up jumped the devil

Things are looking straight ahead, if not exactly up. My fiction class was canceled on Thursday, and from about 1-3pm, I had my first off-and-on sleep in a week and a half. I wasn't even heavily drugged, unless you count the hangover from the night before. My dreams were demonic, frustrated by a build-up of random images and irritations in the back of my stupid head. But I can handle weird dreams. I welcome handling them, for they mean sleep.

That bit of rest gave me a wicked thrill. Taking myself off caffeine means that I get my nervous energy from unlikely sources, I guess. I even felt up enough to see a movie. Which I did, with some people/friends from my kid fiction class. Amazingly capable of me, no? Compared to how blue in the dump I've been for the last two weeks, I really think I deserve prizes.

Or, my pills deserve prizes. Or Dr. Drug. Or no wait, be serious, my therapist deserves it all. Off and on, over the years (since I was, what? 17?) she's come in first with 150cc's, and won gold on the Extra Difficulty Special Cup, where all the courses are in reverse. Which is a metaphor I don't understand myself, but that just makes it more fitting.

In any case. I saw The Darjeeling Limited and liked it a lot, unsurprisingly. Except I kept thinking about Owen Wilson's suicide attempt and wondering in every scene (does he want to die now? Does he want to die right now?) Which may have made the movie better. I don't know. It also made it more sad.

Then, last night, I settled in for a long autumn's nap with my 50 mg of Trazodone and 2 MG of Lorazepam, and it actually worked. I slept through the night like a person. I probably would have slept longer, too, but I had to get up for a dentist appointment at 12:45. Or so I thought. I went downtown through sluggish traffic and got to the office 15 minutes late, where they explained to me that my appointment was actually for 2:45.

This has been happening to me a lot lately, this thing of getting time wrong. It tends to make me feel even more isolated from the normal world, which is already a habit, thank you.

I killed time by wandering down to the comic store on Granville, but got sidetracked at Urban Outfitters, where they had the Banksy book I've been curious about. Then I noticed some decent shirts and figured I could use a new hoody. When I eventually got out of there, I'd spent something like $130. This surprised me, especially since I have no money right now. I mean, six dollars at the most, no kidding. If I weren't such a spoiled live-at-home 24 year old, I probably wouldn't be able to buy anything at all.

As it is, I had charged everything to Visa and then had a tasty lunch down the street (also on Visa), and then I ran out of time to kill. So I never got to the Comic Shop, where they'd have certainly forced me to buy more stuff, probably comics related. I went back to the dentist's office to my molar filled with pain and presumably some kind of acrylic? For which I paid with Visa.

Once home, I continued to amaze myself by not collapsing on my bed for a few hours of Rune Factory, and instead walked my dog to Quilchena and back. My mother's been taking up the slack with Happy since I've been sleepless and depressed, but now she's at the cabin so it's up to me again. It gets me outside in the light (assuming it's a day with light, which lately there haven't been so many of) and the air, and the walking and the breathing. All good things, I'm told, to fight the bad headspace.

I talked to my mother on the phone, post-walk, and told her what had happened. That wacky Visa, I exclaimed, what goes and buys things for me alone! But actually I told her the truth and because she's feeling guilty about being away on my birthday (tomorrow), she said "good!" Which proves my point about the spoiled twenty four (for the rest of the day) year-old. BECAUSE I AM ONE/CANNOT TELL A LIE. I'm just like toddler George Washington except that story with the cherry tree never happened. And anyway Lincoln is so much cooler. So tall and... craggy. Lincoln got depressed too! All the time!

Except he probably had better reasons for it. Maybe.

Plus he got shot while enjoying theatre, and I don't want to emulate that. I go to a lot of movies, you know? I get paranoid in movie theatres, too. Like the big Vancouver quake will finally hit and the ceiling will fall in, or mass panic will ensue for some justified reason, like Serin gas, or somebody will be talking really loudly during Diehard 4. But, anyway.

Oh right. I'm done.