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Author Topic: can't sleep - personal problems
TL
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Can't sleep tonight, thinking about a lot of things. And I'm physically uncomfortable, too -- I'm too hot and too cold at the same time. In the kitchen, there's a swarm of fruit flies in my oven, eating a quiche that I cooked but never ate. It's been sitting there for a couple of weeks. I didn't really know about the fruit flies until I figured I'd throw out the quiche yesterday and reclaim the oven. But, man, when I opened that oven, it was full of fruit flies. I'm talking about a cloud of those little suckers. So I just left it (the quiche) and them in there. I'll probably take a couple of days to think about my approach. What do I do about these flies? I'll keep thinking to myself -- and then I'll just do what I could have done immediately: throw out the quiche, clean up, and wait for the things to die.

Doing a fantasy number in my mind, the way I do every night before going to sleep; only this one's too scattered. My brain is too loose, and the fantasy is slippery, and I can't see it the way I usually can, and that's frustrating me. Sort of forcing it. These fantasies usually involve me becoming successful, somehow, or losing weight, and then meeting a girl -- who loves me and eventually marries me and then I get to have the kids I want to have (little Ammon and little Atticus, running around, climbing trees and crap) and I make a lot of money and buy a farm somewhere and start building the pentacle-shaped compound I've been planning for so many years.

I think the fantasy has to always start me being some kinda success -- has to begin with that leap -- because I don't think the real current me of now, early November, 2006 is worthy of love. Inadequate guy I am. And a lot of nights these fantasies make me feel good, worthy, warm. A lot of nights I can feel the arms of my imaginary companion around me as I drift off to sleep. But sometimes, like tonight, the reality of being alone in a strange state and overweight and unloveable (in my mind) sits there superimposed over the fantasy, cold contrast, and I get pretty depressed.

I have suspected, since I was a little kid, that other people don't feel things the same way I feel things. I realize, of course, that this probably can't be true. But still, the suspicion is there. They (you) feel things -- but not quite the same way. Not quite with the same sense of longing or wonder or anger; mine skewed off to the left, somehow.

There is beauty in longing, more beauty than pain maybe.

I go around and I keep looking for signs of similarities -- no, not similarities; the similarities are there -- I keep looking for signs of exactnesses. Most of the movies I see and books I read? When they show beauty, or longing, or loss, (or warmth, or humor) it's never looks like exactly what I've felt. It's always something else, something slightly off; the reflection of longing or loss in a bent metal mirror, recognizable but just wrong enough to seem slightly grotesque.

Meanwhile, when I think about my childhood, and who I wanted to be, back then, when I grew up -- I feel angry with myself. I feel like I've betrayed the hopes and potentials of one of the most interesting kids of the 70's. (Me.)

This is not the life I wanted. Want.

Tonight the fantasy girl was 25, wearing a denim jacket, dark-skinned (probably Navajo) and we were talking outside some place, she and I, hiding from the snow (it was snowing) and she was funny, really funny, and a fellow writer. (Cigarette break?) In my mind I started calling her Yoko -- even though there's only one Yoko -- no associations.... This was in my mind. Who knows why things happen in my mind? Maybe we'd been on some kind of writing panel together (keep in mind, I'm always already successful in these fantasies) and now what? I don't know. She was dazzled by my intellect. But that sort of killed the fantasy. Where do I go from there? They're so often dazzled by my intellect in these fantasies, it has started to seem a little unrealistic compared to the girls who have been dazzled by my intellect in real life. (There've been a few, but less than you would probably suspect.)

(Cause I know you guys know how dazzling my intellect is.)

(Which is a lot.)

And now I'm sitting there lying in bed, my legs sweating, my head too cold, fantasy ruined, because --

How many years can I go on sustaining myself with these fantasies? How many years has it already been? 5? 8? Can I do this for 5 more? 8 more?

Meanwhile work keeps creeping into my thoughts. One thing I don't want to think about. But I can't help it. Work is... kind of a mess right now. Takes up too much energy. Then the thought assails me: How many more years can I keep putting off my life -- what I really want to do -- because of work? 2? How many years has it already been?

Where could I be right now if, instead of everything I've done, I had focused on the writing years ago? Could I already be a success?

I've been spinning my years since I was 10 years old, always telling myself, next year is the year I'm going to finish those stories. Next year is the year I'm going to start submitting. (You have no idea how serious I was at 15!) Well now I'm 29, it's 14 years later, and I'm just as serious about doing it all....

...someday...

Is it worth it, this year in Montana? To spend a year apart from the precious few friends I have in the world? Would this year in Montana be better spent with Rhonda, or Marcky D, back in Utah? Or with Chandelle and my Mom, back in California?

Will the world end in 2012? Sometimes I suddenly have that 2012 thought, and then I start singing the David Bowie song '5 Years' over and over again all day long. I sing quietly to myself -- because I want to sing, but I don't want people to hear me. And all day long people look at me and say, "What?" And I say, "Ah, sorry -- nothing." And they think I've just been muttering to myself. They don't recognize it as music.

Every once in a while, a great while, I recognize the emotions that someone else describes in a book or a movie as the emotions that I've felt. Exactness! And when that happens, it always hits me like a pink laser beam to the brain. It's a Eureka moment every time. And inevitably I come to feel some kind of love for the someone else. Because I think I recognize a kinship, a siblinghood; there must be precious few people in the world who feel the way about things that I feel about things. So it's a brotherly kind of love.

Philip K. Dick, for sure. Whenever I talk about PKD I always start ranting about the humanity of his characters -- and what I really mean is -- here's a guy writing about people who are a lot like me. I recognize myself. The bent metal mirror becomes... just a regular old mirror. And I wave to myself. And I turn in a circle. And I say, "holy crap, there I am."

The girls in my fantasies are always writers. I think this is for a couple of reasons: Maybe I think deep down that only a fellow writer is truly capable of appreciating my greatness. And I want to be doted over in these fantasies, and I want them to tell me I'm a genius. And I am a genius -- in the fantasies, I'm a better writer than I am in real life. I also want them to understand me -- and I think only a fellow writer would understand me. I don't know why I think this, but I seem to.

You know, there is one compliment that another writer once paid to me that I think about over and over again, in a pretty pathetic way actually -- and I use this quote to bolster myself when I'm down. This actually happens, I swear on my life, this actually happens: I'm lying down or walking around or doing whatever, and I'm thinking about what a louse I am, and then this compliment comes to mind, and I smile. I actually stop, and I just smile. Because it has that effect on me. The compliment was: "I just really like the way you write," and the writer was X.

I know what you're thinking. X, Troy? Again with X. What in the world is your obsession about (Prize-winning writer) X? Would you stop it already with X?

And my answer is: Can you stop a rainbow?

Just kidding. My real answer is: Yeah, sure, I'll stop it. I've stopped it. I don't even *know* X. But (and I'm sure you know where this is going) I think X is one of those someone elses. One of those people who feels things the way I feel things. Maybe there's ten of us in the world, and (I know, I know, I'm a crazy [expletive]) she's one of them. And I'm one of them. I also happen to think she's one of the best (and I really mean this) American short story writers alive today, right now, in early November 2006. Like a younger hipper more female Woody Allen (shut up, I know). I'm a huge fan of hers. I would *be* a huge fan of hers even if I'd never had the good fortune to chat with her a little.

But I did get to chat with her a little, and she said "I just really like the way you write," to me once. She also once read a story of mine once and said "Don't change one [expletive] word."

And it brings a smile to my face to think about it. If I'd been around in the 60's and Philip K. Dick had said to me "I just really like the way you write," I'd be smiling about that, too.

Okay?

Sheesh.

The truth is that every night when I have these fantasies about these girls and about this success and about this family and about this farm, I think about X a little. Obviously I'm attracted to her, or to her brain, or whatever (how attracted can you really be to someone over the internet?) and I think I recognize a kind of sameness in her, even though we're very different kinds of writers. I think the framework of the girl in the fantasy is sort of based on X. The idea of the girl surely existed before I came across X -- brilliant, funny, attractive, a writer, the understanding, the sameness, likes my work. But X actually *is* all of those things. She's not a fantasy, she's real. So that's how she came to be the template. Just kind of fit in there with what I already had in mind. I'm not saying that I fantasize about X every night. I'm saying that I fantasize about girls an awful lot like X every night. I ask myself: Is there a X out there for me? Knowing that the actual X is out there for someone else. But there's gotta be another one somewhere. Right? Somehwere?

Wow. If I've made it seem as if I'm thinking about her, I haven't properly expressed myself.

I'm not thinking about her. Just someone. I'd better go back and X out her name in case she googles herself and comes across this and thinks I'm obsessed. (Which I'm totally not!) Stop it, X. Stop googling yourself.

I really want to have a wife and a couple of kids. I want to be loved. I want to spend my time doing worthwhile things, being the person I want to be. I guess everybody does.

That was a lot of rambling about junk on my mind because I can't sleep.

I'm gonna go try again, though. Good night.

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TL
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By the way, last time I posted something probably inappropriately personal for hatrack, someone told me to start a livejournal, which -- I think they meant well -- but it made me feel like they were really saying: "We don't care about you. Take it somewhere else."

So please just ignore this if the alternative is telling me to start a blog or something.

Thanks.

Good night.

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Troubadour
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Tl, I recognise your pain and you have my empathy.

Your fantasies, your fears, your insecurities have all been mine in the past.

I know what it's like not to sleep through frustation and internal rage. I know the fantasy you have.

I only have a couple of things to say....

If you need to, you can email me anytime. Go through the forum profile for that.

Apart from that, you've got to deal with this one step at a time, and 2am isn't the time. Make some plans, ones that you see as achieveable, write them down, and you'll be able to sleep.

Quantify what it is that you want to change, and map out the things that you think you need to do to change it.

Attack things one step at a time, and you'll see progress. It's too hard to go after it all at once.

I think you should find a professional to talk to. I didn't and I think it cost me years. I resented my flatmate (who is my close friend since early childhood) for not noticing how desperate I'd become, without know that at the same time I should have been seeing a therapist, he *was* seeing one.

I know you've heard this before, but you can't expect anyone to love you until you love yourself. Cliched, but true. It also sucks being a fat smart guy, because you resent the world for its populist thinness and it's too easy to turn into the haughty fat guy as your defence against a thin world, convinced that your intelligence is somehow more valuable than beauty.

I know, I've been there.

There's no easy answers here. There's a value to looks, a value to smart, a value to wealth, a value to success, etc.... but it's up to you to value yourself enough that whatever mix of those you have is attractive to the right person.

But I'll address the thing that hurt me the most.

If you hate your weight so much, do something about it.

It's hard, it sucks, it involves more sacrifice that you want and it doesn't care about your rationalisations.

At the end of the day you have a specific amount of weight you want to lose and only conscientious diet of the right number of calories per day with a decent amount of exercise experienced over the right amount of time will move it.

I know what it's like to be unable to believe that you'll ever be thin again - but you CAN be. You CAN do it. You just have to decide to, to find the right plan and stick to it. You won't see results every week and the results you see will always be less than you'd like and it will ALWAYS be tempting to make tiny rationalised concessions - and it'll be those little weaknesses that will sabotage you back to where you are now or worse.

But here's the thing:

You CAN do it. You CAN be what you want to be, you CAN change the things you want to change.

You KNOW what you want, so just go do it. It's that simple.

Something that I've loved is http://www.traineo.com - I log religiously every day and it's helped me discover how much of a difference my 'just one won't hurt' weaknesses cost me. It's stiffened my resolve to see things so black and white.

If you join, I'll be your motivator.

So seriously. Do something. I'll listen. I'll tell you what I think you need to hear. I've been there. I'm mostly fixed now. You can be too.

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Troubadour
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(TL, btw, I'm in Australia, so I'm just heading off to bed. I just wanted to quantify that I'll listen when I'm actually awake)
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Dr Strangelove
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I know it won't mean squat coming from me, but if the way you wrote that post is any indication of the way you write other stuff, I also really like the way you write.

I don't know exactly how you feel. But I do know the beauty of longing and the beauty of pain. I'm a failure at expressing myself, so I'll fail here, but I know your pain. Not precisely or exactly, but I can see it, and what I see of it, I see in myself. I'm young right now though. Quite a bit younger than you. I have this hope that I'll find someone someday who validates my hopes and my fantasies. I have some weird hope that everything will work out and somehow somewhere sometime the balance will shift between pain and happiness and life will be worth living, instead of just something to get through. I have some little hope that I am the way I am for a reason. That me seeing differently and thinking differently than other people is not a curse, but some sort of blessing. Hope. Tis a fickle thing.

Somehow or another, reading your post bolstered that hope. It doesn't make a lot of sense how or why, but it did. And I wish I'd read it 6 hours ago when I was feeling sure that the answer to happiness and the end of pain was to try to erase my "skewing" as you called it. I want/wanted to stop caring and to be like all the other drones I see around me. I wanted to stop hoping I would ever utilize what makes me different and just not be different at all. I wanted to stop hoping I would find somebody who would share with me the same ideals, someone who would actually see me for who I am. I wanted to stop hoping, period. It just hurts too much to constantly have them dashed.

It was a rough night. But, as I said, something in your post spoke to me. If you can make it to 29, I should be able to too. And if there's an X out there for you, however unattainable, there should be one out there for me too. If you've managed to hold on to hope this long (and I earnestly wish for you to hold on to it longer and find a way to practice it), I should be able to too.

So thanks.

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ketchupqueen
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Please don't name your kids Ammon and Atticus. Especially if they're twins. (Ammon's not so bad. Atticus is not wonderful, but not the worst. But together, please don't!)

Although when you find dream girl I'm sure she'll have her own opinion on baby names.

My husband and I still like to fantasize about our "ideal" life together, even though some of the dreams are very far off and some are never going to happen; it's a good release, as long as you turn from that to your real life and your plan of action for it.

As for the fruit flies, throw out the quiche, spray some oven cleaner, and do a self-clean cycle. That'll kill any left in there.

Any that escape, Raid, or my new favorite, Victor Poison-Free Flying Insect Killer (mint-based, non-toxic to humans and animals.)

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Will B
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You could email me, too, if you want.

I'd tend to agree that fantasies have a big problem in the long run: they don't make reality happen!

When I'm down, I've started doing something paradoxical: I take whatever I'm dreading doing, and do it. After all, it's got to be done. To the degree that it was a problem, I feel better afterwards. Sounds like yours starts in the kitchen!

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breyerchic04
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When I saw this thread I was sure it would be someone posting a little fanfic my friend is spreading around the internet. About the president's inability to sleep last night.
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Uprooted
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Since I don't have anything helpful to say about the longings and so forth, I'll just chime in to kq's advice on the fruit flies and say deal with it, it's not hard, and you'll feel better when you know you don't have something feeding swarms of fruit flies in your kitchen. Some of them have probably escaped now that the oven's been opened so make sure you don't have anything sitting out in the kitchen they can make a meal on (including sticky stuff on counters or pieces of fruit). They'll die off pretty quickly once their food sources are gone, although they may be pesky for a day or two.

You are a good writer. And your life has value even if you aren't fulfilling all your dreams right now.

It may be true that you perceive/experience life differently than most others--that's pretty hard to pin down. We all love that feeling when we recognize our own responses to life in another person's writing or expression. Maybe someday you will write the thing that makes a kindred spirit feel, "That writer 'gets' it!"

[ November 09, 2006, 02:28 PM: Message edited by: Uprooted ]

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BlackBlade
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Have you considered turning the oven on?
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Soara
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Aww shucks, you beat me to it.
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Will B
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And get your movie camera out before you do. It should look interesting.
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TL
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Worst. Idea. Ever.

I turned the oven on.

.
.
.
.

It didn't go well.

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TL
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(I should have thrown out the quiche *first*)
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cmc
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Oh man - what happened???
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Uprooted
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TL: Listen to your mother! [No No]
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Storm Saxon
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quote:

Worst. Idea. Ever.

I turned the oven on.

.
.
.
.

It didn't go well.

You gotta elaborate. [Big Grin]
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Will B
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I think I can picture it.
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KarlEd
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Yes, "Turn on the oven" was my first thought too. I gotta know what happened. [Big Grin]
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Morbo
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Picturing it might be bad, but I bet it was the smell after the oven was on that was the worst of it.
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Morbo
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BTW, TL, do you have insomnia often? If so you might try taking some melatonin--it's helped me sleep better lately.
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TL
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The smell was unbelievable. I now have a good frame of reference in case I ever write a book about the stench of the devil or something.

I mean... Holy crap. Just an unthinkable stench. And I can't believe how quickly it filled the apartment.

So now I find myself having to open windows in the middle of night in November in Montana. Trying to sleep with that poisonous stink all around me. Major headache.

Definitely, if this ever happens to any of you (but why would it?) throw out the quiche and spray the flies.

Do NOT turn on the oven.

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Orincoro
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Come on. You can still salvage that quiche... [Eek!] [ROFL] [ROFL] [ROFL]


I'm so sorry that made me laugh (hard), but I mean, really. That's something you can't make up to put in some stupid TV show: you leave a quiche in the oven for weeks, and when you discover it, it's a fly fest, so you cook it, flies and all. It's got the elements of tragedy and comedy, that make for enthralling storytelling. Oh the bitter irony: never cook the rotten parts of your life, because it will only entensify the stench.

[ROFL]

again, sorry, but I laughed. Hard.

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quidscribis
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Um, I'm with Orincoro on this. Think of it this way - this is an example of how well you write. You make people laugh. [Smile] And yes, this is all grist for the mill and will make your writing all the richer for it. Of course, some things still suck in the present, but it will get better, and when you write about such things, you can write so intensely, so richly, because of your experiences. That will make you a better writer. [Smile]

Meanwhile, I'd strongly suggest you write out about your fruit fly/quiche/oven experience and record for posterity. [Big Grin]

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cmc
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Oh Goodness, TL... I hope once the smell (if the smell?) leaves you can laugh about this, too.

That was some quality description. I laughed so hard...

Hope you've gotten some sleep... : )

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BlackBlade
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Sorry about the smell TL but that was really funny.

I thought you would take the quiche out before roasting them flies.

I don't know why I didn't think about this but I remember having a fruit fly in my microwave once. I turned it on and:

1 minute, still alive.

another 2 minutes, still alive

finally after about 10 seconds shy of another 3 minutes it died.

Really sorry it didn't play out the way I thought it might.

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Soara
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Ok now you need a huge fan.
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