iLiza's eyes

If you’re sitting on the toilet in my bathroom, you’re looking at the door. There’s a silver doorknob that looks fairly polished, especially considering I’ve never cleaned it in over a year. It acts as a mirror. Tonight I glanced at it and noticed in its weird bends the square of my purple shirt, and floating above it, my head. When I saw it, my head looked mis-shapen. The smooth turns in the doorknob had made my neck and chin disappear, and my forehead and eyes bulged out like a drop of beige water hanging on the edge of a shower faucet, about to fall. It looked squeezed, pressured, like it was on the verge of exploding.

When I moved my head to the left, my face became recognizable again, but doubled onto itself, so I saw a blurry reflection of two of my faces growing from each other, like some weird alien in a children’s book.

And then when I moved my head to the right, and passed the position where it was an exploding bubble, the reflection just disappeared altogether, and I became a purple shirt without a head. Perhaps it had exploded.

I’ve had a hard week. I didn’t go out last weekend, I spoke to myself in Spanish for two days straight instead. Needed my friends on Tuesday to talk about how I got stood up on Monday but could only talk to them through email because I was stuck in the windowless basement of the library writing seven pages about bullshit in another language.

On Wednesday I had a panic attack. On Thursday I had one too. They were different than the ones I had last year. When I printed out my edited, completed, ready to be turned in Spanish paper on Wednesday, I was overcome with the feeling that I was forgetting something. Even at 5 when I turned in my paper, it felt like I hadn’t even started, and like I was completely failing to turn something in. I looked in my planner time and again. There was nothing.

On Thursday I slaved in front of an excel spreadsheet until my contacts got so dried out I couldn’t see, and then I went to the gym. I don’t remember running. But I did.

And then tonight, I’m here. And I had a bad week. I don’t remember much of what I did, but I know it was a bad week. I know I had a bad week because I haven’t finished a hard Sudoku since last Thursday, and my room is littered with half-done level 4s and 3s and Avanzados that I can’t bear to throw out because I know I know can solve them. I just can’t solve them this week. I must have had a bad week.

I know I’ve had a bad week because I drank a half gallon of milk in two days. I almost never buy milk, and I never drink milk plain. But I don’t have cereal right now, and I drank a half gallon of milk from the same cup that I kept washing between glasses and then filling up again and gulping down, and then washing and filling up again until my stomach hurt and I whined to my roommate. If I think that milk is going to make me feel better, I’ve had a bad week.

And then my head disappeared in a reflection in my bathroom. It popped, and I watched it, and then it disappeared. And I wonder, since when has stress bothered me? Since when can I not remember running for an hour, but I can make up fake deadlines to freak out about?

It’s been a bad week.

posted by iliza @ 10:39 PM 0 comments

Here's one reason why the "Abstinence until marriage" message is just ludicrous to me:

If 30 is the new 20, and people aren't marrying and having babies when they're 14 like in colonial times, and so many parents encourage their kids to explore themselves and follow their dreams before jumping into marriage, and almost half of marriages end in divorce, then aren't the majority of people in this country unmarried? And thus, if we are all abstaining from sex except with our spouse, what on earth ought the never-married 35 year old do? What should the 40-something divorced woman do? Well, they're unmarried, so they ought to abstain.

...So then I guess we'll all become 40 year old virgins...

...ahh, Kelly Clarkson!!

posted by iliza @ 10:29 PM 0 comments