Old Whine In A New Bottle

Wanna know what the worst part of having a mood disorder is, for me?

If not, read no further, because I'm about to whine a bit. If so, read on.

*****

It's the paranoia. The big P is a cast-iron bitch. Because, while you can beat it into submission with the proper meds and a decent "Happy Place", you never know what's going to trigger it.

Take this fer'instance:

Your wife buys a new watch. For whatever reason, she decides to buy a big, chunky man-ish model. Your wife neglects to show you this watch. (Or, to be fair, you just don't remember the damned thing.)

Your wife bathes the dog while you're at work on evening shift. While doing so, she takes the watch off and wraps it around the towel rack.

Keep in mind that you haven't actually seen her in two days, and suffer from a chronic fear that you're not getting enough canoodling time to meet her needs anyway.

You wake up the next morning, long after your wife has left for work, and go to take a shower. You see said man's watch in your bathroom, hanging on your shower rack. Remember, you haven't seen your wife in two days, except while she sleeps.

That's the lovely moment when Paranoia decides to swoop in and cop a squat in your cortex.

Queue the "Happy Place" and a lot of determination to quell the nasty, ugly thoughts that well up unbidden from the recesses of your monkey brain. Only then can you exorcise the demon Paranoia from your mind.

And the worst part? It's never-ending. You never know what's going to set it off, and you never know how much effort it's going to take to throttle it into submission. One. More! TIME!

In re-reading that, I realize it's rather flip. But I'll leave it that way. I often get flip to cover for my inadequacies, so it's only fair that I leave it that way. Having these thoughts is probably the largest source of shame in my day-to-day life anymore. And that's saying something, because I'm barely recognizable as a socialized human being some days.

I realize intellectually that I shouldn't take the fact that I get a little more paranoid than the average bear so personally.

But still ... damn. It's moments like the one above that make it easy to understand why someone would contemplate suicide. If I had to deal with that shit on a daily basis, it would tear my world apart every frakking day. As it is, I only have to reaffirm the foundations of my little corner of the world every so often. And I can handle that, I guess.

Ironic Sadness

This Skepchick article makes me, in a quite ironic way, very sad. In my late teens/early twenties, my mother was diagnosed with a mood disorder, and I discovered years later that I suffered from one, as well. Over time, it's become clear that mom and I aren't the only ones in the family who could (or do, in my case) benefit from happy pills. But considering the (relatively) strong genetic factor, I can only wish we'd caught it earlier. I would probably had a much less troublesome childhood, and I know the teenage years would have been less angsty. Well, probably.

Considering all this, and a few skeletons in Aradia's closet to boot, we're going to have to watch our (frustratingly hypothetical) children likes the proverbial hawk.

Ah, well, it's probably for the best. They'd probably try to blow something up otherwise.

Contingency, Romance and the Skeptical Outlook

When I was a teenager, I asked a married woman to go to the prom with me.

Of course, I didn't know she was married. She was a fellow student, one that I'd had a rather large crush on for over a year, and she knew I was working my way up to asking. We were ... more than friends, less than boyfriend/girlfriend. This was entirely her choice, although I didn't know it at the time.

You see, I met her in my one and only keyboarding class. She had the air of the outcast about her, self-imposed isolation from the rest of the class, never making eye contact with anyone but the teacher, last into her seat, first out of it, the whole angsty teenage girl thing from start to finish. But she was very attractive, and I was (probably still am, to be honest) a sucker for a woman in need. So of course I decided to worm my way into her orbit.

The only way I was able to do this was that neither of us should have really been in that keyboarding class. We were both rather advanced in our typing skills compared to the rest of the class, but since neither of us had ever had one before, we got stuck in the intro class. Damn those prerequisites!

Anyway, since we were both so skilled at typing, our teacher essentially taught us a more advanced course. We had separate assignments, separate tests, the whole schtick. The upshot of that was that I didn't have to pay attention to the teacher most of the time, my newest project and I were given lots of self-directed assignments. So I started telling this girl jokes. It started out as a joke a day, just trying to get her to open up to me. Eventually, I got an honest-to-goodness full-blown smile out of her, and I knew that I had my way into her attentions.

Eventually, she and I became friends. And we started to have more classes together. Either that or I just started noticing her more often. Frankly, in a school of five hundred students, its kind of hard to not have classes with all your fellow juniors, seniors or what have you. But this girl had caught my attention, and I paid that attention out as often as I possibly could.

The problem with all this was that all my friends, and even some of my family, started acting really strange when I mentioned this girl. And since I was rapidly falling for her, I talked about her more and more. But I could never get a straight answer out of anyone as to why they started acting all weird when I mentioned her.

So, anyway, prom season comes around and I finally work up the courage to ask her out. And she turns me down flat. No soft landing, no reasons why not, nothing. Just no.

And then a week or so later, I found out why. One of my neighbors (a girl who was trying to get into bed with my best friend at the time) let the cat out of the bag. This sad young woman that I'd been gently wooing for months on end had just gotten married! And what's worse, she had just gotten secretly married to a teacher at our high school, who had been married to another teacher not too many months before, who was slowly dying of a debilitating degenerative disease. Do I know how to pick 'em, or what?

Why she did this is a long, sad and sordid tale that I won't recount, since it's not my tale to tell, really. Suffice it to say, though, that I was hurt and sad and angry and miserable for several weeks afterward. But I was a teenage boy, and these things do heal over, given enough time. Apparently, several weeks and a well-time letter are enough to heal even the hurt of asking a married woman to the prom.

You see, another young female friend of mine and I were in sporadic contact. We lived in different counties in West Virginia (much like living in different cities in other states) and kept in contact the way most people did before the advent of the Internet, by handwritten letter. We had met a couple of summers previously at Governor's School, and had come away as good friends, to say the least. I still have fond memories of the time we spent together that summer. So when prom time came around, and neither of us had a date, it came about pretty seamlessly that we would go to the prom together. I actually ended up going to hers, and she to mine, as well. Both experiences were pleasantly frustrating to my teenage boy mentality, but we came away from them more than friends, but not quite boyfriend and girlfriend, I suppose. Although that's not how either of us viewed things at the time, I'm sure.

Did I mention that I could be somewhat naive, when I was a teenager?

Anyway, I chased this girl to college, where she promptly broke up with me. Of course. But since I'd committed to this school, and had quite a lot of scholarship money tied up in staying at said school, I stuck it out, went through a disastrous two-year relationship with the bitch-queen of southern West Virginia and then was introduced to my someday-to-be-wonderful-wife, Aradia.

And once I got my head out of my ass about said bitch-queen, things have, more or less, worked out happily ever after. At least to this point, and I have to say that things are looking up for us, to be honest.

So, why tell this long, winding story? Well, mostly because it came up at work yesterday, and it dredged up a lot of old memories. But after telling it, I said, "But if none of that had ever happened, I'd have never met my wife!" Of course, that's entirely true. My introduction to Aradia took a torturous path that seems inconceivable to me in its unlikelihood.

But its not inconceivable, is it? I mean, I just laid the bare bones of the story out for you in a (relatively) few paragraphs. That's a lot of history to condense, and I assure you I left out copious details, but still, its not all that hard to see how it happened. I had atrocious instincts where women were concerned and then lucked into meeting one the greatest women on the face of the planet. Then I almost listened to my atrocious instincts and rejected her, but wised up at the last moment, with said last moment only being the last moment because she was extremely patient with me. Frankly, she gave me a lot of last moments to work with, and I finally got one right.

Now, a lot of people would read this post and say something along the lines of "Divine providence led you to your wife." Or maybe "You were destined to be together." In fact, I used to say that Aradia and I were destined to be together. But the more I thought about that yesterday, the more I realized that that was pretty damned insulting to Aradia. It wasn't destiny that put us together, it was her patience. And its not divine will that we be together now. It's a lot of hard work and compromise on both our parts. The path that I took to finding my most wonderful wife was full of contingencies and pitfalls. At any point, things could have gone another way. And if we went back and ran the "experiment" again, they probably would go another way. That's the nature of contigency in systems, after all. But I refuse to lay the credit for our ooshy-gushy, sickly-sweet romance at the feet of some ineffable, intangible agent.

Aradia and I are fully to blame for the wonderful life we live together, and I like it that way.

Pandora Internet Radio

Okay, so I'm bored to tears with nothing to do, but I need to stay up late to switch to night shift for tomorrow night. What do I do?

Well, first I rate about a thousand things on Amazon.com. Bored, remember? That kills a couple of hours, especially after I look through the Alliance-Union books by C. J. Cherryh, and realize how many of them I already own.

And how many more of them I WANT.

Ahem, excuse me.

Next, I go to Netflix and tool around for a few minutes. That kills like fifteen minutes.

Then I cruise over to my friend Ranson's blog, Hobocentrism, to see if he'd written anything lately. He hadn't, the weenie. However, I saw the link to his Pandora internet radio station and clicked through to it. It's full of his eclectic mix of interests. By the way, Ranson, you completely stole the term Musical Whiplash from me. I'm mildly ticked by that one, bud.

Anywho, Ranson had pimped Pandora to me previously, and I thought it was a neat idea, even if I don't have a lot of use for it at home (my computer went kaput recently, and I'm in the midst of re-rating the 6000+ songs I had backed up, after all) and my workplace monitors our intertubes usage closely enough to discourage long-term streaming of media (alas, no marathon of Chad Vader at work).

Like I said, I have hours to kill before I can go to bed, and Aradia is snoozing like nobody's business, so I can't do any heavy housework. And since she's not feeling well (poor woman got ill after visiting her parents for Christmas ... she wears herself out on these trips and it hits her hard sometimes), I don't want to play any Rock Band (even if I did go gold on X-Box Live just to play with some friends in Richmond, Va) and run the risk of waking her with my, ahem, monkey banging.

So I take the time to put together a couple of stations on Pandora and put a little linky-thing over there in the sidebar. So, there are a couple of my Pandora stations. Enjoy.

Or, you know, whatever.

:)

A Sad Exchange

Here's a perfect example of how a disagreement can go quickly off the rails. A friend of mine from college put up a rather disturbing statement on one of the online networking sites. I sent him the message below. Identifying information has been removed, but otherwise, the text is unedited.

My first message:

Hey, man. I just noticed your status line: "I love Sarah Palin, she is a woman worth protecting, while liberal females are not."

Just thought I'd point out some implications of that line.

That means that Aradia's not worth protecting. Nor is her sister . You remember her, right? 4'11". Stomps everywhere she walks. Diabetic. As close to me as my own sister. Sure you do.

For that matter, it means at least half the women in this country aren't worth protecting.

You've shocked the living daylights out of me, man. I thought you were chivalrous. Now I realize that you're just political.

Women are worth protecting because they're women. No, better yet, they're worth protecting because they're human beings, liberal, conservative or moderate. I thought you of all people would be able to see that. But if Sarah Palin's pixie looks have turned your head so much that you'd lose sight of such a basic principle that I know, for a FACT, that you used to believe in, then she's a hell of lot more evil than I ever gave her credit for.

I don't believe you've ever disappointed me more in our entire friendship than when I saw that status line.

His response:

Really an evolutionist talking about evil!?! That is sort of hypocritical don't you think!?! Since, by definition Good and Evil are the domain of religion and morality based on something other than survival of the fittest. Let me see it was Nietzsche that made the argument that anything natural is therefore not evil (ignoring the point that good and evil are concepts that develop out of religion and not evolution). That means when a father sleeps with his daughter, or mother with her son, or sister and brother, who is of breeding age it is not evil nor wrong because it is natural for creatures to do so. Every primate except man, matter of fact every species of animal will do so with the exception of man. Since it is perfectly normal for that to occur in nature (the root word for natural) what keeps man from doing so. Is it a belief in evolution or is it a belief in something different? Yet we don’t allow that to happen. So the perception of meaning of the term “Evil,” depends on what way the person wants to define the situation. Maybe I consider those who have had or supports abortion to be Evil.

So let us look at this logically. Liberal females are for abortion and they make the argument that it is a woman's right and that it is their bodies and no man can tell a woman what to do with their body. That they have been liberated and no longer have the old shackles to hinder them. Ok, fine let us take that stand for sake of argument. However when a male does it is not fine? A male is not to control his body and not required to take damage when he does not want to nor when he thinks the person deserves the sacrifice!?! “Women are worth protecting because they're women. No, better yet, they're worth protecting because they're human beings, liberal, conservative or moderate.” The statement turns males into chattel slaves by not giving them a choice in the matter; but allowing females choice in the same style of situation when dealing with the unborn child within them. It is also a violation of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution and violation of basic fairness. It essentially says that you are male you must die to protect a female regardless of the situation, but Liberal Females do not have the same duty.

It is the lack of holding American females to account that explains why Scott Peterson is in Jail but Casey what is her name is not. Why adult females do not go to jail for fucking children. Why it is ok for a female to hit a male, and not the other way around (when neither is correct). How it is the poor Duke Lacrosse players lives were devastated because a woman without proof screamed rape. Those are just a few cases of the lack of honor with the system and Liberal Females. Until liberals truly want the same standards and fight for those standards to apply across the board that is just the sad logical truth.

Now the true aspect of chivalry is defending those even when they are not worth defending. I never said I would not protect liberal females, (however they are few in number {and those that I would gladly defend are even fewer [Lena is one]} and consisting of those you listed and on my friends list). I just said they are not worth defending. Look at John Adams defending the British Troops after the so called Boston Massacre, or the Nazi Defense Lawyers in the Nuremburg War Trials. They where chivalrous and defended people who are not worth it. Relax and don’t get too emotional about things with me

I responded, then he did. Etc. etc. etc. End result: he has completely cut off contact with me. This man was in my wedding. I always considered him my friend. But his religious stance has pushed him into this kind of thinking. This makes me sad. I've never actually been called an amoral baby-killing fascist, before.

Purity Lost

So, Aradia and I were watching the premier of True Blood tonight (I love the DVR) and the recording cut off in the middle of the preview of next week's show. Here is a transcript of the conversation from that point.

Aradia: Fuck! GodDAMNit!

Me: Near Maniacal Laughter

Aradia: What?

Me: For years, you wouldn't use a curse word to save your life. Now it's "Fuck! GodDAMNit!" just because you couldn't finish the preveiws!

Aradia: But they were pointing a gun at SAM!

Me: Near Maniacal Laughter

If that makes no sense to you, then I suggest you read the first Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Until Dark. Or any of the Southern Vampire series, for that matter.

Oh, and yeah, True Blood rocks! The casting is very good so far. All the important elements of the books are there, although as with almost all book-to-TV adaptions, some minor details have changed. They work pretty well, though, and I'm sure they cut the cost of the show considerably. Which is good, because I want this show to last, and a show with production values this high has got to be expensive as hell. Expensive shows are hard to keep on TV.

Oh, and one more thing. I so desperately want to live the life of Sam Merlotte.