The Best Gift to Myself on This Birthday

It's my birthday, and I am now 24 years old. My body responds by being sick, of course. I respond in kind with an artillery of drugs, because I am going to a concert tonight, and that is that.

However, I am not here to kvetch. 

After taking a nap today, I awoke to find a large, chocolatey temptress of a cupcake sitting at my computer, with an attending card, from parents. It was a pleasant "surprise" (it's hard to be surprised on your birthday; one kind of expects something out of the average to happen). So I went to my mom, thanked her for the card and cupcake, and then politely abstained from devouring the dessert. She understood, and I of course offered it for her and dad to eat. 

This is, in action, part of my gift to myself. I could easily have forsaken everything and scarfed down the whole sugary kit and kaboodle. If I hadn't downed a bunch of advil, tylenol, and excedrin today, or didn't care about my liver, I would likely booze it up later. Then, I would have stayed up late, doing lordy knows what. I choose not to use Time as an excuse to speed up the ravages of Time, however. The best gift I can give myself today is take control of myself.

The past year has not been kind to me, overall. (See: this, this, and this.) Then, again that's not quite right: I haven't been kind to me. Essentially, I had given up and given in. In losing so much self-control, I had lost much sense of self. This has proven necessary, however, to vomit up some things which were dragging me down. Yet, not even a month ago, my grasp on my identity was close to dissipated. The mental ground upon which I walked seemed to be ever shifting, and I was about to be sucked in. 

I have had it, though. I have had it with giving into depression, jealousy, loneliness, envy, incompetence, inferiority. One can admit that one's life isn't quite where one wishes it were without allowing these base feelings come in to play. I have had it with letting these said emotions run my life; they will still be there, naturally, but not in the pilot's seat. 

How does a cupcake factor into this? Part and parcel with my mental health, my physical health went down the drain. In the summer of 2010, I lost 40 pounds, going from 185 to 145. I am now back at 180, and all my previous health problems I had overcome have come back. So I am doing a 6-week Paleo challenge, and for the next 30 days (well, 28 now), I will only eat certain, healthful foods. It will be difficult, and only yesterday I spent much of my waking moments telling myself "No!," in a conversation not much unlike the kind Gollum has with himself; yet, the best things in life are difficult pleasures, for the payoffs are glorious. (Why Paleo? Of all the ways of nutrition I have read about, only Paleo has proven well nigh 100% effective, not to mention making a lot of sense. Plus, it is because of Paleo that I lost the weight in 2010.) I resort to eating when I'm bored (that is, to keep myself busy, because of an over-active mind), when I'm emotional, or when I'm hungry. With the way my life has been going in the last year, those three things covered most of my waking hours. 

Therefore, I will not give into my body's maniacal urge for easy desires and mind-numbing delights. Instead of using my birthday as excuse to let myself go, I will use this memorial to my aging as a reason to do myself good. I am still in hibernation, not quite ready to spring fully forth, but I am also not wasting my time, using my relative free time between now and when I go to England to rebuild myself, to regain my confidence, and to strengthen myself against giving into what has for so long been holding me back.

Well, now for a piece of music to match my mood: My favorite work by my favorite composer, Sibelius' Fifth Symphony.

Syntactical Astronomy

This is a working theory on syntax, "the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form constituents (as phrases or clauses)."

Grammar knows no equality, and all the better for our speech. Yet every word has its part, and even the lesser ones affect the greater. A word is a celestial body. These span the mightiest stars to the lowliest comets. A word is a locus, a center of gravity; its immediate meaning is that material which has been so drawn in that it is what constitutes the body. If the word should have particular significance/size, it can draw in other words. The Earth has a moon, and in the phrase "good dog," "good" is the lunar object of "dog." The most important word is the sun of this solar system of a sentence, around which all the other planets move (let's not even think of multi-star systems). Gravity pulls between all objects, however, and just as the moon affects tides on this planet, so too can gigantic planets affect their stars. Gravity here causes meaning locally (denotation) and generally (context). From here, we can carry on the analogy: paragraphs are galaxies, chapters/sections are groups, books are universes. Dark matter is the effect of outside influences (memories of other works, personal experiences); nebulae are drafts (maybe). 

This pleases my need for grandiosity.

Soul-friend

Journeys begin in great friends meeting. 

Like in a Russian novel, I first met her when she was in middle school, I in high school, she was singing for a solo and ensemble contest, and she was one of the students I was accompanying; I think she sang "Climb Ev'ry Mountain." And that was it. This recollection was pieced together later, and I know I could barely remember her name during the brief time we performed together; yet, musical theatre, lying at the intersection of our first fleeting encounter, would bring us together again a couple years later, to form a more perfect union.

Too often in my life great things happen to me as I'm heading out the door. If greatness was thrust upon Malvolio, it calls after me as I'm leaving, telling me I forgot my keys. At the end of my senior year in high school, our choir took a weekend trip to Chicago. Who overheard whom, I don't know, but Sweeney Todd was brought up, and the other one of us mentioned "Hey, I like that show." By the time we had returned from the Bloviating City, we...well, hadn't yet become the best of friends, because Life so poorly imitates Art, but she had asked me out sometime by the end of the following week. I declined, because I was leaving (I may have had a week left of high school, at the most) and she was a freshman, because I wasn't that interested--and my lack of interest mostly a result of my picky bisexuality--and because it was during a time when I wasn't that interested in relationships. Intrigued, though, I did exchange my email address. She then took her sweet time. I got her first email. I replied. Then it continued. It grew and grew. We finally hung out together as friends. During my first year at Webster we managed to see each other frequently. There was no slowing down.

I won't share the problems we have had, not out of fear for myself, just out of respect for our privacy. Herein, though, is one of the things that makes this relationship so dear to me: even at the brink of ending it, there is an understanding between us not to, something I finding lacking in so many other relationships, romantic or friendly. In order to maintain the bond, change occurs. I have been scorched, wind-blasted, buried, and well-nigh drowned, and doubtless so has she, but in hanging on, we survive injuries both coming from the world outside and from each other:

I am much more open;

I am more receptive to relationships;

I have better patience;

I am frequently humbled;

I am loved by non-blood, which in many ways is more important;

And a host of other things that I can't quite grasp. 

As my life lies currently in crumbles (not, thankfully, in itty-bitty bits), I have taken to needing her more than ever; I restrain myself still, for I fear I could suffocate her. She shoulders me, more than perhaps she knows, and I stumble forward with her help, waiting until I have recovered my strength. 

Je t'aime, Paige.

Now, to the reason I first started crafting this post: to get a shout-out from her new, awesome blog, which can be found here:
http://tippingteapots.wordpress.com/. Hopefully now she will reciprocate.

Also, I will acknowledge some other friend's blogs:

Kara's: http://kararosemarie.wordpress.com/

Alyssa's media empire: http://lifeistheteacher.wordpress.com/,

                                      http://alwaysquestfortruth.blogspot.com/,

                                      http://giftsofgodsmercy.blogspot.com/

Derek's: http://insearchofamorebeautifulquestion.tumblr.com/

If there are more, I apologize for missing/forgetting them.

UPDATE: As I was crocheting, I remembered a newer friend and blog that I had wanted to mention. Kevin's blog can be found at http://chekhovsgunman.wordpress.com/. My apologies.