I was standing in line at Starbucks this morning for my Venti French Roast and the woman behind the counter said, “here. This is free.” It was a huge snowman cookie, the one I’d been eyeing not one second before. It had to be some kind of reward attached to my Starbucks app, but I’m pretending I got cruised just to stroke my own ego. Or maybe I was being cruised, and I’m just an idiot (I usually am about these things). Picking up that I think other women are attractive? Easy. Telling when people are attracted to me? Not so much. Not so much at all.
I need an app on my phone that instead of making matches, just says, “she’s looking at you, jackass.”
I’m in a punchy mood because I made it to Starbucks on time this morning, the coffee is fresh, and the onslaught of humanity has not yet begun. It’s 7:04 as of this writing, and it doesn’t start getting busy around here until 7:30. By then, I’m finishing up and heading to the train. It’s a win-win situation.
Overhead, they’re playing some kind of Bob Marley album that feels like indy coffee shop and not Starbucks. As far as I could tell, no one behind the counter was wearing patchouli. Which reminds me that I need to go to Whole Foods.
This morning I saw an article on Facebook thanking her friends for catching her when she was down, and it hit so close to home that there were tears streaming down my face as I read it. She fell because of alcoholism; I fell because I was too proud to admit my bipolar disorder/PTSD was WAY out of hand until I couldn’t hide it anymore. Letting that much emotional pain ride on that much anxiety without medication to keep the physical effects under control was the wrong. move. entirely. It’s no wonder my entire life blew up- I’d been trying to pretend it was fine since I was a teenager, not knowing why my relationships wouldn’t work out, why everyone looked at me like I had three heads because I just didn’t get it…. well, I don’t think anyone will ever stop doing that, but you get the picture. There are things that actualized adults know that people who are faking it don’t. I am starting to catch up, one day at a time. I feel better than I have in a long time, and wrongs are starting to “write themselves.”
It’s been a hell of a journey, and in some ways, I’m glad I have record of it. In others, I would gladly set fire to the server and watch it all burn. Going backward is enlightening and painful all at the same time, but they are different pieces of me, and thank God I have friends who are willing to put up with the bad parts to get the good. I would like to think that the good parts outweigh the bad ones, but I’ve only recently started to feel that way again, because in some sense, I thought the bad parts were bigger than the good ones because I couldn’t not. Not since I was a kid. As I have said before, meeting Diane at the time that I did in the way that I did made me feel like I was damaged goods, and I’ve carried that burden for far too long. Susan unwittingly said so when she said it was this “big bag of shit I’d been carrying around forever,” not knowing what was in it, and not listening when I tried to tell her. But she was never going to be an objective audience, because if I was Diane’s partner, I wouldn’t believe me, either. But kids just do not have enough malice aforethought to make something like that up, especially with so many details that have stayed the same for years and years, under duress or not.
There’s a homeless man trying to beg for change wandering around, and I wonder if he knows that no one carries cash anymore? I’m betting at least half the people here have paid with their phones. I did, and I’m just barely a yuppie. I have an iPhone 5c, which I believe stands for 5cheap, because the battery life is terrible and I have to keep an $80 Otter Box on it just in case it drops from my bed to the floor. I’ve had it long enough that I think I could upgrade, or just buy a new plan out here if I wanted, but I hardly ever use my phone. I’d rather use my iPad instead. I can even take my phone calls on it as long as it’s hooked to wi-fi.
People ask me all the time as a tech person what kind of phone I would get. Not sure, but Android over iPhone because I use Linux. I don’t really care about the OS of the phone itself, just that the iTunes store encrypts all your music so you can’t get it back off the phone, and there is no version of iTunes for Linux (yet, at least). You can try running an old and busted version using a Windows emulator, but good luck getting the hardware to work in a virtual machine without a lot of gut-wrenching pain. I’d rather have something that works natively with Rhythmbox and Banshee, the two media players I use on Linux the most.
Wow, this entry has skipped around a lot. But that’s just where my brain has gone this morning as I’ve sat watching from what I call “the technology loft,” so named because all the tables that are upstairs have outlets. However, it’s time to get moving now. Maybe I’ll see you at lunch.
love you miss you mean it
Stories That Are All True 