Pigsy the vampire catcher

I am feeling very restless today. My mind is jumping from one idea to another and running in circles of increasingly unlikely fancy before pausing, yawning, and looking into a void. Then starting over. I jump up from the couch to stand at the kitchen window, not to do the washing up, which sits there all out of patience and out of luck, or any other thing before sitting down at the computer to half play a silly game before jumping up again to read a magazine article. Reading doesn’t soothe my irritated mind, nor does any part of the internet, I could do something but everything else seems a chore or is a chore and I’m trying to pretend that they’ll just go away again.

I think that after only two days off I’m not yet ready to face the stress of work again. It’s never a good sign when work is so stressful that it ruins your time off and suddenly you’re a child again and it’s Sunday night and you’re freaking out so much that you can’t sleep. You want to go back so little that you think your brain will burst from it.

Weeks ago I read my cards (bet you never imagined that, eh?) for the first time in years. There’s something about this flat that puts me off doing readings and, besides, there’s no point when you already know what they’re going to say. Mine always say the same things. Always. And I usually pick the same cards. Success through creative discipline, change, dramatic change – if there is karma, if there is reincarnation then my lessons are all about trusting my abilities, more than that – believing that I am able and trusting in it, and of changing situations before they become powder kegs. I always wait too long, hold onto dead situations, take on responsibilities that aren’t mine, feel responsible for people who are older and who really ought to know better. I am never content to sit in the present and watch things unfold. I take the pieces I look at them and see when they could lead, it doesn’t take much to have a good idea of where something is going but it always amazes me how many people can’t look at something and see its trajectory.

I am tense because I am trying to be calm and accepting [and possibly have PMS] of the things I cannot change either at all or in an instant. I recently applied for a job, one that I want very much not because it’s a particularly awesome job but because of the possibilities it opens up. I think I am stressed, not just because of work, because I haven’t heard anything back from them, not so much as ‘thanks for applying’. I’m trying not to be judgemental about what could be viewed as a lapse in etiquette [really, to leave people hanging for two weeks?] because I realise that there would have been a hell of a lot of applications – I only hope that mine is viewed as genuine.

I am also stressed about the people in my life. I hate those conversations with friends when they tell you how out of character you’re being when you expose a facet of yourself that they haven’t seen before. I suppose this is my own fault for being unnaturally secretive. I genuinely don’t expect people to find me fascinating or to be interested in my minutiae, I’ve got me for that [oh and a blog], so I don’t really give out a lot of information. Even things that I am terribly passionate about, like politics, only get airing in the right company because my idea of a good time does not include being lectured, told I’m a communist, told I’m naïve, told that I know nothing about what I’m talking about [this one is particularly ironic but don’t people get shitty when you’ve been to university? Consequently -], told that I’ve been brainwashed, told that I don’t know how to think for myself [thank you, but I can, you know, life would be awfully tough if I couldn’t], and oh but I can’t remember all the other things I’ve been told. And also, you know, sex-death-politics – the real fun of life, apparently aren’t good dinner table conversation. The other thing is trying to force yourself into a mould that you didn’t come from. I didn’t come from that particular small town, limited culture, limited exposure to the other; I came from Sydney and was transplanted. I was the minority, I was too young and too alienated to stand up for who I should have been so I tried to be as they’d been brought up to be, as they’d always known. It couldn’t have been more foreign. It couldn’t have left bigger scars. It turns out that I’m not afraid of the city, of the concrete wilderness, of the millions of people doing whatever, of the world beyond home and hearth. I prefer it. And what that means – I don’t know, my prejudice, probably. My snobbery. My struggling to get away from a way of life that could be large but is made so very small. My belief that there is more than one way of living, more than two even, that there is a different way for every different person and that I’m quite sick of having others tell me who I am, how I live, how I shall be. I have my own ideas, I will not be dictated to and I will not long stand your constant constraints even if they are your attempts to understand and place the world – you can do it without sharing.

There is, in fact, so much that I am sick of in my personal relationships. I’m quite sick of being a dumping ground. I’m sick of being a last resort. I’m sick of being the picked up when others are bored only to be ignored when they’ve got something else on. I’m sick of being thought to have an absurdly think hide – seriously, no one is that fucking insensitive, it’s mostly fat, not elephantine skin. I’m sick of the friend who doesn’t like me being around her other friends because…what? Am I that much of an arsehole? I realise that I don’t fit in with them terribly well and am gauche around them [actually, bet you didn’t realise] but the attitude doesn’t help. I do try. I’m sick of being the one that’s somehow weirder than the others. You know what, I’m an adult, I’m fairly intelligent, different things interest me, I’m independent [far more so than people ever seem willing to acknowledge], so what if I’m weird to you – you’re pretty damn weird to me too.
I’ve lost the train of this rant and am going off to watch Huff – which I like so fuck off.
If you want me, you know what, you know where to find me but don’t be expecting me to search you out.