schillerium

Few things accentuate just how much one has fallen out of the habit of regular LJing like consciously trying to get back into it. Believe me, I've tried, but for the most part I struggle to feel like I have anything remotely interesting or coherent to say. Of course, that didn't always stop me before -- but somehow in the past year or so it's seemed more insurmountable than ever.

It's not the davomatic thing, exactly. While that's obviously still on my mind, I'm not devastated about it the way I was when franionnoinarf died -- this time, it's really more of a persistent melancholy than anything else. There are a variety of reasons for that, not least of which is the fact that we knew it was likely and had time to prepare ourselves. And, too, having been through the aftermath of Torvald's passing, I had a much better handle on what to expect this time and how to muddle through it.

In truth, what's been weighing on me far more of late isn't David's death itself, so much as the fact that I've mostly had to cope with it alone. I'm still single, and still essentially invisible when I put myself out on the market. I have a bunch of casual friends of the type I can shoot the shit with over coffee, but almost nobody I feel close enough to that I could actually call outside of the standing afternoon koffeeklatsch if I needed to talk about something personal. And I haven't even been able to get my feelings off my chest in counselling, because my therapist's been off on sick leave since January.

So, yeah, that's where I'm at: kinda lonely, and not really feeling as though I have the power to do anything except ruminate about it. Blergh.

Having to consciously remind yourself that you're a stronger person than you typically give yourself credit for can be exhausting sometimes, no?

It was pretty inevitable that I'd eventually post something more about the American election than my verklemptness of last night. It simply took me a while to collect my thoughts enough to say something coherent about it.

I'm still kind of teary-eyed and emotional today, surprisingly. Partly it's tears of joy that something so amazing, so powerful could happen so much sooner than anyone might have thought imaginable even so little as a year ago -- that racism, such an overpowering and corrosive barrier, could be overcome. But it's also a moment of catharsis, an expiation of all the pain and anger that so many of us have carried in the last eight years.

For everybody, both the lowly American soldiers and the innocent Iraqi civilians, who died in the service of a war built upon lies. For everybody who lost their lives or their homes because of government incompetence in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For everybody whose horrific death in the World Trade Center was so brutally dishonoured by the oil industry's war agenda, one which as we all now know was already in the works long before anybody knew that September 11, 2001 would be no ordinary day. For Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. And for every proud American who was willing to stand up and fight for what's right, but was censored or arrested by an administration determined to silence honest debate and criminalize dissent.

Not that any of that's been excused, of course. But the opportunity now exists to turn the page.

The road ahead won't be easy. The challenges facing the United States -- and the world -- at the moment are profound, and Barack Obama won't be able to fix them overnight. But the incredible outpouring of emotion and goodwill from around the world, and the convincing mandate that Obama won last night, are both cause for celebration, because it's by building coalitions and working together that we'll get through it. One of the great myths of American political discourse in these past eight years has been that the world is fundamentally anti-American -- but the truth, too often forgotten, is that you're our friends, our neighbours, our family. We hate the government you've had for the past eight years -- but we love you.

To all my American friends who organized and lobbied and fought for change over the past eight years, you helped to elect a man who ran one of the most effective and inspiring election campaigns that many people in this world have ever seen, a man who commands respect not by being a Dubya-style demagogue, but by the force of his intellect, his commitment to staying on the high road even when his opponents were flinging shit, and his ability to find and appeal to the common ground that unites us all.

There's still work to be done, of course. Actually getting out of Iraq won't be easy. Reviving the global economy won't be easy. Overturning Proposition 8 won't be easy. But getting Obama to the White House wasn't easy, either -- and you did it. Remember, too, his own words from just last night: "And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words -- yes, we can."

Thank you, my friends. Thank you.

Maybe no words are necessary in this moment. I think you all know.

Just...yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDYzMGFiNjQ0MWRjNmI0ZTlkYjgwZTExMjA3MWNiZTk=

It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.

Most people would call that a migraine, actually...

Rove: Some McCain ads don't pass '100 percent truth' test

Some jokes just write themselves, don't they?

There are so few things in life more stark and chilling than the persistent feeling that you're just not ever meant to find real love.

The realization that you've reached the age of 36 without ever having had a relationship at all -- not because you don't want one, or because you're incapable of having one, or because you don't try, but because you seem to lack the basic ability to attract into your life anybody who wants to be with you.

You go to bars, and you're invisible. You go to bathhouses, and you're invisible. You try online personals or sex hookup sites, and you're invisible. You try joining clubs or discussion groups, and invariably end up as just about the only person in the group who doesn't ultimately end up in a long-term relationship with somebody else they met in that same group. If you make the first move, you invariably get turned down cold, and if you wait for someone to approach you, you're going to be waiting until pigs fly. You try just hanging out over coffee and going with the flow, except the flow always ends up with you going home alone at the end of the night. And on the exceedingly rare occasion that you do meet someone with whom you seem to click, it's invariably an illusion that gets yanked away, for one reason or another, the moment you reach for it.

You really try to be okay with your loneliness. You know the old cliché that it happens when you least expect it -- so you do your very best to live life one day at a time without getting attached to specific expectations, and just be open to whatever. But that doesn't seem to make a difference. You do your very best to learn and grow and accept your life as it is -- but no matter how hard you work on improving yourself, there's always something you're still doing wrong that's keeping the opportunity to actually love and be loved by someone at bay.

And most people you know just don't want to hear you bitch and moan about how lonely you are anyway, so mostly you just keep it to yourself...which succeeds only in making you feel even lonelier, because you're left in a situation where you can't talk about your feelings to anyone...well, except the one hour per week that you spend with your counsellor.

So you even turn to prayer, and try to keep faith that some kind of force out there -- be it God, angels, the universe, little Keebler elves, whatever -- has enough compassion to give a shit how crushingly isolated you feel. But while so many other people claim that this works for them, when you do it you just face a deafening silence that leaves you feeling even more disconnected than you were before you got down on your knees. Let go and let God, eh? Doesn't that aphorism imply that He's actually supposed to do something?

And the end result of all this is that relationships seem out of reach, and you feel completely powerless to do anything about it.

It would appear that my suspicions about the Wellbutrin were correct. After a week off, I'm feeling significantly less anxious and tense. A little more tired than usual, but nothing unmanageable -- and it would be rather difficult, anyway, to separate how much of the tiredness stems from Wellbutrin withdrawal and how much stems from the cold that I caught within the same period of time.

So, my pretties, it's all good.

I'm now beginning to suspect that I have somewhat more of an anxiety problem than previously thought.

Mainly because I suddenly realized today that ever since my shrink started supplementing the Celexa with Wellbutrin back in December, I've been in a near-constant state of low-level dread complete with cramping chest muscle tension.

I'm not sure whether it's just a bad reaction to the Wellbutrin, although ironically I never experienced anything like this the first time I was on it, or whether there's actually been a low-level anxiety problem lurking under the surface the whole time. Obviously something I'll need to ask the shrink next time I see her. But it would seem from reading a bit on the net about comorbid depression-anxiety, that the combination does tend to produce exactly the type of treatment-resistant condition that I've been struggling with.

This either changes everything, or nothing. I'll keep y'all posted.