Sunday, Bloody Sunday

So I've had a pretty frustrating weekend/week/month. I'm not feeling so perky. In the interests of wanting to know if it works - is anyone else on the pill Yaz? I'm switching to it next week, because I told my doctor that I pretty much can't stop crying, so she wrote me up a prescription. I had a big read about Yaz when I got home and found out that there's such a thing as Premenstrual dysphoric disorder which - to be fair my doctor didn't seem too interested in going into my mood swings so much, so no I'm not formally diagnosed or anything - but it seems that the symptoms are me everyday. So is anyone else on Yaz, what's your experience, does anyone else have killer crying jags, or is it just me?

My weekend: For Valentines Day, we woke up and it was raining, so we stayed in bed watching Boston Legal for a few hours, which was nice. Then we went up to go on a trek to get some Italian. It turns out that all nice restaurants in the radius of our house do not open until 5pm. So we ate some cheap Indian which just made me long for my new favourite Indian place just up the road. Which was shut. I hate life.
So there was that. Today, once again I lay in bed all day, this time reading. I finished off A Child Called It by David Pelzer, which made me sick and reinforced my idea of becoming a foster parent someday. I get so upset to know that child, spouse, any abuse happens so often, it's happening right now, probably to someone you know. Once again...what the fuck is wrong with the world? And where is Dustin Hoffman with a bouquet of flowers to make me feel better? I'm glad I made that picture my desktop background.

Right now I've just finished reading a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I've been wanting to read it for ages and swiped it up on ebay. It was brilliant, creepy and really disturbed me. It's a short tale based on Gilman's own experiences with mental illness in the 1800s - a woman who is stricken with some type of "female hysteria" is taken by her physician husband to a house in the country to let her "absorb some air". She's confined to a room on the top floor with hideous yellow wallpaper. She is told to rest, and unable to indulge in any of her hobbies - writing - and as the days pass she begins to hallucinate watching the wallpaper.
I also watched a great movie along the same lines last night called Bug. A woman and a retired veteran are together in a motel room and they begin to see bugs. The first hour was slow and I wasn't sure where it was going or if the story really mattered but then things started to go awry. It was one of those movies that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since watching.
Another one that I recommend is a film called Funny Games. The original is German or Austrian, but the director remade it himself shot-for-shot in English to get a wider audience. It was powerful and intense and disturbing and all those other words you can think of, and just watch it, okay?

Anyway, here's something I wrote the other day while kind of pissed off. Directed at anonymous.

You're one of those people whose best years were in high school. Consequently you never left in your head.
You still have the same friends and refuse to entertain the possibility of making new ones. You listen to the same music and refuse to listen to anything else, old or new.
Every day is the perfect time to reminisce.
You continue to live exactly the way you did the first time you moved out of home. I know, I did it too. Eating nothing but noodles, ice cream for breakfast and cereal for dinner. Let the bowls pile up cause someone else is bound to clean them. You stay up really late like you're badass for doing it. Watching Rage till the sun comes up and drinking coffee cause there's no one to come and tell you to turn it off. Then you were old enough to drink, so lying on the kitchen floor with a bag of goon became familiar. You still live like your parents are gone for the weekend.
It's always bothered me to see old schoolfriends on facebook who live in the same place and see the same people. You're just like them.
You think you're independent because you've lasted this long. But you've gone nowhere, you've learned nothing and you're the same person you were at 17.

Hard to Define

Last week there was a really great post on Jezebel called Close Encounters: When The Nice Guy Down The Street Makes You Uncomfortable. Here's an excerpt, but I recommend a read of the article, and the multitude of comments from readers.

The other day I was talking with a friend who said she had a problem. "Not a big
problem, but it's bothering me." She explained that she frequents a 24-hour
market near her apartment and that lately the guy who works there has been
making her uncomfortable. "I think I was just too friendly," she said. She added
that she felt guilty. "He's nice; it's not threatening; I even think he's
married - it's just a lot of 'I've missed your pretty smile,' and 'you haven't
been in this week' — and I kind of dread going in there!" I knew exactly what
she meant. But when I tried to explain the situation to a male friend, he looked
at me blankly. "Does he insult her?" No. "Is he inappropriate?" Not exactly.
"He's just being friendly? What's the problem." The 'problem' of course, is that
as women we're vulnerable in ways guys can't appreciate. Sure, they can
comprehend that catcalling is offensive and that pervs rubbing against you on
the subway is disgusting. But they can't understand the smaller things you need
to guard against, day in and day out, that you can't be too friendly, because it
just leaves you...open.

I feel like this every single day. It's the reason I wear sunglasses at all times and walk faster than everyone else around me, wear headphones and read a book simultaneously, it's why the one time I thought I was being followed home, I walked around the block until I was sure I was alone. It's why I don't go to the corner store on Saturdays because the guy who works on that day told me to come in every Saturday just so he could see me. It's why I ignore every friend request because of the guy 20 years older than me who used to serve me coffee two years ago found me on Myspace and asked me out on a date.

I asked someone I know - a boy - to read the article because I wanted them to know that it's true and I do feel like that. They told me it was petty to complain - petty to feel upset about these "encounters". Which made me more upset than I probably should have been.

But at what point am I no longer being petty when I am upset about these things? At what point am I "justified" in complaining? Could it be that when the guy at work calls me sweetness and I complain, that's petty, but I have to wait until the day I catch him leering at me (hypothetical here) to be justified in being upset about it?

Some people do not understand social boundaries, for lack of a better term. If someone is invading my space, or forcing me into an unwanted, often inappropriate conversation, if I feel the slightest bit uncomfortable, I will not pity them or feel bad when I tell them to leave me alone. You cannot excuse someone who is not picking up on my blatant cues that I don't want to talk. When I'm sitting at the bus stop wearing headphones and reading, does it really look like I'm in the mood to be chatted up?

I guess the person I asked may not understand this feeling, because maybe it's never escalated to something more, and they've never had the urge to break into a frantic run just because there's someone walking a little too closely behind you. Maybe they've never felt the sick feeling in the bottom of your stomach when you realise the man behind the counter is leering at your boobs...and it's not like you can hide them. Is this my fault, did I wear something too revealing?

I'm most likely never going to stop feeling this way, and telling me it's petty is not exactly helping. I guess it was just nice to have somebody put the feeling in words - to know that I'm not being narcisstic, people everywhere feel like this. Why so prevalent?

As for me...I'm investing in a burqa.