I am turquoise and I want to marry the color black right now
I have a seasonal melancholy. It happens sometimes this time of the year. I don't want to see anybody or talk to anybody. I don't want to go to any parties. I just want to be alone with my books and my colors and my car and the city. All I want to do is write write write and cry cry cry and no, not really paint, not right now, but drive drive drive and feel feel feel and think and listen to The Smiths, except I don't have any of their albums. I am melancholy but it doesn't feel bad. It actually feels good. It feels good to just give into it and scowl and feel gloomy even though nothing is really wrong. It might be different if things were wrong. But things are pretty good, and they were then too. I liked my work, and I liked my roommates and the apartment I lived in and the city I lived in, and there was a cute little boy in my bed. But I was feeling melancholy and it was the good kind of melancholy. The kind that makes you feel alive. And that's how I feel today, very much alive.
When I look at myself energetically right now, I see myself trying to rip open my chest so that my heart can come out. But there are dark, hard, inaccessible places around my heart which are ruled by fear, and I often can't distinguish fact from fear, and fear from fiction. I also see myself wanting to take a sharp object to my stomach and disembowel it and carve out all the pain from my past that has collected there so that I can let the love in that is hovering right outside my stomach, trying to get in. But that pain from the past is still there, taking up space, and it's affecting my every move, and it's making my moves inauthentic, and it keeps pouring buckets of tar all over the pink shimmering hearts and rainbow glitter that are being thrown my way these days.
Today has always been awesome. I woke up and wrote my morning pages in bed. And then I read ALL the morning pages I have written so far, from October 2 to now. And boy, am I neurotic and anxious. But the pages were also full of optimism and hope. I love how I am able to talk myself out of the darkness when it comes. Then I stayed in bed some more and read a little bit of Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting . And there were these voices in my head that said things like "Get up. Get something to eat. You're hungry. Call Inge. Call Julia. It's her birthday. Go to yoga. Go find that little stuffed unicorn for your Halloween costume." Those voices were making me feel uncomfortable and anxious. So finally I said "No, I'm enjoying THIS right now, so I'm going to keep doing THIS for a while." And I closed my eyes and the most amazing feeling of relief and bliss washed over me, and then I continued reading my book. And then I went and got a bagel, and then I went to the Borders on 3rd Street and Townsend and had an iced mocha and wrote some taxi stories, and then I read another book by Sabrina Ward Harrison because that's what I craved more than anything else today, and I fell in love all over again with her brilliant vulnerability, and then I got on the freeway to go to Target but I took the Pacifica exit instead and I drove along the coast until I ran out of gas, and I wrote this in my head while driving.
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.: posted by Vera 
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Things took the wrong turn at a party once
I noticed that in the post I referenced about the February Blues, I very cryptically referred to something "bad" happening at a party:
This weekend [the February Blues] hit me with full force after I took the wrong turn at a party on Friday night. Please excuse the crypticism but I'd rather not elaborate here. If you're dying to know, email me, but only if you're really dying. [February 16, 2004]
One of the people that were dying to know was Amy. She emailed me and I emailed her back and told her the whole story of what happened. Back then I would never have posted this on my blog because I was afraid to lose my job if my employer found out I had ever so much as tried anything that could be considered a drug. But now I feel protected by time--this was almost three years ago--and I also just don't worry about these kinds of things anymore.
So here is what I wrote in my email to Amy, dated February 17, 2004:
So here is the deal. I went to my friend M's birthday party on Friday. It was at her new boyfriend's house, whom I hadn't met yet. I thought he was really cool, and so were his roommates. I met some new people that night and also hung out with people I had known for a year or more. I had a couple of beers, and all was great.
Then somebody started passing out pot brownies. I don't care much for pot but I have had some nice body high experiences with brownies (as opposed to smoking it), so I ate a tiny bite. It was about a square inch big. What I didn't know was that these brownies were super super strong. Oh. My. God. I went through a totally hellish trip. It was the second worst trip I have ever had on anything. I kept having all these horrible thoughts, and I couldn't talk myself out of them, no matter how hard I tried. As soon as I refuted one horrible thought in my head, I had another horrible thought which refuted whatever I had just used to refute the previous horrible thought. A friend once told me that if during a trip you feel like you are losing your mind, just let it happen. Give into it because resisting it is the worst you can do. So this is what happened when I did that:
"It's fine. I'm losing my mind. That's okay. Go ahead and take it..."
"But what if something terrible happens? What if I hurt myself or somebody else in this state? What if I lose my friend M because I lost my mind at her birthday party?"
"Don't worry, you're not losing your mind. Everything is fine. It's just a drug."
"Is it? Is it just a drug? Or was the drug just the trigger to reveal how completely nuts I am? What if there is no turning back? What if all the happiness I have felt recently was just a façade, a figment of my imagination? What if this is the only true reality, and now that I have seen it once I can never go back to that happy illusion I had before?"
As you can see, these were very constructive trains of thought. For probably about two hours I stayed frozen against the kitchen sink, refilling a cup of water every few minutes. I was completely freaking out. Sometimes people talked to me and I tried to talk to them, but I could hardly understand anything they were saying and mostly just smiled at them weakly because I didn't know what else to do. At about 1 or so, people started leaving. M came into the kitchen and started cleaning up. I had no idea what to do. There was nothing I could do. I kept asking her "Should I leave the kitchen? Should I go home?" I was too fucked up to even ask her for help. This also wasn't even her apartment so I couldn't really crash there anyway. I finally made my way into the hallway. Then I made my way onto the street and towards my car. I knew I couldn't drive so I just sat in my car for a while. I saw a cop drive by and that once again made me completely freak out. I kept walking towards the nearest street corner to look for a cab, but I was so scared to be arrested for being under the influence in public, that I quickly retreated back to my car each time. Finally I called a cab company and told them that I was hiding inside a yellow bug near Post and Divisadero. As soon as I was inside the cab, I started feeling better. I knew that nothing bad could really happen now--I couldn't get arrested anymore, the only person I could embarrass myself in front of now was a total stranger, and all I had to do now was sleep off the rest of this stupid fucking drug.
Unfortunately, when I woke up the next morning, I was still high. I wasn't having a bad trip anymore, of course, but I was completely out of it, dizzy, uncoordinated, giggly, whatever. My friend Aaron drove me to my car to pick it up around 1, and I honestly am not sure if I was even okay to drive by then.
You'd think that it was over by then, but the entire rest of the weekend was so depressing because I kept continuing those thought processes I had started Friday night, albeit in a much milder and less scary manner, but still: Some of these thoughts were very unpleasant. I just started questioning everything. I started questioning my reasons for having been so happy recently. Terrible! Like: Does my career really make me as happy as I think it does? Am I as close to people as I think I am? Am I as confident as I thought I was? Is San Francisco really the perfect place for me? I was just unable to see anything in a positive light anymore. This happens to me every February, by the way. I always get really gloomy and negative in February.
So don't worry, it's just a temporary molecular imbalance! I'll be just fine. Nothing bad has actually happened. I just freaked out A LOT for a couple of hours and then I freaked out a little bit for a couple of more days, but I'm feeling a lot better today.
Anyway, thanks for your concern, and I hope I didn't bore you with all of my baggage.
Thanks again for caring, Amy. If you hadn't cared, I never would have had a record of what exactly went down that night.
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.: posted by Vera
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Stacked
I got my boobs late. In 8th grade, I was completely flat. My friend Jenny was very busty, and the boys in our class called her flag ship*. They called me flat ship.
Over the course of 9th grade, my boobs started to grow. By the summer after 9th grade, they were as big as they are now. Which is pretty big. It all happened very fast.
Sometime in the beginning of 9th grade, I was wearing my favorite blue hooded jacket with the black-and-white checkered stripe. My boobs were starting to show but they hadn't fully blown up yet. I was wearing the jacket unzipped. My friend Tobi, a boy whose opinion I always valued very highly, said to me "Jesus, Vera, zip up your jacket. I can see your tits sticking out." I zipped up my jacket and never unzipped it again. Since then I have not once worn a jacket unzipped or unbuttoned. Tobi's words were powerful.
In 11th grade, like in many other years, I suffered from the February Blues. That year I focused all the blue energies on my boobs. My boobs were decidedly TOO BIG. I stood in front of the mirror naked and said to my mom "My boobs are FAT." She said "They are not FAT." I said "Yes, they are. They are HUGE." My mom said "You have pretty good size boobs, but they are not HUGE." I said "Are too." My mom said "Stop staring at yourself in the mirror if it makes you upset." I said "I'm just trying to embrace them, to make friends with them. But I hate them. They are FAT."
I told my mom that I wanted to get a breast reduction because my boobs were too big. She told me about this neighbor lady who had gotten a breast reduction a couple of years earlier. I went to go talk to the neighbor lady about it. She showed me her scars. She said "I got a breast reduction because my back was hurting from the weight. Does your back hurt?" I said no. I just didn't like the way my boobs looked. I just wanted them to be smaller.
My mom took me to a doctor to talk about a possible breast reduction. The nurse talked to me first. She told me how boobs are like a cow's udder. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, just like everything in nature. And she said that mine were a little on the larger side. I wanted to puke. I also wanted to slap her. I did not need to hear about how my boobs were like udders. She also told me that perhaps I should consider waiting to get the breast reduction until I was married. Or at least until I was in a significant relationship. "You never know," she said "your husband will probably like your big boobs. Maybe you should consult him first." I said "Listen lady, I don't like my boobs. I don't care what some person from the future thinks about my boobs." She said "I'm just saying."
The doctor said that he wouldn't operate on me until I was 18. I was 16 and a half. He said to come back in a year and a half if I still wanted a breast reduction.
And that was the end of that. I stopped obsessing about my boobs. I told myself that I would wait until I was 18 to freak out about them. And by the time I was 18, I didn't want to get a reduction anymore. I wasn't happy to be stacked but I had accepted my fate and didn't want to mess with nature anymore.
*Or it might have been flak ship. I was confused about that even then.
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.: posted by Vera
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Peter is here!
Around 4:30pm yesterday I took out the trash and ran into my upstairs neighbor Steffanie in the backyard. We chatted for a little bit and she asked me what my plans were for the weekend. I said "Probably paint. I finished a painting today and started a new one that I want to finish, and I have an idea for a third one." She nodded. Then I walked down 24th Street to run some errands. When I was walking back, a Walgreens bag swinging from my hand, my cell phone rang. I looked at the number and it was a European number. The country code was 44. I knew that it wasn't Germany because Germany is 49. I wasn't going to answer it but then I remembered vaguely that my friend Peter from London had mentioned recently that he was going to be in San Francisco soon. I answered the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi Vera. It's Peter."
"Peter! What's going on!"
"I just got into town."
"Are you at the airport?"
"Yes."
"Do you need a ride?"
"Are you driving a cab?"
"No, but I can pick you up with my regular car."
"No, I'll just take another cab."
"No, let me pick you up."
"But you're not driving a cab."
"So?"
"You'd have to come all the way out here."
"Yeah, well, I'd have to do that even if I was driving a cab."
"But then you'd get paid for it."
"So? Let me come pick you up."
"I'll just take another cab."
"You suck."
"Okay, is this something you really WANT to do?"
"Yes, I really want to."
"Okay, come get me then."
So I picked up Peter. I drove him to his hotel in the Financial District. And suddenly my plans for the weekend were completely different from what I expected. I love when that happens. We went out for cocktails at a bar near my house. It was great because he is one of my favorite people in the world.
And today we had lunch, and then the goal for the day was to take some pictures. We went to Haight Street and Golden Gate Park and another park and took some pictures. Peter just bought a Nikon D80. I have camera envy.
And if I'm lucky, Peter will let me take him to the airport when he leaves tomorrow.
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.: posted by Vera
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Sometimes I'm a little bit famous
So my beloved former co-worker Alex started working at this new company this week. Today I got an IM from him.
[11:51] alex: hey
[11:51] me: hey
[11:52] alex: so the first thing I heard before I sat down on my chair is "I heard you know a great cab driving developer!!"
[11:53] me: hahahaha!!!
[11:53] me: no way
[11:53] alex: yeah way!!
[11:53] me: I get around ;)
[11:53] alex: apparently!!
That's kind of creepy. I kind of like it.
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.: posted by Vera
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Questionable satisfaction
I'm skinnier right now than I have been in a long time, maybe ever. I haven't been dieting at all; I just haven't had much of an appetite for the last few months. There are two reasons for that:
1) Driving a taxi is so much fun that I forget to eat.
2) There have been boys that have filled up my belly with butterflies.
The other day I bought some new jeans. All the other pants in my closet are pretty much size 8 or 10. I tried on size 10. They were way too big. I tried on size 8. Way too big. I tried on size 6. Still too big. I tried on size 4. That one fit and I bought it. Size 4! I never thought I could fit into a size 4, ever.
When my aunt was here she said several times "Promise me you won't get any thinner, or I'll worry about you."
So, I'm pretty skinny right now. The thing is that I find this tremendously satisfying. I love how skinny I am. I love my skinny arms. I love how much my hip bones and ribs stick out. I love that my thighs are smaller than they have ever been. And I love that I haven't even been trying. I love that this just sort of happened.
It alarms me how psyched I am about my serendipitous weight loss. It makes me wonder just how much of the eating-disordered girl I once was is still with me? Am I really as recovered as I think I am?
It also makes me wonder what kind of message I am sending out to other girls. I am bragging on the internet about how skinny I am. This suggests that being skinny is desirable, that being skinny is better. I don't like sending out that message. I want to send out the message that everybody is perfect just the way they are. I was perfect a few months ago when I was heavier, and I am perfect now. That's what I would like for everyone to believe, but sometimes I have a hard time believing it myself.
I do really love my body right now. And I question that love because I fear that it's conditional, under the condition of skinniness. I can accept that love as long as I ensure that that love for my body is still there when I gain that weight back. But I doubt that I will love my body as I much when/if I gain that weight back. And that signals to me that I still have work to do. I am not fully recovered from this world.
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.: posted by Vera
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Sabrina writes about her feelings too
Yesterday I went to some open studios. There I came across this print that combined drawings with handwritten words, and the words started out saying
I am a woman who wants to only wear 123 pounds and somehow thinks that could be the answer.
And that was enough to grab me by the shoulders and suck me in. I met the girl who made that drawing, Sabrina Ward Harrison, and I bought one of her books, Spilling Open. She has three more books out, and they are all a mix of journal and sketchbook. And they are screaming with emotion, insecurity, and self-doubt, but they are also full of self-love, self-awareness, and universal truth. I love it. I'm so inspired and in love.
Sabrina signed the book for me:
Welcome inside Vera. We read to know we are not alone. <3 Sabrina
That was very synchronistic because I have thought lately that when I write my books that are spilling open with my feelings, other people are going to read them to know that they are not alone.
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.: posted by Vera
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Overdue life snippets
- On Monday night I went to Death Guild, a goth and industrial club. This guy I once knew was there and said to me "You made it to a goth club!" It's true. I think I have been a closet goth for a long time. But I don't think I'll ever come out of the closet. My friend Starrie and I noted the other day that I have always been goth in spirit. But I guess in body, I am not. Back when I was really into Nine Inch Nails, I used to think that Trent Reznor would think I'm really lame because I didn't dress in black. I think I had the littlest crush on him.
- On Tuesday, 10/10, was my friend Lura's birthday. She had been traveling with a circus for the last few months. I met up with her and a couple of other people at Axum Cafe. Afterwards we went to our friend Christina's place who and whose husband just bought an apartment on the 13th floor or something with an awesome view. I just sat in her living-room and didn't say much and looked out the window at the city and the freeway, and it felt good to be alive.
- 10/10 was also the one year anniversary of me moving into my studio. Yay!
- I'm finally starting to make money driving a taxi. I think it might be because I started tipping the dispatcher/cashier/order taker more money. I used to give them $5 at the beginning and $5 at the end of my shift. I was told that that was customary. But now I give them $5 at the beginning and 10% of whatever I make at the end. Like, today I gave them $18 at the end of my shift. I think word has gotten around that I have started to tip more and that's why I am getting more good fares now. Today I had three airport trips and one tourist city tour where I got to drive around and show these three Australians whatever I wanted. So fun. Or maybe I'm making more money now because I'm just so good now.
- Today is my co-worker Alex's last day. Last night we had going-away drinks for him. I'm going to miss him terribly. Our coffee walks and chats kept a grin on my face when there wasn't much else to grin about.
- Alex leaving has prompted me to do something rash and scary that I have been thinking about for a while. I told the project manager that I won't be back for a while. She is going on vacation for a few weeks anyway, and we agreed to talk on the phone when she is back. But for now it kind of feels like I have left too. It feels like I took that step.
- On the Muni home after drinks last night, this guy sat next to me and immediately fell asleep or into a coma. His head kept tilting more and more towards me, and his shoulder was leaning into me more and more heavily. My eyes were closed too, and I wonder if people thought we were two very very tired friends. The truth is he was a stranger, but somehow I didn't mind him leaning into me, so I just let him. Until my stop came, and then I got up, and he couldn't lean into me anymore. Not that he knew this consciously or anything. He was unconscious.
- I have been reading the the Artist's Way. I'm on week 2. This is something I had thought I "should" do for over a year. But I haven't felt like reading it until recently. But now that I feel like it, I have been reading it and it has been amazingly resonant. When you read the Artist's Way, you don't just read it, you also do it. And one thing you do every day is the so-called morning pages. You hand-write three pages of whatever enters your head. This is how I described it to a friend recently: It's like a drain for your brain. All the gunk comes out, so you can think more clearly. But my favorite part in the book so far has been this sentence:
My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them.
Oh. My. God. That concept is so true and powerful and empowering. And if you don't like the word God, which I don't very much either, you can just substitute Spirit or the Universe or whatever non-material entity you want. I personally think that everybody who has a soul should read the Artist's Way. Yes, that means you.
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.: posted by Vera
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So what did we do in Hawaii
My aunt and I drank coffee, ate, read, swam in the ocean, went to bed early every night, and had many very very long conversations. In fact, on two days we didn't leave the house at all and just talked. This is what that looked like:
Vera: It's 3:30 and we're still in our pyjamas.
Inge: Yeah.
Vera: Should we get dressed?
Inge: Maybe we should. So we don't starve to death.
The pictures speak more loudly than I do.
Last night I dropped off my aunt at the airport. I cried hard afterwards.
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.: posted by Vera
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Other people's privacy
So things have gotten a lot more open and honest around here, ever since I decided that I was done hiding. I have divulged some very personal stuff here that other people cringe at the thought of revealing, and I myself would have as well back when I was still hiding. But now I feel good about it.
But lately an interesting question has come up regarding how much I reveal. And that's the question of other people. I obviously don't live in a bubble and I do interact with other people, and how I interact with other people influences how I feel and what I experience and ultimately what I write about on here.
While I still feel good about exposing myself and being completely naked up here, I realize now that I can't undress other people. Other people's clothes have to stay on.
My aunt and I had a long conversation about this in Hawaii. I will not be writing much about what happened in Hawaii because I want to protect my aunt's privacy. I will also not be writing about that one guy I went to see The Last Kiss with, even though I promised, because I want to protect his privacy. I actually started writing the post in my head the other day, in my taxi, and I got all the way into the gory details and then I stopped myself and said "Did I just say b------? I can't tell the Internet about THAT!" I mean, I can tell the Internet about anything I want but if it affects another person, I need to think about it twice.
I will also not be writing about my new favorite person because I want to protect his privacy. At first I thought that my hesitation about writing about him came from insecurity, and that I was afraid about what he was going to think about what I wrote about him, or that, if I talk about my feelings about him, he wouldn't feel the same way or be hurt or offended or whatever. But now I'm realizing that it's not about that. My hesitation comes from wanting to protect his privacy.
So why did I just reveal something about Antti? Because I'm pretty sure that he would be okay with it. Yes, I am making an assumption here but I have always asked him about everything I have ever written on here about him, and he has felt okay about everything. He has also told me once about what kind of stuff not to write on here about him, so I think I have a pretty good idea about his boundaries.
But there is still the question of people from my past, especially people from Germany. I have no intention of holding myself back when talking about anybody I knew in Germany as a child or teen. The reason is that I am now writing in another language than the one we spoke together. I know this is not a great reason to violate someone's privacy but somehow it makes it okay for me right now.
I also think that I will censor myself less for things that happened in the past. What exactly past means, I don't know though. One year ago or more? Two years ago or more? Five years ago or more? I don't know.
And you know what? Privacy sucks. It's messing it all up for me. It's impeding my creativity. It's taking away my freedom of speech. A part of me wants to just defy all societal rules and personal requests and write about whatever and whoever the fuck I want to write about. Just to see what would happen. But I won't.
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.: posted by Vera
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The power of manifestation
No, this is not another post about manifestation. They belong on my other site anyway.
This is a post about something that made me smile today because I received some evidence that I can infect people with my belief in manifestation. Infect in a good way.
Throughout our relationship I was always talking to Antti about manifestation. Manifestation this, manifestation that, let's manifest a good parking spot, let's manifest good weather, you manifest everything that's in your life or that happens to you, blah blah blah. Antti was always saying "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if I believe that, there is no proof, it's just coincidence that we found that parking spot, blah blah blah."
And this is what Antti wrote yesterday:
I had yesterday seen some buffalos from afar and actually even complained to some people that I don't have a zoom lens so the animals should come closer to me. And then they did :) Talk about the power of manifestation.
Reading that made me smile, like a lot. But now I also feel kind of bad because I don't want to say things like "I told you so" or "See, I was right." I hate it when that's being done to me. I also don't want to seem like I try to brainwash people or force my beliefs on them. So I feel conflicted. I am wondering if I have the right to feel happy about Antti's comment and what that says about me. This Sunday sure is starting out pensively.
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.: posted by Vera
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Twenty year anniversary
I'm back from Hawaii, and twenty years ago today I had to go to the mental hospital and stayed there for seven weeks. It was a Friday. It all went down in the afternoon after school. Diagnosis: "Depressive tendency with obsessive ideas."
I'll never forget that day, October 3rd, 1986. It was a really big fucking deal. I mean, you don't end up in in a mental hospital every day. Several years later, after East and West Germany were reunited, October 3rd became a German holiday, German Unity Day. But to me, October 3rd will always be the day I was put in the mental hospital.
When I was applying for my greencard in 1995, my dad told me to stop mentioning my period of mental illness in applications. He said that it was so long ago that I didn't really need to mention it anymore, and if I did mention it, it might put me at a disadvantage. You never know, he said, somebody might not accept you because of your history of mental illness. I listened to him and for a long time I kept very quiet about it.
But now I don't care anymore. If anybody rejects me for anything because of how I felt when I was 10, then so be it. Be my guest. Reject me. It's not like I'm applying for a lot of colleges or jobs or greencards these days anyway.
I'm not ashamed of what happened. I'm also not proud of it, but I do know that I wouldn't be who I am without that experience. And I embrace all of my past, no matter how hard it was and no matter how bad it felt. In fact, you could even say I celebrate my past. It's my twenty year anniversary! I feel very much mentally healthy these days. And that's plenty of reason to celebrate.
Also, around that time, in 1986, I wrote in my diary "One day I will be 20." Little did I know that one day I would be 30 as well. Time blows my mind.
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.: posted by Vera
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