On writing

I hate making new year resolutions. Mainly because I break them. And because I have the world’s fastest changing mind. However, I do want to make a resolution for 2014. I will live up to my own writing expectations. I …

Kept in the dark

Tuesday didn’t paint to be a good day. An early appointment with parents pissed at me because their little ray of sunshine got a 6 in Oral Expression (kindda like a C-). Then,I had to get to the thesis seminar (though I …

Kitties, Chaplin and bangs

Today I got something similar to an idea for a post I can actually write (I got tons of awesome ideas for posts that somehow just can’t write). It may be just a tad lame, but hey, I once heard it’s better if inspiration catches you working, so that’s what I’m doing. Anyhow, as my title very subtly implies, I will be talking about kitties, and bangs, with just a sprinkle of Chaplin.

First things first. Yesterday, I went to get my hair cut, just a little trimming of my hair ends* really, and when I sat down on the chair and the girl asked me what I wanted to get done, I just couldn’t stop myself from saying: bangs! And so, today was my first day out with a bunch of hair on my face. Not particularly comfortable, but I think I’ll be able to deal with it. Today was also a quite social day for me, which I loved (not). First I went to have breakfast with some of the teachers from work. I really wish I could get more in-sync with them ’cause they do try to include me in their stuff, but I just can’t let go and open up, it’s really hard to let my guard down, and I’m learning it only gets harder with age. That, and the breakfast was stressful in itself because it meant I was in a social situation where I was required to eat. And boy if I did! Well, I guess objectively speaking it wasn’t all that much, but compared to what I’ve been eating lately it was a huge change, and it forced me to not eat anything else throughout the day except for diet coke and coffee.

This little issue reminds me that I had a sort of a sour session yesterday with Mr. Shrinky. He was fishing for details regarding my weight and what I’ve been eating, and I just wasn’t prepared for that kind of questioning from him. Mainly because I’m used to expecting those kinds of questions only from N, but also because I was upset he didn’t notice my bangs! I know, it sounds silly, but I remarked how unfair it seems that I notice every little change both in his office and in him, things that he’s even told me nobody else notices, and he can’t even notice that half of my face is covered in hair. It just made me feel like he doesn’t really care, like my assumption that I’m just the 5 o’clock appointment is true. This, together with the knowledge that I won’t see him next week because of spring break, got me in an I’m-not-talking mood, which isn’t exactly the most fruitful mood in therapy. I’ll see him tomorrow again before the break, let’s see how that goes.

After stuffing my face in the morning, in the evening I met a dear friend from uni (my only remaining friend from uni actually) whom I don’t see very much these days with all the things we both have to do now school’s over. We met at a midway mall ’cause we live in what would be opposite sides of the city if Mexico’s City were a normally sized town. We had a lovely chat. Not that we talked about butterflies and clouds, we actually discussed sad and angering issues, but it was lovely to share our mutual stuff with a girlfriend who cares. And then, though I’m not much a buyer ever since my depressive shopping-lollapalloza that’s still has me tied by the balls to the freakin’ banks (excuse my princess-like vocabulary), I agreed to accompany her to a couple of stores to get some stuff she needed, and that’s when the magic happened. I found the cutest kitten tee I’d seen, and just couldn’t help myself when I grabbed it and walked right up to the slaughterhouse cash register. As we were leaving, I found yet another item that seemed just perfect for me, a Chaplin tee! I’m a huge Chaplin fan, though I don’t own many Chaplin memorabilia, so I thought for a sec about taking the kitties back to get Chaplin home. I’m just not in a position to buy two things on the same day anymore, but before I made a decision my friend grabbed the tee and paid for it, she gave it to me as a birthday gift, and so I got out of there with two adorable pieces of clothing and with the feeling that my friend was trying to find ways to express she’s missed me and cares for me.

I know that this post is all over the place and serves no apparent purpose, but as I said I’m just trying to keep the words coming in the hopes that the good ones come back, I certainly don’t want to spend yet another week without writing.  Anyways, maybe wishing you don’t think you’ve completely wasted your time by reading me, let me at least show you what I’ve been rambling about:

Me and my bangs, together with the kitty tee:

The Chaplin tee, which I’ll proudly wear tomorrow:

Hope I’ll see y’all real soon!

Chatte

*Is that the way you call the tips of the hair? Being a non-native speaker, I sometimes get the idea that I use awkward, old-fashioned, or right out non-existent terms, so if you catch any one of these in my posts, do let me know, it’ll be much appreciated!

Meds and birthdays

I’m not used to having sucky Fridays. They’re not my favorite day either, but I handle them. Today sucks though. And I want to write about it but I don’t want this post, and my blog for that matter, to become a place where I come and barf all my negativeness. And it’s also angering because I don’t understand how I can wake up and feel like shit in one second, before I even walk out into the world. So I’m placing the blame on the meds. Fuck ’em.

I usually take my morning dose somewhere around 8am, but today it was one of the first things I did after getting up at 6 because I knew from the moment I woke up it wasn’t going to be pretty. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I set my mind to have a shitty day, it just comes that way sometimes, it sneaks up on me. And to be honest, I haven’t been taking all of my meds either. Ever since N admitted one of the pills was making me gain weight, I  stopped taking it. She had told me to just lower the dose until I had my next appointment with her, and she could then decide what to replace it with, but I just couldn’t put it in my mouth knowing that it was making me hate my body all over again. So yeah, that’s what happens when you tell crazy people to take their meds I guess.

Also found out earlier today that I’m gonna have to work on my birthday. It’s a Saturday so I was thinking I could at least take the day off but no, I have to be at school entertaining parents on the Family Day, whatever the hell that is…  Still I’m considering the possibility of doing something for that day. I haven’t properly celebrated it since I turned 19 some ages ago, and maybe I’d like people to celebrate me for a change though it’s something that makes me anxious.

I’ve had some shitty birthdays that’s for sure. Right now there’s one that comes to my mind. I remember once BF asked me to spend my birthday at his place as they were celebrating another friend’s bday, it seemed like a good plan for me. Little did I know no one except BF gave a shit about my birthday. I hate people singing happy birthday, and the cake ritual and stuff is just not my thing, but when a cake appeared and everybody started singing to this guy and then to congratulate him and simply ignore me, I just wanted to hide under the table. His birthday had already passed, and mine was on that very night,  and still they didn’t care! Thanks for the appreciation…

I haven’t really decided yet, but I’m giving it a thought. It would be something very low-key, absolutely NO cake included, and probably at my house (exxxtra-anxious!) because I don’t really have a group of friends. I have scattered friends from all the lives I’ve lived and so I think it would be easier to make the reunion at my house instead of at a restaurant or something.

One of the reasons I think this might be a good idea is that maybe the time after my birthday wouldn’t be so hard for me. Last year I had it rough. Fell into a deep crisis and zombied through April mostly. This way, there could at least be the possibility of having something to look forward to. There’s also the possibility it becomes an epic fail and throws me into some miserable days, there are just too many things that could go wrong.  So what to do? I’ll let March be the judge of that.

So there you go. Meds and birthdays. Are my post-naming skills getting smoother or what? Happy weekend!

The mother flu

I’ve come down with the flu. I saw it coming and took some vitamin C together with some anti-flu meds. It looked like I managed to dodge it, and the day I stopped taking any precautions, it hit me, and it’s pissed I tried to run from it. Good news is we have a long weekend ahead here in Mexico so I’m gonna get the chance to rest before I get back to dealing with screaming children. Kids (and me too) got to laugh at me today because the topic where seeing is ailments, and I usually act them out for them to guess, but when reached the land of  flu, runny nose, cough, and so on, there was no need for acting at all! 😆

I don’t really know what to talk about right now, it’s probably the headache. But I feel like writing, so I’m in a pickle. I’ve been thinking a lot about writing about my mom, I’ve been dancing around it ever since I wrote about my father. Maybe that’s what got me sick in the first place!

And that’s it really, I can’t really focus so I’m going to keep it short, though I’ll sure be back here on Sunday. It’s become a sort of ritual to write my demons out on the day that they haunt me most.

New year, same debts.

It looks like it’s going to rain, and I hope it does. Rain has such a calming effect on me, and calm is exactly what I need right now. As much as I hate it, my vacations are over and I’m going back to work tomorrow, back to waking up before 6am and back to working 8 hours straight.

Back to normal life. And that includes back to Mr. Shrinky, but I don’t really know what I feel about going back. It’s not something I dread, but I’m not exactly eager about it either. He and I have a pending business to attend. He wants me back on a 3-sessions a week mode and I’m all for the 2-session option. And since I can’t really afford anything else, I guess we’ll have to go my way. Still I’ll have to listen to what he has to say about it, and I’ll have to expose yet again my poor finances.

My terrible handling of money and credit, something I’m horribly ashamed of, also forced me earlier today to reject another trip planned by BF, this time for easter or summer. If I don’t start saving to pay off my debt instead of fleeing this city whenever we get a chance to, I know I’m not gonna be done with it any time soon. Having debts is a rather uncomfortable thing to say the least. And for a person like me, who gets anxious so very easily, it’s more than uncomfortable, it’s like a needle pinching my lungs and ribs now and then.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I got the car and the clothes and the shoes and the phone, and, well, you get the idea.

And I’d never done anything like that before, I used to be in charge of my finances, until I discovered during the infamous 2012 that buying was an effective way of not feeling the pain I was used to, at least momentarily. I don’t recommend it at all though. It brings more problems than it solves, and finally it only helps to increase the feeling of not being in control, of being a failure, and ultimately it feeds your self-loathing.

Right now I can only be thankful for UNAM, my uni. It’s the best one in Mexico and Latin America and yet it’s free, I cannot imagine what my problems would be like if on top of it all I had a student loan on my back.

So now I have another problem I created for myself, like I needed more.

The Frankenthesis strikes again

I don’t consider me a New Year’s Day Grinch, but I do wonder what the fuzz is all about. The firts day of the year is always a dead day, nobody’s out on the street, everything’s closed, and your supposed to enjoy the quietness and calm around you. Well, I don’t. Even more, this calm worries me because I fear that’s one of the reasons why Sundays are so hard on me. That’s what it’s come to, I’m feeling just a hint of a chest pain, but I’m terribly scared of what it may become as the day goes by, because it can get so strong it amazes me it doesn’t kill me. So I’m gonna try to keep busy, probably reading and working on the Frankenthesis. I haven’t finished a couple of books and I might get to that.

As for the thesis, I didn’t deliver what I was supposed to in December, and now I have a lot more work to get done by Jan 15th, and I’m not sure how exactly I’m going to manage to get it done. If only I’d type on it as many words as I have on this blog, I’m sure I would’ve finished it by now 🙄 and I have to admit I need all the cheering up I can get to work hard and maybe finish what I’m supposed to.

This time around, New Year’s Day is reminding me of everything I didn’t accomplish, of all the different ways I messed up, and all the problems I got myself into, money being the most worrying one. I guess I’m feel a little ripped out because people act as if  on Jan 1st everybody got a clean slate, and I don’t see that. What I see is a reminder that time keeps going by, it doesn’t stop and everything we do keeps adding to our tab.

All I got left, and I realize it’s a very big thing, is the hope that things will get better, and man do I need a brighter horizon to keep me going right now! Hope is the fuel that so many times keeps our engines running when all evidence says there’s no point. And today I can be thankful that I do feel the warmth of hope (however small it may be) in my heart to keep me going.

I realize this is a bittersweet post (that’s a little more bitter than sweet), but still let me take the time to wish you all a happy 2013 full of happy moments and goals achieved, and a year that brings you as least sorrow as possible! 🙂

What the Frankenthesis looks like these days.
(Image credit: http://www.craftycrafty.tv)

The final one of the year

2013 is knocking more and more insistently on my door, and I’m not even gonna have a chance of willingly open it because at 12 tonight it’s gonna come bursting in. Also, I have no way of knowing  if the uninvited guest is friend or foe, or if I’m prepared to entertain it.

But still, it’s not up to me and a new year is coming up ahead. I can’t deny I’m a bit scared. Anything new and different scares the hell out of me. But I’m also glad 2012 is ending. It wasn’t the best of years, and I’ve been going through a lot. I can only hope what’s coming is better.

After analyzing the rights and wrongs of 2012 I’ve reached the conclusion that it is the Frankenthesis what’s been pulling me back and down. It’s not by far my biggest problem, but it’s certainly the one that nags me the most, and that’s why I’m determined to not let it be the doom of me.

I do have to say it wasn’t all that bad. I’m in a good place with BF and it isn’t thanks to luck but rather to our hard work and will to stay together. I also started this blog back in june and I feel incredibly happy of doing so. It’s like a door that existed long before I wrote the first post but never really dared to open it and when I did, not only did my cramped issues formed a flowing stream outwards, I also gained friends, and input, and acceptance. So thank you for reading this, for accepting me, for not pulling away when I’m letting all the sh*t out in the open, it really means the world for me, and all I can do in return is wish you a happy 2013, you deserve it, you really do!

So 2013, I feel you rushing like a tsunami, but I know it won’t kill me, not this time, I’m gonna embrace you and be opened to what you have to offer even if you scare the sh*t out of me. Welcome!

Parachuting

Tomorrow is my last day at the beach, the day after that we head over to the city of Morelia in the state of Michoacán, and I’ll be home by New Year’s Eve. I haven’t posted much since I’ve been quite busy doing nothing and nothing by the sea. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been reading, and doing this:

and hanging out with this guy:

Right now I’m reading The Hobbit ’cause after watching the film I remembered how much I loved it and also I realized I didn’t remember much of it.

As for our doggie company, we still haven’t figured out who he belongs to, but we’ve seen him everyday at the beach and he plays, runs, and swims with anyone willing to do it with him. The strongest theory is he’s with someone who sells stuff at the beach and who lets run about until it’s time to go, we just haven’t seen anyone responsible for him yet.

I’ve also been feeling fat, like I could be mistaken for a beached whale any second, which makes wearing a swimsuit a painful task 😦 but at least I’ve managed not to feel this every second of everyday.

Taking a shower: a challenging task

Taking a shower can be so hard sometimes. It amazes me how something most people take for granted can be such a difficult thing to do for me. There are days when I have to take it step by step. Literally, step by step. There are also days when I just can’t bring myself to doing it.

Just take your clothes off Dani, you can do it. Now, just get inside the shower, just that. Then I’ll stay under the water for some minutes, making my mind up to just grabbing a bit of soap and start rubbing it on my body.  I also have to do this step by step; on the hard days I’ll usually start with my arms and shoulders and work my way outwards.

It puzzles me how on occasions taking a shower can be such a therapeutic experience, and sometimes an absolute torture. Today it was neither, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

“Young woman taking a shower”
(Kazuya Akimoto)

Random thoughts

I haven’t been writing in the past few days because I’ve been feeling like I have nothing else to say, guess I’m still in my meh phase, trapped in robot-mode, and I’m so sick of it!

Work’s better, with a little help from my partner I have managed to stop being late and go back to having enough time in the morning to get me some coffee on the way to school, which makes it easier to do my job. I think I’m getting used to it (I just started at this school in mid-August), but it’s still hard having to deal with it AND with my thesis, which is not comming to good (or not at all I might say).

The kitties are fine, getting bigger and stronger, they’re going to their permanent home this week, and I’m gonna miss them so much. With the help of meds they did beat the skin fungus, the bad news is now my cats have it and need to be medicated as well. Now that the babies are going I’ll have more time to focus on helping my cats beat it as well.

In other news, I’m thinking about quitting therapy. I’m just not sure it’s helping me anymore. The crisis keep comming and it’s been months since I felt I made some real progress. Also, I certainly could use the money; half my paycheck is going to my mental health, be it therapy or meds, and as much as I try to stretch the other half I’m just not making ends meet. It’s a very hard and unfair decision to have to choose between your mental well-being and your personal finances health, but I’m getting pretty close to having to do just that.

It does worry me that maybe I won’t be able to cope with my issues, but how not to be depressed if I’m not having enough money for my expenses? Money problems are certainly not the cause of my depression and I’m sure that even if I didn’t have issues with it I would still be depressed, but the problem here is that I don’t want money to be just another aggravating factor.

I’m just thinking out loud and probably won’t make a decision like that in the remaining time this year has left, but I am worried and it’s something that’s on my mind.

Meh

I don’t know what’s going on with me. It’s like I’m back in robot-mode, except I’m a broken robot. I can’t be on time for work, I can’t catch up on my work, and most of the times I feel like I have no feelings left in me. My mind’s been playing hooky and leaving the auto-pilot on, the down side to vacationing inside my brain is that I can’t control it, and there can be times when I have no memory of what happened in the time I was gone. Fortunately it seems like robot Dani knows how to handle herself and knows not to get in trouble, the worst thing that’s happened is having awkward situations where people act like I should know something but I don’t, or where I come back in the middle of a conversation and have to discreetly find out what it is about. I know for sure it could be worst, I’ve driven and gone places without really being there

It’s like I’ve lost the ability to feel happy or sad, and most of the time I feel like a blur. The only time this week when I felt emotion was rather lame: right before T, I decided to stop for a coffee. I’m very picky about my coffee, probably because it’s very comforting and because if I’m buying expensive coffee I expect it to be exactly the way I ordered it. Anyhow, I payed and waited for it. It took them a while, and when they finally gave it to me, it was all wrong, so I politely mentioned this to the girl who prepared it, who said my coffee was ok. I told her I had asked x and y, to which she answered: “Your coffee is done the way it’s supposed to be, but if you still don’t like it I can change x and y for you”. This coffee was not even close to being ok. Even if I had ordered a plain one from the menu it wouldn’t have been ok. I was mad but I told her it was fine. She was making me feel like the most annoying client ever, so I just left with my crappy expensive coffee.

I wanted to let it go, but I was triggered by now and when I got to the car I cried and felt miserable while drinking my crappy non-foam, weak, coldish latte. How lame! And this was the feeling-peak of my week! This was the reason I started feeling(!)  uncomfortable about not feeling stuff. I’ve been playing along with it because I thought it was better than being miserable, but when you start crying over coffee I guess it’s a sign that you’ve done as much denial as you can. Problem is, I don’t know how to shut if off. I’m paying more attention to the things I do and that’s helped me stay inside my body, but I still can’t find the on button for my pressed down feelings, anyone know where it is?

If i find it, I wish it’s over the weekend when I can take some time to deal with stuff, and not on Monday first thing in the morning like it’s happened before, because if I’m lucky I’ll manage to bottle everything and go to work and if I’m not I’ll go to work a mess…again, either way I’d be screwed.

In the meantime before any of this happens, I know I won’t be going to that coffee shop again! 🙂

Sharing the good stuff

The lovely Attachment Girl from The Boundary Ninja Tales has nominated me for the Wonderful Team Member Readership Award. I was glad and surprised that such a talented bologger whom I admire so much would consider me for an award, so thank you so much AG!!!!

For the first two awards this blog got, received when it was still wearnig diappers, I was excited and very happy, but didn’t really know what to do with them besides sticking them on my home page. Now I know a little bit better, and in case I didn’t, this one comes with a set of instructions, which are as follow:

The Rules

1. The Nominee of the Wonderful Team Member Readership Award will display the logo on his/her post/page and/or sidebar.
 
2. Over a period of 1 week, the Nominee shall nominate a number of readers that he or she appreciates – this can be done at any rate during the week. It can be all on one day or a few on one day and a few on another day, as most convenient to the Nominee. – 

This is my list of Nominees, there are obviously some more readers whom I appreciate very much, I just based this list on people who have left over here comments I’ve particularly appreciated:

Buckwheat @ Buckwheatsrisk

Benjamin @ Expressions of my life

Melanie @ Deliberate Donkey

Purple Pineapple @  Purple Pineapple

Goldfish @ Fish of Gold

Aallegoric @ Always Allegoric

Inés @ Inesdelorange

3. The Nominee shall name his or her Wonderful Team Member Readership Award nominees on a post or on posts during the 7 day (1 week) period.

4.  The nominee shall answer the questions, all in the spirit of fun!

1) Why do you blog?
I’m not really sure, I guess it’s some kind of exorcism. I’ve always written, but have only recently gotten fond of sharing it. Letting my thoughts out, wether they are deep or an absolute waste of time and space, has somehow helped me deal with my personal issues, including my mental health. One thing’s for sure, I love it, I think it may even be a little adictive, but hey! who doesn’t need a healthy addiction right?

2) If you were trapped on a desert island, what book, DVD, food, cartoon character, and childhood game would you bring?

Book: Following AG’s example I won’t, because I can’t, choose just one, but five: First of all The Little Prince,  a book that gives a lot of meaning to my life (I even have a tattoo that proves it!). Second, The Sea Wall by Marguerite Duras; third, the very gem of my personal library, my very own William Shakespeare Complete Works; fourth, my Selected Works of Virginia Woolf; and fifth, a little reading from my field, Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives, an awesome book that helped me define what I want to do with my life.

DVD: The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Food: Sushi
Cartoon Character: Candy Candy (japanese anime for girls, good times! :))
Childhood Game: This one took me a lot of time and I simply can’t say, how sad is that!? Can it be a childhood book? lol. Let’s say yes, in which case I’ll say Harry Potter. I’m part of the lucky generation that went from the teen years to young adulthood reading Mrs. Rowling, and I would have given up absolutely any game to get a hold of my Harry Potter series 🙂

3) Share a funny joke or one-liner.
Gosh I’m might have to google one, I’m terrible with jokes!

4) What is your favorite thing about yourself?
Mmm, my Tetris skills? Either that or my ability of being an observer.
5) What one word best describes you?
Curious.

6) If you could have a lifetime supply of any candy/candy bar, what would it be?
Technically it’s not a candy but I say ice-cream counts. I choose Ben & Jerry’s Cherry García, yummie!

7) What fictional character do you relate to most?

This is a tricky one, but I guess I’d have to go with Marguerite from The Lover and The Sea Wall. The autobiographic novels by Marguerite Duras made a profoun impact on me, for obvious reasons like the tragic relationship ( don’t really know how to call it, but problematic seems like an understatement) she and her mother have or her affair with a much older man, but also for the way she transmits the pain that comes from family trauma or being a victim of emotional abuse, of not being able to feel loved and important, of remaining always a runner up in people’s affections. Duras is absolutely and without a doubt my favorite author, and I would advise anyone who loves literature to read her, her other works like The War are also amazingly accurate in transmitting pain; there’s another short novel called L’Amante Anglaise which deals with a psychoanalitic approach to a puzzling bloody murder (which happens to be comitted on MY birthday! Yet another thing I can relate to, however strange it may be)… ok ok I’ll leave it here, but only because Duras deserves a whole post, which I’ll get to later on.

8) If you were to write the story of your life, what would you call it?
9 lives

My hidden words

Tonight my left hand aches too much. I haven’t mentioned that my hands, specially but not only my wrists, are quite faulty and apparently came without spares, which has meant two right-hand surgeries and excruciating pain from physical therapies; and now my left hand seems to want to join the club. It’s been mildly bothering me for at least two years but this is the second time in the same number of weeks that I’ve been unable to use my hand from the pain it’s causing me, and what worries me is that I know this pain, it’s the same I felt on the other hand before I had to get the first surgery, so that can’t be good news.

Aaanyhow, the point being that my hand in pain, together with the guilt for having spent yet another day without much progress on my ongoing-torture (a.k.a. the-thesis-that-must-not-be-named), somehow managed to trigger my chest pain, which I know comes from an increasing angst that at some point becomes unmanageable for me. It started a couple of hours ago and it kept growing and growing, and since I’m not up to spend one of those nights, I had to resort to my special cry-baby medicine, only to be used in some cases…and tonight I guess this little episode qualifies.

While I waited for the meds to kick in I turned on my ipod and the random mode gave me a gift to help me relax, and I wanted to share this beautiful song because it describes very accurately what I feel when this anxiety attacks me. I had to translate ’cause it’s in Spanish but I think I did an ok job. Here you go:

Under my tongue are hidden the words

That reveal all about me

They could tell you about my insecurities

How small I can sometimes feel

But I do everything to stop them

It is too soon to tell

Everything I want slips right through my fingers

That’s what I didn’t want to admit

Everything I want slips right through my fingers

And I don’t know how to handle what I’m starting to feel

Under my tongue all my fears will remain hidden

To everything I don’t know about you

Dangerous and precise words that try

Everything they want to define

But I do all I can to stop them

It is too soon to tell

Everything I want slips right through my fingers

That’s what I didn’t want to admit

Everything I want slips right through my fingers

And I don’t know how to handle what I’m starting to feel

One does not simply “write” a thesis

You should know this post started out in Spanish. I simply didn’t feel like writing in English… or so I thought, and before my text resulted in a reasonable causality for a linguist’s heart attack I decided to go back to my adoptive language (still not sure of who adopted who).

I’m meeting my thesis director tomorrow afternoon. I’m considerably afraid of her. The worst part is that there’s no justifiable reason to do so. She’s not only an academic warrior and someone to look up to professionally, but also a very nice person, and whenever I come down with my regular this-thesis-is-a-joke mood, she’s the one to show me all the good things about it. In short, I’m scared of her and ashamed for being so. I’m meeting her tomorrow and as I sat a moment ago wondering what it was that made me so uncomfortable when she’s so nice even as she helps me work out every millimeter or my work, I thought that it really isn’t her whom I’m afraid of, but my thesis.

Grabbing it and working with it has become something similar to working with The Monster Book of Monsters (go google it…ready?…let’s continue). And when anyone tries to stick their nose into the matter, it’s usually on the tone of: it’s just a matter of sitting down and writing it, I just feel like paraphrasing poor tortured Tolkien’s Boromir and screaming: ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY “WRITE” A THESIS!, though what actually comes out is a low, pathetic little voice saying “yeah, you’re right”. Of course they’re not right! Are they? Well, maybe… The fact is the “writing” process is coming close to a whole year and even though I’m working in the fourth chapter, I feel like I’m moving as fast as Frodo and Sam inside Mordor (gosh..maybe I should re-name this blog: Almost Everything About The Lord of The Rings…) and yes, just as them, as I get closer and closer to achieving my goal, the task becomes harder and harder. So I guess what I urgently need is a way of dealing with my pathologic fear of my own thesis.

By the way, while wasting valuable time researching important issues on the web, I found this (though I guess my thesis won’t have tea and cookies with me anytime soon): 

And finally, to honor the actual name of this blog, I should report that exactly a week ago Mrs. Gobby was lost and found. She fell dow the balcony of her first floor flat and spent a couple of hours hiding in some bushes, which has resulted in her becoming the most spoiled and neediest ensalver cat ever.

Writing Ghosts

Ever since I can remember stories have been holding me together. Wether in the form of small plots or entire novels I would create for myself, mere day dreams or elaborated fantasies, there has been a world inside of me with varying levels of importance depending on how much I’ve needed it to survive.

The first elaborated story I remember writing was some sort of foundational myth with gods and wars and Creation, and it all resumed in the Universe creating me and my mother. I was 6 or 7 and have no idea where my story went.  But though the imagination has stopped at times, the writing has been a continuum. My narrative certainly became scarce when my adoration for literature grew more and more, making me realize I had no job competing with my idols; however, the physical action of the writing in itself gives me a sutil pleasure I’m not sure I can effectively describe.

The futile action of holding and using any kind writing device makes my heart beat in a different way. It can be a pen, marker, preferably a pencil, and even a keyboard… anything goes; and when I’m feeling low, the very words that are ripped out of me through the chosen item seem to have a life of their own. The therapeutic sound and the feel of the tip of the pencil sliding rhythmically as I write, or the touch of my fingers dancing through the keyboard making what to me sounds like music, is sometimes good enough to uncover and free whatever demons have been feasting on me.

The thing is, those are the exact kind of writings I seem to be unable of sharing because they expose me in the deepest way. That’s also the reason why I think most of my idols were not only amazing writers but absolute heroes, because they were brave enough to share themselves and their inner world with outsiders, with strangers who might praise on their work and whom’d tear it apart in a second. As for me, I think I might be something of a Gollum-like writer, holding my precious close to my heart while hiding it in deep dark caverns that no one should ever find.

Aaanyhow, that’s the reason why my attempt of a blog wasn’t updated lately, and so before this turned out to be just another thing I started and never saw through, I thought I should write about NOT writing, well, at least not writing for anyone else except me.

And my three faithful readers might be asking just exactly what has gotten me off my blogger mood in the past few days. Well, to keep with my Lord of the Rings analogy let me just say that I feel like the war against the Dark Lord has just been lost. No one came in our help and we were simply outnumbered. As I see it, Mexico has been lost to Mordor and we are just gonna have to learn to live under the regime of dark wizards and their orcs, while knowing we had the chance to end it all for good and we decided not to.

Election day came and went, and after the electoral prosecutor’s office has basically declared that anything goes and nothing’s gonna be made about it, Mexico’s gonna have to put up with a president 60% of mexican voters did not choose. A man accused of murder, a proven repressor, with no political career and who could not mention 3 books read by him, is going to rule over me, woohoo!

Sure, AMLO is a bad looser, if it means not putting up with fraud and resisting an election which was bought vote by vote. Being a “good” looser would then mean to act as the female PAN candidate, who recognized her loss with only 2% of the votes accounted for and who has not spoken a word against the proven vote-buying and constraint.

Ha, I think I managed to trick myself, started talking about me and my demons, ended up talking about my country’s demons… guess mine have locked themselves up for the night, and I’m gonna let them tuck me in ’cause I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow, and so does Mr. Sylvestre Bombon, who left the realm of the awake a while ago.

Electoral Pourdown

I just came back from voting both for federal and local elections. There hasn’t been a single sunbeam today, and at least here in Mexico City we have our very own electoral downpour in the most literal way. I’ve been out checking different spots where people are voting, and was pleased to see so many people getting in line to have their saying despite of cold and rain. However, the reports coming in from the rest of the country are far from being positive; there has been word of violence, of vote coercion, of voting stands sacked and/or blocked, and a big number of other democratic disgraces.

This reassures my worries expressed on one of my past posts: that the election could easily be corrupted. Well actually, that already happened and I have no doubt about it; I guess my concern today is that this is going to affect the result of the election. It’s just so sad to think we have an electoral system that’s very well designed but that it doesn’t because no one really protects it from being tampered with. Not even the institutions created for that. The EPN-Televisa media scandal is no such thing here in Mexico, and despite of all the coverage done in The Guardian, not a single institution has done something about it.

The other big scandal, also by EPN’s party, has been the distribution of so-called gift cards from a bank called MONEX, likely intended to either buy votes or give financial aid to coercion skims. Appropriate complaints were maid by the other two important parties (PAN and PRD) both at the Electoral Federal Institute (IFE) and the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Electoral Crimes (FEPADE), and at least the PAN partie demanded that the MONEX account from which the plastics were being funded was frozen until the day after July 1st and further investigations could be done. The authority held an inquiry and concluded that the account was indeed being used for ilegal financing, but as it (allegedly) couldn’t be proved that this unauthorized budget would be used to buy or coerce voters, the account was not frozen and further inquiries will be made only after the election process is over. That is, until the ilegal money may and probably will have irreversibly affected the election. (You can read some more about it here)

So today, just as the weather, the election has been gloomy, and does not promise a single sunlight in the horizon. The sky cried all over us today, and it’s been the saddest election I’ve been witness of. To think about it only makes it worse because it reminds me that today should be a public festivity. We should be celebrating our obtained right and obligation of deciding what to do with our country, the only one we’ll have, the one we should be looking out for. But perhaps the gloominess is not so bad, maybe today we have been given a taste of our own medicine. People need to start realizing that democracy is not getting out on one day every six years to cross out a sign on a paper. That’s only a small part of what we should be doing.

The #YoSoy132 movement was enormous, but it seems like it  wasn’t enough or it didn’t have enough time.  Not that it’s its fault, because it’s only a reflection of the stupor on which the mexican electorate stood for the most part of the last term. If everything we hope does not happen our job will be to spread the knowledge and the awareness. On the other hand if everything, or at least some, of what we hope actually does happen, our job will be exactly the same.

P.S.

I found a nice blog to read more about mexican elections, check out The Mex Files and its post “Democracy Interrupted?”

Also, I’m so glad to have been recipient of littleprince68‘s generousity, who nominated this still very new project for the The Versatile Blogger and Sunshine Awards.

Countdown to hell

At what point does writing stop being a hobby and become an obligation? At what level should you care? Did I leave the car door opened?… These are the kind of questions I have tried to keep myself busy with, but it’s becoming quite difficult so I resorted to my very last way out: Science Fiction. However, after watching Alien and halfway through Aliens (for the non-initiated that’s the second part of the saga) I had to accept that poor acting and jalapeño popcorn just weren’t gonna cut it for me.

Fact is election day is this Sunday, and I’m not the least bit excited, maybe because I’ve been busy freaking out about it. We got a lot to loose, and some very dark people have a lot to gain from whatever happens on that day. The once (and hopefully not soon to be) State party PRI has been caught over and over again in nasty stunts to get voters, and you’d have to be quite blind no to see all the different ways that is election has become tainted, and still experience has shown us mexicans that no matter how filthy and election is proven to be, results will be upheld.

In fact, I’d dare to say there hasn’t been one clean federal election in Mexico’s history. Not that every single one of them has been a fraud, not obvious ones in any case. No, what I mean is that there’s always the ghostly figure of vote buyers, of threats against uneducated people to make them vote a certain way, of endless tricks and obscure possibilities to make and election’s result tilt a specific way, as you can see here or here.

Still not everything’s lost, and hopefully the left wing candidate has learned his lessons from last election and has acquired a better defense mechanism against such threats… it’s just sad that he has to. There’s an incredible amount of problems to be solved immediately in Mexico, and it would be kind of relieving another huge one on our backs.

*You can also further your reading a bit more here

Why #132 now?

The #132 movement has burst into mexican political scene for a little more than a month now. On June 9th, two weeks ago, I was an active part of it. Me and other tens of thousands of mostly young people marched against many things, because we are very angry…and very scared of what may happen on our election day, July 1st. The presidential candidate and known repressor Enrique Peña Nieto and the tight hold that Mexico’s main TV stations keep in the destiny of Mexico could be called the main two banners of the movement. However, the underlying reasons for a bunch of angry college students to turn into tens of thousands flooding the main avenues of Mexico City are many, quite many. I will try to explain mine here.

Our generation has watched our parents’ money disappear before their eyes, has seen killings that become bloodier and bloodier, and has watched the distance between classes become one of the widest in the world; all of our lives we’ve been told that we are in crisis, that our currency is devaluating; we grew up listening to after-dinner conversations about false elections, politicians who ripped us off and ended any possibility of development. Then, after 72 years of this ongoing situation lead by a State-party, we got a chance of hoping for change in 2000. Yes, it was a right-wing opposition, but still nobody cared, we had gotten the thieves out of our pockets, right?

What actually happened is that this clown-president practically shouted “haha, gotcha!” in our faces. Now, for me, and I guess that for most of the people involved in the #YoSoy132 movement, this wasn’t our first election, we just sat in the background and watched the show of the campaigns unfold in front of us. And what we saw was our families, neighbors and fellow mexicans get ripped off, because no matter if they had supported president Fox or not, they had all believed something was about to change.

For the next election it was quite different, me and a lot of other participants in the movement got to vote for the first time. And hell no, we weren’t about to vote por the same Party again, or the one before it, so we supported the next best option, the leftish Party PRD, but specially, very specifically, we voted for its candidate, Andrés Manuel López O. It was an election that literally divided not only the country but entire families, and up to this date it is a very risky thing to talk about whether there was a fraud or not (since we obtained absolutely no proof against it by our institutions). Against all our hopes, AMLO lost to Fox’s Party.

And that’s when the fun really began. The new president decided to declare a war against drug trafficking in our territory. Not that it was a particularly bad idea, except for the fact that he did it just days after becoming head of State without having ever mentioned it during his campaign, spending who knows how much money in this task, and… oh yes, I almost forgot, turning Mexico into a living horror for millions of mexicans. And that is without even mentioning  things such as the blatant corruption or the never ending constraint of the State industries by Televisa and TV Azteca, the above-mentioned TV stations.

All of these while our people, our very families and friends, together with most of the population, were being deeply misinformed, if not viciously mislead. How? Well, for example, by selling the idea of a “new” PRI, the old State-party, as if a handsome-not-so-old face could make us forget that behind it are the exact same people whose very own hands drove Mexico back to its ruins, all while filling their pockets with the Nation’s treasury. There is quite a lot to say about this deceitful pretty face, but I’ll leave that for another time.

I’m no expert in politics, but hopefully I learnt something at my dearest UNAM other than to grab a table at a packed cafeteria; I learned to think, to observe, and to analyze my surroundings. And what I see is devastating, and it doesn’t seem to have a happy ending anytime soon, if you’re not on the right side of the scale that is… I feel like am carrying not just my anger and my humiliation, but the one suffered by many generations before me, with the difference that I have tools that they didn’t have, and an access to information that they couldn’t get… that’s quite a responsibility not to do something. And I’m sure tens of thousands, if not millions, of young mexicans feel the same way I do.

remember.

Pretty much all I need to know before going to bed tonight!

Rockin Mom's World

 

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