Monday, March 18

Coconut Smoothie. To Health!

Coconut Flax Smoothie

1 part coconut milk (currently using "light", but regular is good)
1 part almond milk (or soy, if that's your thing)
1 serving roasted flax seeds
small scoop of ice
pinch of sugar or honey to taste

For an extra boost, add a serving of protein powder! (i would, but i don't have any... it's expensive)

Having never had flax, or understood why people would put seeds in their smoothies, I only grabbed a bag of the stuff at Trader Joe's because I wanted something healthy to make smoothies with and the damned protein powder was too expensive. Flax isn't a great source of protein, but it's good for fiber and Omega-3s, which is good, and I like to think that the almond milk gives it a little extra bit of protein too. Soy milk would likely add more protein, but I'm avoiding soy while I try to get back in shape.

So I got home and threw stuff together. I wasn't sure what it would taste like, but it turns out I love it. It tastes like a coconut puffed rice cake!

I've been drinking these for breakfast before going on the treadmill, or bigger portions at dinner time when the idea of cooking just drives me up the wall.

I imagine Echo drinking smoothies like this when she's training with Nina and Mark. The couple aren't good for her, but she learns to be fit and healthy instead of just skinny while she's with them; learns to eat right and exercise without starving herself.
"I met Nina first. She taught aerobics classes at the gym and I used to stand next to her, looking at all those mysterious muscles-- the arcs of her biceps, her ladderlike abdomen, tight rear end, strong, narrow quads, powerful calves. Everything tanned evenly. I wanted that perfection. Maybe, I thought, you can find it without starvation-- with protein and sweat and pain becoming perfectly formed, taut body tissue." - Echo

Friday, March 15

Melancholy

I feel a sense of melancholy today. Quiet and reserved. With tiny, secret bouts of fury and terror and pain. I want to wish the world away and stand in sunshine. Sleep in warmth and dream of waves and skies and stars.
"What shall we do, all of us? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth..." -Blood Roses

My day job makes me too lazy for my freelance work, and I sit and waste the afternoon away.
I want to buy back my hours, the ticking seconds I didn't use. They make me feel useless. Wasted. Old. Every second another moment of my life gone to nothing but sitting here.

"But the Cyclops eye seemed like it could drill a hole right through her, so that in the pictures the tree tapping the window would show up where her heart was supposed to be." -I Was A Teenage Fairy
My medication hasn't taken away my depression or anxiety (yet?), but instead I have a sense of clarity within them. My depression comes in phases curled under the covers. Eternities of seconds staring at the ceiling in empty, quiet thoughts. Each individual anxiety eventually lost in a haze of moments passed. Forgotten with the simple, silent passing of time.


"'Let the pain wash over you,' she said. 'Let the pain teach you. If you can feel it then you can feel joy again...'" -Blood Roses (Changelings)
Only my anger remains. Surviving the ticking clock as my skin crawls and my mind twists with useless, mild rage. Curling through my thoughts like wisps of smoke, slithering snake temptations of hate.

"I wanted to destroy the body I was trapped in, become what she was, no matter what it took. No matter how much mutilation or pain." -The Rose and The Beast (Ice)
Even food is like work, and I ignore hunger pangs like unwanted advances, curling up to listen to the silence.
It comes and goes, this peaceful, empty melancholy. Some days the world is mine. The sun shines and music plays and work gets done my new apartment is its own world of possibilities and I am potential itself.

"We try on different dresses, different selves, but our souls are always the same-- ongoing, full of light." - Psyche in a Dress
Then the quiet days come. Empty but the buzz of the ac unit or the refrigerator drone. I listen to dogs bark and people climb the steps behind my bedroom, and think of nothing, or wish for everything, and sit with my nothingness.  

"I wanted him to call me darling. Tell me it would be okay. We'll take care of it." -Echo
 
I wait for the better me, as if she will crawl out of my own skin to make me dance and sing and smile. She will be beautiful because she is strong in herself. Not for others but for her. Lips tilted  upwards and heart open to the sky and the world. Unafraid of her own shadow and the voices of others. Unafraid of the blank page or the open door. She will be me. The right me. Born of my self.

"I will paint a Tarot deck-- my own.... I will be the Hanged Man, also the woman in the Lovers card, also the Queen of Cups. I will be Strength with her lion." -The Hanged Man


Om Mani Padme Hum
"I will be Strength..."



Thursday, March 14

Romance of Sadness

"My version of the truth is every letter I never sent and two broken watches sitting on my desk; one that slowly stopped ticking after five years wrapped around my wrist and one whose strap snapped as soon as I tried to put it on and I’m sure you could make a novella out of that but I do not want a metaphor anymore, I want you. Fuck meaningful glances and the smell of rain sneaking through my windowpanes in the early hours, fuck untaken chances, fuck serendipity, your heart is not an empty room. FUCK EVERYTHING I SHOULD HAVE SAID AND EVERYTHING I SHOULD HAVE DONE AND EVERYONE I COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BECAUSE NONE OF IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH. I am begging you to tear out your fears now and run and run and run from the romance of sadness because for however many birthday cards I keep, however many long poems I write, however many aeroplanes don’t crash, I only want your hand in mine. I want you a train ride away. I want to lick the stamp and walk to the postbox and know my love will find you."

-Finn (A Greater Reality)

Tuesday, March 12

Watching My Anger Through a Window


A new medication makes my days less intense. Less stressful and angry and frustrated.

But still this anger seeps through, like acid filling my head, ants crawling over my skin.
Suddenly there is a hate inside, so intense that you want everything to burn. To stop existing.

My eyes are heavy from other medications. Downers to lesson the flames. But still my thoughts run; slower but just as angry. Not enough. Never enough. So much I could be doing but instead I'm sitting tired and slowly, scorchingly angry over something trivial and unfair. Something useless.

New bed and new room and new home. But the same useless, angry me that can't let it go and can't get things done and will never
be
enough.

Sunday, March 10

Moving

Newness.
An overabundance of contentment that pervades my thoughts and nerves and very skin.
Not happy, exactly, just... Good. Okay. Possible.

New home new furniture new ideas new life new money new me yes please every moment.

I want to trap this. This level of subtle excitement. Thrilled but practical. Realistic but expectant. Terrified. But hopeful.
New.
Potential, I said.
This year had potential.
I think this is the start.
New.

Though the first thing I'll truly need to change
Is myself.

Wake up.
Run.
Work.
Clean.
Love more and
Laugh more and
Do more.

Be.
more.

I can be that potential, too.
Right?