Chapter 242: Support System

Today was the third day of my four-day weekend and, in spite of the fact that I still have a whole day left, I can’t help but already begin dreading going back to work. I don’t know what it is exactly but I have really been in a place lately where I just REALLY don’t want to work. It’s not a matter of hating my job or anything like that. It just sometimes feels like a huge waste of time. I know it’s not, and that it is serving an extremely important purpose, but I can’t help but feel sometimes like I am wasting my life away staring at all the beige in this office building. I just have to constantly remind myself that no matter how bleak or bland it may be, both literally and figuratively, it isn’t forever and it is serving a very important purpose in my life. After all, this is what is supplying me with the money to support myself and keep my Mom and I living in this apartment and barely scraping by, as we have been for the past several months. I’m exaggerating. We aren’t exactly “barely scraping by,” we simply aren’t doing as well as we have in the past. We are living very normal lives without anywhere near as many luxuries as we used to enjoy. It’s not terrible. I just sometimes have a tendency to think of it as being a lot worse than it actually is because when I can’t go out and drop a hundred dollars on clothes or makeup or whatever else whenever I want to I feel like I am really struggling. I know it’s not the case but I sometimes get caught up in my own head and start to feel that way. The issue is actually with the fact that it is the third day of my four-day weekend and the third day that I have spent in this house all by myself. You see, when I spend too much time alone I spend too much time thinking and when I spend too much time thinking I spend too much time exaggerating every part of my life. Liz Phair has a song where she kind of declares, “I don’t need a support system.” Well, Liz, that is admirable and I would love to have that quality myself but, unfortunately, I don’t feel like I do. I mean, I always say that I don’t need anybody in my life, in the sense that I don’t have a genuine need for a romantic interest in my life or anything like that, but I DEFINITELY need people. I am more like Barbra Streisand said – I am a person who needs people. I need friends. I need family. I need people in my life.

Speaking of friends and such, with all the talk of my birthday party and such, I have only recently started considering a guest list. It is rough shit trying to figure out who to invite and who not to invite and such. It has also kind of made me realize that I have considerably less friends now than I ever have in the past. I mean, it’s not that I have less people that I know or acquaintances but I have less people who I actually feel close to or would want to come to my birthday party. Then there is the work factor. I have a tendency to not want to invite people from work to things outside of work, particularly things like this that are happening at my house. There are only a few people at my job who I would actually consider inviting in the first place and it’s one of those things where I would feel kind of bad not inviting them but I don’t think I will because my sister and her girlfriend are going to be there and the rest of my co-workers are the people they work over and that could be weird for them. I just know that they are normally considerably more reserved and less at ease when we are at an outing with other people from work, so I kind of want to avoid putting them into that sort of mood. Of course, as much as I initially wanted to do a bigger birthday party this year, looking at the list of people I know it is looking like it is going to be a small one again. I don’t mind having a small birthday party, so long as it isn’t like last year where everybody separated into different areas of the house and didn’t interact with one another. I am thinking I am going to position seating in a way that doesn’t allow that to happen, although I’m sure it still will. I am thinking I am just going to have my closest group of friends and my family come and be done with it. I don’t know, I may invite a few other people, too. I don’t know what I am going to do yet. All I know is that I need to figure it out soon because my birthday is two weeks from today. I am figuring I am going to buy little kid style decorations for the house and a little princess cake and shit like that, maybe even a piñata, and have a kid-style birthday party. I don’t know. Thinking about all of this is making me kind of depressed. I’m about to be 27, I don’t have enough friends to throw a big party, I have a shitty job, I don’t know how to drive, I don’t know how to play piano yet AND, to top it all off, my hair is REALLY thin. My place in life is a lot different from where I expected it to be at this point.

I need to shut the fuck up. My place in life is just fine. I am working towards creating a better future for myself. I am learning to play piano. I am really getting myself psyched up to learn how to drive. My job isn’t that bad. I have a good, if not sort of small, group of friends and 27 isn’t that old at all. My hair IS really thin. There’s no bright spot for that one, unfortunately. I was looking at some pictures of myself from my brother’s wedding that my sister-in-law posted on Facebook today and you can really see straight through my hair to my scalp. I don’t know what to do about it. I mean, I don’t want to shave my head again. I don’t think it would work with my look nowadays. I guess the answer is just keeping it short. I need to get it cut more often. Still, that isn’t going to help for too much longer – if I am running my hands through my hair too much or something along those lines, I can see all kinds of hairs coming out in my hands. It is awful. I hate it. Aside from that, though, my life is not so bad. This is all, again, to do with the fact that I have been at home alone for the past three days. I am beginning to look at things as being much more drastic than they actually are. I just need company. Thank God my Mom is coming back to town tomorrow. That’ll make things better. Of course, aside from spending time alone, I think I am also having the problem that I find myself having pretty much every year – the pre-birthday depression. I used to always get really depressed in the month or so leading up to my birthday. That hasn’t really happened in the past couple of years but it seems to be back a bit this year. I think it may have a lot to do with the fact that this is my 27th birthday and I am coming right up on 30. According to society, I should be in a much different place in my life than I am. Of course, I have never been one to follow the rules of society. Still, I am getting to a point for myself where I feel like I should have something much different. I am really starting to feel like I should be leading a much more independent life. I SHOULD be driving. I SHOULD be living on my own, or at least in a place where I am capable of living on my own. I SHOULD have better hair, damn it! I don’t know what I am going to do but I definitely feel like I need to start taking steps towards leading a considerably more independent life. I need to start leading a much more adult life. In fact, I have just changed my mind about doing a kid-style birthday party. I want my birthday to have a more mature theme. I am turning 27, for chrissakes! I don’t know what to do about my birthday. I don’t know what to do about my life… but I am confident that I am going to figure it out soon. My hair, on the other hand, I am much less confident about.

In the meantime, it is 1:25am and I really should be getting to bed. I want to get up in time to see my Mom when she comes home to get ready before work. I am setting my alarm for 10am, so if I want to get a decent amount of sleep I should probably get to it soon. I also watched a really amazing movie today but I am not going to take the time to talk about it here because I have decided to do a movie-themed blog tomorrow night. You see, this weekend was supposed to be my Audrey Hepburn movie weekend but that plan was quickly thwarted when I realized that Netflix really doesn’t have many of her movies at all available for Instant Watch. So, I have watched a bunch of independent films this weekend and have decided that I am going to write a blog discussing all of them tomorrow night. So, look forward to that. For now, though, I am off to bed. Goodnight.