Insomnia is a bitch

I never actually slept last night. Not even for half a second. I had that weird kind of insomnia where it felt like keeping my eyes closed actually took more muscle power and concentration than letting them stay open. So, as a result I had a loooong night of thinking about things and I decided that there are....



5 Off-hand Comments That Changed My Life:
(These are things that randomly came up and other people probably didn't think much about when they said it, but actually had an effect on the way I turned out.)

1. In 7th grade when I had recently met Anna (who I love to death), she was talking about how she didn't like being so skinny and blurted out, "I just wanted to be pleasantly plump like Phoebe!" She meant it as a compliment, but I did have quite a round face coming out of elementary school and I realized right then and there that I would have to change for middle school. So I cut my daily food intake in half, and became ridiculously thin by 8th grade. Seriously. I was like a Barbie, except without breasts, which in retrospect is closer to a Holocaust survivor than anything remotely sexy. Still, I stayed at about that size throughout high school (although I started eating regular amounts again in 8th grade), and I liked it. It could have been dangerous, I suppose, but it worked out fine for me.


2. This next comment is actually my own, but I think I can classify it as off-hand because I definitely wasn't conscious of saying it. Early on in high school I woke up sobbing from a bad dream, which is an utterly disconcerting experience that I have only had twice that I can remember. This particular time I had dreamt that I had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and would die at any time. More than anything else, my dream-self was apparently torn apart by the significance of not having a future on earth. All I could say in the dream was, "But, I'll never get to be a lawyer."

This off-hand comment haunted me for years, forever reminding me of humankind's frailty and that you cannot view your life as moving towards an end as in an age or career, because it could end at any time. This point was hammered home by the event that led to my second waking up to myself crying incident, which was Olive's death. However, the lesson in life perspective was actually better taught by the off-hand dream comment. It also let me know that maybe I should focus on being a lawyer since my dream-self seemed to be so passionate about it in the face of death.


3. After an incredibly boring year of school, my 9th grade student teacher returned a Magical Realism essay to me with the comment, "You don't seem to be reaching your full potential here." Damn straight, I wasn't. That was the most bullshit assignment that I had ever been given and I hadn't even blown it off. If she was expecting more than a convoluted story about love between a man and an inanimate object, she should have given a prompt that allowed it. Better yet, she should have been teaching about something other than the connection between Magical Realism in art and literature which has less application than anything I've ever learned in my life including how to snort water. [The water bit helped me to clear out my passages enough to go write five more essay pages after throwing up in the Odegaard bathroom last year.]

Anyway, her snarky red-inked comment pushed me over the edge, and that was the moment when I decided that I would definitely drop out of high school and start at the UW. This turned out to be an ok choice.


4. "(content censored)


5. "It's funny because the smart ones this year are the introverts, whereas in your year it was the extroverts."
-one of my favorite profs at the UW

I thought it was weird that he said this to me because he wouldn't have unless he was including me in the extroverted group, but I had been told that I was shy and introverted my whole life. I'm definitely still shy, but I also realized that I am actually an extrovert, something that was confirmed yesterday with the Myers-Briggs assessment which put me at ENFP. Apparently, I have ace intuition, but also constantly need affirmation from the people around me, and am "slightly silly." Yes, I would say ENFP=me. The reason that my prof's comment changed my life is that it changed my whole perspective of myself.




Ha! The best insomni-related off hand quote I've ever heard:
"I can't sleep." -JM Barrie, 1937 (creator of Peter Pan), upon saying this he promptly died.