torsdag den tjugotredje augusti

because the guy who's been living in my future lair is trifling, i probably won't get to move until next week. i suppose it will be before the 31st, at least, since legally i have a right to be in there on september 1st. i was really hoping to be in there before orientation began on monday. fuck. now i have to juggle my mental and physical energy between orientation and moving. fucking trifling asshole below my sister. why has it taken him so long to move his ass out? he's moving to the ground floor apartment across the patio. c'mon. that's the easiest move i've ever heard of. there's no fucking reason to take so long. anyway, my roommate is back. he's been back since last saturday. we're getting along fine. i love his company. i just don't enjoy the dirtiness and roaches. just a few more days until i have my own space. and i haven't seen any roaches in my room since the last bombing. yeah, i haven't had my own space since early 2002. over 5 years of living in other people's spaces on their terms under their rules and surrounded by their things. over 5 years of not having my very own home to myself. i reveled in having my own space when i lived alone in seattle and vancouver. i LOVED it. i was such a great homemaker, especially in vancouver. i wanna totally be that in this new place. i am gonna make everything in the lair sooooo cute and pretty and cozy and functional and inviting. i am gonna make the patio really nice, too. then i am gonna invite friends over to visit and have fun. people really will come, too, seeing as it's so easy and fast to get to from midtown manhattan. when people visit new york from other places, i'll truly have a place for them to stay. i can't wait. and it will be so quiet. i will be hitting the books and studying so hard in there! :) it's so serene back there. i really can't wait. just a few days. just a few days. just a few days.

so, i'm really obsessed with bento boxes, and i look forward to making my lunch every morning to take to school or to my field assignment, and putting it in one of my cute little bento boxes. :) i can't wait to cook again. i don't cook in this roachy kitchen, but i will cook and bake so much in the new lair! i can't wait for the weather to get colder so that i can start churning out the baked goods and hearty, scrumptious meals. i can't wait. oh, and i will have all new furniture except for the bookcase that my sister gave me. i finally figured out that it's gonna work to go to ikea and get almost everything there. i'm gonna get the stuff that is made out of solid wood but isn't expensive. i have to wait til my student loans come through to get the stuff, though. i'm gonna have a futon bed (not from ikea). i'm scrimping around to have enough $ to buy it so that i'll have something to sleep on when i move in. i have have very little work these past two weeks, so money is very tight. i can't wait til the student loans come through! oh, and i found inexpensive, big rugs from crate & barrel that i'm gonna get. my lair is gonna be a shoes-off-at-the-door kind of place. i will have a swedish welcome mat. "välkommen!"

tisdag den tjugonde augusti

there has been a roach infestation in my room. i bombed the room yesterday. i found 3 roaches crawling since then. i bombed the room again today. hopefully there won't be roaches alive in there for a while. i just don't wanna deal with them as long as i'm living there, which hopefully won't be much longer.

i am moving to my new lair in a few days, hopefully before the weekend ends. next week is school orientation. i've been having medication side effects which are now getting better, and i have been stressing out about wanting so much to move asap, and i am scared about school. i'm not scared about school, actually. i am excited about school and scared about how well i will handle it and how good i will be at my field placement. i wanna succeed at this endeavor so very much. i want my 30s to be a decade in which i enjoy small and large fruits of my labors and struggles.

my new lair is very close to manhattan. my name is on the lease. the lair will be an empty shell when i move in. no one else's shit will be in there. i'll have my own little tiny piece of this huge city for myself. it will be a quiet place to study in. it will be a retreat for me, myself and i. i'll have a patio. i'll make an awesome little home for myself. it'll be the cutest place ever.

måndag den trettonde augusti

i have been having panicky feelings the last few days. it's because i'm on full-blown meds again, both zoloft and wellbutrin. i am gonna see the psychiatrist on wednesday afternoon. i couldn't stop picking at my scalp and pulling at my hair yesterday. i take my anxiety out on my hair and skin when i feel like this. today, i am okay at work. i am panicky about what i have to do after work, though. it doesn't help that i work at times square, the worst place to be if you're feeling anxious. i have to plow through the crowds to get to the nearest office supply store 3 blocks down (which seems like a mile for me in this state). i have to buy padded envelopes for my dvds. i have to mail out 5 dvds today. after i get the envelopes, i will walk 1-2 blocks to the times square subway station (the busiest, worst station) to go down to the 7. i am going to take the 7 to 45th road-court square in queens. there's a post office nearby that's open til 7 p.m. it's really empty and quiet a lot of the time. i'll mail the stuff there. i feel really fucked up in the head. my financial problems, my problems with my mother, my friend's schizophrenia, my other friend being in north carolina for a few weeks, the fact that school is starting soon, and how tomorrow i am meeting with the management guy for the apartment (i'm scared he's gonna not keep his word about keeping the rent at its current low rate, therefore making me unable to rent there after all). worried about how to afford furniture. my sister's offering to help me purchase a futon bed, though. that's very unlike the way she was before. i spoke with her for the first time since winter yesterday. i am hoping that things will be better between us now. but things with my mother are bad. i don't wanna talk about it now. today is the last day of this temp job i'm doing as a receptionist at times square. who knows if i'll get any more work before school begins? stress, stress, stress. stress, stress, stressssssss. well, i'm gonna go now. bye.

onsdag den åttonde augusti

the 7 might have been the only train running this morning. luckily i live a block from the 7. i pushed my way onto a packed train after not being able to board two consecutive jammed ones. it was insane. but, i got to work only 15 minutes late (instead of hours late, like many new yorkers) and was the first one here.

update on my mother: she responded to my reply to her e-mail and listed all the major instances of her doing something nice for me throughout my life, and then asked me how, in each case, she had abused me. i won't get into what i wrote back. i just explained that abuse is not a series of events you can list. abuse is a pattern of behavior and ways of relating that forms the fabric that a relationship is made of. i explained that a series of events in which nice things are done for a person does not excuse or make irrelevant the presence of a pattern of abuse of that person. she stated she had no idea what i was talking about in terms of abuse in our relationship. i asked her to go over the instances of being nice that she had outlined and think about how our relationship generally was during all of those periods of time. i reminded her of the anger, resentment, fights, snappy comments, criticism, etc. that has permeated our relationship for a long time. i am not going to continue a back-and-forth with her in which i continue to explain and describe things for her approval, as it's a perfect example of her not valuing my truth and of her challenging me to prove my feelings and experiences as valid. she has always invalidated anything of mine that she doesn't want to deal with. yes, this is one of the ways she's emotionally abused me. i have no idea what her next response will be. probably some sort of alternate history of our relationship that doesn't involve abuse, just misunderstandings between a mother and her troubled child. i won't take the bait. i'll just let her know that i need to go back to not being in communication.

my roommate is temporarily home for today and maybe tomorrow (i'm not sure). then he's back up in new england at the summer camp until august 12th. i'll have barely seen him this whole time i've lived in his apartment.

i am so anxious to move and set up my own new lair and get settled in. i am going to have the cutest chococat-themed bathroom ever. at a store down the street from where i currently live, they have chococat wallpaper banners that matches my bathmat, toilet lid cover and shower curtain. it's all in the "lapis" design. the store also have a matching lapis set of a chococat soap dispenser, cup and toothbrush holder, but that might be too much. i probably won't get that. there's no bathtub in the bathroom, just a shower stall. you can't have it all, though. i will have totally bare walls throughout the apartment that i can decorate. everything will be 100% ME! :)

there's a boy down the hall from where i currently live who looks, talks, and acts like alex. he's latino, not a swedish/greek boy like alex, but they are doppelgangers. alex could easily pass for latino. i think this boy is substantially younger than i am. he's like, the late teens version of alex. what a cute sweetie-pie. oh, my god. what a cutie-pie. i'd like to talk to him sometime. no, i don't have designs on him, but it would be interesting to talk to him! he seems like a really sweet kid! i also saw a boy on the subway yesterday who resembled alex. awww, how cute! :) alex was cute-deluxe. i love seeing boys who remind me of him!

tisdag den sjunde augusti

i am at a posh desk in a highrise building in times square. i'm subbing for a receptionist in a real estate office. today is my second day. i am temping here through next monday. after that, i will have less than two weeks before i begin orientation at school. who knows if i will get more temp work after next monday. maybe not. i went for two weeks without anything just now. maybe the summer is slow for temp work. when september hits, my student loans will come, and all the money for non-school expenses will be direct-deposited into my bank account. i just have to make it through these few weeks.

i am back on my meds. i was partly-to-mostly off of them due to not being insured and being broke. it hasn't been pretty to be me or be around me as of late. i can't believe i went for years like that, being so depressed and not being treated for it. it's so nice to have health insurance again!!! i never take it for granted!

yesterday i got a definite "yes" on the apartment below my sister. i also got to take a good look around it. it's very cute and will suit my needs fine. i can't wait to move in. i should be able to move in in between one and two weeks from now. i am so very excited to have my very own space for the first time since i moved here. and i can't believe i'll be living so close to everything. 5 minutes to grand central. 8 minutes to times square (i hate times square, but it's where i need to go to catch the 1 train to school). once i sign my lease, a huge stress will be lifted off of me. and after all my looking and planning, i'm ending up staying in my beloved borough of queens. :)

i saw a very old friend on sunday. we had brunch and then went to the guggenheim museum (which i had never been to before) and then went to "fika", which is to have a break in which you sit down for coffee (or tea, or whatever) with family or friends. it was really nice to see her. she's doing well. she's been sober for 8 months. she became an alcoholic 3 years ago. she's now in aa. my own alcohol use has been much more under control. i haven't had hard alcohol for weeks, just a beer or two once a week or so. it's my aim for the alcohol use to dwindle down even more. i can do it. her mom is giving me some old furniture. i thought i could use her mom's old futon, but it's queen-size and i need full-size. :/ so i guess i'm in the market for a new futon. i need a frame for it, too, because my last futon got moldy from being right on the floor in a humid climate. :( her mom is giving me the two hammock chairs with brown fabric covered in orange and yellow mushrooms which date back to the '70s. that furniture was there in their living room when i first met my friend in nursery school. :)

i am too tired to talk much about other things going on: the fact that another very old friend of mine who has schizophrenia has symptoms that have gotten worse, and his family is in denial and is therefore not helping him get what he needs psychiatrically. he called me last night and was so desperate and haunted by his hallucinations (which he is convinced are real) that i worried for his safety and called my dad crying and my dad called his dad and did some diplomatic talking (our dads have known one another for eons). i dunno if it helped, but at least his dad now knows that other people know what's going on and are watching. i wish i were there to physically take that boy to a good psychiatrist who will help him and give him medicine that works!!! i will do my best to support him from afar.

another thing: my mother e-mailed me today, telling me how much i've hurt her by not speaking to her for the past half-year. manipulation and guilt trips. what's new? she can't accept that we have a fucking abusive relationship. she makes me out to be a bad guy who is giving her a "silent treatment" and "punishing" her. i'm not punishing her. i'm taking care of myself! i can't fucking take it. she implies that i don't love her because i'm not talking to her. i can't fucking deal. this makes me want to talk to her even LESS. to be honest, i barely miss my mother now. i feel horrible about it, but i barely miss talking to my mother. the effect of NOT talking to her does me a lot more good than harm at this point. i miss my sister more. my sister and i are on writing terms now. i'm sure we'll be on speaking terms soon, seeing as i am going to be her downstairs neighbor. i know this situation is weird. i am moving downstairs from someone i haven't been talking to for half a year. but i think that my relationship with my sister is salvageable since she is more able to self-reflect and admit to wrongdoings than my mother is. my mother's a lost cause. she's stuck in the abuser/martyr role and sometimes i wonder if she really loves me or is just trying to look good to her friends and society by playing off "the good mother" in front of others. it's hard to play "the good mother" when you're daughter's not talking to you. yeah, well, it's hard to look like "the good daughter" when you're not talking to your mother, but it doesn't fucking matter to me anymore.

that's some of what's going on, the good and the bad of it. oh, and i am addicted to haruki murakami. :)