You Really CAN Find Anything on the Internet!

http://www.brains4zombies.com/

I just finished reading The Complete Idiot's Guide to Voodoo, and it wasn't half bad. Sort of fluffy, but I didn't expect a defense of Karmically-Challenged-Magical-Practices (aka 'Black Magic'). I've got enough research under my belt to be able to tell bullshit from political correctness, and the CIGtV erred only in trying to be acceptable & palatable to the masses. Anyway, it's got a great list of zombie movies & had a blurb or two about virtual voodoo dolls & the above site, serving all your zombie appetites. 

I've been having an anxiety attack tonight. I'm twitchy as fuck all, my ribs & head itch - not due to any kind of rash, but because my skin is crawling, and my ulcer has flared up. Everybody always tells me, "Oh, you shouldn't keep your worries inside, express yourself and it'll all feel better". This is pure bullshit. It doesn't seem to matter whether I keep my worries, doubts & fears inside or whether I calmly explain my problems to someone or whether I spend a good three hours yelling "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?" at my math problems, I am still suffering intensely at the moment. I try to keep my good humor up, but sometimes it's tough.
 
Life's little practical joke: Valium & its herbal counterpart, Valerian, have absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. Except for once when I was 3 - Granny left her Valium on the coffee table when she went to go get her blackberry brandy. I apparently thought it was Pez. According to my parental units, I slept for 3 days & then proceeded to eat everything in the house.  

You Want Me to What?

Leave my nice safe house & go out? Outside? To a cheerful gathering of many people? 

Er, sorry, I gotta work.

My job lends me so much safety it's pathetic. I used to think that I was a social butterfly - especially if large quantities of booze was served. Over the past few years, especially over the past three years, my depression has basically chained me to my desk. It's not because I've developed some weird sort of social anxiety, either. It's just...

Dull, unhappy, obviously uncomfortable people seem to be show-stealers. Limelight-suckers. Everybody wants to give them attention to help them 'snap out of it'. And it just sucks the life out of any kind of social occasion. The folks who are supposed to be the center of attention then become irritated & resentful. The party was their party, not thrown to try & make some wet blanket happy & have a good time. 

There's this one woman I work with who is one of the hypochondriac types of wet blanket. Everything is wrong with this woman - and it's worse if you're sick, too, because she's gotta bad one-up-complex. If you've got a cold, she's got malaria. If you've got chicken pox, she's got the bubonic plague. I've only met this woman once because I had to go into work at 3 in the afternoon, and I spent a good two hours trying to not talk to her or look at her or lean too close to her - she was snorking & hacking & blowing the entire time. And the more I ignored her body-language that said, "Ask me what's wrong", the louder & more intense her allergy attack or cold or tuberculosis or whatever she had got. Now, I've heard stories about Vickie before, but until I worked with her for 3 hours, I thought everyone was exaggerating. After sitting next to this mucosal fountain of woes and misery, I was like, "Ye Gods! I hope I'm not becoming the emotional version of Vickie!" I have really tried to keep my verbal expressions of doom & darkness to a minimum at work since then, but it's very hard to not respond to 'have a good night, Janelle' with a heart-felt and sincere 'Fuck you, too!' But anyway, the entire time that Vickie was there, everyone who came into the room offered home remedies, store-bought remedies, they wished her well, they told her to get better soon - in other words they showered her with attention and affection, trying to make her feel better. And obviously, since she's been sick the entire time she's worked for the Ex, the negative encouragement has worked like a charm for her. If she were well & healthy at work, why, no one would pay any attention to her at all or we would treat her as rough as we treat everyone.

I don't want to be that kind of person who goes everywhere with a sense of silent suffering, oh poor me, oh I'm so sad, oh no one loves me, oh I'm too old to be all emo & cut myself, where can I turn for emotional relief... help me, help me, help me.  With the emphasis on 'Me! Me! Me!' Now granted, I have gone to parties & stuff when I've been sick because, well, booze always makes a cold or bronchitis feel better, and when you're drunk & sick it's fun to spread a few bacteria around. But there's a difference between having a cold & still being able to have a good time - and the fact that I'm having a hard time not showing how I really feel to the outside world. It's leaking out of my pores. It's like my aura has become bloated and visible, like a dark miasma of the chronic blues. I am desperately unhappy, and there isn't much I can do about it because a) I've trapped myself in this pit, and b) there is something wrong with my brain's chemistry or something hormonal or something that I honestly cannot control that is exacerbated by the fact that I hate my job, I hate school, and I'm in a spiritual black hole.

At my job, they expect me to be the Mistress of Darkness. It's my role in the office. Every workplace needs one.

So I'd rather spread some holiday cheer around my way - by packages of Swiss Colony or Figi goodies, gift certificates, cards & e-mails than by actually going outside & encountering fellow human beans.
 
I love y'all, really, personally & in that Universal sort of way that I love everyone, but I can't handle PDA's right now.