Campfyre Stories

There are always stories, but there aren’t always good points to end on. The stories that are mine to tell, at least in part, haven’t come to a stopping point, and I’m loathe to give something that will be "to be continued."

And so it goes.

Then there are the stories that simply aren’t mine to tell. As interesting as many of those are, they aren’t mine and I cannot share.

And so it goes.

Once again, as a calendar year ends, nostalgia finds me. Several people I had lost touch with have, in some form, made an appearance in my life. The stories I have about them have been told and need no rehashing. The parts of the stories that have not been told publicly will remain untold, publicly, probably forever. Some things need to remain unsaid.

And so it goes.

I got a message the other day that some random person found my MySpace page, liked my music and wants to book me for a gig.  I haven’t yet replied to the message.  I’m not sure if it’s something I want or not.

A friend of mine who reappeared after falling off the face of my world asked me about my writing and if I was still writing outside of the blog.  It’s embarrassing to admit that I haven’t even been writing ON the blog, let alone off it.  I have all of these ideas that I simply cannot translate, but that feels so much like an excuse that I don’t consider it valid.  I’m not doing it and I should be.

In fact, the entire idea of "not doing it and should be" applies to every aspect of creativity that I involve myself in.  That people are asking me about it in the most positive possible ways makes me feel like this is the nicest kick in the pants I could have asked for.  Maybe this needs to be a resolution.

And so it goes.

I’m still not sure what I’m doing for New Year’s Eve, but after the past few quiet New Year’s in, I think it’s time to make a point to have a night out again.  I don’t know what I’m interested in or what bars are even on the list of maybes, but I need to find something… 

And so it goes.

I’m feeling antsy and dissatisfied.  Something’s gotta give, but I’m lost in terms of figuring out what changes I need to make for things to be more satisfying.  All the ideas that I have are too grandiose and it seems like there’s some small-scale stuff that’s just out of sight, or just out of my reach.  I’m not even sure how to find out what those things are, but I’m working on it.

And so it goes.  And so it goes.  And so it goes.

I feel like I’ve spent a large portion of my life bearing the weight of intolerance for being different.

When I was young, it was because I wasn’t "from" there and didn’t fit the mold of what was known.  This started around when I was 7 or 8 and we moved to New York State and lasted through high school.

As an adult, it was because I didn’t buy into the same level of political activism or partisan beliefs as some of my friends or acquaintances.  I’ve been called derogatory names from both sides of the political spectrum for not fitting neatly into a partisan box.

Later, much later actually, it was intolerance of being fat.  What’s interesting to me is that for a long time I didn’t have the blatant denigration of random people, that’s a recent development.  Call it within this decade, as obesity rates have skyrocketed, especially among children.  Even when heroin-chic models (a la Kate Moss) first became popular, someone being fat didn’t give the rest of the world free reign to mock and deride them for it.

The thyroid medication allows me to think more clearly, and to see more clearly sometimes.  I went from depression to apathy to anger about what I see around me.  There was a recent discussion that I could not allow myself to really participate in.  A friend of mine claimed that it was internet anonymity rearing its ugly head, but the truth is that people who feel so negatively about overweight people (in general, but more specifically women) don’t need that veil of anonymity.

It’s actually so acceptable that even fat people are intolerant of fat people.  They look at people bigger than themselves and assume they know their eating habits (poor, junk food), their exercise habits (non-existent) and their medical history (fine except that they’ll be a drain on the system once the negatives of being so fat kick in).

I have a serious problem with hypocrisy in general, but I have an even more serious issue with hypocrisy-laden intolerance.

Like people who gorge themselves on crap fast food and rarely exercise, but keep a svelte figure deride those who are overweight for poor eating habits.  They know they’re among the lucky ones in terms of size and shape, but inside they’re at least as damaged by their diet as the very people they scorn.

These are people who think that as long as they look fit, they ARE fit and, if they’re anything like the most mainstream people I know, they’re not likely seeing a doctor to even find out if everything is right on the inside.  They fit the societal mold of "looking good", therefore, they are better than the disgusting fatties they are FORCED to look at.

*sigh*

And it’s an issue that I am WAY too close to.

This post is leading somewhere, but there are a lot of things I need to say first, just to clarify.

I believe in karma.  Not in the traditional Buddhist way, but only within a lifetime.  I don’t believe that things like karma carry over or follow you around.  I believe that true faith makes things real, so if you are a true Christian and live your life in a Christ-like fashion, that Heaven will await you in the afterlife.  Whatever beliefs that have honest, true and devout faith behind them will be true in the end, but I also believe that karma happens to everyone, so it cannot carry over, not if you’re not going to have another life after this one.

I believe that the things you do come back to you.  I believe that the choices you make in life lead to the decisions that are imposed upon you.  I believe that if you are a fundamentally good person, then good things will generally come to you, if only you can see/find them.  I believe that "sin", however you define it or phrase it, is a matter of doing something with the certain knowledge that what you are doing is WRONG.  I believe that when people are kind, without wanting anything in return, kindness must be returned to him/her.  I believe that when you are the recipient of significant kindness, you owe a karmic debt, not to a god or omniscient power, but to the universe as a whole.

I believe that karmic debt can be inherited if a person passes on either owing or being owed.  My father, for example, told me that he helped more people move than he could count, but when it came time for him to move, often people were scarce.  I, however, have always been happy or, at least willing, to help people move, but I can’t think of any (although there must have been some) who took me up on that.  When people could have used me, I’ve always been unavoidably out of town or with long-standing, unbreakable plans.  I think I am the recipient of my father’s karmic moving credit.

I believe that karma only applies when no sort of ROI is expected.  When you do something out of pure generosity or kindness, it just exists.  If there is any (perceived, at least) measure of obligation, that obligation negates any karma that would have otherwise been accumulated.

I believe that there are some things that are fated to happen, though they are not always dependent on the where.  I believe that the order of the universe is most organized when debts are paid between the people who back-and-forth share karmic debts and credits.  If a friend buys me a cup of coffee, I’d much rather treat that person to dessert or buy him/her popcorn at the movies than to hand them a couple of dollars as repayment.  I believe that illustrates my concept of karmic debt/credit as well as anything else.

I believe that favors are obligations and they are outside the karmic system.

And because I believe all of those things, I try, very hard, to keep my karma in balance.

So there’s this boy who rides my bus.  He’s been riding for a couple of months, he’s very pretty and we play the "looking at you, I’m not looking at you game".  Because he gets on the bus after me and gets off before me, I’ve never had a reasonable chance to sit near him and strike up a conversation.  I only ever see him in the morning.  He takes a different bus than I in the evening…  probably he has a more reasonable schedule and doesn’t have to walk 2 miles

I also think that, in the past I don’t know how long, I have lost a significant amount of my courage and confidence and find that I’m unable to come up with a conversation starter or even the nerve to try.

Seeing him every day and appreciating him on a purely superficial level has turned him into the subject of my daydreams.  It’s all very vague, really, but he occupies my mind when there’s nothing else better going on up there.  I started beating myself up a little about being so amazingly chicken about the whole thing.  Most people who know me agree that I can pretty much talk to anyone.

Anyone, that is, unless I am attracted to them.  (Or unless I know them, regardless of whether that happened before or after I felt the attraction.)

Ok, so there’s the background.  This is what happened:

I was riding home on Monday evening.  It was a terrible bus ride, filled to capacity and the bus was making a weird grinding/banging noise.  I also had to ride further than usual, so I was not a particularly happy camper.  About 2/3 of the way through my ride, I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes.  The thought passed through my head, "Wouldn’t it be nice if it turned out that He was shopping at the mall (next bus stop) and got on this same bus so I would have something fun to look at…"

I thought about dozing, but it wasn’t happening, so I opened my eyes and sat up, looked at the seats across the aisle from me and there he was!

And I still couldn’t think of anything to say.  Not even hello.  I smiled and looked away.  He did the same thing.  I hate that damned game.  I took off my headphones to try to make myself more approachable and he scooted across to the aisle seat from the window.

My mind was a complete blank.  Even the obvious phrase "So, did you have a nice Thanksgiving?" didn’t come to me.  I sat there like an idiot and he kept looking like he was going to say something, but he didn’t.

A few stops before he got off, some big dude in a huge puffy coat sat next to me and blocked us from even playing that stupid LAYINLAY game.  Meanwhile, He kind of threw himself back over toward the window, slumped down in the seat and pouted the rest of the way until he got off the bus.

It’s really easy to read into that.  I’m trying not to.  Instead, I beat myself up for missing the obvious conversation opener, for not having said hello, for having missed that opportunity.  I’m usually better than that.

So I got myself all worked up.  I called myself the world’s biggest chicken publically and psyched myself up to try to give it another go, to COME UP with a way to talk to him, even without as perfect an opportunity as I had missed.

And he didn’t ride that morning.

Here I was with all this mustered up courage and this intention to DO SOMETHING and no way to channel it.  It was pretty frustrating until an outlet occurred to me.

I posted to the Missed Connections forum on Craig’s List.

Yeah…  I know…  but I did it anyway.

A few hours later, I got a reply, "I know this isn’t about me, but I also ride that bus in the mornings and I wonder about the stories of my fellow riders."  It turned into a conversation where we learned that we have a lot in common, both working as contractors for the same multinational conglomerate, both being guitar players, both having and using (and kind of being cultish about) a Treo 700p.  Interesting connection, but not the one I had missed.

Then I got another reply, simply asking for pictures.  Well, now let’s be honest here.  Not only am I a fat chick, but I’ve been in a wretched mindstate for quite some time and my confidence is (to put it mildly) shaken.  I haven’t felt attractive for months if not years and I avoid pictures that actually reflect reality…  no, I avoid pictures almost entirely and try to be one of the ones behind the camera.

I didn’t tell him all of that, I gave him an edited version of "I don’t have any recent pictures."  Also, I don’t know that I trust people who are trolling CL for pictures of women.  The whole point, for me, was to encourage this pretty boy to talk to me *on the bus*, in person.

So I got another reply, asking me to describe myself, which, at the urging of a very dear friend, I told him I would do in person.  The next reply was possibly the strangest I have gotten.  He asked "Do you have callipygian qualities?"

I had to look "callipygian" up and the definition cracked me right up.

Meanwhile, I haven’t see the boy since that evening.  He hasn’t been on the bus in the morning and there’s no way for me to know what happened.  I’m always a little sad when a regular stops riding (for example, my friend Pete, who I would spend the hour ride chatting with about almost anything, who has disappeared off the face of my world), but even moreso because I have no eye candy when he’s not around.  I’m not so delusional as to think that there was more than a remote chance that he would 1) read CL, 2) recognize himself in my Missed Connections post and 3) take the initiative, but it was a nice little daydream to have for a few days.

But the overall point that this makes to me is that I’m really starting to come back to my real self.  I’m flirting more freely, I’m back to considering potential…  something in boys, I’m back to being as boy-crazy as I was before.

That much, at least, makes me feel good, even if it ties in with a minor disappointment.

Yeah, whatever, it’s not Thanksgiving anymore.  My mother asked us to share what we were thankful for on Thursday.  My response?  "I am thankful for my doctor."

That’s right…  it’s another thyroid post.

My father’s widow provided me with a long list of common, but often overlooked thyroid disorder symptoms.  It was quite an eye-opening list, and it has started getting some of my friends wondering about whether or not they too might have something wonky with their thyroid.

Part of me is glad about this, but with the lack of information within the medical community, it concerns me that they might wind up having a bad situation like I did last year and will wind up with an undiagnosed problem.

Because of that, I’m not posting The List here.

But I do want to talk about the differences that I’ve noticed since I’ve started on the Synthroid.  I know that this is probably not all that interesting to people who have read my irreverent ramblings and stories, but as it is a key point of my life right now, it’s something I need to document for myself.

The very first thing that I noticed, when I started taking the low dosage, was that my mood immediately lifted.  I went from having these terribly dark thoughts about how I was going to get fired or how I’d never have sex again or that friends or family must hate me (all of which are unfounded and, frankly, ridiculous) and came back to myself.  I got back to my optimism and humor and silver-lining thinking.  I hadn’t even realized how lost I had gotten in a very short period of time.  I was faking it and not faking it very well.

I also noticed that I had a lot more motivation.  Instead of dreading the two mile walk to the bus stop, I found myself quite enjoying it.  After moving to the next dosage, the aches in my knees and ankles went away, so I enjoyed my walk even more.  My back stopped hurting (I used to wake up almost unable to get out of bed from the pain) and I started sleeping.  Not sleeping better,  but SLEEPING, at all.  The word "better" cannot apply in this situation.

I had read an article that talked about sleep disorders and described one of the symptoms of sleep apnea as having serrations on the sides of the tongue, which I ALWAYS wondered about…  it’s a weird thing to have happen without explanation.  Sleep apnea is actually on The List I was sent of thyroid disorder symptoms, so it makes sense that it would clear up.

Emotionally and mentally I was feeling better than I had in years, and it was lasting rather than coming and going as it had previously been.  Physically, I started to notice changes, too.  My pants don’t fit anymore, and while I’m not really losing any weight, I’ve always been heavy for my size.  It’s more accurate and encouraging for me to gauge my weight/health by what size I wear rather than the number on the scale, but as I’ve started needing a belt all the time, I’m certainly seeing and feeling a difference.  Soon I’ll need to take a link out of my watchband.

I’m less hungry, or, hungry less often, which is actually a bad thing.  People think that I eat a lot, too much, or poorly, but I actually eat quite sensibly and quite well.  As it stands, I eat when I’m hungry.  That’s the smartest way to eat, frankly, but if I don’t get hungry, I will forget to eat, which will cause my blood sugar to drop and will make me cranky at best, insanely bitchy at worst.  It’s something I’m trying to be aware of and I need to adjust my habits from eating "when I’m hungry" to eating periodically to make sure I’m getting the nourishment I need.

Girl had told me (with a caveat of "please don’t take this the wrong way") that she felt I looked "puffy".  Not always, but generally when I was having other symptoms that have since cleared up.  She’s right…  I’ve been "puffy" and I notice it in my hands, mostly, when my rings don’t seem to fit.  Others see it in my face.  Well, again, that puffiness was something on The List.  When she came to town this past weekend, her first exclamation to me was "You look like you again!"  The puffiness has subsided.

Having my long-time best friend who I rarely see come to town was a really good thing and a positive reality check.  She noticed that the eczema (I didn’t know it was eczema, I didn’t really know what eczema was) that has always been a problem on my upper arms was GONE.  I’ve always been self-conscious of my upper arms, partly because of the flab, but even moreso because of the angry red patchy blotchy crap that was always there.  It was not attractive, but it, too, has subsided, and again, eczema is on The List.

My hair is softer and better behaved.  My skin is clearing up (apparently, it’s the lack of stress helping there, but again, it comes back to the thyroid making me stressy).  Things that I didn’t even know were thyroid problems are clearing up and it just hammers home the point to me that it really is the Master Gland and there was a lot more *wrong* with me than I had any idea about.

So I’m on an even higher dosage now, which is where I’ll stay for at least a little while.  In a few weeks, I’ll get my prescription called in and actually pay for it, having run out of the free samples by then.  A month after that (I already have the appointment), I’ll get bloodwork done again and we’ll try to determine the level of "normal" that applies to me, specifically.

But, folks, I feel SO MUCH BETTER now.  I can’t believe that I functioned as well as I did for so long, and I can’t believe how many things I thought were just par for the course that are now fixed.  It’s a world of difference.