eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

i liked this movie after the one time i saw it, toward the end of last summer...but i like it even more now that i feel like i understand it a little more than i did then. recent events have left me feeling substantially handicapped by the mental and emotional resources which i find wanting in myself, and i wonder: would it be better if i could forget about them altogether? things like that seem to serve no purpose other than to provide life experience. most of the time such experience is valuable; we learn from it how to function in society and in large part it builds our individual character. yet, is it possible that there are some events or situations which turn out to be so traumatic that even the "valuable" life lessons come at too great a cost?
if so, would it not be better to lose the memory of the experience, in order to rescue one from the anguish of its aftermath?
of course, this is complicated by a variety of issues... mainly that one would also lose the memory of any positive parts of the experience, and that one would also be more inclined to repeat the same mistake. my mind echoes the sentiment of my junior high social studies teacher about learning from the mistakes of history or being doomed to repeat them. but if you're doomed either way, what difference does it make?
let's just hope that i'm not doomed, because as far as i know i can't have my memories erased anyway. so, this is a purely rhetorical question to begin with; and besides, i'm not sure i'd go through with it anyway. maybe sometimes one month can be happy enough to be worth the payment of a lifetime of anguish and regret. i haven't quite decided if this is one of those times though.
maybe it just depends on when the month happens... when it's already past it's hard to bear the pain...but if you knew that it was waiting for you at the end and you could look forward to it, then somehow it would seem bearable after all...but i guess that's an entirely different question...

the witching hour

i've been having some strange dreams lately...which always involve people i know in real life, but often in rather foreign and/or surprising situations...which are generally also rather frustrating. i suppose perhaps this reflects the amount of frustration i've been feeling over the impending doom which i will be facing as soon as i get back to washington and have to face a lot of strange and upsetting situations which will be rather determinative of my future and over which i feel a definitive lack of control or even understanding... these strange dreams are also the kind where you seem to wake up not suddenly, but in this transition of awareness that you're just dreaming which seems to always leave me laying in bed thinking, often with a rather strange starting place. in this morning's case my thoughts continued along a strange path ending with the thought that i may not look like much in the daytime, but to a desperate guy i must start to seem rather attractive when it gets closer to 3 am. i was just about to start integrating this knowledge into a plan for how i may more effectively end my long run of singlehood, when i glanced at my cell phone to see that i had a text message (which has been increasingly uncommon as of late, much to my chagrin). in the message, this girl i know was ranting about how guys think she's an object and only text/call her to get some action, and at the bottom it indicated that it was received at around 3:30 am. so, it would appear that i ought to expand my hypothesis a bit. it isn't that i get more attractive late at night, it's just that desperate guys give up and just go for whatever (whoever) they can get at about that time. this knocked me out of my illogical reasoning by reminding me that attempting to prey on desperate guys is really just letting them prey on me and that, yes, as horrible as it may sound: i'm better off by myself. dang it.

late nights at the brinkerhoff house

so, i went to this ysa dance in westland last night, which is down on the west side of detroit (who would have guessed...haha) and then i stayed way late talking to my friend elliot...like, until the people who set up had cleaned up and were going home... oops... haha...and i had to stop and get gas too so it was really late when i got home, like, well past 1am...and my whole family was still awake...you might be surprised by this, but i really wasn't. i realize that part of the reason i'm such a night-owl sometimes is that it kind of runs in the family i guess. haha!

they say your head can be a prison

Baby, seasons change but people don't.
And I'm always there waiting in the back room.
I'm boring but...
Wouldn't you rather be a widow than a divorcee?

coming home is great. going to church is great. but going to church at home is funny. i know i shouldn't be thinking about fall out boy songs in church, but the lyrics just sort of popped into my mind as i sat there before sacrament meeting. i've been the "old maid" of the ward for a while, but as i get older it becomes more apparent as everyone else gets married and the age differential between myself and the other single people continues to grow. the next oldest single girl is quite a few years younger than me. but, she's only single cuz she's divorced. still, it occurred to me that i'd rather be 26 and an "old maid" than a 22-year-old divorcee (or widow, for that matter). sitting in relief society near my old young women's president is cool, but back then her oldest daughter was maybe 9 or 10 years old, and now she's sitting there in relief society with us. crazy.
still, i may not always be glad about the way my life seems to be going, but i suppose i still have enough to be grateful for and enough reasons to be glad that i'm myself instead of somebody else. of course if God got the whim to turn me into a supermodel i'd probably go along with that one pretty quickly...

self-sabotaging

"Last night I saw my world explode...
Well, I'm looking out at you obscured by the stand up arcade
And the sound of the descendents.
Your smile reminds me of switchblades and infidelity."

i'm currently fixated on the part of my life that i can't seem to fix...or change...i suppose the word "fix" seems to indicate that there's something inherently wrong, when that's probably just an issue of my own subjective perception of the situation... *sigh*

at any rate, this fixation is problematic not only because it's something that i have little or no control over nor even mere understanding of, but because it seems to overshadow the other areas of my life that i CAN control. i mean, i'm not completely psycho. i still lead a rather productive life... but if i cared more about other things that i CAN change and less about things that i can't then obviously my overall productivity would be increased because the things i feel motivated to do and the things i actually can do would match up.

hmm...maybe it's just one of those life challenges...the kind that exists exactly because it's a challenge. if everyone's desires and abilities matched up then life would be a lot easier, and they'd be able to do a lot more, but then maybe we'd all learn a lot less. i suppose i should look at "productivity" not just in terms of what i can accomplish outwardly by how i use my time and skills, but also in terms of the character growth that comes from doing things that you don't want to do and living without things that you want to have. i guess sometimes i forget that in the eternal scheme of things it's that kind of personal growth that's really important... i suppose that's just so abstract that it's hard to measure, if you can even see it in yourself at all.

life is strange and never seems to happen how you expect. i just wish i were better at remembering the pleasant surprises and not letting them get covered up by all the disappointments.

and i wish i understood other people better. a lot of my problems and frustrations seem to be a result of my misinterpretations of what other people do and say and how it relates to how they feel. a lot of times about me i guess. just goes to show how self-centered i am. my friend JD says i care too much about what other people think about me and that i constantly assume that they think bad things. i dunno. i feel like i'm just trying to be realistic and not assume or expect too much. but maybe that just ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy - low expectations sometimes yield low results i suppose. but that just goes back to the original problem: i misinterpret people. maybe because i'm assuming bad things, but maybe just because i really don't understand them...or even more frustrating - because people don't express themselves honestly because they're too worried about management of what others think of them. too complex for me to dissect when i'm tired and upset.

hmm...i was sort of arguing with my g'ma yesterday. i had a rough day. pretty much from the second i woke up i was freaking out and upset. i've been working so hard to be to church early for choir every sunday since i moved here months ago. and the week of the choir christmas program was the week i didn't wake up. *sigh* frustrating and yet not surprising. haha! i think that's how you know i'm in a bad mood. i'm not at all surprised when horrible things happen, and much more inclined to think that things that really aren't that bad are actually horrible things. anyway, so when i went home i was just really defensive and kept arguing with my g'ma, which i really try so hard not to do! i don't want to argue, but it's so hard! why does my g'ma side with other people in arguments against me?! why does she say things that aren't even true?! argh!! she was going off on my political beliefs and whatnot and things my mom said about me, but she doesn't even know what i think about stuff! because i never talk about it cuz she won't listen and just gets upset and i don't want to fight so i don't talk about it!! and then she picks the weirdest kid in my ward and starts talking to him about dating and thinks he's so great and starts agreeing with him about how "mormon girls expect too much from guys" with dating and stuff... blah, blah...and it made me so upset!! and how mormons encourage people to date and get married too young and too fast... she got married earlier than my mom or my sister, and i'm the one who's stayed single the longest! argh! i don't expect anything from stupid boys! i know it's a waste of time because i never get anything! geez! my g'ma's always giving me a hard time about my having been upset about the travis-breakup thing. she says i didn't even really know him and it doesn't make sense for me to have been so attached or make such a big deal of it. and i guess in a way she's right. her husband died when they were pretty young and she's been a widow for over 40 years. i know that wasn't easy. but at least she got to have him for a while and knew that he loved her and that he didn't leave her on purpose.
anyway...it's late and i'm digressing...

i have a final that starts in 5-1/2 hours and yet i'm still awake...
how's that for self-sabotage?