Discoveries

I have made several discoveries lately:

1. People think the Church is against feeling good about yourself...you must always feel bad and guilty. But! I had an epiphany. When people feel good about themselves, and they say it, immediately people react with pointing out bad things about that person. For example: A girl says "You know what? I'm done feeling self conscious. I am a strong, pretty girl". People immediately jump to: "Ugh, who does she think she is, showing off her confidence? She isn't very pretty. Just look at the following flaws......" etc. So, the Church does want you to feel good about yourself, but it wants you to be humble about it, so as to not lead other people into sin, because people are stupid and petty and jealous.









2. God has not brought me my husband yet because I am terrified of children and babies. When I see a baby, and every girl around me goes "AAAWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!" my eyes go wide, very shifty, and this is what comes out of me: "Ummm....yeaahhh...look how...cute....." while my mind is like: "omg, a baby. How terrifying. They have self-destruct buttons on the tops of their heads, which is the most accessible place on a baby! And they all look the same." Thus, I feel like a horrible monster, because, who the hell doesn't like kids? Seriously? I am a woman, isn't this supposed to be in like, my genes or something? Don't get me wrong, I want kids someday...no more than 2 or 3, but that's different, because my children will be little machines of awesome that every person on the face of the earth will adore, and people will say, "you're so awesome, just like your mom".
(Sidenote: Please don't fall into sin and naturally start pointing out how not-awesome I am).



















3. Apple cider is better than regular tea.














4. Getting an honor's degree blows. Big time. If it had a face, I would punch it. Twice. At least.

Exposing HSP

I thought I would take a moment, or several, to shed some light on an issue that is important to me. It's not a moral issue. Rather, it's a mental, or emotional one, called HSP, or "Hypersensitive Personality".

I always thought it was just a habit, not an inherited "thing". Experts say it is NOT a disorder, but honestly, it feels like one to me.

I never put any psychological thought into it until this past week, in which I had a lot of emotional difficulties with my professor and my thesis proposal presentation. I talked to many people about it, friends, colleagues, and virtually every one of them said the same thing: "Don't take things so personally". It was at that point that it hit me: Something is wrong with me.

That statement really bothered me, because it implies that I choose to react in an emotional way. It implies that "normal" people can switch off their emotions. Well, unfortunately for me, I can't do this. Believe me, if I could wake up one morning and stop being hypersensitive, I would.

This evening, I spent over an hour reading on HSP, and quite appropriately enough, the articles I read made me cry. I never knew there was writing about this, and it made me feel like I was normal, like I wasn't alone. If you don't have HSP, and can't relate to it, I envy you. Truly. The articles say being hypersensitive is a gift and blessing. I wish I saw it that way, because to me, it is incredibly oppressive. Crying over everything makes me feel stupid, because it isn't logical. When I left my thesis presentation, as I was fighting back tears, this was the mantra going through my head: Don't cry, it's stupid. Stop taking things so personally all the time. This is ridiculous. So people constantly telling me to stop taking things personally is not going to enlighten me, or fix my issue, because it can't be fixed. It's just the way I am.

The following 2 quotes describe me perfectly, and explain this problem better than I can:

"The trait of Highly Sensitivity causes them to process and reflect upon incoming information very deeply. It is not that they are "afraid," but that it is in their nature to process incoming information so deeply. Highly Sensitive People may even sometimes need until the next day to have had enough time to process the information fully, reflect upon it, and formulate their response. "

"Pearl S. Buck, (1892-1973), recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938, said the following about Highly Sensitive People:

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:

A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.


To him... a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create - - - so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating." -Pearl S. Buck"

(2 quotes taken from http://healing.about.com/od/empathic/a/HSP_hallowes.htm)

So that's basically HSP in a nutshell. I am perfectly aware that it is very annoying to be around people with HSP, because it also means they are highstrung and defensive all the time. But unfortunately, I don't yet know how to fix it. I'm not even sure it can be fixed. But I do know that I do not choose to be this way.

Lack of Owning

I stood before my professors and peers, smiling as the sun shone through the two windows.

I presented my powerpoint. Calm. Positive. Confident.

I made them laugh. It relaxed me.

*Sigh* This won't be so bad afterall...going well... I thought to myself.

My presentation ended. The floor was open for discussion.

My supervisor's words of comfort from yesterday rang in my ears: Don't worry. It's not going to be a firing squad.

The first prof spoke.

System Failure

In order to further cope with yesterday's fiasco with my professor freaking out at me over his email, I decided to recount the event, as I remember.

We were in class, doing small groups. There were 6 of us, plus the prof.

I got up to put my chair back.

Prof: Have you gone up to see your supervisor yet?

Me: No, I went to go see her on Monday, as soon as you sent the email, but no one was there.

Prof: (getting snarky) Well it is REALLY imperative that you go see her as soon as possible.

Me: (being very, very calm) Yeah I'm going to try again today. I guess I was just a bit confused and frustrated, because when I sent you my proposal, you emailed us the following Monday saying you would distribute them to everyone in the department, so that's why I didn't give it to her.

And then this happened:















He went totally apeshit. Hence why I drew him as a flaming ape...and the colour of shit. My friends behind me at the table were completely stunned. I just stood there, thinking, "what....the....f**k???" Even as I write this, I am laughing about it.

Tomorrow, I am going to own my presentation.

Happy Dude and Angry Cloud

This is what I drew on my paper in German class when I successfully understood how to tell time.
















But earlier, this is what I looked like:























Ok, so it was probably more like this:






















But with a large portion of the anger in the cloud.
I drew myself as a flower because I am delicate, fragile....sensitive (my friend Cat would probably laugh and say "No, the cloud is way more accurate").

Today was not one of my more proud moments, per se. I cried in front of a friend, who is more of an aquaintance because I only see him in class. I mean, we get along, and we have the same stresses because he's in the same department, and going through the same school crap I am, but still.

It wasn't my fault, honest. He caught me at a VERY bad time. I went up to the department to vent at my supervisor about how much I hate my prof (who is also the department head, and whose class I just came from), and how about I want to quit my Honor's because of how much of a jerk he is to me, and she wasn't there. Seriously, my prof bitches at me for not meeting with her, and she is NEVER there when I go see her. Last week, he cut me down in class, horribly embarassing me. Today, he FREAKED at me because I calmly expressed my frustration that he said in an email he would take care of distributing my proposal to the department and he didnt do it, therefore it was not my responsibilty to do it, since he said he would do it. He freaked out saying his email was down for 2 weeks. How was I supposed to know that? He clearly emailed me saying he would do it, so....obviously it was working...? Excuse me for being confused.











Anyways, at that point I was done. We are supposed to present our thesis topics on Friday, and he conveniently left me off the email list saying what room we are presenting in (one of the other students noticed and sent it to me). There are only 7 of us. How could he forget to include me? I don't understand why he is being such a dick to me, considering he is the one who humiliated me last week. I've never experienced this before. I have never directly had conflict like this with a prof before. So after class, I just broke. I went to go talk to my supervisor, she wasn't there. So I was heading back to the office where I work, ran into the above mentioned friend/aquaintance, and I lost it.

Ugh. *shakes head* I absolutely HATE crying in front of people. Not just people who aren't close to me. Anyone. My mom and I are super close, but when I came home, I sheltered myself in my room for an hour so she wouldn't see me upset. I cried in front of a boyfriend once. He thought it was romantic and endearing. I wanted to punch myself in the face, lol.

Anyways, nothing is resolved, but I'll recover with plant food. (which for me, means lots of sugar, soup with cheese....actually, anything with cheese....and cider.)

Now I want cider....

UPDATE!

I am drinking cider.

Feelings

This morning:




















This afternoon:





















Now:

Exploiting My Friends-Comic Style

Low Battery

I can't draw people or stick figures very well, so I will draw whatever object I can relate to most.
Today it is a battery with no energy.

(the other day, it was fire)











(click on the image to see it bigger)

PS: If you're wondering, the computer monitor is on top of a dictionary, on top of an atlas.

Results of proposal ownership pending...

Update!


























(10 minutes later):
























8:46pm:

Snow and Fire

For some bizarre reason....and I've been feeling this for at least a week now...I feel as though if I were to look out the window right now, there will be snow. Everywhere. Like, crazy snow storm. This makes no sense for 2 reasons:

1. Halifax is a retarded sea-port city that gets almost NO snow in the winter.

2. It is not winter. (I should probably either apologise to any Albertans reading this, or say "LOLZ!!")

For the past week, at least, everytime I wake up I'm all like "It feels like Christmas", and then my mom gets mad like "GGGAAAHHH NOOOOOO I HAVEN'T STARTED SHOPPING YET!!!! AAARGGGHHH!"

What's the deal, brain? Why do you think it is Christmas? It feels like I should be baking Christmas desserts. But that's probably just my natural born woman instinct to be in the kitchen.

Anyways, my academic life is basically a disaster. It is an unending cycle of me not being able to accomplish tasks or get organised. Also, I wanted to punch my professor in the face on Wednesday and make him a trophy for being the biggest tool of the semester. But I decided that since I have 2 classes with him, he is controlling 50% of my grades this semester, plus he has substantial control over my thesis being acceptable or not, so it would probably be in my best interest to not punch him in the face.

Rather, I decided on leaving as quickly as possible. This did not happen. My prof stops his conversation with a student to rush over and block me from leaving class to apologise for being a big retarded tool (this may or may not be paraphrased). Given that my one and only thought was to punch him in the face (my natural human self-defense reaction to my intelligence and ego being threatened), I decided to back away from him, out of punching range. Clearly he does not understand body language, so he moves closer. I moved away again, into a chair. He moves even closer. Now I have no more room to back up, because I am against a chair and table. Trapped. No way out. He tried explaining himself to me. Unfortunately he is incredibly incoherent, and is the worst prof I have ever had for trying to explain himself. I just wanted to leave, so I just kept telling him I understood what he meant.
Finally, before this happened:


















I got away.

Now I'm pretty much over it.