Stringing Words Along

My fortune cookie

was fortune-less.

I’m going to try hard not to take that as an omen at the start of my field season. 

When my field stations are filled with stinging insects I don’t know the extent of my allergy to.

O.O

I found myself on an odd tangent of thought this morning.

I’d had a rough day yesterday, so today I deliberately picked out jewelry. This isn’t uncommon, I wear jewelry for a variety of reasons, from looking pretty to promote feelings of peace, safety, or security in myself. It’s why I can be finicky about what I wear on different days, because different pieces make me think different things… Like I wear my fox earrings when I feel playful or my turtle bone earrings when I want to feel more steady, or my pentacle necklace when I need more balance.

But there’s a few pieces that I find myself wanting to wear… But I don’t.

Today I felt… Well, I felt vulnerable, so I went for the earrings that I used to wear when I felt that way, when I wanted a small boost of security. They’re a pair of blue hearts, marked to keep away the evil eye. Small talisman to let the negative and darkness creep by me.

I haven’t worn them in quite a while and today, when I found myself looking at them (they’re still some of my favorites, so they placed up on the wall with the others)… I couldn’t bring myself to put them on.  They’d make me feel better, I still feel that way, so I was left wondering why I put on my Great Blue Herons instead.

The only conclusion I could come to is that I don’t like wearing jewelry given to me by someone who isn’t in my life anymore. I found myself looking at other pieces of jewelry that fall into this category… And it doesn’t matter if they were a friend or an ex… I don’t wear the jewelry when we don’t talk on a regular basis. When I feel like a connection has been broken, I don’t wear the talismans of those connections.

It sounds superstitious I suppose, like I’m afraid the break will affect me in a negative manner if I wear the piece, but I’m not sure that that’s how I feel about it.

I still love the jewelry, I still feel like it would serve the purpose I need/want it to… But I guess the best way to put it is that it wouldn’t be as strong a reminder as I want it to be. Part of the charm of these pieces is that they remind me that I’m not alone when I feel vulnerable. That I have someone there to talk to if I need them.

You’d think I’d put them in a drawer somewhere if they were such sad reminders of times gone by, but I keep them with my favorites because they are. They still make me smile when I see them hanging up. I just don’t wear them anymore, it feels like I’d be setting myself up to look for support that isn’t there.

Anyways… Am I the only one who thinks that way?

Tips for improving morale in grad school:

• Go camping. Preferably far away from any place where people can or will make demands of you and your time. Bonus if your cell phone doesn’t get reception.
• Camp when the weather is cool enough in the evenings that you’ll want to huddle together around the campfire with friends, but not so cold that you have to worry about losing toes or fingers.
• Marvel when your friend figures out how to make macaroni and cheese to go along with your hotdogs and rejoice when she makes hobo dinners the next day.
• Read to one another while sitting around the campfire waiting for lunch or dinner. Bonus points if it’s something poignant to remind you of the joy of the world around you, encouraging you to embrace the nature you’re submerged in.
• Hike, get away from pavement and lights. Listen to the birds and the wind in the trees.
• Go caving, enjoy the cool, quiet, grounding force of the earth around you. Realize that the elements are in balance around you - seek out the water, earth, wind, and fire.
• Bonus points if you come face to face with a small, adorable bat roosting away from the colony in an unexpected part of the cave.
• Extra bonus points if you can take a lantern led hike into the cave, finding your way inside and out by lantern light (this is where I should mention Mammath Caves is an amazing place).

And when you come back, have friends kidnap you, feed you excellent french food and attend a live showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Not a bad spring break all around. I feel more energized, though that may be due to the new gym regimen (the 6-7 hour cave hikes with the 700 stairs may have me a bit intimidated, lol).

So, haven’t posted in forever.

Grad school ate me.

It’s still eating me.

But not as much as living here is eating me.

Mostly because the people here are fucking insane.

I want to go back to a town where, when I hear something like a gunshot, means that the neighbors are being stupid and shooting at the deer/doves in their yard.

Not that I should worry about whether or not the store my best friend is working at is being held up by the crazy crackheads who were breaking into people’s cars and pretending to drive them.

…And I know that I’m far too paranoid for my own good, but this is also the same brain who has in the past randomly kept me up freaking out about one day going blind.

I need more people to remind me how to be sane.

There’s too much bad-kind-of-crazy out there already.