Alive journal.

In an attempt to be more transparent with my internet self, this post is going to be more of the feel of what I'd post in my livejournal. (Which I still use. Shut up about it.) Flowy, stream of consciousness, the works. You have been warned. Life has been really rough the last few weeks, everything coming to a head. Things I've been trying to put off for the past few months have finally showed up to get me, and no amount of coffee, jazz, or hot babes can seem to soothe my soul.

I thought watching Thelma & Louise would be a good way to get to bed yesterday. I was wrong.

Susan and Geena forced me to check "hot babes" off my feel better list. 

I got an hour into things and just...really wasn't feeling it. I'm going to finish it tonight for sure, but my stress levels proved to be too distracting.

At 3:30 this morning, I decided to get to my OST playlist on Spotify. The best new addition was a track called  AsHºK∆ by Knx. I sat in bed and popped for a few minutes, wondering what a road trip movie scored by hip-hop producers would look like. (HexualStealings  is really great too. Very ethereal and super dreamy.)

I couldn't shake how disappointed I was watching T&L. I wanted it not to feel like a thesis film, but it really felt like a thesis film. I could see the words on the page, I could read the call sheet, I could sense the promise of pizza, stale coffee, and bagels. Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind to get anything out of it other than the stench of previous experience.

After I stopped listening to dreamy hip-hop beats, I laid in bed with my eyes open praying to fall asleep. Reaching out my arms to goddesses of the universe and hearing them yell back to me in whispers: WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US.

What kind of movie would I want to make instead of Thelma & Louise? What do I have to say that hasn't been added to the conversation? Am I ~just cute? Is it bad that I'm fighting the notion of cuteness? How is it that this 9 year old is a better tapper than me when I've been dancing longer than he's been alive? Have I been avoiding putting everything I have into my work? Or have I been putting in everything I've got into my work and just struggling with the notion that it's not enough?

I wrapped my blanket around my pillow, hoping to ease the fear that when I finally went to sleep (if that was ever going to happen) that I wouldn't wake up with a neck strain. Or was I going to throw up? Or start crying? Or need to blow my nose and go to the bathroom at the same time but not want to get out of bed? Is that the sun coming up already? Is it really ten days until solstice? Should I be saying nine days because it's officially the twelfth? Am I ever going to get to sleep?

WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?

I considered giving them the abridged list or the full list, trying not to reach my grabby hands out without first offering up gratitude. I remembered taking my anxiety medication, but I was still afraid I was going to have one (or more) of those dreams that make me more exhausted when I wake up. I couldn't shake the notion that I'd done a long list of very bad things, and that I had a few people I knew that really loved me-- but I couldn't figure out why.

I started thinking about Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis making out, which made me laugh. I paused T&L to google what an inverted bow looks like because I couldn't tell if Geena had an epically inverted bow or just an epic bow; and it turned out to be the latter. (Kathy Baker is a really good example of what an inverted bow looks like. The line between her lips curves upwards instead of downwards.)

It struck me as interesting, because I had a huge art boner for Geena Davis for a long time in my adolescence; and now I have a huge boner-boner for Susan Sarandon because...she's really hot. If facets of myself could make out with each other, how come I couldn't make peace with ALL parts of them?

I driftingly pondered doodling Thelma in her long boho maxi-skirt and cute halter top, how each pencil stroke of hair would feel as it hit the paper; how my tortillion would smooth out the area around Louise's orbital bones and how her cinnamon eyes would look in shades of .5 lead.

(I took a break in the middle of writing this post because anxiety brain made me physically sick, which doesn't happen very often.)

I was still thinking about lady kinship (the non-sexual kind) as I metal-pedalled back to my house this evening. I almost got hit by a guy in a plumbing van that screamed SUPER ROOTER as oceans of sweat flowed from my forehead. In the movie of my life, 3 Days by Rhye  played on repeat as I futilely attempted to complete basic tasks. I kept picturing Christine Baranski and her dead husband doing fouettes in static places of the universe. I imagined her hair clipped back, and maybe what she looked like without makeup.

It all started as a test I sometimes give my imagination to work really hard at picturing things I can't outright picture. Or, perhaps it really started after she signed my Boeing Boeing playbill and I told her I'd never use the pen again. (It still vibrates when I touch it, clipped over Kathryn Hahn's signature.) Is she standing beside Mark Rylance doing fouettes? Singing?

I made it home in one piece, thinking about that line in Me & You & Everyone We Know about low ankles. You think you deserve that pain, but you don't. I did. I do. I was wearing birthday shoes I refused to give up hope in, they blistered into my achilles and slapped the ground forcefully as I ran to the pharmacy window dripping with salty perspiration and pockets of little leftover wage from my last day at work.

I had to do two things: buy insulin, and throw up.

Though, I wasn't sure in which order.

How much money do I owe everyone? Why am I so bad at math? Hopefully I'll be able to take off my sweater before I get sick. OH SHIT, THAT WOMAN'S TRYING TO CROSS THE STREET. 

At that point, I had stopped clearing my throat (just in case) and I was trying hard to cry-- thinking it would make me feel better. I couldn't. It didn't.

Once I got home, I spent ten minutes staring at my colorless face in the mirror, and deliberating which orifice my mom's mercury thermometer was primarily used for. (Thankfully, I found an electronic one before I had to make that decision.) I didn't have a fever, I'd just had a ridiculously epic panic attack.

My hope is that tonight, when I sit down to finish Thelma & Louise, I won't be so quick to give it a hard time. I'll make some kettle corn, and snuggle up on the couch ready to give it my full attention.

Here's to hot babes, and feeling better.

-Mac