October 31, 2024

Happy Halloween from Snottie -- I mean, Lottie Person, aka Snotgirl, aka the coolest fashion blogger in the West <3

October 30, 2024

Yesterday a woman at work told me "Wow, you're ready for Thursday!" And I had to ask her what was happening then. And then I got to laugh and tell her that I just look like this every day.

My brain has been so mush lately that I didn't even have opportunity to make any Halloween plans -- I had to miss a Halloween party last weekend, and the other one I would have gone to is while I'm out of town, so alas. My Snotgirl costume will have to wait, while I instead sit on a Zoom call doing schoolwork with some colleagues.

I went on a beach trip with some friends soon after my last blog post, where I rampaged about my shitty roommate, and I've had so much more time to reflect on the situation with my friends. It's exceptionally shitty of my roommate to have carved up our mutual friends. In synthesizing with friends and trying to understand where everything went wrong, someone also gave me the thought that, like, nonzero chance my roommate is deeply motivated by envy, consciously or unconsciously, and thinks that they too can be happy if they acquire the same things that make me happy, as if acquisition of things could ever provide more than a shallow, fleeting sense of joy.

When that thought was put in motion, a lot of things made more sense. I can see a world where envy, shame, and pride are deeply intertwined -- another mutual friend of ours told me that at one point my roommate had doubts about keeping their cat and considered rehoming him; they never talked about these thoughts with me, which the mutual friend thinks it might have been a pride thing.

But that, plus when I think about how when we moved in together they, like, started buying some of the same products as me... and intentionally bought outfits that mirrored mine (and told me about that)... and started going to more concerts... and intentionally started modeling the dates they went on after the dates I went on... and pierced their nose (even though they had a panic attack about it in the bathroom right before going under the needle)... and started getting more involved with our Union... I don't know. When I think about things like this, I wonder how much of their identity is actually their own.

Though I'd argue that most of us are patchworks of everyone we've ever met, so I don't know where one ends and the other begins. I'd always thought it was normal to share things like this with a best friend. I don't know how weird it is yet.

But I think I've also seen manifestations of jealousy cross their face when I'd talk to them sometimes. They didn't actually like hearing about my burgeoning relationship, no matter how many times they told me that they were actually happy for me. I always thought I could see twinges of something when I'd tell them about my writing and (incredibly minor) publications. And the like.

Nor do I want to say that you have to be overjoyed for your friends' accomplishments. But this is the same person that was actively upset that, when they started transitioning, people were just happy for them and not exceedingly happy for them. So that level of consciousness is in there somewhere.

I decided several months ago that this person I've been living with for two years is completely incapable of introspection, so maybe this level of psychoanalysis is meaningless when applied to someone deluded from a concrete reality, instead folding to one where they've cast themselves as a monolith of good.

A friend of mine keeps telling me that you will always be a villain in someone else's story. It doesn't matter if you always strive to be good and just, you will always be someone's villain. It's unavoidable. Some people are better at understanding this than others.

ANYWAY. There are so many other things happening in my life worth noting!! I've put in an application for a new apartment that will hopefully be approved later this week. Assuming it is, I'll be moving at the end of November into a three-bedroom, with my partner and another one of my friends (who I've known longer and I can vouch for his communicative conflict resolution skills). I've lived with a partner before, but this will be a TOTALLY different situation in every possible way -- and one that I am very nearly counting down the days until it happens.

My partner and I are also going on a trip to Hawaii next week -- oh god, next week! We'll be going to a wedding for one of his friends, who just happens to live in Hawaii. My goal is to travel as conscientiously as possible, support local businesses, not take any rocks or dirt or anything because I'm fucking normal, and hang out with my partner in a beautiful place :)

I've also been doing more to take care of my health and am finally seeing specialists for the dumb things happening with my body. One specialist has already didscovered a minor infection that I've been living with for probably like 4 years, and I'm really hoping that when it's cleared I can start repairing the damage it's maybe wreaked. I'll be seeing another specialist next week to hopefully receive treatment for the hypothyroidism I was diagnosed with in February, so hopefully I'll start feeling some relief from the fatigue, brain fog, sensitivity to cold, and weird weight retentions (and more!) that I've been experiencing for the past few years. I'm feeling hopeful right now.

And then I'm still mid-semester, needing to nail down an internship for the spring, doing a ton of work for my Union as we bring a second contract into our local and two very important officers have stepped down, everything is a little bit on fire but it needs to be okay, it will be okay, listen to me, it will all be okay.