(no subject)

I've been debating over whether I want to actually discuss this on LJ or not for a while now, largely because I really had no reason to just up and say "Hey guys guess what!" as just another wacky thing in my life lately, but as I sit here and think about it and how much it's actually contributed to a lot of the more interesting ideas I've had lately, I think it stands to be mentioned, at least as a lead-in to some of the things I want to try to write out in the not too distant future. Unfortunately some of those ideas are just so...well, ridiculously difficult to put into words that *I* find understandable, let alone communicative to others. but I will try.

Anyway...first off, I've mentioned this one once or twice on LJ before, usually just a random musing of why the hell do I feel like this...but anyway...so occasionally I get these inexplicable, completely irrational and unfounded feelings of being completely alone and abandoned in the world, like no one cares about me and no one ever will. Sometimes it lasts just a few minutes and goes away, sometimes goes on for hours, and then I'll go to sleep for the night or take a nap or something and wake up and feel just fine again. (Please I know the knee-jerk reaction, at least some of you that I've known for a while are thinking "Oh, but I'm here, I'm your friend, I care about you." and may even be reaching for the comment link as you read this. Please understand that I *know* this, and my feeling this way has nothing to do with you or anything you may or may not have done and is not a reflection of how good a friend you are.

I don't generally talk about it much for two reasons: 1. In the past when I've tried to talk about it in medias res, its only ever tended to make me feel worse. 2. I've been experiencing it for so long that I'm so used to it that I can get through it without anyone ever realizing that there's something wrong and no matter how bad I feel, I always know rationally that it's going to pass. (If this is now making you wonder if this was what was the problem if you've ever caught me in one of my rare bad moods, all I can say is that it's possible but not likely. When I'm in a bad mood, it's generally the result of something external.)

Over time, a few people have noted that this is wholly unsurprising given my past. it's interesting to note, however, that I remember this happening when I was three or four...which was three to four years before things went to hell. I have a pretty damned good memory of my life, even that far back and I can think of nothing that should have ever made me feel that way.

The second thing...I can think of precisely two people I've talked to at all about this, possibly a third. This I have first memory of mentioning it to my grandmother at some point in I think third grade, but it had been happening for a while before that- and what I had said at the time was that I frequently feel like my life isn't actually happening to me, but that I'm reading it as a story in a book. Her response was to ask me if my mom was treating me so horribly that I wished it was a story...now this WAS after the point where my grandparents had convinced me that my mother didn't love me, and as a result I wanted to have nothing to do with her though due to court orders and all that stuff, I had no choice...but even looking at that, I knew that my mother wasn't as horrible as my grandmother was implying so I just dropped it and never mentioned it again until some years later when I said something similar to my mom, who just looked at me and said "You're weird." by this point, I was long used to it and it wasn't having an adverse effect on my life so I just let it go.

Anyway...this is one of those things that have been a continuous occurrence in my life. I'm not always sure that I'm actually the one living my life, I sometimes feel like I'm inside someone else's head as they're going about their life. There's no definite boundary between when this feeling stops and starts- sometimes I wake up feeling like that. Other times I just suddenly realize that I feel like that and have to wonder if it just started and that's why I realized it, or if it's been going on for a few minutes or hours or what.

Its a bizarre feeling. it comes with a certain feeling of being insular as well...I guess the feeling that I'm actually inside someone else's head, therefore no one realizes that I'm there creates a sort of transparent buffer between me and whatever's around me.

Sometimes I can consciously snap this feeling off. A lot of the time I can't. Again, I always know rationally that yes, it's me, no there's no one else there, yes, this is my life. but occasionally I have to ask myself those little questions- how do I know? I just do. Yeah but how do I know? Prove it. I can't prove it. Just have to wait til the feeling goes away. It always does. Sometimes takes a few hours, less frequently up to a few days, but it goes away.

I found out a few months ago that there's a word for all this- it's called depersonalization. Apparently it's a fairly common thing that most adults experience at some point in their life, usually as a short-term reaction to some sort of trauma or extreme stress...not so much an ongoing thing that starts in childhood and seems to occur without some sort of provocation. What I've been told is that it falls into the much milder end of the same spectrum as dissociative identity disorder.

Also, at times, I'll be dreaming and either be unsure if I've had the same dream before or if I'm replaying something that really happened in a dream...or vice versa while awake...I'll be unsure if something's happened before, or if what's going on is similar to a dream that I had.

And the last thing...I know that I've mentioned this to a few folks at times, usually in conversations that meander into "where is my life going..." territory...and that would be the feeling that I'm something huge is about to happen (not a feeling of doom sort of thing, just something extremely huge and significant of some sort) or that I'm at a constant crossroad, or just about to jump off of some proverbial cliff into the great unknown. Yeah, apparently there's a word for this, I just happened upon it last night by accidents, but presque vu...it's related to deja vu. (Perfectly illustrated in this quote from Catch 22: And there were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him.)

In case it's on anyone's mind to suggest in response to reading this...I have just started seeing a therapist, it's something I went back and forth on for months, after being involved in a discussion back in June that hit just a little too close to some of the things that have gone on in my mind...as a direct result of said conversation, I talked back and forth with this individual on and off for several months before I finally went ahead and made an appointment.

y ya esta.

How has all this contributed to recent ideas I've had? Well...I'm stiil working on verbalizing that coherently. But I'll post more about that when I make some sense...

(no subject)

Wrote this a few days ago as a response to the thread on the Neokoroi list on people feeling sadness due to Apollo departing for his winter in the north with the Hyporboreans...

Hmmm....this is interesting. For some weeks now, I've been expecting to wake up and feel like something was different, or amiss. Ever since the dream I had of Dionysus a few weeks ago, the Delphic split has been on my mind to one extent or another on a near constant basis, and it made sense that perhaps Dionysus was coming to take a more predominant part of my life for the moment, while Apollo would step back but that's not happened.

Dionysus hovers close, I am frequently reminded of his presence, though I don't actually need reminders. However, it seems that Apollo has drawn even closer. I sometimes wake up in the morning feeling a similar semi-delirious languor as I did when he stepped from the shadows during the Dionysus dream and pulled the arrow that he had just shot at me from my chest. When I'm awake, I feel a nearly-constant, almost tangible-presence.

I find it fascinating that each has been appearing in a manner more obviously appropriate to the other. In my mind, the ideas of balance and binary opposition- two opposites, without the other, one cannot exist- which have always been interesting to me have jumped much more to the forefront of my mind.

And then there is this theory which I recently ran across, I think while reading William Broad's book The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, mentioned only very briefly but still churning around in my mind since then, that some scholars have had the idea that Apollo and Dionysus are two halves of the same god. To be clear, I do not believe this but it is a fascinating idea and I can see where it could come from. The related idea that I have settled on for the moment as my understanding is not two halves of one whole...but more like two atoms sharing a covalent bond, connected by common threads, very difficult to separate one from the other.

I don't know. Maybe I'm experiencing some sort of between-time overlap. I'm working on a ritual to celebrate Lampteria next weekend. Maybe that will trigger a more seasonally-appropriate shift in my perception. Or another possible cause is that it's all connected to some things that have been going on with me that I'll not go into now (though I can suddenly see inspiring an interesting work of short fiction...) in that I need to be seeing this intricate connection of one and the other, two separate entities that cannot be wholly bisected- seasonal events be damned. Part of me is hoping that the first is true, part of me is hoping the second. In any event, the gods will do as they will, I will (hopefully) see what they want me to see.

Do I sound like a raving lunatic here? At the same time, it's making perfect sense to me...but sounding somewhat ludicrous as I reread the words.


And after someone suggested the idea of twins, without a whole lot of elaboration as to what was meant:

I hadn't thought of this in the sense of twins...and I don't actually think that that's what I'm thinking of here, but I'm not sure.

It's like....ummmm...different evolutions of the same little slice of the divine? In one way, they're so different, but if you go 359 degrees from one, you come to the other. All the difference is contained in that 360th degree. Small, but still there and if you look closely enough, you can see the same inner core...

(no subject)

I got a new backpack this past weekend because I have really missed having a backpack since the zipper on the burgundy Timberland that I've had since 1997 bit it.

I picked up a Jansport backpack. It's mostly dark pink, with some light pink and grey trim. Has an elasticized side pocket which actually holds my coffee mug (woohoo!) plus four zippered pockets- including this little one right on top which is SO perfect for holding my bus pass, keys, lip balm, a pen etc.

Currently, I have a binder, two dvd's, two notebooks, four or five books some knitting, my dvd player (in its case), wallet, coffee mug plus various and sundry other items and there's still room. So happy.