Think Geek

See what I did there? x3 Yes, this post will mention thinkgeek, the website, but also I'm referring to the fact that I'm trying to, you know, think...geek, as in reconnect with the geeky side of myself.

In high school, I was Geek. I was totally okay with my obsessiveness and nerdiness. I wore White Letters on Black T-shirts, along with shirts with Inuyasha or Zelda or Yoda or all these other things on them. T-shirts and boy pants. My backpack was decorated with patches and had so many pop-culture keychains on it that I would walk down the hallway and friends on the other end would know it was me approaching. I drew anime characters and comics during class, was very verbal about how many days remained until the release of the next Harry Potter book, I wore the One Ring around my neck and I doodled on my hands with jelly roll pens long after it was cool. I dressed up like Terra from Teen Titans one year for Halloween. I loved my teachers and always strove for the distinction as "teacher's pet." I found myself doing math problems for fun during the summer to keep myself from going crazy.

When I left high school and went to college, I found myself in a sea of remarkably ungeeky people. At least, not geeky the way my friends and I were geeky in high school. I felt out of place and I was terrified of being labelled as "the weird nerdy one" that no one would want to talk to. I abandoned the vast majority of my incredibly geeky shirts, to the point that I cut them up with the intent to make a quilt out of them, and replaced them with girlier clothes. I just about completely ceased drawing anime during classes, because stadium seating meant more people could watch over my shoulder (I've always been a sit-up-front kind of teacher's pet), and I thought that college was supposed to be hard and thus I should not be able to draw during class and still do well. (I always ended up drawing in the margins of my notebooks anyways, or surfing the internet when I switched to online notes).

I was a LOT happier in high school than I was in college. Apart from factors like "I felt like I was doing something worthwhile with my education" and "my friends in general were not dicks," I think a large portion of it was also that I felt comfortable being geek! I didn't feel any pressure to impress ANYONE. I was, for the most part, cool with myself and my White Text on Black Tshirts, my clacky keychains and my One Ring, my baggy boy pants and my flip-flops, even in winter. I had insecurities, sure, but what teenager, or person really, doesn't? The fact of the matter is, at that point in my life, I was far more secure in myself and my place in the world than I ended up being four years later.

I mean, there are some things now that I still just don't like that I did then. White text on black tshirts? Not so much, but if I can start accumulating more colorful shirts like this one from thinkgeek, then I would be very happy! The sound of clacky keychains? Nope. However, I do have an extensive collection of nerdtastic buttons that are just BEGGING to be displayed on a purse or something.

I really just want to feel okay with being geeky again. I want my brain to work the way it did in high school. And one day, I'm going to replace that incredibly tarnished the-gold-plating-is-falling-off One Ring with a solid gold one. :3

My memory

So, you know how everyone has those little voices in their heads (I mean, it's not just me, right?) The voice of a good idea. The voice of self-doubt. The voice of do-the-right-thing. The voice of what-do-I-want-to-eat-tonight? Those voices.

I have a voice that doesn't like to speak up when she really damn well should.

It's my memory.

I don't know if it's genetics or my depression or what, but my memory *hates* me right now. It has for a few years. I've always been one to have things slip my mind, but it's been unbelievably bad, lately.

Yesterday, I'd realized that I'd completely forgotten that Waking Sleeping Beauty, an amazing-sounding documentary on the Disney Renaissance from 1989-99, was going to be in Phoenix. And I'd missed it by a day.

Then, today, I realized, to my extreme horror and upset, that it was Monday the 14th... and that Friday the 11th, at 7pm, I was supposed to be standing poolside at Fort Lowell park, cheering on my favorite cousins at their synchronized swimming water show. And it wasn't just a water show - it was the last water show my oldest cousin Ellen was going to be in, ever.

I love my cousins. These ones, for some reason, are really near and dear to my heart, probably because they've always looked up to me and accepted me, and I've always felt comfortable around them, more so than many of my other cousins. I've always been very proud of them. And I always loved watching them swim. Their acts are always amazing, and they consistently go to nationals.

And here's where it's just really bothering me -- I was so excited to go. I really wanted to go. I kept reminding my mom that I couldn't do anything on Friday because I had to go to the watershow. I told Donald I'd take him with me so he could hang out with my cousin Robert, who's about his age. I told Ellen I would be there and that I was so excited. I told Sean, my older brother, that he should go. On Thursday night, even, I'd told my mom that I would be going.

Then Friday came and went.

What the hell happened??

I don't really even remember what I did on Friday... I mean my mom has been really sick the past four days, and I know she stayed home sick on Friday (first pnemonia, and then a massive allergic reaction to the antibiotics they put her on). I took Donald to a movie, and I think we stopped at the library? But at 7pm, I wasn't doing anything. Maybe I was drawing. Maybe I was writing. Maybe I was hanging out with Donald or painting or something. But the point was, I was not at the water show.

I feel terrible. I've actually been crying off and on since I remembered earlier today, about 60 hours too late. I feel like I let my cousins down, and I'm afraid they'll never forgive me. I let myself down, because I really really had wanted to see Ellen swim one last time. I also didn't get to go to the water show last year because I had to work, so I wanted to make up for it by going this year. I feel rotten. I feel like a loser failure dirtbag. I wrote on Ellen's wall to tell her I'm sorry, but either she hasn't read it or she doesn't want to respond. I'd text her, but she changed phone numbers. I'd call her, but I'd break down into tears almost immediately. I just feel awful, and I can't get over it. I know it's too late to do anything about it, but I am just hating myself, and my stupid silent memory, for forgetting.

I've made efforts over the years to figure out a way to help me remember things. Probably my most successful was the calendar on my old phone. If you made a calendar appointment, you could set a reminder time, and it would ring at that time and every five minutes after that, to be really fricken sure you notice it. My new phone doesn't have that feature. It makes one small noise and is forever silent. I've tried dead-tree planners and notebooks to write down homework assignments in, I've had dead-tree calendars where I can write down things. I would even write notes to myself with dry erase on the mirror so I can't even look at my face without seeing it -- and you know what? I would forget to check all these things. Seriously.

But something has to change. I don't want to let anyone down like that again. I don't want to be like my father, who was always forgetting shit and letting me down. But I don't know what to do. And right now, all I want to do is curl up in bed and cry.

Yeah, this is my life.