heroic

So, I'm making this post just because I am feeling really really proud of myself.  Which is dorky, but, hey.  I deserve a pat on the back.

I heard noises of a rather . . . sexual nature coming from the room next to me so I went out to investigate, and my suitemate N was lying on the floor with her skirt hiked up and a shirtless guy on top of her, with the door open.  They tried to kick the door shut softly but I stopped it with my palm and responsible!Kellie kicked in.

Me: Are you okay, N?
N: Yeah . . .
Me: Are you drunk?
N: Yeah . . .
Me: (to guy) . . . are you really sure you want to be doing this to her while she's drunk? *scornful tone*
Guy: I'm really drunk too.
Me: I just don't want her to regret it in the morning is all.
Guy: Yeah, she's probably ready for bed.
Me: Yeah, I think you guys should go to bed.  Sorry to ruin your fun and stuff but I just really don't want you to regret this.
N: No, you're such a good friend Kellie, you're the only responsible person [no really I swear that's what she said]
Me: Yeah, I mean have fun and everything guys, but maybe just don't go the whole way right now.
N: I love you Kellie!
Me: I love you too N.  Goodnight guys.

LULZ.  I felt like I was in one of those teen educational movies or something.  I am such a total responsible nerd.  But really though, I just prevented a potentially bad situation from occurring.  I think I have a right to be proud of myself, at least a little bit, for being helpful.  But I didn't want to be really lame and brag about it where large amounts of people would see it.  *waves to audience*

obviously feminised names

I love these so much.  They're so underloved because they were given to women a lot in the 30s and now everybody views them as old lady names, but they'll get their place in the sun again soon.  A lot of people also see them as ugly or unfeminine because they retain all of the sounds of their male ancestors, but I love love love me a good strong female name.  Some I especially like:

Albertina
From the Germanic name Adalbert, which was composed of the elements adal "noble" and beraht "bright".
---I've just started being really fascinated by this name.  It's like a toy made of porcelain that you love to play with and spin around but must handle very carefully because it is very fragile.  I love the shapes and sounds my mouth makes when I say this name.  Albertina.  You could call her Berta or Bea or (gasp!) Beata!
Claudine
From a Roman family name which was derived from Latin claudus meaning "lame, crippled".
---It's like Nadine, but with colours that remind me of impressionism.  Claudine is the name of every woman in every Monet painting I've ever seen.  And that's not just because his name is Claude.  Or maybe it is.
Ernestine
Derived from Germanic eornost meaning "serious".
---Oh Ernestine, everybody thinks you are so ugly and rotten.  I will nurture you into a beautiful bloom, with your literary and feminist references.  Ernestine has a harshness and a bitterness that puts a lot of people off, but there's a softer, more lacey side to it that follows you around if you're lucky enough to see it.  Ernestine is a name that was antiquated before it was ever used.
Georgina
From the Greek name Γεωργιος (Georgios) which was derived from the Greek word γεωργος (georgos) meaning "farmer, earthworker", itself derived from the elements γη (ge) "earth" and εργον (ergon) "work".
---Such full, bouncy sounds.  Few names have a true rhythm to them.  Georgina has a true rhythm to it.  Georgina reminds me of fruit trees.  It's full and rich and saturated with colour and life and possibilities for personalities.
Geraldine
From a Germanic name meaning "rule of the spear", from the elements ger "spear" and wald "rule".
---I see Geraldine as almost a mix of Ernestine and Georgina.  Geraldine is frumpy and ugly but lacey on the inside much like Ernestine, but it's intense with sound and colour and flavour like Georgina.  One of my favourite things is when names give me not only colour but flavour.  Geraldine carries a parasol.
Oscarina (okay, so I made this one up)
Possibly means "deer lover", derived from Gaelic os "deer" and cara "lover".
---I made this up about a year ago because I was (am) so infatuated with Oscar Wilde that I couldn't bear to have him missing from my female combos.  Daphne Oscarina was the combination it was invented for.  Anybody named Oscarina would have to be an avid painter with her own "art studio" that is really just a converted garage.  It's swell.

I can't even imagine how awesome it would be to have a daughter named Georgina.  Even though if I ever have a daughter I totally won't name her that since there are names I like more.  But even so!  Georgina!  Albertina!  Be still my beating heart!!  I sometimes wish I wanted a big family just so I could bestow all my children with these antique roses of names.

This needs to end, now.

Dermatillomania, that is.  I'm stopping.  I'm going to force myself to stop.  No matter how painful and stressful and horrible it is going to be to do so, it needs to stop.

One month before my eleventh birthday - actually, it was exactly eight years ago today - my parents got divorced.  Along with the crippling mental illness that ensued came the beginnings of acne (which may also have to do with the first hints of puberty).  I was the only person in my class, and in fact my entire school, who had acne.  My mom had just moved out abruptly and my brother was locking himself in his room for days at a time and I spent a lot of my time locked in my room as well, crying and crying and staring in the mirror at my stupid crying blemished face, and then I just began digging my nails into it.  I had nothing but fragments of family left at home, and at school everybody started to avoid me because of the scabs on my nose and forehead resulting from hours of time spent in front of the mirror pawing at my face until it bled.  I just wanted my stupid ugly zits to go away.  I thought if I just tore at them enough they would go away.

And now eight years later, this compulsion has spread from my face to my arms and shoulders and back and hips and neck and stomach and chest.  Over almost my entire body, I am covered with small circular scars.  I hate looking at my body in the mirror, and it has nothing to do with weight or whatever else it is most women dislike in the mirror.  It has all to do with these horrible blotched scars covering me.  And it makes me so angry at myself that I begin to pick at them more, because a part of me still believes that if I can just pick at them enough, they will go away.

Whenever I get an itch, instead of scratching it, I find a blemish I've created somewhere around the area and pick it open.  If there isn't one, I find a pore and dig my fingernails into it.

There have been dozens, if not hundreds of nights where I have crawled into bed around 11pm hoping to get a relatively early night, and then start tearing at my skin, and when I look at the clock it's far past midnight.

For a period about a year ago, I would run my razor over areas of my body where there wasn't any hair, just so that I could get razorburn, so that I would have something to pick at.  That's why my stomach has scars on it.

A few years ago, I cut my nails short in an attempt to stop.  The next day I stole the family pair of tweezers so that I could use them to keep damaging my skin.

I haven't worn a bathing suit since I was eleven because I don't want anybody to see my back.  Nor have I worn a tank top because the tops of my arms and shoulders are covered with wounds and scars.

I very rarely wear white shirts, because they get blood stains on them.

I realise that all of this is really disgusting to think about.  It's really, really, really disgusting, and if I didn't trust Oscar so much to love me unconditionally I would never make this post because there have been a lot of times when I have convinced myself that nobody would ever want or love a person with such a disgusting habit and such a disgusting body.


I'm stopping now.  This is it.  Tomorrow afternoon I am cutting my nails short, going to the store to buy scar remover, and purchasing band-aids so that if I have an urge to pick at my skin it won't be able to be fulfilled instantaneously and I'll have time to convince myself not to.  I'm going to stop this.  I'm going to do whatever it takes to stop this.  I have allowed myself to destroy so much of my self-esteem, confidence, hope, and body for some of the years when I needed it most.  And it ends now.  This illness is not going to eat away at my life.  It ends now.

invisible tears in my eyes

I don't understand why I cry so much.  More specifically, I don't understand why I've been crying so much lately.  It's not depression - I went through five years of hell with depression, and I know that this is not it.  I'm happy, generally.  I'm not burdened by anything.  But some little thing will happen during my day, something that might make the average person a bit upset but certainly nothing tear-worthy, and I'll lie in my bed and cry over it for ten or fifteen minutes and then feel perfectly alright again.  It's as if there are little fireworks inside of me and every now and then someone lights one of the fuses, and there they go off crackling inside of me strong and glowing and piercing, before little smoke spectres appear in their place and everything is calm again. 

I love being an emotional person.  I really do.  It took me years to accept that.  I used to cry at the slightest thing in elementary school and everybody would mock me, and I hated how fragile my emotional state seemed to be.  I remember when I was very little and my mom told me that I was "so sensitive", and then she explained to me what that word meant, and appropriately enough I was very, very hurt.  But no.  I love my emotions now.  I love feeling.  Everything in this world, art and music and films and tea and love, I have the incredible privilege of experiencing to a deeper and higher and more powerful degree than the vast majority of people, and I love that endlessly.  Even sorrow, though I do hate it so, a part of me loves it as well.  As Wilde put it, wisdom comes with winters. 

There are some small experiences, though, that I wish I weren't affected so deeply by.

It's so unfair to other people to have my wonky stupid emotions playing with me in such negative ways when they do a random and perfectly reasonable thing.  It's not his problem at all, it's mine.  And my cumbersome emotional states for which I have a slowly reblooming contempt.

Sick Child (Lithograph)

Edvard Munch

1897

Fuck You, Crime Psychics.

Okay, I realise I haven't posted here in quite some time and this is not the lightest subject to bring up when I do so, but a fellow WWU Freshman has been missing since Saturday night.  Which is awful.  Absolutely awful.  But this post is not about the awfulness of his disappearance, but rather about the awful, awful nature of the posts I'm seeing under the 'Help Find Dwight' Facebook group. 

Example:
I just listened to Coast to Coast radio program. Someone called in and ask a psycic named CC to give a reading on Dwight. CC accurately discribed him and said he was alive and walkng in a clearing sourrounded by trees south and east of his residence. Possibly near water. She also said 2 days, either he's been gone 2 days or would be found in 2 days. She did not see any foul play involved.God speed to all.

Let us dissect:
CC accurately discribed him
His picture has been posted all over the entire city and aired on various news stations.  It's everywhere.  Of COURSE she described him accurately.  Jesus Christ.

and said he was alive and walkng in a clearing sourrounded by trees
We live in Washington State.  If you are not currently walking in trees, you are currently walking in an area surrounded by trees.

south and east of his residence.
Bellingham is located in the very north of Washington, and has a large body of water to the west.  There is no other possible direction he could be located.

Possibly near water.
I reiterate: Bellingham has a large body of water to the west.  It also has dozens of rivers and lakes and ponds.  In fact, I doubt you could be anywhere on the west coast of Washington and not be described as 'near water'.

She also said 2 days, either he's been gone 2 days or would be found in 2 days.
Well he definitely has been gone for more than two days.  I think that's one of the few blindingly obvious facts about this case.  So I will give you two days, psycic [sic] and if Dwight is not found in the clearing of a wooded area near water south east of here without any foul play involved, you have a lot of explaining to do.

---------------------------------------------------

This absolutely enrages me.  There is a person missing, who has been missing for a long time as far as missing cases go, who is most probably either dead or in imminent danger of dying, who needs help as immediately as possible if he is still alive, and there are honestly people out there who are willing to cash in on this and spew arse gravy about "2 days" and "bodies of water" AT THE POSSIBLE EXPENSE OF A HUMAN LIFE.  FUCK YOU, CC THE PSYCHIC.  Fuck you and your disrespect for human suffering, fuck you and your tainting of a search for a person's child, fuck you and your willingness to possibly delay search parties from finding this person in what little time span he may have left in order to earn a few bucks.  How will you feel if there was foul play involved, if Dwight is not found safe?  How will it make you feel to know that you might have given this family an artificial hope to cling to, redirected the search for him in a damaging way, delayed finding him until it was too late?  You are absolutely disgusting.

ANYWAY. 
I feel a bit better now.
I hope enough people are sensible enough to ignore the profit-driven babblings of an unsympathetic crackpot that Dwight will have a chance of being found safe.  It's a horrid situation that's only being made worse by people whose actions distract from the real issue at hand.