couldn’t get into my car and I am too fat/uncoordinated/drive too small a car to climb across and I just didn’t know what to do with my life.
And then she comes out and tries to do that sheepish TEEHEE thing and it’s like, “Look, bitch, I know we all have things to do, but you need to reevaluate your life and understand that it would’ve taken you FOUR SECONDS to re-park when you realized what a shit job you did. FUCK YOU.” Paris Hilton couldn’t have climbed into my car, she was parked so close. Fuck that.
There should be a comprehensive driving and parking exam required before you can own or operate any vehicle larger than a fucking SmartCar.
So I was really upset about the duel Tahoe incidences and I was frustrated with school and life and ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH EVERYTHING EVER and I just got tired and frustrated and defeated. And for once, I started thinking about why things are the way they are and why I’m feeling all these inconvenient feelings and I thought about MYSELF and about OTHER PEOPLE.
And I think it comes down to figurative breathing.
I’m not asking for like, a social revolution where people start being considerate and thoughtful of one another. I know that is probably beyond the scope of our abilities as humans. I am just as entitled and self-centered and awful as most of the other people moving around on the surface of this planet. I YELL AT PEOPLE WHEN THEY DRIVE BAD. I am often unkind and impatient and self-absorbed. I recognize those things and I am going to try to practice what I preach.
I’m just looking for, I think, the tiniest iota of AWARENESS. Self-awareness or external-awareness or what-the-fuck-ever awareness. Just two seconds out of your life to be like, “Hey, I’m being a dick” or “God, maybe that lady just had a really awful day” or even just taking TWO SECONDS TO TAKE A DEEP BREATH.
I’m just asking for a little cool-down here, guys. A two-second version of counting to ten. A breath. Just one. For everyone’s sake, including your own.
I’m calling it the Two Second Breath and I’m going to start practicing it immediately.
Guy cuts me off? Two second breath. Rude cashier? Two second breath. Internet idiocy? Two second breath. Political frustration? Two second breath.
I spend so much of my life being reactionary and I just think it’s exhausting. Everything is instantaneous — email, texts, calls, television, youtube, all of this media and communication flying at us all day long — and we (I. I. I.) get so wrapped up in responding promptly that I’ve stopped thinking. I react, I don’t respond. And maybe I can’t always count to ten, maybe it’s too hard or too frustrating or too long, but I can always count to two. I can take a two second breath and respond competently and confidently.
I don’t want to kill anyone with kindness. I don’t want to fake my way through life. I don’t want to be conflict and confrontation free. But I do want to think, respond, and relax a little because being always on, all the time is finally catching up with me.
I want to take a whole lot of two second breaths.
I would like to point out that I almost immediately regretted not calling it the three second breath upon publishing the post. Hate even numbers? TWO SECOND BREATHING OUT OF MY ASSHOLE FOR DAYS.
AKA: A Bunch of Shit You Probably Don’t Even Want to Know!
So this is one of those internet questionnaires that probably went around in emails and then into the blog and online journal spheres until it became a narcissistic series of THIRTY POSTS that are supposed to reveal your ~true self~ to the internet. And since I am nothing if not a COMPLETE NARCISSIST, I’m doing it.
Day 1: Introduce Yourself
My name is Ash. I’m 25. I’m getting ready for my second and last year of grad school where I am trying to get an MFA in writing (fiction) and writing a book and being a reader for a pretty okay group of other writers.
These are the three most recent pictures taken of me, least to most recent:
The top and bottom were taken by my gf because she is obsessed with my hair and also putting things into my bun, like pens and flowers. The middle one is a self-portrait! Told you I was a narcissist.
I like all of the media things that I talk about: books, movies, tv shows, the internet, music, and comic books/graphic novels. I also like taking pictures of shit, but I think all of the conceptual/technical photography stuff is really, really boring. If I like a picture, I like a picture. Fuck your rule of thirds.
I’ve been writing since I was little and I spent all of third grade carrying around those black and white composition books where I wrote stories about the kids in my class then told them that I wrote stories about them, but wouldn’t show them the stories unless they did things for me and then always, 100% of the time, refused to show them anyway.
I was, and am, kind of a dick.
I am not a great or a dedicated writer. I have never been a devoted or hardworking person. Ever. I write because I like it and it comes easily and my basic number one goal in life is to never, ever have to work hard at anything.
My first novel is a young adult story and I love it even when it’s a huge fucking cunt that I want to punch in the face over and over again. I am pretty certain that young adult is really where I belong as a writer (and a reader!) so I am already looking at other MFA programs that specialize in YA/children’s lit to go to after I finish this program, since I am obviously not at all ready to try and be part of the real world.
Also, I have no marketable or useful skills to speak of. I have only ever taught and written for money. I am useless at everything else except for working at a video store, which I was great at! But is now totally obsolete as a career choice. God damn it.
I am really fat and loud and usually smart and funny. I am not into outdoor activities at all unless it’s going to Disneyland or walking from my car into a place of business. I am into fat acceptance and body positivity and feminism and equalism and gay rights and human rights and the general ability for awesomeness that I believe the human race probably does possess deep down inside somewhere under all the evil and body odor.
I’m an adamant atheist and I think religion is basically stupid. I don’t understand people who aren’t pro-choice or pro-gay marriage. Basically, I was born and raised in California.
I have absolute faith that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe. I will absolutely punch you in the mouth if you somehow infer that believing in the statistical probability of aliens is comparable to believing in ghosts/werewolves/vampires/Jesus.
I live with my parents (fail!twenties, represent!) and my girlfriend and four dogs and two cats and we are all pretty awesome. I am close to my parents and my older (by nine years) sister. My family is really weird and one of my neighbor friends once said to me, “You guys are, like, really loud.” and she was totally 100% right. I don’t think she meant it as a compliment like we took it though.
I can be really rude and brash and obnoxious and because of these awesome personality defects, I have a really hard time making friends. The few I have are basically stuck with me whether they like it or not. I never know if the people around me actually like/tolerate me because I have a really hard time reading people and body language. I am also sort of bossy and demanding and I have unreachably high standards when it comes to public decorum. I AM A GREAT PERSON TO BE AROUND. CAN’T YOU TELL?! WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE LOVE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE?!
Basically, I have spent my entire life being incapable of keeping my mouth shut, completely unable to stop the torrential outpouring of verbal diarrhea that makes up my personality.
I am fucking awesome.
More narcissism here.
So, earlier this summer, I made a summer wishlist post with only one item on it — a god damn pool I NEVER GOT.
And it’s the second to last day of August now and the first draft of my book isn’t finished yet (I’m at 177 pages though, YEAH THAT IS RIGHT.) even though I set September 1st as my ABSOLUTE CONCRETE FINAL DEADLINE and I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL but there’s still only one more thing on my summer wishlist:
FALL
Yeah, part two of my summer wishlist is for it to FUCKING BE OVER ALREADY. I don’t want to go back to school or have to leave the house for any reason other than Disneyland or hangs with the BFFs, but I am ready for my financial aid disbursement (I bought one gallon of gas today. ONE GALLON. Because that was LITERALLY all that I could afford. But at least I got that damn gallon.) and cooler weather and rain and for some other shit too, like:
STRAIGHT UP READY FOR SOME HALLOWEEN SHIT RIGHT NOW. Including:
And:
How fucking awful are these? I made a sexy/trashy/stereotypical Native American costume for the GayBFF last year that was better than that thing!
Also ready for these:
And always ready for some of these:
Fuck yeah, FALL CLOTHES! TACKY SWEATERZ 4 LYFE.
Anyway, yeah, ready for some cooler weather! And some changing leaves and stuff. I always envision fall like some glorious orange, yellow, and red spectacle of color and breezes! Like Disney’s Pocahontas painting with all the colors of the wind and shit except with grandma cardigans and jeans and flip flops because let’s get real, I live in southern California and I am not putting on real shoes unless it is absolutely necessary. Except for the part where I LIVE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, so the chasm between dream and reality is pretty monstrous.
 And also fall is starting RIGHT NOW. My bank parking lot was knee-high with leaves this weekend because the trees were like, “FUCK I AM TIRED OF HOLDING THIS SHIT UP. IS SUMMER EVER GOING TO END?!” and then got pissed and took a massive dump everywhere. Except it was a million degrees all last week, so it’s not red cable knit sweaters and running and high-kicking through the leaves and giggling, it’s stomping through sticky leaves basically barefoot in shorts and tank tops with sweat squirting out of your armpits like ejaculatory geysers. Fuck you, California, fuck you.
In spite of (or because of, it’s a razor-thin line) all of that, I am fucking ready for fall already. But it won’t come. We still have at least a month and a half of summer left, if not two full months. A month of which will involve my commute further east where it will be twenty to thirty degrees hotter than where I live! (MY LIFE IS GREAT! I AM SO EXCITED FOR SCHOOL TO START! CAN’T YOU TELL? AREN’T YOU SO JEALOUS?!) Which means that I will be going to class on 100 degree days and waiting for my eventual death from heatstroke. In October.
HOORAY FALL.
Anyway, all of that is really just to say, I fucking hate candy corn. Fuck that shit. If you like candy corn, our friendship is over. Get out. And take your fucking candy corn with you. Because it’s bullshit.
Let’s talk about how I am really excited about this movie! And not just because I love everyone in it!
It’s pretty uncharacteristic of me — I like movies where things (literally) blow up and where there are fart jokes and dick jokes and violence and blood and sex and stuff. I love comedies, but not generally ones that are about chicks or relationships. Not that there are a lot of comedies about chicks! WHICH IS WHY I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS MOVIE!
If a man tells someone that he likes comedy movies, they think about stuff like The Hangover (which I love) or Clerks (which I love) or maybe animated movies like Shrek or Toy Story or Groundhog Day or Hot Fuzz or Ghostbusters or The 40 Year Old Virgin or American Pie or Tropic Thunder or Animal House a ton of other movies that I DO in fact love.
If a woman tells someone that she like comedies, they think about stuff like Love, Actually or The Bounty Hunter or Moonstruck or Sleepless in Seattle or You’ve Got Mail or Splash or 27 Dresses or a million others JUST LIKE THOSE.
The commonality between these two groups is that most of those movies have predominantly male leads. The ones that have a female lead are usually the “romantic comedies.” As if women are unable to laugh except when the jokes come between bouts of relationship drama. Female-starring comedies, straight-up comedies that are NOT primarily about a relationship, just don’t exist. Off of the top of my head, I can honestly not think of a single one. NOT ONE.
SO I DON’T LIKE ROMANTIC COMEDIES. Generally. I don’t like them because the women are USUALLY: weak, boring, self-involved, only concerned about the men in their lives, insecure, unstable, vengeful, bitter, catty, stereotypical, anti-women, anti-man, anti-human, baby-crazy, often in competition with one another, and rarely fleshed out as anything other than half of the relationship dynamic.
I’m not saying that romantic comedies don’t exist where this isn’t the case — though it isn’t perfect, I actually think the women of Love, Actually are pretty well done — it’s just incredibly unusual.
This is where You Again comes in. Based on the trailer: There are women! LOTS OF THEM. And they’re not competing for a man! Or worried primarily about the romantic pleasure of a man! They are successful! And driven! And smart!
The trailer alone passes the Bechdel Test!
Granted, it’s still women: in competition, being catty, man-oriented (even if it’s family), petty, and stereotypical, but it looks like they learn a decent lesson about being human, forgiveness, all that great stuff.
So I remain cautiously optimistic and hope that maybe, just maybe, studios will learn that female-driven movies don’t all have to be Eat, Pray, Love or Bride Wars because there is an eager audience just waiting for them to do it right.
Lately I have been experiencing an increased amount of anxiety.
I’m not talking like, clinical, medical, diagnosed anxiety which is somehow at a level higher than normal. I am talking about the actual feeling of anxiety that all people experience at one point or another. Granted, I’ve had panic attacks for most of my life and I should probably be diagnosed and medicated, but since I have not and am not, I am more comfortable talking about it as an emotional reaction. Even if my emotions are reacting to nothing.
So, again, for the past week I’ve been experiencing some heightened anxiety levels. I haven’t had a panic attack thus far, but my sleep patterns are more screwed up than they normally are (I keep a weird schedule during the summer, usually staying up until 3-5am and then sleeping ’til noon-ish). I have been napping during the day or evening or sleeping for two or three hours at a reasonable time (10 0r 11pm) and then getting up and staying up for many hours, then sleeping in midday. I either sleep fitfully or like the dead, no in between, and I can’t figure out how to eat in a way that doesn’t make me miserable. I’ve been crying (at stupid things! LIKE SAD CATS) and having some problems regulating my breathing and just generally not feeling well at all.
Something is clearly up.
The other day, I was lying in bed watching some… Homes of the Rich and Tasteless style show and they were showing this HUGE house in Malibu overlooking PCH and it was enormous and so… empty. And I started legitimately panicking at the thought of trying to fill up that space with my life. And how I don’t have very many friends and how a house that big would be so wasteful. And while talking to my girlfriend about it, I realized that there’s an emotional connection between being unable to physically fill a home and emotionally fill a home and blah blah blah it all makes sense, but still. I had to fend off a panic attack over some house on TV that I have no desire nor ability to ever live in. That’s the epitome of crazy, right there.
Tonight I was working my way through my Google Reader load and I had about three dozen tabs open beside it (I read through the whole set of posts, then clear through the tabs one by one, usually compiling blog/tumblr posts and emails for my girlfriend/dad/sister.) and I just started panicking intensely about all of these THINGS in front of me and I started shaking and I had to go splash my face with water and sit on the toilet to calm down.
I’ve talked about it briefly before, but I have a truly awful, unstable memory. I cannot retain more than three ideas at a time (not joking. at all.) and I have to take lots and lots of notes just to be able to function through bullshit daily tasks like internetting and blogging, let alone primary needs and work (my novel) and school. My memory plays an enormous role in my issues with anxiety. I am constantly freaking out about forgetting even simple, unimportant things and being unable to remember what I wanted to do, sometimes from one moment to the next, is… It’s embarrassing. And miserable. And depressing. And frustrating and exhausting and STRESSFUL.
I forget whether I’ve accomplished tasks. I forget what tasks I am supposed to do. My mom or dad or sister or girlfriend can ask me to do something for them, something as simple as grabbing a glass of water or checking something on the internet, and I will, in just a matter of moments (usually the ones I am using to complete a task before I can turn to theirs) forget ENTIRELY that they asked me to do something for them.
I cannot remember shit.
Compounding my memory issues and exascerbating my anxiety is multi-tasking. I am CONSTANTLY multi-tasking. I cannot remember the last time I only had one tab open in Firefox and even when it’s down to two or three, I am rapidly moving from site to site, tab to tab, trying to stay up to the minute on all of the ~social media~ feeds I follow. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GReader, Flickr, boards, blogs. My email is always set to pop immediately upon receipt of a message. Texts are frequent, instant, constant. Phone calls, follows, mentions.
I love the internet and I love the availability and speed at which it brings even the most inane information straight to my eyeballs, but it’s making me insane. It’s making me anxious.
Since I made this bed for myself, I am trying to find more survivable ways to lie in it.
STEPS FOR MY INTERNET SURVIVAL:
1. Chill out. The information isn’t going to go away.
2. You are not at a place in your internet presence where you have deadlines. Appreciate that.
3. TAKE NOTES. You keep papers and pens around you at all times, use them. TextEdit and Word are always open, USE THEM.
4. Stop forsaking your book (YOUR REAL JOB) for the internet.
5. It is always okay to step away for awhile.
My anxiety is manageable. I learned a trick from my dad when I was just a kid that still works: NINTENDO. NES used to do magical things for him when his anxiety was unchecked and Wii does the same unbelievably simple job. MarioKart requires zero brain cells. And if I just keep remembering to CALM THE FUCK DOWN, I’ll probably make it out of my twenties alive.
ANYWAY. Now that I talked all serious-like about my anxiety, I can talk about what I really want to and that is:
The idea of buying real furniture, like the kind that doesn’t require significant assembly, but does require delivery by people in large trucks, freaks me the FUCK OUT.
The idea that, at some point in the relatively near future, people are going to expect me to go into a store and pick out some SERIOUS FURNITURE that I am going to have to live with for… years that is going to cost me a whole bunch of money and require a place in which to put it? That’s fucked up! Dining rooms?! How is that a thing? How do adults do this shit? I am only TWENTY-FIVE. Ikea and milk crates and paying for concert tickets instead of putting money into a savings account. THOSE ARE THINGS I UNDERSTAND. Adulthood and mortgages and OH GOD I AM GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A JOB.
 This is some serious bullshit. Not ready, world. YOU HEAR THAT. I AM NOT READY.
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