There are dark points to every year, places where the protective membrane between you and the realm of Pinhead's Cenobites wears thin.
For me, its always Daylight Saving time.
If I were Stephen King, I would have written my life story, a thirty-two (for each year) volume set of all the horrific Daylight Saving Days I've had to live. There's a reason more car accidents and heart attacks happen at this time. The world becomes its own Macabre Event Horizon Blood Orgy.
I know you're thinking to yourself "you lose an hour, big deal. It happens at 2 a.m. on a Sunday, whatevs, you fuckin' wuss."
And it isn't a big deal... but it IS. Every year, my life just gets HARD around now. Shit is happening in the universe and my system is not agreeing with it. In high school, the swim unit always happened around this time, which is always a wonderful time for someone with saggy flab tits and Stretchmarks galore.
This year, I was up late when I had promised myself I wouldn't be - I had informed myself of Daylight Saving time's impending arrival, and I had screamed to myself "I WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES to be in bed and sound asleep when it passes over us all like an angel of death. Stop being so passively accordant to all the people and events in your life that conspire to keep you up during this crucial, crucial moment where you lose an hour of peace and quiet. You have a chronic illness, and you don't have some hag to nag to you about the imperative need to take care of yourself. You live alone and you will die alone and you need to fucking get your shit together.
At any rate, smash cut to me stumbling to my bed at 2 am, setting my alarm for work at 6 a.m, looking away for one second and then seeing the clock read 3 a.m.
MY GOD, I ACTUALLY BORE WITNESS TO THE LOSS OF MY PRECIOUS HOUR. AGGGHHHHHHHH!
This is where my depression literally morphs from a gray wet blanket to something that is screaming and on fire. I won't lie, there will be a lot of crying in my pillow. A lot of silent staring at blank walls. A lot of absent minded consumption of bland comfort food.
If you've read Harry Potter, you know about the Quidditch snitch - that little golden device that has that Latin phrase "I open at the end" written on it. And in the final book, when Harry finally puts it together that he has to walk into his own slaughterhouse five, it opens and all of the people he's lost through all of the books come to him from a foggy wood and give him encouragement to go through with his own death,(I like Sirius Black's line "Don't worry, it only hurts for a moment and then its like falling asleep")
Well, for me Daylight Saving time is my snitch and when it opens, all the people in my life come to me, but instead of saying words of praise and encouragement, they each say the most hideously hurtful thing that I can remember them saying to me in real life. For ex:
Oscar night circa early nineties, I'm twelve-ish and just soooo happy. I don't have much in life. I hate sports, I hate school, the only thing I love at that moment in time is losing myself in movies and what better night is there for someone of that nature than Oscar night, the one day of the year when we celebrate all of cinema. Now, mind you, I'm a fat 'lil fuck back then and I want to celebrate as fat fucks do and there happens to be a package of oreos on the counter. The show is about to start - I fill my glass of milk and grab a stack of them, probably seven or eight to load up for the three hour show. An obese relative sees this and just LAYS into me. It would've been one thing if it were one of my thin (at the time) parents or angry aunts, but this relative was one of my faves, one of my friends (probably because he was big). I think he was dieting at the time, but I can't really remember. All I know is that this screaming fit came out of nowhere, and I mean SCREAMING fit, "Do you know how many calories are in each of those cookies, what are you THINKING! Blah blah blah, blah, bleechity-blah!!"
Cue crestfallen heart, me placing the oreos back into the package and watching the Oscars trying not to cry.
who does that? Who yells at a fuckin' kid that isn't even your OWN who is clearly just trying to be happy? and on OSCAR night, no less! Just let the fat kid eat the cookie. Just let the fat kid eat the cookie. He's not an asshole, he's a nice kid. He's a nice, shy fat kid minding his own business, why are you yelling at him? Just let the fat kid eat the cookie, he's working towards some kind of happy.
bleccch.
That's just one of many examples of dead and/or living loved ones coming back to haunt me like Harry's loved ones. I had completely forgotten about the Oreo incident until yesterday. It came to me when I saw an ad for the 100th birthday of the Oreo cookie. It's an awful cookie, by the way, and I no longer watch the Oscars, but the legend lives on in my mind and continues to torment me. Not always, only on special unholy occassions, like Daylight Saving Time.
Last night was particularly bad. Had a rough day at work and it was Two Dollar Tuesday at the Riverview theater. To get me through this evening's batch of angry homeless people with $200 fines on their cards, I made plans to take the lightrail over to the Riverview Theater to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Movie, movie movie!!!! You're never fat when you're in a dark theater surrounded by people who are distracted by a large screen of images. No one will ever pass judgement on your shame-shell of flesh, it's a safe zone!
But as the evening wore on (I work late on Tuesdays), the prospect of seeing a David Fincher film started to wane. I love Fincher films. I believe they should only be seen in the theaters. Fight Club, Se7en, The Game, all of these are luscious, dark works of extraordinary beauty. But after having to serve the third shitty patron of the night, I couldn't get excited about Dragon Tattoo. I mean, the selling point of the film
TATTOO SPOILER ALERT HERE:
is when she gets horrifically raped in the ass and then she eventually finds her attacker and rapes him back, (so to speak), in the ass and gets to kill him.
TATTOO SPOILER END HERE, YOU MAY CONTINUE TO READ IN PEACE.
So, when I left work, I thought to myself,
"You could go to the theater and see this movie...you could sit there and fill your already fragile head with these images and sounds and then you can go home to your empty apartment.....
or.... You go home to your empty apartment and heat up some vegan lasagna, listen to one of your favorite podcasts and try to get some sleep."
I chose the latter. I'm sorry David Fincher. There is a place in the world for your work. I believe it. But my mind just needs to be at a certain level of resiliency to witness it.
Right now, I need to baby proof my brain. Baby proof my brain through this awful part of the year.
I ended up waking up at 4:30 a.m, crying about something. I went for a three mile walk through some scary parts of the city, just to get away from myself.
Happy Daylight Saving Time! Fuck you, Daylight. Why don't you learn to save yourself for once?
For me, its always Daylight Saving time.
If I were Stephen King, I would have written my life story, a thirty-two (for each year) volume set of all the horrific Daylight Saving Days I've had to live. There's a reason more car accidents and heart attacks happen at this time. The world becomes its own Macabre Event Horizon Blood Orgy.
I know you're thinking to yourself "you lose an hour, big deal. It happens at 2 a.m. on a Sunday, whatevs, you fuckin' wuss."
And it isn't a big deal... but it IS. Every year, my life just gets HARD around now. Shit is happening in the universe and my system is not agreeing with it. In high school, the swim unit always happened around this time, which is always a wonderful time for someone with saggy flab tits and Stretchmarks galore.
This year, I was up late when I had promised myself I wouldn't be - I had informed myself of Daylight Saving time's impending arrival, and I had screamed to myself "I WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES to be in bed and sound asleep when it passes over us all like an angel of death. Stop being so passively accordant to all the people and events in your life that conspire to keep you up during this crucial, crucial moment where you lose an hour of peace and quiet. You have a chronic illness, and you don't have some hag to nag to you about the imperative need to take care of yourself. You live alone and you will die alone and you need to fucking get your shit together.
At any rate, smash cut to me stumbling to my bed at 2 am, setting my alarm for work at 6 a.m, looking away for one second and then seeing the clock read 3 a.m.
MY GOD, I ACTUALLY BORE WITNESS TO THE LOSS OF MY PRECIOUS HOUR. AGGGHHHHHHHH!
This is where my depression literally morphs from a gray wet blanket to something that is screaming and on fire. I won't lie, there will be a lot of crying in my pillow. A lot of silent staring at blank walls. A lot of absent minded consumption of bland comfort food.
If you've read Harry Potter, you know about the Quidditch snitch - that little golden device that has that Latin phrase "I open at the end" written on it. And in the final book, when Harry finally puts it together that he has to walk into his own slaughterhouse five, it opens and all of the people he's lost through all of the books come to him from a foggy wood and give him encouragement to go through with his own death,(I like Sirius Black's line "Don't worry, it only hurts for a moment and then its like falling asleep")
Well, for me Daylight Saving time is my snitch and when it opens, all the people in my life come to me, but instead of saying words of praise and encouragement, they each say the most hideously hurtful thing that I can remember them saying to me in real life. For ex:
Oscar night circa early nineties, I'm twelve-ish and just soooo happy. I don't have much in life. I hate sports, I hate school, the only thing I love at that moment in time is losing myself in movies and what better night is there for someone of that nature than Oscar night, the one day of the year when we celebrate all of cinema. Now, mind you, I'm a fat 'lil fuck back then and I want to celebrate as fat fucks do and there happens to be a package of oreos on the counter. The show is about to start - I fill my glass of milk and grab a stack of them, probably seven or eight to load up for the three hour show. An obese relative sees this and just LAYS into me. It would've been one thing if it were one of my thin (at the time) parents or angry aunts, but this relative was one of my faves, one of my friends (probably because he was big). I think he was dieting at the time, but I can't really remember. All I know is that this screaming fit came out of nowhere, and I mean SCREAMING fit, "Do you know how many calories are in each of those cookies, what are you THINKING! Blah blah blah, blah, bleechity-blah!!"
Cue crestfallen heart, me placing the oreos back into the package and watching the Oscars trying not to cry.
who does that? Who yells at a fuckin' kid that isn't even your OWN who is clearly just trying to be happy? and on OSCAR night, no less! Just let the fat kid eat the cookie. Just let the fat kid eat the cookie. He's not an asshole, he's a nice kid. He's a nice, shy fat kid minding his own business, why are you yelling at him? Just let the fat kid eat the cookie, he's working towards some kind of happy.
bleccch.
That's just one of many examples of dead and/or living loved ones coming back to haunt me like Harry's loved ones. I had completely forgotten about the Oreo incident until yesterday. It came to me when I saw an ad for the 100th birthday of the Oreo cookie. It's an awful cookie, by the way, and I no longer watch the Oscars, but the legend lives on in my mind and continues to torment me. Not always, only on special unholy occassions, like Daylight Saving Time.
Last night was particularly bad. Had a rough day at work and it was Two Dollar Tuesday at the Riverview theater. To get me through this evening's batch of angry homeless people with $200 fines on their cards, I made plans to take the lightrail over to the Riverview Theater to see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Movie, movie movie!!!! You're never fat when you're in a dark theater surrounded by people who are distracted by a large screen of images. No one will ever pass judgement on your shame-shell of flesh, it's a safe zone!
But as the evening wore on (I work late on Tuesdays), the prospect of seeing a David Fincher film started to wane. I love Fincher films. I believe they should only be seen in the theaters. Fight Club, Se7en, The Game, all of these are luscious, dark works of extraordinary beauty. But after having to serve the third shitty patron of the night, I couldn't get excited about Dragon Tattoo. I mean, the selling point of the film
TATTOO SPOILER ALERT HERE:
is when she gets horrifically raped in the ass and then she eventually finds her attacker and rapes him back, (so to speak), in the ass and gets to kill him.
TATTOO SPOILER END HERE, YOU MAY CONTINUE TO READ IN PEACE.
So, when I left work, I thought to myself,
"You could go to the theater and see this movie...you could sit there and fill your already fragile head with these images and sounds and then you can go home to your empty apartment.....
or.... You go home to your empty apartment and heat up some vegan lasagna, listen to one of your favorite podcasts and try to get some sleep."
I chose the latter. I'm sorry David Fincher. There is a place in the world for your work. I believe it. But my mind just needs to be at a certain level of resiliency to witness it.
Right now, I need to baby proof my brain. Baby proof my brain through this awful part of the year.
I ended up waking up at 4:30 a.m, crying about something. I went for a three mile walk through some scary parts of the city, just to get away from myself.
Happy Daylight Saving Time! Fuck you, Daylight. Why don't you learn to save yourself for once?
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