dime riot

[dimeriot]

space for change

This week, I intend to align my actions, words, and thoughts to: 

COMMUNITY.  Lately I’ve been feeling really bored, lonely, and bored of being lonely. I think a big part of it has to do with moving back home after college, but I don’t really care about further describing that experience. 

So I joined Meetup.com. This Saturday is my Spanish conversation group meet up. I took Spanish classes throughout high school and college, though I stopped just shy of finishing requirements to complete a minor. That was a few years ago now, and I don’t want to let that time and practice be for nothing. I want to be fluent. 

The other thing is, I’m tired of the thoughts in my head. I’m tired of the peanut gallery, the hecklers in my head who have something to say about everything. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say anymore. 

I used to feel embarrassed about my (shitty) accent when I tried to speak Spanish. But these days I’ve been embarrassing myself regularly just trying to speak English, as it’s impossible to get a coherent thought out against the shrieks and calls of the hecklers in my head. The peanut gallery. I wanna try speaking Spanish. I’ll have fewer words and phrases at my disposal so hopefully my mind won’t feel as cluttered when I try to express a thought. 

Besides, it can’t be more embarrassing than trying to speak English. 

In high school I used to volunteer as a facilitator for an adult ESL class. It was fantastic. Sure, I had to drag my ass to the library every Monday night, but I was always happy that I came. It was... cleansing. Relaxing. The participants were mostly women from the towns surrounding mine. Most of them had moved here for their husbands’ jobs, and many were stay at home moms despite having completed advanced degrees in their native countries. It was nice to see them every week. It felt like I’m actually living, not just occupying, the town. 

The second thing is EASE. I've gotten pretty used to being tweaked out all the time. I’m high stress all the time now and it’s not okay with me anymore. I mean, sure I was stressed out before everything happened, but that doesn’t make it okay for me to continue tolerating it. I wanna take it easy.

I’m gonna chill out at this new job. I’m going to make friends, actual friends, not just people I work with. I’m going to just say things. Don’t think about it too hard. Don’t proactively redact myself. Just say things. Don’t live in the fear of their judgement. Don’t think that there’s nothing that needs to be added to the conversation. Don’t be shy. I wanna actually be friends with my coworkers. I’m going to actually be friends with my coworkers. 

I also signed up for an improv class. I love stand up comedy and I love the instances when I can make someone laugh. I wanna be able to do that more often. I wanna be silly. I think this improv class will give me some practice. Help me shift my mind state. 

The third thing is CLARITY. 

I heard that your bedroom is a reflection of your mind. I believe it. There was a time in college when I was living in a tiny bedroom, really a closet, with a ceiling that sloped down towards two windows that peered out to the sunset. I lined it with tapestries and fairy lights and the whole thing was pretty cozy except for the rivers of clothes and the single moldy orange that languished on my desk. At one point I put a Victoria’s Secret bag over the orange just so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. 

My bedroom at home is nowhere as grim, but it still needs work. My closet is full of clothes that I don’t wear anymore. Like, I haven’t worn 80% of my clothes in several years. They’re just taking up space because I feel too guilty to throw them out. Some pieces were gifts, others were just expensive and I don’t think I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of them. But guilt isn’t serving me anymore and obligation never has. Also, it’s preventing me from going shopping for new clothes which I would actually wear because I can’t justify spending money when my closet is full. But these days, getting dressed is a real challenge for me. Between the OCD and the weight loss, there isn't much that makes me feel good. And that has to change. I’m gonna make space for change. 

[dimeriot]

the opposite of addiction is connection

I thought that this was the Insha that people wanted to see. like, the insha who is the best girlfriend she could be, the one who is the best employee she could be, the best daughter that she could be… I look at that and see that that insha is probably really anxious. i mean, she’s managing all this shit and she’s killing everything. but she’s definitely anxious. 

so i justified it when i started noticing how physically crappy adderrall was making me feel. it feels horrible when you’re crashing but it wasn’t anything i hadn’t seen before. i’ve been dealing with a racing heart, not eating, not sleeping for long periods of time. and yet despite that, or maybe adjacently with that, i had achieved everything i had so far in life. i knew that overall i had done alright for myself and i figured that i did it either despite or because of how much i stress about things. so i calculated that my ideal superior self would also probably be stressed and worrying about things and having a racing heart and shit. so i took more. 

listen adderall makes you feel like your superior self. so i took it to study and i felt superior. then i took it for parties and to go out cuz i thought it made me funnier, more upbeat, made me engage with people better, made me more talkative. then i took it going on dates cuz, well i guess for more or less the same reason as for parties but also sometimes just to not break down and cry and sometimes to feel like i’m having fun when i’m really not. which i guess is the same thing as parties anyway. 

along the way i started needing it to do trivial shit. driving lessons. to not hit my snooze button and sleep for three hours longer than i had intended. i used it to play video games because i really had no relative knowledge or interest in video games, but i found myself in a situation where i suddenly needed to. 

Family functions. extended periods of interaction with my mom. calling my dad and not fucking it up. going to eat lunch at the neighbors. 

obviously this whole time you’re also taking it for the first and most basic reason: because you’re tired. 

but then you need it because you’re coming down from the adderall and it feels awful. so you take more adderall to cope with the crash from adderrall. 

it was my motivation and my reward. i used it to make things and people seem more interesting, and/or to make me more interesting to the world. i used it to write, which sucked because my writing turned into frenzied rants and spaced out rambling and confusing metaphors. and it turned into a lot of crossed out lines. i could never execute the decision of what to say, what to write. it was extremely frustrating. you find out that the adderrall is, by far, the most interesting subject for adderrall to write about. you find yourself staring intently at your reflection for alarming lengths of time. you stare at a leaf on the ground not really thinking about it even, just waiting for the stampede of thoughts in your head to clear. at work you’ll literally stare at the clouds above the buildings you see across the street for twenty minutes. of every hour. 

Forming a complete thought in your mind feels like getting on stage at an open mic and immediately getting heckled. By a lot of people. Aggressively. 

And talking to people is getting really weird. i’m not saying what i mean because i don’t know what i mean fully. i say something and it comes off really insensitive sometimes. or really out there and i have to circle back and try to explain it. it’s because i’m hyperanalyzing everything you’re saying and being really critical of my own attempts to respond. sometimes i’m super quiet because i can’t even decide what to say because i’m being inundated with the loud mouths in the peanut gallery of my brain.  

although maybe a more apt analogy is you’re about to start your TED talk but you’re immediately getting yelled at and harassed by the audience.