dreaming in flour

Last night we had to say goodbye to Miso aka Mr. Man aka Meese aka Meesey. He was tough as nails and could be a huge asshole, but under that was the sweetest creampuff of a cat, and Stace and I loved him very very much.

He came into our lives in on my birthday in 2007, through a friend of a coworker at Barnes and Noble, and lived in every home Stace and I ever shared. He thought he was a giant guard dog and intimidated the shit out of many a plumber/electrician/vet tech over the years, but also crawled under the blankets to flop across my legs every chilly winter night.

Despite being an only cat for his first 10 years, he welcomed Zappa into our house in a way I never expected. I hoped they would at least tolerate each other, but never thought they would become buds the way they did. They played tag up and down the hallway in Cambridge, shared window perches in Fitchburg, and slept next to each other more often than not.

He took absolutely no shit, but also made it very clear when he loved and trusted you. He both loved and hated with the heat of a thousand suns – progressively more love and less hate as the years went by. Stace and I decided a long time ago that Meese was fueled by spite – like our vet said once, “the meaner they are, the longer they live.” But in Miso’s last days, we realized that once he used up all that rage – once it had been replaced by love – he’d be ready to leave. He was here to learn how to love, and he did.

When he first emerged all giant and fluffy and majestic from a too-small pet carrier at the Empire, I had no idea I’d get to hang with this confident, dramatic, loud as fuck, sweet, snuggly, loyal dude for so many years – I was 23 when he showed up and 40 when he left us. Too much time to recount, nearly half my life. We’re so sad but also so grateful for all those years, and there’s a giant Miso-shaped hole in our home now.

I feel it crashing in
A wave, a weight, it’s harder when it’s soft
I talk about it way too much
But never get the point across
I see things how I want
But never truly how they really are
I think about it way too often
Death and dying’s just a part
But I am older now
I see my whole life inside your eyes
It’s spring time, forest, clouded skies…
-Weakened Friends

Things feel especially dire right now. I’m a really anxious person, so things feel scary all the time – but this feels different. People I trust – the adults in the room – are also freaking out.

I have no idea what I can do. I’m just one little human in a sea of humans on this weird planet, in this flaming trashcan of a country, going to work and making weird music and watching Star Trek reruns and doomscrolling and not sleeping enough.

The people that are supposed to be in charge have been checked out for a long time, but it feels so much worse now. Where is everyone? Where are these mythical checks and balances? Where are all the people we voted for? Are they really going to sit by and do nothing while there’s a fucking hostile authoritarian takeover of the US government?

I’m an elder millennial – I was in high school for Columbine and 9/11, my 20’s for the recession, my 30’s for covid, and now my 40’s for this new shit. I’m so, so tired.

I just want to live, and hang out with the people I love, and pet cats, and make art, and maybe find a tiny scrap of stability. I don’t understand how that threatens anybody.

Sometimes I feel like I lose the ability to be an active participant in my own life. When depression starts to creep up again, I want to want to do things – write or record music, knit, paint – any of the things I do that involves actually creating something. But I just can’t. I sit next to my knitting on the couch, or in front of a song I was already in the middle of writing, and nothing happens. Like the part of my brain that does these things has been walled off – inaccessible, dormant, being slowly buried in snow. It’s not a violent thing; it’s a sort of quiet, gentle loss – the way the air pressure changes when you close a door on a cold day; the solid thunk of a deadbolt; the crinkly sound of dry leaves in the wind, still clinging to their branches, just before they let go.

When did I become so complacent, so accommodating, such a helpless thing? Have I always been like this? Was I always so terrified of conflict that I was willing to do anything to keep the peace, even if it meant ignoring what I actually needed?

This seems to be a theme lately. People push and push and push and they expect me to just take it. Because I usually do.

I think I used to be… not like this. I have this fantasy that I used to speak my mind when pushed far enough. But maybe that was only when I was drunk. Maybe I don’t know how to stand up for myself otherwise. Maybe I never learned at all, and instead spent the time I should have been learning drinking and arguing with people and developing a reputation for being an impulsive, obnoxious person. It seems like, without booze, I’m actually neither. But cutting off the catalyst of hard conversations left a vacuum in its place – now I can never tell anyone how I’m really feeling, because I simply don’t know how. I said recently that I feel like I’m back in middle school – people can be shitty to me when they’re having a bad day, because they know I won’t fight back. They can exclude or ditch me without consequence because they know I’ll still be there when they need something.

I don’t know how to fix this.

I originally started writing this in an Instagram story but it got way too long, and also maybe too personal. It was in response to a post from mattxiv about a firefighter that came out as gay in his obituary. The last slide said, “Why do we have pride? So that no one ever has to come out in their obituary. So that queer people can have peace in life, not just in death.”

It hit me harder than I was expecting, and then I tried to figure out why, and now here we are.

~~~

Definitely had the thought years ago that maybe I could just go through the rest of this life in discomfort.

Like if I had already survived for this long, why rock the boat, why make a selfish decision, why risk alienating the people I love?

But at some point, I realized I was just watching the years tick by, waiting for my time on this planet to end so I could try again. (Apparently, I have a lot faith in reincarnation.)

Not suicidal exactly, but really ambivalent about being here.

I knew top surgery was what I needed way back in 2015 or so, but didn’t think it was for me, didn’t think things were bad enough, didn’t think I deserved to use up those resources – there was definitely someone else who needed it more.

But in retrospect, that was a symptom of the same ambivalence – why bother doing something difficult if I was just waiting for the whole experience of being alive to end anyway? Why go to all the trouble of finding a surgeon, arguing with insurance, spending a whole bunch of money, going through a miserable recovery process, figuring out how to tell everyone? What would be the point?

But now, here, just about a year and three months since surgery, it was so incredibly worth it. It’s like there had been constant low level static in my head since 2007, and suddenly it was just… gone.

Recognizing that static for what it actually was took FOREVER. And then I had to convince myself I was actually worth all this effort.

But there was so much ease waiting on the other side.

Things are definitely not perfect, but the baseline is so much better. Each day I stand a fighting chance of feeling okay, when before there was this unshakeable wrongness baked in to living.

Once again, up at 4:35 in the morning. At least this time it’s a Saturday.

I signed up to do Record Production Month again this year, wherein you pick a quantity of music you want to record (a single, EP, or full album) during the month of February.

This is the third year in a row I’ve tried to do this, and maybe the first one where I actually end up making the thing I set out to. In quantity, anyway.

I had intended to do some sort of bedroom pop thing, like the stuff I’ve been making the past while. I tried for the first couple of weeks, then got totally consumed with prepping for a gig I ended up playing mid month (which is a subject for another time). I only just got back to it today, with a week left, because the mailing list I signed up for originally sent out a “if you haven’t started yet, it’s fine! BUT JUST DO IT” email that I found strangely comforting/vaguely guilt-inducing. So I tried again.

What ended up coming out of my brain was three improvised pieces of ambient/drone/whatever the fuck, using my guitar and a bunch of pedals, most notably the Chase Bliss Mood and Walrus Audio Lore. And it was actually fun to make. I think I’ve been putting a ton of pressure on myself to make music in a very specific way, and it’s just not working. I keep saying “my brain is broken” but maybe it’s just getting re-wired again… I’ve decided this happens whenever I go through a period of being depressed and start to either come out of it or at least realize what’s going on and try to climb up to the surface a little, to get some fresh air. And right now that apparently means I have zero desire to write lyrics or otherwise address my current brain rot in a direct way. In retrospect I’m not sure why I didn’t just try to do something different in the first place. Or maybe I did try earlier in the month, but didn’t think weird improvised ambient counted as music, which is silly because I actively listen to this sort of thing.

Either way, I made a thing and I think it sounds decent and it made me feel less like shit for an hour so I’ll take the win.

Yesterday, at like 10pm, I got an urge to take out my very old and chonky Dell laptop. I didn’t remember quite how old it actually was – Stace was able to look up the service number, and it was purchased in November 2003. I used it regularly until about 2007, and a few times in 2009 from what I can tell.

It was a disorienting early 2000’s time capsule, which I expected, but wasn’t able to meaningfully access the internet anymore, which I was not expecting. Something about a bookmarks folder full of hundreds of dead links that I’d never be able to access again was jarring. There’s a whole era of the internet that’s just… gone. This is not an original thought, and the reason why the wayback machine exists, but it still sucks.

But that’s not the thing I came here to write about… I found a folder full of old writing. It’s definitely backed up elsewhere, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to read it in its natural habitat. I went through most of it, until 5am cause I’m an idiot, and like every time I do this sort of thing, by the end I felt very weird.

The weird feeling always happens, like I forget who I am for a couple of hours, like I’m reading about someone else. I don’t know if other people feel this way about their younger selves; maybe it’s a function of having so much written down. It has a “watching a car crash in slow motion” quality.

I kind of hate who I was from 21 to 24 or so. I was so fucking dramatic, and ungrateful, and self centered. But I was also deeply anxious and depressed, with some raging undiagnosed ADHD thrown in for good measure. One thing that stood out yesterday, in the disjointed chronology of poems and journal entries and AIM conversations, is how the systems that should have helped me out of that hole failed me over and over.

I’ve written about this before. The dismissive primary care doctors and school administrators, the unaccommodating and unsympathetic counseling department at Simmons. I kept reaching out, knowing something was really wrong, but kept getting told it wasn’t bad enough, I wasn’t sick enough, until suddenly I was sleeping through all my classes and not leaving my dorm room and self injuring and getting blackout drunk all the time. But what struck me for the first time last night was one sentence, buried in a journal entry about the meds I’d been taking for a month at that point: “Also, noticing colors more. Things seem a bit physically brighter, I feel more ‘here.'”

How fucking depressed had I been? And for how long? No wonder I was such an asshole.

I still don’t really like who I was or how I acted back then. But having one concrete reason I can point to is comforting. I was trying to claw my way out of a hole I’d been in for years, without much of a support system, without the resources of the modern internet and, let’s be honest, some shitty attitudes about mental health that wouldn’t begin to change for at least another decade.

I said a long time ago that this blog wasn’t for drama and was only gonna be about crafting and baking and nice photos. But it’s good to have a place to write this out. Life isn’t all fun hobbies and good food. Honestly, it’s like 75% shit, at least lately. But being able to look back and know I handled things the best I could, and that I’m way, way better at handling them now, feels useful.

So Christine McVie died today.

I have… a lot of feelings.

My thing with Fleetwood Mac started in 9^th grade, when my dad handed me a cassette of their 1975 self-titled album, and told me to give it a try, I might like it. And I did, in a completely obnoxious way, in the way you only really get into things when you’re 15, and they become your entire personality. I became that asshole, the one recommending two-decade-old music to anyone who would listen, like I had made some huge discovery.

I scoured the internet for grainy photos of them to print out and tape to my bedroom wall. I lurked on forums, dug through my dad’s bookstore for biographies and old magazine articles, pilfered all my parents’ cassettes and listened to them on an old Walkman, in the glowing dark of our living room in the middle the night. And when Napster became a thing, I downloaded lo-fi demos from the 70’s, multiple versions of the same song, each one slightly closer to the one that made it on the album, tracking all the changes in instrumentation and lyrics and melody.

I liked plenty of other music, but this was eternal. Each album became the soundtrack to a summer, or a shitty year of school, or a miserable unrequited crush. I got really into the song Save Me (an underrated Christine jam from an otherwise crappy album) while I was at Dublin, far away from my friends and family, wishing for a time machine, a way to go back to the year before.

The Christine songs I’ve been listening to on repeat all night:
Save Me (from Behind the Mask)
Over & Over (from Tusk)
Love Shines (from 25 Years – The Chain)
Temporary One (from The Dance)
Hold Me (from Mirage)
Little Lies (from Tango in the Night)

the river goes on and on,
and the sea that divides us is a temporary one
and the bridge will bring us back together

I just spent way too much time reading through ancient journal entries on a bunch of my old blogs I thought for sure had been eaten by the internet. Turns out Blogger still exists, and is owned by Google, and at some point I updated my email to the one I’m still using, so all these old as fuck pages are still kicking around. The really old stuff, from 2002-2003, was likely using a theme that’s not compatible with modern Blogger, so while I can access the content from the back end, the front facing blog is blank. This is for the best. Even the slightly newer stuff (2006-2007) is full of things no one needs to see ever again. Thankfully, I was appropriately vague at the time, so it’s not likely to make sense to anyone, if it’s even findable.

I don’t really have a point here, I was just already having a weird week, and then read a bunch of writing from 15-20 years ago (christ I’m old), so now I’m all discombobulated.

Also realizing I haven’t posted on here about actual baking or crafting in forever. I’ve been working on a bunch of holiday knit gifts the past while, which I’ll try to remember to take photos of once they’re all finished and blocked. Perhaps a show and tell, once they’ve been delivered to their new homes? Will the ADHD goblin allow me to remember this in a month?? ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

On a related note, in a few of the old journal entries I mentioned having a ton of trouble concentrating, and wondered aloud if there was a reason for it, or if I was actually just lazy. Jaq from 20 years ago, if you’ve somehow stumbled upon a temporal anomaly while cruising AOL: you’re not lazy, you have ADHD. Ask Jeeves about it or something.

In the meantime, some nature:

And now, for the epilogue of this not-a-story: I must have summoned the ADHD goblin. I just spilled soup all over my laptop, because I was eating OVER it and trying to type at the same time. Well done.

Lots of love for all, especially my fellow goblin-havers.

It’s been a minute.

I got two teeth extracted the other day, and a bone graft. My face is wicked swollen and my mouth is full of stitches, and it’s itchy and achy and uncomfortable. Doing anything that raises my heart rate makes it throb. I just want to get back to something resembling normal.

I wish I could turn off the guilty feeling I get from calling out of work when I’m sick or injured. It’s so stupid.

I wish it were warm out. I wish I could see my friends. I wish I could go to shows and bars and movie theatres. I still miss all of those things. I know this will end, eventually. But what will be left when it does?

I’m home today, with my stupid swollen face. I would rather be out walking dogs. I would rather be doing a lot of things.

Knitting and Star Trek are the things keeping me afloat. Which is okay I guess. But those things will eventually run of room to hold all my boredom and loneliness and sadness. And then what?

I feel like I should end this with something positive, so have some cats. They’re cute at least. <3

(Re the title: screwing around with Spotify playlists, I had forgotten about Helios)