I guess that’s what is so lame about conditions of the mind. You want to control them and sometimes you even try to but in the end they are the ones who are controlling you. I like to think that any day now all this madness in my brain is going to just calm down like a pond 5 minutes after someone has thrown a rock into it. I guess my pond is located below a rocky cliff, the rocks just keep tumbling down.

Maybe I am doing something, like screaming at the top of my lungs, which is causing the rocks to rattle and fall but maybe it is just what the rocks were meant to do. I don’t know why I find it so much easier to explain my life in terms of other things but it just is. Right now I am a pond and my water is moving in waves crashing against the rocky edge that surrounds me.

I think about it though. I feel like I want my water to be calm and peaceful but maybe that is boring. Maybe life is all about having waves but just learning how to deal with them. As soon as I think I want something I realize that I don’t. I do think I want my mind to calm down but part of me doesn’t because in all of this craziness I feel like I am really alive and feeling things.

I think I tried too hard to keep my water calm in the past and some sick part of me wants to get back to that but then I remember that it wasn’t a calm happiness, is was a calm madness. Right now I am probably closer to happiness than I think but I will call my current state rapids of change. Change can’t happen without a little bit of crazy splashing.

You know what, now that I think of it some of the coolest people I have ever met have been a little crazy, I think I can make this work for me if I can just kick this infinite sadness that washes over me every other day. That’s easier said than done though I think.

For the past year and a half I have been depressed and I have done a long list of things but none of them have been good. I have said before how embarrassed I am about so many things that have happened this past year but that doesn’t really stop me from sharing them here and I think that says that I don’t plan on being this way forever and also that I am perfectly comfortable taking responsibility for my own failures.

I was trying to think today about the good things I have done since I normally focus on the bad and with each thing I thought about I got a little happier. It also made me realize that if I can change just a few small things about the way I think that I could probably be a lot happier day to day.

I am 28 years old and these are some of the things I am happy and or proud of myself for:

In grade school I got awards all the time because I loved school and I was a ridiculously attentive student but I think the very first thing I am truly proud of myself for is joining the track team in high school. I wasn’t amazing, I didn’t have any friends going into it, I sucked at nearly every event I tried and my parents never came to see me at a meet (my step mom did show up after one once) but I kept at it and I felt good that I did it even though no one else cared. I thought I was awesome. I still think I was awesome. side note here, one of my most embarrassing moments happened when I was on the track team.

embarrassing story: Okay, so the whole track team was crammed into a classroom watching tapes of our first meet and when the 400 meter event comes up I get a little worried because I finished dead last, and when I say dead I mean it. I thought I was going to die. So we are watching the race and at first I am keeping up with everyone but then I start to trail off and I am soon not even in the shot anymore, everyone crosses the line pretty close together and the camera pans back to pick me up and follow me across the line. The fact that my whole team was watching this was bad enough but one of the coaches goes “ooooooh kaaah-moooon!” and proceeds to fast forward the tape, not realizing that person was someone on our team. I almost died and the girls sitting around me who I had made friends with started laughing cause they knew it was me. I was super embarrassed but hey I lived. wow, see how easily I just lost focus there? Back to me talking about how wonderful I am.

The winter before I turned 17 I got my first job and it was at KFC. Lisa totally hooked me up with this one but I had been going out on my own with no help from my parents because I wanted a job so bad. For anyone who knew me then this was huge because I was TERRIBLY shy but I wasn’t about to be broke AND shy. Laycie got her first job and Lisa gets part of the credit! yay!

My next big thing would be graduating high school. I was the first person in my family and the only one in my immediate family. I gave myself a high five for this one!

I got my Associate’s degree from Chemeketa in 2002 and became the only person in my family to have a college degree of some sort. Once again high five!

Okay, I’m starting to feel like a weirdo now so I am just going to quickly rattle off some of the other things I have done that make me feel happy: I learned how to drive a manual and I got my license (even though I was nearly 20 this was a huge event!), I learned how to sell on eBay and then proceeded to sell and sell for many years. I went to WOU for way too many years and even though I have no degree I am still proud of the hard work and good grades I got. I have ran two marathons and a handful of other random road races. I have become a wonderful pet owner, even earning the title of acceptably acceptable cat hoarder of the year, okay I made that title up but hey I deserve it! And it may not seem like it but I AM proud of myself for being able to do what I needed to do after realizing that I wasn’t happy with Michael anymore even though it meant I would be terribly broke and devastatingly lonely… I’m not happy that I haven’t executed the aftermath of that realization too beautifully but I do plan on tying the whole mess up with a pretty green ribbon and that my dears makes me feel alright for now.

I read an article this morning about the value of independence and I feel like it kind of shed some light on a few things for me. For one I haven’t really thought about breaking down the different areas of life where a person can be dependent but the article broke it up into financial, social and intellectual. I just globed myself into a pile and told myself I was a dependent little mess.

When I was with Michael I always felt financially independent until I started back to school in the Fall of 2006. I decided not to work and to only study, this made me completely dependent on Michael. I was already socially dependent on him and though I like to think I am and always have been intellectually independent I was easily swayed by his opinions and thoughts.

So that Fall nearly two years ago I lost the last bit of independence I had. It’s weird too because I fought for that independence like it was the last piece of bread on earth and I had a tub of butter hidden in a hole that just needed that bread more than anything. I let go of the bread and just sat by the hole eating butter by the spoonful.

As I said, I knew I was super dependent on Michael but until I read this article I didn’t really realize that I had had one little piece of something that I didn’t rely on anyone else for. I made my own money, it made me feel free and even thought I have never been an amazing budgeter or anything it was something that I never let go of, I never let Michael be in charge of our finances, it was my thing and it was the one piece of control I had in my life. I was the boss of the money.

Michael tried several times to take over our budget but I never let him, I still didn’t really let him when I decided to not work anymore but it all just felt different. There wasn’t anymore power because it wasn’t “my” money. I like to earn my own way and I just felt like I had handed Michael my last little independence coupon and that now he was all powerful and all knowing to my life.

Of course these independence issues are just frosting on a cupcake that was our relationship but they are huge issues in themselves, after all I think most of the calories in a cupcake reside in the frosting. So what I’m trying to get at here is that right now at this moment in time I am finding it hard to muster up the motivation and desire to make money and get myself out of debt hell.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that right now I am completely alone and don’t have anyone that I have to filter choices through. I’m no longer being carried down the river of dependence while reaching out for a branch to just hold me in place as the water rushes past me threatening to take my shorts with it. I am free to do anything I want and oddly I just don’t feel the need to do anything. It’s like when someone gets an injury and the doctor tells them not to walk for two weeks and suddenly they feel the need to walk everywhere just because they aren’t supposed to. It’s the opposite though, the doctor just told me I can do anything I want in the world and all I can do is sit here in shock.

Even though I am not with Michael anymore I still find myself trying to find someone that will replace him, someone that will control me. It’s so messed up but the thought that I am completely in control now and can do whatever I want is almost crippling.

I thought a lot about the intellectual independence thing too. It’s hard to look at yourself objectively and really see what things are but I feel like I am intellectually independent. I don’t think the same things everyone else does even though there are definitely times I get caught up with thinking the same as other people. I think for the most part I am happy thinking for myself.

I can pinpoint a million times where I didn’t think for myself and when I thought other people’s opinions were my own and its only because after I broke up with Michael I found myself utterly confused and had no idea what opinions were truly mine and what opinions were his that I had latched onto.

It’s really weird and annoying and I have said it before but I will say it again, I feel like a teenager who is just figuring herself out. I feel the same way right now that I did when I was 17 right before I started dating Michael. I feel like because I was at that place when we got together, the place where you are just searching for your place in the world that I let myself fall into his place instead of finding my own. For the most part I was completely fine with that because I wanted to be anywhere but where I was but now I am excited to find my own spot and have a little party there. There will be green balloons on the mailbox, I hope you come.

You can find the article I read over at Scott H Young’s blog.

I am going to Bend this weekend to hang out with my friend Summer and I am very excited. I am excited to see her and her family and to get out of this town, away from this little room I live in. I have had really bad anxiety this whole week and I keep trying to figure out why but I haven’t came up with any solid conclusions.

I think my anxiety is probably do to a nice mash-up of several things, though it always seemingly comes out of nowhere. Like I get up in the morning and it just pops up like hi, it’s me, your worst enemy who is not only going to sit on your chest but who is going to poke you in the eye intermittently also. I was trying to think of a way to describe this feeling the other day, because lord knows all I think about is how to convey every aspect of my life in either a photo or a blog post and all I could come up with is that I feel like I am 5 minutes away from giving a presentation in high school, and I feel like this all day. There never comes that nice moment where I am done and get to sit back down in my desk and watch the other presentations, I am just sitting there all day waiting for my turn with knots in my stomach.

Yeah so there’s that, and while its pretty fun to just feel your thoughts and stresses in a physical manner I am getting tired of it. I haven’t been writing too much because I am struggling with what I do and don’t want to share. On one hand I feel completely okay with just putting it all out there because after all I am just a human like everyone else who reads this and I know I am not the only one who has weird thoughts, or who is going through a tough time but sometimes I just want to get through this all behind a closed door so no one has to know how bad I got.

The other day I wrote about making my sister a cake with rancid oil. um, that’s nasty and I honestly can’t believe I fucking did that but what I really can’t believe is that I shared it with the world. I mean, what the shit? I don’t know what crawls up my ass sometimes but I do and share the most ridiculous things.

If I had made that cake today I would have gone and bought more ingredients if I had the money, but if I hadn’t had the money and I DID decide to just go with it I would not have told the world, I would have let it be my secret because it’s gross and embarrassing. So, besides the fact that I can’t trust myself to write anything here that I’m not going to regret I am just having a problem with just being totally okay with sharing all the stupid shit I am doing or going through right now.

I am so down on myself right now. I do have little windows where I am nice to myself and think that I am doing okay but then I turn the corner and someone has shut the curtains and I am back to beating the crap out of myself. It really sucks being on such a unstable footing or whatever, I just can’t really decide how to feel about anything let alone myself. I don’t know why I hate myself so much but I am trying really hard to get over it.

I have let just about every single thing in my life fall apart. It’s so embarrassing I hate even thinking about it because it just isn’t me. I make all my money off ebay and I accept my payments through paypal. Well, I managed to get my paypal account restricted because I had about 5 complaints in a 2 week time period for non-delivery. Then, I got so many bad comments on ebay that my account got suspended for 30 days. This has never happened to me and I have been selling on ebay for 8 years.

I don’t want to admit any of that, I don’t want to admit that once again every single credit card I have is late and over the limit but it’s the truth, it’s where I’m at and I accept that I put myself here. I have been working my ass of these past few days and trying to just do shit because I need to do it, not because I want to impress someone or have someone pat me on the back or any of the normal shit I do when I am looking for approval or praise because if I haven’t mentioned it, it’s pretty much all I live for.

I have been writing a lot in my journal because I can’t really go a day without writing and I just didn’t trust myself on the blog. Tonight for some reason I just felt the need to sit in my awful desk chair that has a broken height adjuster thing-a-ma jig. I swear everything I own is a broken piece of shit. Anyway, I am already feeling like I shouldn’t share about how I am letting my business run into the ground because I can’t pull my head out of my ass.

I think it’s hard to share how depressed you are when you feel like no one will understand and that everyone is just judging you and wondering when the hell you are going to get a grip on life. It’s funny though because I worry about people judging me yet I keep sharing the embarrassing shit I do and I keep writing and I just keep putting things out into the universe that I think are going to make everyone think I am a loser.

In reality I just think that everyone else is the same as me and I am judging myself, I am wondering when I am going to get a grip and I am sick of listening to my own shit. I was talking to someone the other day about depression though and I was sort of talking about it like I was over it, or had got through it but I haven’t, I am in the middle of it, maybe not the worst I have been but many things in my life just keep getting worse because I haven’t found a certain motivation for living yet.

In a way I feel like I am getting worse. I haven’t had any anxiety attacks like I had before when I was trying to go to sleep but I have just had days filled with the feeling that an attack was going to come. It sucks to just have the feeling of anticipation that you can’t shake and you don’t even know what the hell you are anticipating. Anxiety has really been a weird thing for me because I just think way too much about it, it’s annoying. But as I was saying, I feel that my sadness and hopelessness is just morphing into different things.

Instead of anxiety attacks while I lay in bed trying to sleep, I have no problem falling asleep at all yet I have horrible dreams all night long. I wasn’t remembering any of my dreams for several months and now suddenly I keep having these super vivid dreams where my friends are all telling me off and getting mad at me and it’s just really stressful and doesn’t really help with the negative thoughts I already have about everyone’s perception of me.

I think about so much, I think all day long, my thoughts flow through my head in a perfect narrative like I am reading a book, it’s so annoyingly overwhelming yet completely beautiful at the same time. Sometimes I wish I could shut off my thoughts so I try watching a show or a movie and I just find myself not paying attentions or making a connection with everything I am seeing to my own life. I can’t stop thinking or feeling or trying to figure out what the heck has happened to me in my head.

It’s like I was stuck in this sort of limbo my whole life, not really truly wanting to deal with anything or get to know who I really was but rather just reaching out for some sort of fake life I wanted. I wanted distractions, I wanted to try my hand at being what I thought everyone wanted me to be, I wanted a life that I had made up in my head and labeled “normal”.

Now that I have fallen from the clouds and bruised my ass, I am stumbling all around, knocking shit over and falling into holes and just going on this totally painful dirty adventure. I keep looking up into the clouds and they look fluffy and nice and sometimes I really just want to be back up there but I know I couldn’t survive the fall again and that life on the ground is really much safer.

I feel like this is all so hard for me because I’m not just dealing with losing my first love but I am dealing with EVERYTHING that I had been pushing deep down inside. It’s overwhelming and sometimes I just feel like I am going to die because it all hurts so bad but I just keep telling myself that it will all be okay. Some days I have to say it a lot more than others but I really am trying hard to get through this.

I don’t want to keep up this blog unless I am being honest and just saying what’s on my mind. Some days I write stuff and I am totally just pretending that I am okay and I feel guilty after I post them, like I’m lying to everyone but I just don’t want to be a downer you know. Anyway, thats me for today.

I walked over to safeway this morning to buy some eggs to make my sister Katie a cake because today is her birthday and Kendel thought we should surprise her with a cake we (read: I) baked. So I go to put the cooking oil in and right after I pour it into the bowl on top of all the other ingredients I realize it is rancid. Yeah, it smells like fumes from melting plastic or something, not that I have smelled fumes from burning plastic but I am just imagining. Anyway, that was awesome.

So after realizing that I cannot get the oil back out of the bowl (I DID try believe it or not) I use my phone to look up rancid oil on the good old Internet. What I find is that though it will have a foul taste it’s not bad for you so I pull out the mixer and begin mixing. Yeah it might be mean of me to go ahead and make this cake even though it might taste funny but the way I see it is I’m not eating any of it and after my sister eats one piece and realizes it tastes a bit off she will throw the rest away and the world will be a better place because who really needs to eat cake anyway. It’s the thought that counts today and I think I am just doing her a favor by not making her one of my amazingly delicious straight from the box cakes.

As I was walking over to Safeway I had all this anxiety and I am not sure why. Maybe it’s because I was up and at ‘em so early and sometimes my mind isn’t so on point and I was worried I was going to mess something up (which turned out to be true thanks to racid oil) or forget about something I was supposed to do. It might also be because Kendel has to work at noon and we are trying to make this cake and take it to Katie and have enough time to visit before we have to jet off to Fred Meyer.

Truth is I really don’t love birthdays. I like other people’s a lot more than my own but still I don’t like them. I just feel like there is so much pressure to remember and do something nice. But do you do something really nice that shows that person what they actually mean to you or do you do something that is just nice enough in relation to what they did for you on your birthday, or do you do something that is just nice enough to let them know you remembered but doesn’t make you look like some sentimental freak. I mean, what is the right thing? Sometimes I want to do something awesome for someone but then I just get all this anxiety that they will think I only did something like that because I want them to do the same for me when my day rolls around. I worry about the dumbest things and I know this.

Also, why should we have to wait for something like a birthday to let someone know we think of them and love them? Why is the birthday the one day everyone will go a tiny bit out of their way to see someone or write a little nicety in a card for them? I really don’t want to go on and on about birthdays but If I keep going here that is what is going to happen. So while I do not like birthdays I do love any day where there is a reason for me to bake or make something because I love baking and making. But again, why should I wait for a special day to give myself permission to bake.

I could have baked this cake with the rancid oil any day and just thrown it outside at my fence, watching it fall into a lumpy pile on the weeds below. Then when I hosed it off I could have thought about what fun I had baking and how the smell of a baking cake is almost as good as eating it, then I would have really wanted some cake so I would have gone back to the store, bought good oil and made another cake just because thats the sort of thing I do.

It’s late Saturday night and I am super tired but just wanted to write a little bit. I tried writing something earlier today but it was all over the place and really unimportant so I just gave up. I go through these phases where I am just super embarrassed of where I am and what I am or am not doing in my life.

I generally have no problem pouring all the stuff in my head out for the world to see here but then I go through times like right now where I just can’t do it. I don’t want to be judged by other people because I am already judging myself and I just can’t handle much more than that.

I pretty much am unhappy with just about everything I do in a single day, minus all the activities I do with Ellie. I never consider time spent with Ellie to be time wasted, but still, all the rest of my time I feel like I am just wasting. I should and could be doing lots of things but I just don’t because of all these dumb little road blocks I set up for myself. Even when I do decide to do something I am never happy with the result and about mid way through the activity I will decide that something else is more important and I am just wasting my time yet again.

I’m trying to overcome a lot of the crap in my head that keeps me from moving on and being happy right now but I’m not doing that great of a job and I’m just embarrassed that I am who I am right now. It really sucks to be that unhappy with yourself because you just live inside your own head all day, everyday, and there is no escaping it. Yeah sometimes I can get out of my head for a few hours but I always have to come back to it sooner or later.

Last week went so well for me, I was working out, eating better, actually getting some work done without hating myself for not doing more, but then I ended up getting sick and one day of not working out turned into a whole week and now I just feel like shit again and that week of good feelings feels like a dream. I hate this cycle I am living in right now but as a cycle does, it just keeps repeating.

I know all I need to change my life is inside me, maybe I’m just a really sick person for thinking I have all the power in this but I feel that I really do. I have never felt that there was some higher thing above me which I was powerless to so I just truly feel that I am the only one who can decide to make it all better or different. I know some people think I need medication and who I am to say that I don’t but I just feel in my heart that I don’t. I tried some medication and it made me feel so wrong that I had to quit it and was too afraid to try something else.

I feel like I am having a hard time right now because I have a lot of emotions and thoughts going through me. I don’t want all that to go away just so I can be some sort of thing that closely resembles happy, I want to deal with all these thoughts and feelings and then just know that when I feel better it is because I have dealt with things and not covered them up with anything.

I feel like so many things just came to the surface so suddenly and I’m just in a place right now where I’m not very stable, I get knocked down real easy and it sucks really bad but I feel like it’s just something I have to go through and deal with. I’m just trying to find out who Laycie is and how Laycie wants to deal with things and right now it’s all a bit confusing.

I just feel like I don’t know how to be okay with everything I have done in my life up to this point. I feel all these crazy emotions and I think I am trying too hard to figure out why everything happened when I should be just focusing on looking ahead. I don’t really need to know WHY the earth appeared out of nowhere and life began to flourish, I just need to accept that somehow it happened and that it is all here for me to appreciate and enjoy. Knowing why it happened really wouldn’t make it any more or less beautiful, it would be just the same.

Last night I took a bath (very RARE occasion for me) and the whole time I was sitting there I was taking pictures. Yes I could have dropped my camera into the water, but what fun is doing anything if there is no risk? Anyways, I almost took 100 pictures and I narrowed it down to 8, which I have just uploaded to Flickr. I was trying to be creative and and arty but for some reason I just feel like an asshole now, weird how that happens.

I had the most bizarre dream last night, totally peculiar. The emotional part of the dream was from my life right now but all the people in it were my friends from high school. It weirded me out, but the message was clear and I’m going to take it as my brain trying to tell me something… quit worrying so much about what everyone thinks of you.

I was sick on Saturday as I wrote below and I don’t know any pretty way to put it but I still have the shits and basically any physical activity just makes me want to run for the toilet. Yes it’s an excuse but hey, I’m using it because I was really truly committed to getting back to the gym and this is just another bump in the road.

Speaking of, I have a nail in my front tire. Yep, when I drive slowly down my street I can hear it grinding on the pavement. Just when I think that all that can go wrong has gone wrong with that car I get a damn nail in my tire. awesomeness.

I sold a bunch of stuff on craigslist, I freaking love that site. I listed a few things at 10:30pm night before last and everything was gone by 6pm last night. I love the internets.

Marlee bought this necklace for me on Saturday; the pendant is the lock key from an old typewriter. I am both inspired and intrigued by it.

I looked at some vintage typewriters on craigslist, if I bought one I don’t know that I could take the keys off and make jewelry from it. I mean maybe if the whole thing was messed up and would never type again but even then I am not sure I could. I would just think about all the things that had been typed out on it, the stories that had been told and maybe even the stories that were waiting to be told. I don’t think I could be the one to decide the fateful end to a typewriter’s life.

It’s kind of like when I eat meat, I eat it, it’s good but I am not sure I could go kill a chicken or cow myself and then eat it. I can wear this necklace that is made from a now dead typewriter but I don’t think I could kill one myself. I mean, how hard would it be popping that first key off and which one would it even be, the L because my name is Laycie, the K because I am a killer? These are all things I would be thinking.

It wasn’t until I looked at the pictures of the old typewriters that I even thought about this. When I saw the necklace and the lady told me what it was made from I just thought it was such a unique and creative idea, but then I saw those little typewriters with all their keys and oddly, I got sad.

Maybe the typewriter my necklace came was ripped from never felt the fingers of a passionate writer against its keys, though I really hope it did. I think I would feel better about its demise if I knew for sure that it HAD felt the fast moving fingers of a person pouring their heart out. I think the life goal of a typewriter, if it could have one, would be to seek out a person who is going to push all their keys, who is going to use them to make a story come to life, who is going to hover over them at times with a flood of thoughts and at other times completely speechless.

Once the story is over and the last word has been typed, will someone return to write again or will they use all the money from their book deal to buy a laptop leaving the poor heavy typewriter in the corner to collect dust? When the dust becomes so thick cleaning it seems impossible will they leave the old typewriter on the street as the fall leaves blow by on a cloudy day? Will someone spot this typewriter from the corner of their eye as it peaks out from under a pile of decaying foliage? Will it then be dismantled into pieces, one of which happens to end up in the hands of a young lady whose hobby is passionately over-thinking everything?

Am I the only one who thinks about the lives previously lived by inanimate objects? I doubt it.

The fourth of July holiday was hard because it was the first big family event I have missed out on since Michael and I broke up. I’m just so jealous and down on myself right now that I could have in no way dealt with being around Michael, his family and our friends in any sort of casual way without wanting to drown myself in the river as soon as the sun went down. I hate myself so much that I am convinced everyone else does too.

I was talking to one of my dear friends today (Hi Summer) and I realized a lot of things, some of which are so obvious but I just didn’t see or think about. I really need to change how I have been treating some of my friends. I can’t keep isolating myself like this. I have been pretending a lot of things and people don’t exist just because I don’t want to put in the work. The truth is you are lucky to have people you call friends and you should treat those people like glass and handle them with care.

I think life is worth fighting for but so are your friendships and the people you love. You have to be willing to climb through the mud sometimes to let people know you love them and I have been doing a pretty bad job of being any sort of friend to anyone for the past year and a half.

I also feel like I have been really respectful to Michael here on my blog since we broke up but last week I think I crossed the line from respectful to bitch. This blog is about me and my feelings and I shouldn’t have wrote anything about seeing him but I’m just so jealous that I lashed out.

I really need to get outside of my own head and think twice before I publish a spur of the moment blurb onto my blog. Everything you do and say in life affects someone else and/or their opinion of you as a person and I don’t want to be the kind of person that does things with no regard for other people’s feelings.

I’m not a bitch, I’m just going to turn into one if I don’t start being more aware of how I am sabotaging my own life right now.