the devil's rose's blog

2009-02-07 10:48 a.m.

Ah, life.

The Epic Saga of My Existence continues...

Or something. I don't even know anymore! ^^; It's all just so weird.

I blew pretty much everything off this week. Well. Sorta. The snowstorm I was watching (<3) the last time I posted ended up shutting everything down in this country. Apparently English people don't know how to deal with snow? That was news to me. I always had these mental images of very Dickensian Christmases in England, with snow piled up outside and people drinking mulled wine and eating mince pies around a fire...stuff like that.

Apparently, much like California only has the two seasons of warm-and-a-bit-damp and hot-and-dry, England has the one season of cold-featuring-fog-and-rain-(and-if-you're-lucky-the-sun-might-come-out-for-five-minutes). Very much with the amusing.

So the five or six inches of snow we got ground everything to a halt, and got my Monday class canceled. Yay for that. I had decided to blow it off anyway when I checked my email and got the school closure notice. Things reopened on Tuesday, but I didn't go to any of that either. Well, I went to my psychologist appointment.

We spoke about the fact that I have an easier time with emotionally-laden communication if it's in Spanish, except as I guessed, Jorge doesn't know Spanish. Probably a good thing. I need to just get through this as quickly as possible. And dancing around it all in a language that is neither of our first language would not be direct.

I'm too impatient with my mental disturbances to let things take as long as they need to get better. I have until I return home to California to be sane. That's it.

We also started to talk a bit about the group meltdown of the summertime, but had to table that for next week because of the fact that we were running out of time.

He's still very perceptive though. He's figured out that music is a shorthand for me to what I'm feeling but can't say. Apparently I mention music a lot - what I was listening to when something happened, what my favorite band was at the time of a major change, things like that - and apparently a lot of my analogies involve music and art and literature. He's beginning to figure out that this is indeed because I have a deep appreciation for the arts, but also because it's a shorthand. I don't have to tell you how I'm feeling or what happened if I can point to a painting or a book or a song that begins to approach what I'm getting at. You're a thinking, feeling, ostensibly-intelligent human being. You can draw the appropriate conclusions. The words aren't mine, I have plausible deniability if I feel I've revealed too much of myself I can just say that I interpreted something differently. It's safe. There's always a way to back out.

I also make him laugh. A lot. Apparently I'm a lot funnier than I think I am. Or maybe I've just learned how to not take things seriously so well that its contagious.

Or maybe he's just laughing because he doesn't know how else to respond.

(My money's on that one.)

...

I'm listening to the Sisters of Mercy, Blaqk Audio, and AFI again. Still Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls - they're perennial favorites and pretty much always on my iPod - and Nickelback has somehow wormed their way onto my playlists recently. Tegan and Sara have also bubbled back up out of the abyss. I finally remembered that I have their CD The Con on my iTunes this week. What else?

My friends and I have so many inside jokes about Harry Belafonte's awesome songs that "Jump in the Line" and "The Banana Boat Song" never go away. The soundtrack to A Night at the Roxbury has joined those on the list of joke songs. Oh, and Walk the Dinosaur. Weird-as-hell little tune, that one is.

I've been playing the soundtrack to Pan's Labyrinth to fall asleep to.

And when I have to go places, I've been listening to Kabah, a Mexican pop band from a few years back. Embarrassing. Haha.

And then there's this song:

...

I live my life to a soundtrack composed entirely by other people, who have no idea that I even exist. It's an interesting balance of connection and oblivion. My existence would be radically different without these songs that I connect to so intensely, and yet I almost never know much of anything about the artists behind them. They, obviously, don't know anything about me.

But that doesn't matter. As long as the music is there. It's just like the books I love - I don't need to know about the author, just tell me more about the characters. They're almost like friends. Friends who can never lie to you or hurt you...but they can never help you, either...although that never seems to matter quite as much. It's interesting how that all goes.

...My psychologist thinks it's amazing that I'm as well-adjusted as I am, and that I haven't been drugging myself into oblivion all these years. He says that my sense of self - especially given that it developed at such a young age - is remarkable given the tumultuous environment I grew up in.

It's beyond either of us to explain it, though. *shrug* Not like I need an explanation to validate it. I'm just glad that I have survived. But then, I'm a stubborn bitch. Survival is just a part of who I am.

I think I confuse him. I don't think he entirely knows where to go with me. There's so much that's happened, so many connections to untangle...we could talk for days on end and it would never come anymore clear, I think. I've got it all compartmentalized away anyway, to keep me from having to deal with it all.

I only bring this all up because Wednesday night was singularly bizarre.

I went and saw Amanda Palmer and the Danger Ensemble (featuring Detektivbyran as the opening act) in London on the fourth. And it was...amazing. I don't really have words for it. But everything about it was just so incredibly powerful.

I absolutely fucking lost it about halfway through the show. I don't even remember what set me off, except suddenly I was crying and couldn't stop. I don't remember what song it was. It may have been when a guy proposed to his boyfriend onstage (absolutely beautiful, in all seriousness)...No, I think it was the newish song she played, but I don't know. It was one of the two, whichever happened first, because I cried through the other because of it.

It wasn't bad crying, like, I wasn't unhappy. It wasn't happy, either, it was just...a release. For a moment I tried to stop crying, and it began to head to panic territory, but I remembered what my psychologist had said about panic reactions typically coming about because you're trying to suppress a powerful emotion, so I just let it happen, and the panic subsided. The tears were still coming, though. And I felt so embarrassed to be crying, but for once it didn't matter that I was. For once I didn't feel like I *had* to stop for someone else's sake.

After all, who was going to notice, in a dark club front and center by the stage, about two rows back? Not the kids around me, they were too focused on Amanda and the Danger Ensemble. Not Amanda and the Danger Ensemble, the lights were too distracting. It was public but it was safe. And even if someone did notice...it was a friendly, safe atmosphere. Everyone had been friendly and nice in line. There was a sense of a community in that little club.

I've never seen that before at a concert, and I've been to a lot of shows.

The lyrics of the next few songs...man. If I hadn't have already lost it, I'd have done so then. But I was still crying as I sang along at the top of my lungs and let myself go and at the end, I was drained as hell and feeling slightly incoherent and giddy in a really weird combination. I half wondered if that was what it felt like to be going crazy, if I had finally cracked, if it even mattered.

It was wonderful and terrifying. And then it all subsided into a calm sort of numb feeling. I had to get out of the line to get my stuff signed and head to the back, though, because I didn't want to be all weird when I spoke to her. But I was anyway. I couldn't speak properly, words came out jumbled.

I gave her a beaded bracelet that I had made one week. I didn't tell her that I'd only worked on it when I was on the verge of melting down again, doing something stupid to myself, and putting bead after bead onto it, slowly, painstakingly, was the only thing keeping me from getting up and throwing all that I've worked so hard for away. I was going to throw it out. But it seemed more...appropriate? more like coming full circle to give it to her, when her show created the kind of cathartic sense that I needed more desperately than I had been willing to admit to myself or anyone else.

I walked back to my hostel that night feeling better than I had in months. I wish there was some way I could say that. Like, there's info on her webpage about where to send letters/emails. But I dunno...I'd feel stupid, almost, to do that.

I'm probably going to anyway.

...Spent Thursday hanging out with a couple of girls I'd met at the show. I find it rather telling as well that I, sort of a very shy, uptight, straight girl, find myself more comfortable hanging out with a pair of fairly outgoing, mellow, controversial girls - one of whom is bisexual-with-strong-lesbian-leanings and the other is a transvestite - than I do hanging out with the friends I've made at my university here in the UK, who are all fairly run-of-the-mill, average, "normal" people.

And then yesterday I blew everything off. I needed to. I'm still processing and integrating everything.

So...yeah. There you have it.

I must admit, I'm curious to see what Jorge says about the whole concert adventure. We're supposed to talk about my group of friends next time, but really...something happened on Wednesday. I need to figure out just what it was.

Because whatever happened, it was important. Back | Older | Current | Next