Anna’s Adventures

• The company of friends. My own friends - not someone else’s
• To be responsible to my friends and family
• Not to be caught up in drama
• Freedom
• The company of women!
• Not to be afraid
• To be in control of my own life
• To be ok with being queer (omg, do I have to ‘come out’? Pretty sure everyone who cared guessed a long time ago)
• To be OK to be an artist
• To lose weight and be fit enough to run when I want to; to be fit enough to fly!
• Swim at leasst 3 times / week
• Have a balanced work/family/life - no more codependencies please
• Compromise!
• I want not to be bound

Ok, so this mate of mine is trying to contact me… and for some reason I don’t want him to. Its really not fair or reasonable. I will get into  contact, and override this feeling of repulsion, this feeling of wanting to let everyone just slip away from me.

But this is how it happens.

I told Kate that I wanted to make friends. She said “you’ve got friends”. Well, of course I do. But I don’t feel that. I don’t really take it seriously. I don’t really take it without suspicion, without strings.

And that’s how I end up without a support network. Because I either push everyone away, or I just can’t think to ask or who to ask when I really need it. I treat my friends and family like the easter bunny: I believe in them as an indulgence that can’t withstand the assault of reason.

I’ve always got by on the minimum support network possible. But now, its becoming less and less viable.

I’ve been reading this book, Bipolar and Pregnant, by Kristin Finn. She lives in a stable middle class marriage where she doesn’t need to work (her husband earns enough for both). Her mother was a nurse. She goes to church and reads the bible. She has a routine. She’s been diagnosed and medicated since her teens. Her family and doctors constantly watch her for any signs of “hypomanic excess”, and confront her accordingly. She takes their advice.

Kristin Finn is so far from me.

I don’t have a support network like that. I don’t have all these cultural markers on what is “normal” behavior.

— correction —

Its not that I don’t have people around me who care. Its that I always push them away. Its not that there aren’t people who will give me good advice, its that I don’t take it.

As I’ve said over and over, my family have always been there for me, even when I’m a bitch.

What Kristin Finn has that I don’t is culture: the bible doesn’t tell me when to be good.

There’s this woman that I know who is a chronic mis-speller. It irritates me. I wonder to myself: does she have an excellent knowledge of English, and is trying to be subversive; or is she spelling by phonics in a mad attempt to make herself understood?

Then that makes me wonder why I am such an elitist about these things. I never have problems understanding her emails. Why do I care if she is scrambling her letters in an intellectual game, or an honest effort? Why do I privilege the game?

I no longer accept my predictions of the future.

I feel like I can’t contemplate or ask for what I want because it will be used as leverage against me in yet another round of bargaining. There has got to be a better way to reach equilibrium.

Getting up from my desk at work half an hour ago, I found myself in tremendous pain. I’ve injured my shoulder. Ouch. Neck pain, neck pain! can barely move pain.

Still, I will get through it. Just no fast turning around. Please don’t sneak up on me!

In other musings, I am having lots of thoughts about relationships. Me in relationships. I’m wondering about the amount of drama that Kal and I can generate. Its like we make soap operas. Being wanted, being needed, respected and placed highly in a person’s life is wonderful. Its amazing. But it can be like a drug. Is it also crippling me, taking away my time and internal resources to be who I want to and need to be? Being off work sick with an ear infection yesterday gave me a lot of time to think about this stuff.

On a side note, the stuff in my ear drops is also sometimes used as an ingredient in anal sex lubricants. Analgesic, anyone??

Putting so much energy into a relationshiop - does that mean I’m sick? Is it romantic? Does it mean I am in peril? Do I need a doctor? Or can I write it all down and ask Cillian Murphy to play the lead? I have heard all these things. I don’t know which to believe. I don’t know how to go about forumlating my own answer to the problem.

I’m not feeling like I have a purpose, and I am not feeling like I have the time, the energy to have a purpose. I am not really feeling like me. Though this is all being borne from my decision 2 weeks ago to let myself be.

I am going to make this.

I shared lunch with a friend today, and decided to try and fulfill my month-long asian noodle craving.

Ha!

I went to Hokka Hokka, got a satay vege and rice box. All good.

Wrong. I was very ill at work afterward. I am still burping noxiousness. Bleagh.

I didn’t get to sleep last night until about 1.30am. I also didn’t eat dinner. I just wasn’t hungry, and I just wasn’t tired. I am both now however. I think it has a lot to do with Melbourne cup yesterday (Kal and I both picked the same horse at random, and that horse was scratched - an omen?).

I am currently tired. I would like my bed and a good book and a light warm breeze to wing me to sleep.

A friend of mine is out of the loop and I’m wondering how much farther down the rabbit hole to go looking for her. I think I may be over-reacting. But I am a friend, and I am concerned.