cyanidekissesxoxo

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

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[cyanidekissesxoxo]

Part 2

So to begin with my frustration and head noise, I need to start with things I've already worked through and rationalized...

Starting off Sunday the 7th with hearing what sounded like the FaceBook heart bubbles pop up on SO's phone across the room, and then paying attention to see if any of his text noises (was texting coworkers about work schedule) or possibly other noises sounded like it, which I hadn't noticed before. The sound didnt go off again. Realized I don't pay any attention to anything that he does on his phone, ever, which is fine - dont really need to be any level of up in anyone's business if everything is cool. But also realized how it would seem odd if I tried to glimpse now and then to see what was up because I was uneasy, because we generally sit in our own spaces, and then realized I should probably step up trying to be closer/more cuddly more. So, I started implementing it then (because if you just plan to do something later, you realistically dont and nothing changes) and trying to be more communicative because he seemed mildly frustrated that night too, due to various things I knew that hadn't super brightened his mood understandably.

However, he set his phone down and turned the screen off when I came to sit by him, after just being on it before. He seemed fidgety and weird, and would pick it up occasionally, turn it on, look at FB for a second or scroll through YouTube for a second before setting it down again. If I got up to do something for a few minutes, hed pick it up and be on it consistently and fluidly again. Sit down, phone off, fidget. After I snuggled up and settled into reading a manga, he finally settled into watching YouTube videos (with volume on), which hadn't been the scenario before. So, I settled down and let him watch his video and show me different stuff about painting models which is a big thing hes into, and made a point to interact back.

But something kept nagging, so I did some investigating the next day to put my mind at ease, and discovered a new subscription to a new porn website and a payment of $20 made on the 7th (day after the gender reveal party too!) on top of the various searches of the regular porn stars that there are private saved galleries of masses of pictures of each one, which I never addressed my discomfort of and feeling that it's different than randomly looking up/at random, varied videos, and had previously half heartedly just tried to write it off and ignore it as something I felt stronger than I needed to or should; who am I to know if that focus on specific naked women and such galleries are a common occurrence?...

Anyway, in the moment, self esteem plummets, anger builds - I'm upset thinking "Didn't we already address spending money to see other bitches naked when you dont have enough money from paycheck to paycheck and have to borrow money?"... quick flashes of feeling lied to and not good enough, about an issue that had already been discussed between us and I thought an understanding and respect for my feelings about it reached, and that it wouldn't happen again...

After debating on several possible angry or retaliatory responses (including taking anonymous sexy pictures and selling them as well, tit for tat, and the possibility of making someone feel bad, I started trying to think on a different level, and in a different light. That this was his treating himself after his paycheck to something that made him happy apparently, and aside from the regular purchases of cigarettes and monster, I understand theres probably not a lot of self-treating, and even on an extremely tight budget, I guess its healthy to spend some money to make oneself happy once in a while, and maybe instead of either addressing it and receiving another promise of change (whether I wanted or expected it), or just burying it and letting it stew and bother me and have the unaddressed/unresolved upset offer a manner of coping solutions which would probably range from useless to rash and damaging to the relationship (including the brief perhaps I could instead focus inwards and try to figure out why this all bothered me so much and so consistently, and try addressing that.

So, I mused. The multitude of hundreds of saved videos/pictures of a small group of the same girls bothered me because it felt more like cheating - "I want to consistently see this female naked, and will follow for updates and new stuff over a long time period and several websites" - than just clicking on random videos when the mood strikes does, which it never has to me if it's not excessive... and made me feel inadequate and similar to as when I found out i wasnt the only girl a guy was messaging (which in such situations in the past, I either played games or just dipped out with little explanation).. the money spent on it bothered me for the additional fact that we're both struggling and I personally dont spend money on frivolous things for myself.

After coming to this conclusion, I realized the best thing I could do was to work on myself, understanding that I don't feel as pretty and capable and confident as I used to years ago, before I stopped doing my regular and intricate make-up and quit modeling - for multiple reasons, including pacifying and reassuring jealous exes and stopping all the unwanted guys from hitting on me (which is definitely not a goal to have again... it's annoying, being treated like meat or arm candy all the time), as well as becoming more tired as I threw myself more into work. Loving myself and being proud of myself is something I've been needing to do, beyond just trying to be able to rationally evaluate if my level of being bothered by these situations was simply based out of inadequacy and the need for someone else to make me feel like *enough* because I didnt on my own... but I also understand that you cant force or expect people to do things or not do things based on your own insecurities; if that is the reason why, it will only serve to cause more issues and push them away.

So, to work on myself... I went and bought an amazing smelling body spray from Bath & Body Works, and let myself know it was okay to take a small amount of a recent paycheck to treat oneself for one's happiness. On the way out, I even cheerfully declined the booth salespeople trying to rope me into their booth to buy things, with an assertive and cheerful, "No thank you! I'm on a time schedule, but have a lovely night!" and a big smile, where normally I would have sunk into my familiar social discomfort, spluttered "No thanks!" out awkwardly and scurried away... which brings me to another resolution I had:

To improve my outlook on things and my interactions with people. If I'm uncomfortable and upset, it continually affects me, and assumably those around me. For a healthy mind, happiness must be practiced in all situations.

My third awareness to address was my anxiety with waking up and communicating over the phone (text, message, calls) with people in an orderly time. Alarm set consistently every day, and incoming contacts replied to immediately or as soon after as possible, which I started that day as well.

Final adjustment was settling back into at least a basic beauty routine to start - hair straightened and not just thrown in a bun (I dont feel pretty with my hair pulled up anyway in most styles), and just foundation to start, which has been feeling good. Next paycheck, a small portion to get my hair cut and colored to something that makes me feel like I'm taking care of myself and pretty, and then working towards eyeliner and mascara. Waking up earlier consistently, this is feasible, and definitely makes a difference. Changed FB pictures to those that are more relevant to my current hair color, and that remind me of how good I'm capable of feeling about myself, without being too "sexy", as S/O has already been immensely uncomfortable with the self-adjustments I've made simply out of understanding what I need to do to have more self love, while I ensure nothing I do comes from a place of making anyone uncomfortable, untrusting, or jealous, which would not do the situation or my self healing any good, and is not the purpose.

So far, without outside stressors or challenges, I've been feeling good about these changes. I've spent a good portion of the night engrossed in finishing this, so I will finish tomorrow with the issues that have come up, and work through how I do and should feel about them.

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

Musings, frustration, and mental health...

Reactivated the tumblr on my phone, because I understand due to the public nature of even my private FaceBook meant for friends & family, it is NOT an appropriate place to blog, to muse, or to repost pictures or quotes or such as I work through different turbulences in my mind before I decide if they are worth while addressing with others, or thinking them through to come to a different or more understanding perspective, including through understanding what negative factors of my own are impacting my thinking in a way I can adjust to be the most fair, logical, and correct person.

I have a lot to muse on, and a bit that is presently bothering me that I need to work through to figure out if I am indeed correct in my frustration, or one sided in my thinking. Unfortunately, I also have a half an hour to prepare to leave for a training consultation, so I will do a follow up post when I'm able later... right now I am just proud of coming to a solution of expressing myself without running the risk of hurting feelings or making others uncomfortable by publishing things to get them out of my head or to lend strength in my internal struggle. ❤ FaceBook posts demand attention; I'm seeking clarity and peace.

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

Personal connection to HFA paper... Call it the beginning of self-exploration?

I’m writing a personal connection paper to a study on High-Functioning Autism/Aspergers (which is a term I learned recently I guess is not as favored any more, but it’s been used - was the term I grew up with as far as other family members - and has identifiable traits that people not highly versed can identify with, so get over it.) I'd say do it.

My family is prone to HFA and ASD.. It has been suggested by family members over the years that I'm Asperger/HFA, but my dad & grandmother never pushed to test (my Dad is also most likely undiagnosed Aspergers/HFA), and I felt growing up that my aunt's coddlement of my cousin and his disabilities allowed him to use his disabilities as a sort of crutch through life, where he may have worked with them a little better otherwise, so I took the route of solidly denying any disability chance, and just told myself it was just personal shortcoming -- I needed to make extra effort to be organized, to be on task, etc.

In a way, I don't regret the path I took - I own and run a dog rescue at 26 that I did all the legal paperwork and filing on, I work 28 hours a week as a trainer, and people constantly compliment me on how motivated and put together I am... however, there's also major issues in my life that I'm working through and have led me to explore the ASDs a little more personally at this point:

- I have a horrible sense of organization. I gravitate towards the neatness of everything in places, boxes, etc.. but maintaining organization is horrible... in about a week, my car/room will go from spotless to like a homeless hurricane hit... I'm getting better about setting myself on a strict path of putting things back in their exact place as soon as I use them, and I do find myself thinking about it more, but still, I battle with chaos and disorder... paperwork seems to jumble itself, etc... Then I become stressed and non-functioning (or functioning out of necessity but not necessarily doing well), and this cycle repeats and repeats. As a child, I was a tornado too, but because there was no attempt to diagnose an illness (by 8th grade I was in IEP for being Emotionally Disturbed - a result of bringing part of my beloved knife collection to school which a friend used to cut herself after "borrowing" one, and I believe ADHD at that time as well, which I'll get into more late), so my messiness was seen as defiance, and punished.

- ADHD or HFA? & Substance abuse issues: In about 10th grade, I was put on Vyvanse for ADHD. I'd already been convinced to try meth by girls in the neighborhood I'd known since I was little, and it got out of control because the main benefit I saw was I WAS FINALLY GETTING THAT MATH HOMEWORK I WAS BEHIND ON DONE!!... well, Vyvanse made me get schoolwork done too, but in a jittery, hyper-focused way that reminded me too much of methamphetamine, so I used it on and off for school for maybe a school year, but it did not answer my problems long term, and was not enjoyable. If HFA is a contributer for these issues, it is possible that being diagnosed properly and treated in a different way would not have more beneficial effect than Vyvanse, and it's also possible that with proper support and help, I may not have chose/continued to use meth to try to catch up on math, because I could have had plans in place in school, and better management at home, to not get as behind as I did in the first place.

- (Un)Comfortable Conversation/Specialized Interests: Between the fallout from separating from a group of drug related people from above, conflict with my family from childhood on (my grandmother thought I was insolent and "taunting" her when I would SHRIEK in fear as a child of punishment, among other conflicts), and never really fitting in at school from a young age, and losing friends rapidly and telling my grandmother at home, who would wonder out loud, "How do you go through friends so fast? Are you doing something? Picking wrong friends?"... so from 3rd grade on, the self-belief that I was difficult to make friends with, I was different, and that my friendships weren't that strong because I couldn't relate to them in similar ways began to grow & got stronger over the years, and now as an adult, I go into almost panic attacks about new social situations sometimes, and it takes me a LONG time to trust, get close to new people, and they often consider me a friend before I've reached that comfort zone... not because I'm antisocial -- I can remember one of my earliest childhood grievances being: "I just want to be everyone's friend! I want everyone to like me!!!", but because I'm terrified, awkward, feel like a burden or sore thumb sometimes, and feel that I either talk waaaaay too much, or I can't make small talk like normal people do (what do you say? "Hey, so, beautiful weather we're having today!" sounds staged. Even if it didn't, what do I say after that? How do I keep the conversation going??!)...

Social Impact: If I had been diagnosed with HFA as a child by a medical professional (assuming I am), I could have possibly had action plans, exercises in developing social skills, being interested in a wider set of topics people want to talk about, not being SO excited to predict what someone's going to say and finishing their sentence, or slowly down with my eagerness to reply once I get talking. I could have grown up with less of the belief that it was something I was doing, that I pushed people away after a while or that I wasn't as good as their other friends --- in actuality, I had a lot of problem behavior as a child as you can see, and I gravitated to problem people throughout my life (in grade school, I have no answer for, other than moving from very diverse Anaheim to Temecula which was still pretty small, I was a culture shock in addition to all my oddities... but in the end of middle school up through high school, I hung out with kids who drank, smoked, and honestly burned through other people too, so this is a partial answer... but again, what behavioral and environmental aspects may have caused me to gravitate towards that type?..)

Adult impact: My biggest problem has come later in life. Throughout high school, I hung out with bad kids, like I said... I did great meeting new people, because I had a very comfortable approach of "Hi, I'm Mariah, let's get drunk and make bad decisions", and substance abuse was my crutch that allowed me to socialize, plus conversation is pretty easy and unjudged when everyone is drunk. However, turning 19 and getting away from those kind of people steadily til 23 left me realizing: I don't drink anymore.. NOW how do I talk to people?! This point was where I retreated a lot into the solace of my dogs, as I've done throughout my childhood, and the training/dog rescue/veterinary school aspiration began to take place. I am now 26 with all of this great stuff going on, but A) dogs are now my comfort zone. I'll talk your ear off about that with no social anxiety. If we're not talking about dogs, I'm still probably really uncomfortable and unable to casually maintain conversation as well. B) Dog rescue & training has become my therapy from my social awkwardnesses, and I push myself HARD to achieve for a continuous sense of self-satisfaction (which is generally pretty short-lived on my end: off to the next mountain to climb! And the next!)... I am now stressed, irritable, and experience panic attacks probably once a week. But also, because there is not much of a social group (I have accumulated a small but very important, intellectual, successful group, many who are working through very similar issues with themselves aside from organization), I have more time to overwork myself, when other people are out going to movies, doing random things, etc... So if I had more focus on developing and maintaining social confidence, that is possibly less grief I could have gone through.

For my family, and if I get the diagnosis when I see a medical provider, HFA is not a horrible diagnosis (I know I'm talking about all the negatives above) -- my family is phenomenally more intellectual than anyone I know, the creativity abounds in individual ways, and the original ideas and approaches to things that I have amaze people -- I've always just thought of things in different terms and solutions than other people, and was surprised when they commented on it --- "Why WOULDN'T you think of that?!"...

I think my fear of the stigma and label was the worst thing. "What if people don't like me? What if they think I'm crazy or stupid?"... well. A lot of people DIDN'T like me anyway, some without ever meeting me... that's not going to change, and it happens to typically developed people as well. I feel that instead, people disliked me anyway, but I ended up internalizing that and then being uncomfortable with myself, or not liking myself. Some people still think I'm stupid with or without a label, but talking to me, reading my writing, or looking at my test scores would disprove that in a second... And to keep a clean, put-together appearance over the years so people wouldn't think I was crazy... well, that turned into me instead wondering if I was crazy.

It's totally possible that I don't have any ASD, and that my issues are personal or from other places (childhood abuse, etc), I haven't been diagnosed or not officially yet - this group is the beginning of my exploration and path to being tested... but even if I'm not, if I had been tested, I wouldn't be here wondering.

I think finding out is your best option. No, your child doesn't? Well, then on with life as usual! But if they do, I genuinely feel the diagnosis and proper management, counseling, and building as an adult will help your child love themselves more, enjoy more out of life, and prepare better to be an adult.

Good luck!

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

Perfectly phrased... So many people think I’ve let them into a comfort zone, that they know so much about me, because we spend time together; or are/were friends or lovers... Me laughing and experiencing things with you doesn’t mean you KNOW me... it means there’s a moment in time we enjoyed together. There is so much more to the iceberg, so many thoughts that I don’t share. Just because you kissed me, you’ve held my hand, you’ve held me, whatever... doesn’t mean you’ve seen me naked, doesn’t mean I’ve bared you my soul or given you any power. Me being intimate with someone is letting them into my heart and mind, letting them know who I am at the core, what I’ve experienced in life & how it’s shaped me, what my dreams and deepest fears are. Everyone needs to be held or kissed or touched... And while it’s not very common for me, once in a while, I do too. But I don’t ever *need* to let anyone in, I don’t *need* to trust or genuinely open up to anyone. So honestly, that’s the real challenge, since there’s no one on that level at this point (:

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

There’s nothing like a racing heart and a good dose of butterflies to make you feel alive and enjoy your youth <3 Don’t take life so seriously; learn to enjoy the moment with no expectations. <3

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

i dont want real people.         i want pictures of memories with grey days that haunt somewhere deep, like the songs from your youth... placed on shuffle, and encompassing     as you race up some new, fog covered highway on the endless journey of finding yourself...   i want frost bite, thirst, ... because the beauty is in the   still   moments, the silence,   ....the roar of a distant thunderstorm

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

blustery.

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

Thinking it's time to get a tattoo to say goodbye to one of the most important and painful chapters of my life, and to embrace the strength I've developed for it all.

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

Fuckinn' dinosaurs man (:Raptors, to be exact.Although the robot from Ratchet && Clank is pretty nifty, tbh [:

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

basking in the glow of the meaning of my name... wind rose... always meant to be a gypsy... to love, to live, to laugh, but never to stay... tangles of tolkien and robert frost, flirting through my mind "all that is gold does not glitter, and not all those who wander are lost...", making satirical love to "nothing gold can stay..." temporary, the beauty of nature is that it changes constantly, but in a way, stays the same. i need late nights, open roads, and the glittering promise of a town on the furthest points of my vision... questing, always... wandering... because when one stays in one place too long, they get comfortable, or fall in love... and both things are a promise of let down. <3 because legends are handed down through the ages, because they are no longer there to witness, only to remember through sweet words.

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

because there's no room for things like comfort zones, right? <3

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

<3 .pretty.much.

[cyanidekissesxoxo]

<3 it makes things easier in the long run