People I am not exaggerating when I say I haven’t gone a single day without crying in over six months. Is this something I should get checked out by a therapist? Probably. But I’m too anxious to actually call a therapist. Phone calls terrify the shit out of me. And I don’t need to feel any more terrified than I already am. It takes very little to set off a deluge of tears these days and the causation of the tantrums is widely varied and truly exciting! I never know what minuscule mishap is going to set me off down a spiraling roller coaster of personal inner hell!
A small sample of crying incidents in the last several months:
5/25 I forgot to shake some pepper onto my sandwich.
I went into the kitchen to make myself a turkey and avocado sandwich and I finished making the sandwich mere moments before I verbally assaulted my father for everything he’s done ever, including trying to get into the refrigerator while I was making the aforementioned sandwich. Unfortunately, in my haste I forgot to grind some pepper onto my sandwich and only realized this once I had retreated to the safety of my room. By then it was far too late to venture out once more and risk any sort of small talk conversation. I cried.
5/19 The monkeys at the zoo looked bummed out.
And dammit I was bummed out, too. The monkeys are in a physical cage with only a few branches for stimulation, forced to spend time all day long with monkeys they may or may not like. This feels eerily similar to my situation. I wonder if the monkeys are having an existential crisis. I wonder if one of the monkeys had always dreamed of being a famous documentary film maker but now he is confused why no one has given him a teeny tiny camera to do his life’s work. I wonder if another monkey wants to be a hairdresser. And then I try to understand how people that like animals work at zoos because that makes no fucking sense. And then I think about how I wish I just wanted to work at a zoo and didn’t have to think about it anymore and I started to actually get jealous of the monkeys. I managed to hold myself together until I got home from the zoo but it was a wild ride once I let my monkey-induced emotions envelop me.
5/27 I had to pee at the library.
Proceeded to cry in library bathroom.
4/17 The lasagna burned my mouth.
Already not a great day and then I singed at least a third of the taste buds off of my tongue when I tried to eat dinner. Food events are the only tiny things I look forward to each day and this one was ruined. RUINED.
5/29 I woke up and just started crying.
12/26 I didn’t get a puppy for Christmas and it nearly destroyed me.
Christmas day was obviously disappointing because Santa really blew it in the dog department this year but when I woke up the day after Christmas the lack of a pooch hit me very, very hard. It was as if I was being beaten repeatedly with the corpse of a dog I never even had the chance to cuddle and play with. I felt physically exhausted and mentally drained when months of hoping for a dog were crushed. In this time of turmoil and loneliness I simply wanted another breathing being to be at my side and I put a truly ridiculous amount of hope and energy into my doggy dream. I think that people who train for the Olympics their entire lives only to just miss the cut off for team USA probably feel similarly. Any free puppies can be sent to my home address in Parker, Colorado.
So obviously things have been less than ideal BUT yesterday I received a phone call from our favorite Slovakian MD (he really is Slovakian, I am not making this up like some sort of racist that enjoys making fun of the good people of Slovakia). He of course called while I was at my mother’s fourth grade classroom on the last day of school moments after all the children had left for the summer and moments after the principal started to play Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out Forever” at full blast on the intercom. I had to sprint outside to take the call lest my offer of employment be revoked when our favorite Slovakian MD heard bizarre rock music in the background of the call. But once I sprinted outside I realized that the outdoor intercom was also playing the music and it was actually louder than it was inside. So I’m on the phone, I can’t hear anything and our favorite Slovakian MD probably can only hear me panting and the phone rubbing against my face as I hauled my body away from the building as quickly as my legs would allow.
I don’t really remember anything he said during that phone call. Except I do know I left that phone call with a job offer that I definitely took and I will be starting at the lab of horrors on July 1st. Which means I have about thirty days before everyone in said lab discovers just how little I know about science! Is the joke on them or me? Only time and the extent of the forgiving nature of the lab manager will tell. I am in no way shape or form enthused about this job but I will simply pull myself together, make money for six or seven months, and then dramatically break a million dollar microscope and then escort myself out of the building for a three month trip to Europe!
While this job will inevitably put me into a swirling vortex of dark thoughts on humanity after hours of mouse slaughter, it will also allow me to move the fuck out of my parents’ house and that’s all that really matters in life anyway, right? Sayonara Margaret and Gaylord, hello run down apartment in seedy neighborhood of Denver! (Obviously I will still be visiting my parents’ household for any sort of food needs, I’m not too so obsessed with my independence that I would pass up a platter of bratwursts.)
Get ready for this blog to become one giant repository of bloody dead mouse photos.
xoxoxox Julia
Going Nowhere Fast 