brain – hannah ananas

Listing

Time to start listing, Banana.

I do well, you see, when I write things out, when I list out all that needs to be done… by when, with whom, for what, etc… When it’s all listed out, it’s like my brain can just rest and breathe for a bit and, inevitably, determine that it is all 100% doable and not that bad in the first place. However, if I don’t do the listing, then it becomes an experience, slowly and surely, of the to-dos becoming insurmountable.

So, let’s get these hiking boots and crampons ready, lady-girl-woman, and start writing down those lists!

You can do this! Woohoo!

Post-a-day 2022

What a week

Ovulation is funny to me. The body takes roughly a week to send out scents to attract the best man to reproduce the most effectively. The brain jumps on board and does a mental calculation of every potentially available man it has ever met. It also sends out hormones and emotions that make the body feel really good and healthy and well, as well as the desire to stop off all clothes, be cuddled lovingly, and romp in the sack for hours on end, days on end. Life feels, somehow, entirely possible, and love feels imminent. And even a touch from a handsome man makes everything turn alight with flame. And sleeping is difficult, and dreams are annoying, and waking up is hard, both for the end of the dream to find oneself alone and for the battle the brain undergoes trying to wake up but trying to satisfy the body’s desires. And being around men is difficult, and being near-constantly and easily aroused feels absurd and annoying. It is a week in which one must be careful not to grow too weak in one’s resolve, as one’s mind seems to seek out any and all possibilities for, first, interacting with a man and, second, copulating with him. It is probably the week that most women reach out to men they like, even a little. It is likely the week with the most sex in a woman’s life. It is certainly the week made for sex in a woman’s life… It is a week of constantly having to chill the f*** down in the loins and head, and aim to remember who one really is, aside from a means of continuing the species. It is a week where loyalty seems irrelevant, and every man sounds like a great option; even several at once sounds, absurdly, entirely reasonable and desirable.

All of that is, simply, because we were made that way. Just a bit bizarre, I think…

What a week…

Post-a-day 2021

Feel the burn

Today, I got to spend some in-person one-on-one time with a dear friend of mine. She and I have not spoken much lately, because, whenever we do talk, it usually lasts a couple hours or more, and I tend to think of calling her when it is a little too close to bedtime for such a long call. And our schedules have been kind of opposite – I go to bed early, and she late – which hasn’t helped her be able to reach me either. We just both accepted that we were in a bit of a scheduling break (break due to scheduling, that is).

We used to spend at least one evening a week together, spending quality in-person time with one another and a few other good friends. Then, we actually lived together. And then I moved away, then back… the latter of which happened right before she moved away. (Not too far, but far enough that even weekly hangouts were out of the question. So, instead, we talk on the phone a lot, which is actually quite nice.

Anyway, today, we spent time together in person. And it was amazing.

The other day, I had almost cried when someone held my hand – it was a surprise for me to have such a reaction, but it was an important but near-forgotten sensation from what feels like oh-so-long-ago. I was nearly overwhelmed by the feeling, by the comforting warmth and pressure in just the right place. Just as our hands were growing slightly damp in the middle, and my insides were breathing with pure comfort and delight at this specific, if odd, comfort from so many moments in my life, he dropped my hand. Naturally, I went a bit crazy in my mind about the possibilities as to why he did that. And I don’t just mean then. I mean mostly afterward, and borderline obsessively. (Fortunately, I can acknowledge when it has been enough, and I can just let it all go, but I certainly allow myself to delve, if only for a short time.) From a logic standpoint, it was likely due to the sweat that he dropped my hand, although it was because of the sweat that I was so filled.

Nonetheless, as I considered this over the next couple days, I began to see how much I had not seen regarding my need for physical comfort. My brain, body, and psyche need physical contact to survive, not just to thrive. And I have been getting by on the absolute bare minimum lately, and so certainly not thriving. Life has been just that much harder because of it.

And so, this evening, as that all was not news to this friend, I was given a good, solid rub-down. Her strong, firm, warm hands placed intentional, loving pressure on my back, both massaging my muscles and giving me comfort. Then she purposefully rubbed all along my arms and each finger, my neck and shoulders, and each leg. I asked her to treat me like a dog, and give me a rub-down, and she did. And it was extremely comforting at the time. Then, further along in our hanging out together, rather than just giving hug after hug at things, we just sat together in an embrace, I somewhat in her lap, arms around her waist. Her strong arms held me tight around my shoulders and back, as my head pressed against her upper chest, and she rested her chin atop my head.

When she had first arrived, there was no doubt in either of our minds that I was struggling. I have a lot of things causing stress in my daily life at the moment – a lot. And those things have begun taking a greater hold of my attention each day, as their volume and significance have increased. Now, about to go to sleep, I don’t necessarily notice feeling any specific way, but that I notice a lack of something. There is something gone that was previously here, weighing me down. I am not tense and stress-y, clenching somehow with my whole being. I am comfortably standing, wide-legged, shoulders totally chill and relaxed, breathing very calm and easy, all without effort. Now, I am merely getting ready for bed. I see those things that have been stressing me, but they are just something I see – they are not taking me over anymore. I am breathing easily, without restriction or strain (that, though I could push through them, they certainly were there before).

And I can breathe, simply because my body can handle it all again. My skin and muscles and hair follicles were rejuvenated by her hands and arms, and they are all breathing freely once again. All because I got a rub-down.

It may sound silly, but there’s a reason that has become an actual job in some countries – people need it. Remember, babies die without physical contact. It’s a wonder we haven’t come up with something for this for people sooner, I suppose.

Man…

Post-a-day 2021

^Meh… got it, but had to consider

Brain waves: zero

Do you ever find yourself sitting down to do something, possibly late in the day or close to when planning to go to bed, and having no idea what on Earth you are supposed to be doing sitting there? Not because you don’t understand the process of the task, but because your brain has checked out and either is napping or has gone to bed for the night… without even fully forming the mental question of, ‘Why am I here?’, you have the sense of the question, the uncertainty and slight sense of being lost that go with it… and, rather than having various thoughts about why you might be here, your mind brainstorming the millions of possibilities as to why you have just set yourself here, your thoughts are just kind of off. The gasoline has run out, the power switch has been flipped – whatever the case, you find yourself sitting in front of something, with no idea as to why you are there, no thoughts to brainstorm your way through it, and no real understanding of what to do about the lack of knowing.

Well, whether you experience it or not, I most certainly do.

Post-a-day 2020

Something’s wrong, and that’s perfect

Every so often – read “almost every day, especially when I’m not doing so well” – I have thoughts of concern around the idea that there might be or that there is something wrong with me.

As I thought about this today and last night, it started to wonder, Well, so what? So what if something’s wrong with me? What does that even mean, anyway? It had me consider that the whole concept of ‘something’s wrong’ is, in a way, utterly and totally made-up. I think about the whole moth scenario, where the white moths all thrive in the snowy place, until the factory opens up, and soot is abundant, turning most of the snow gray…. at which point, the moth population slowly but surely turns almost entirely gray – the genetic mutation allowed for improved survival in the altered times, when snow was no longer white but gray. By our standards, we could say that something was wrong with the gray moths, back when everything was white…, but none of them has a problem with that wrongness now, with everything being gray around them.

Basically, so something about me works differently than other people, or even than most people…, and, so what? Why must I feel inferior or inadequate or lesser of a being because of it? If my hormonal system doesn’t understand how to function superbly, does that make me a terrible human being, or a lame one, or even a non-human? No.

For one thing, it is 100% in our nature as living beings to have mutations – differences, changes, seemingly inexplicable alterations – in our DNA and resulting bodies. My body not working like the rest of humanity’s bodies is totally normal, scientifically speaking. Female hormonal systems work this way, and mine just doesn’t – it works differently than the average female hormonal system. It is statistically abnormal…, but abnormal statistics don’t make me a lesser being.

For a second thing, perhaps this is just a way of my DNA, my body, preparing for those unexpected factories to move into town and turn all the snow gray… perhaps they are preparing me for the unknown contingencies in life. I have no idea what those scenarios would be to have any of these alterations from the average in my body’s function make sense…, but it somehow wouldn’t surprise me if, someday, whether I’m still alive then or not, these alterations all do make sense.

I’m still a bit nervous about the fact that, well, part of my body kind of seems to be screwing the rest of my body over, by not taking care of itself…, however, I like this idea of considering that it is merely a natural genetic mutation, a gray moth among the whites. Plus, I have found various ways to help those struggling parts of my body to function better, and, though I don’t know quite how it all will look down the line, at least for now, I know what works best so far, and I can stick with doing that.

I certainly have had many a struggle and even a good handful of breakdowns around the fact that ‘my body isn’t normal’…, so I hope that this shift in perspective proves to be a powerful one. I want to feel and be okay and comfortable with my altered-from-average body. Anyway, plenty of people who had altered-from-average bodies ended up being spectacular at things other people couldn’t be spectacular at doing. A woman with no arms can use her legs and feet like most people do hands. A blind person can hear things most people don’t even notice. Several genius-types couldn’t function socially or in schools very well, and some not at all. I don’t know – not yet, anyway – for what my alteration from average allows in my life, but I am going to keep an eye out for it now, now that I’m thinking about it this way. Perhaps there is something to this idea, even with my hormonal system’s situation… I shall observe and consider, and hopefully see. 🙂

So, going forward, I shall remember – do what I can as I get adjusted to the idea, anyway – that something is wrong with me, and that that is totally perfect. Seriously: perfect. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Lists

It turns out that lists are extremely helpful, to the point of necessity, for me these days. I haven’t had all of my supplements this past month (and maybe two weeks before that), and I have only been taking the ones I still have and the ones that seemed like necessities to replace… kept the budget low by not refilling everything this month. It was a good idea, both in terms of money and in terms of seeing how much of a difference having all of them makes, versus only having some of them. And I have learned that they make a huge difference when I have all of them. Yes, I have been put under immense stress the past few weeks, and I have survived the stress quite decently, so far as any average person could see it all. For myself, though, I have not been doing very well. Before, I was thriving, even in the face of stress and struggles around me. Now, I am surviving very averagely…, if that makes sense.

I haven’t been able to get myself to do the workouts. Actually, I haven’t really been able to get myself to do almost any physical effort… or even to go outside… I know myself, and I know that I am getting close to a big change in how I’ve been going about the past couple weeks. I need to even some things out in my mind and body. It has been so hard to do so without struggle lately, and so I have been taking it easy. I fully intended to get myself out of this space, and I know I would be doing it in the very near future already, but I am extremely glad that I will be seeing the nutritionist on Monday, and that I will be replenishing all the supplements he tells me to take… I was relieved tonight when my mom mentioned that that was this coming Monday. I have really been in a slump… and it has been starting to get to me mentally, and I’ve been beginning to be upset that I am struggling.

I’m actually really tired right now, so I’m going to stop there – I can’t seem to figure out what I was wanting to say, and even this sentence has been difficult to finish… that’s how tired I am right now.

Anyway, I made a list for tomorrow. It’s a list of things I want to do, and I want perhaps to do. I pinned it to the wall in my stairwell, so I can see it easily when I get up. It will be a solid reminder for me of things to do other than sit around my room, avoiding the world (except for food in the kitchen). I am very encouraged when it comes to being able to check things off a list when completed, and so I think this list will be helpful for me tomorrow. I’m considering a rather permanent move to having a list on my wall, so tomorrow will be a good test for myself and what might work really well for me. 🙂

Goodnight

Post-a-day 2020

So much for fair…

Can I just say that it sometimes feels totally unfair that certain boys end up having the bodies of men (and girls, the bodies of women) when they are still in the slightly awkward phase of semi-idiocy that is high school?

There they are, prime adult physique, the epitome of evolution doing its darndest to make sure the species continues onward in the world, surrounded by various stages of true boyhood and immaturity, that being physical, psychological, and mental immaturity….. and yet, they look to all onlookers to be men…., ready to stand for a modern Michelangelo or Botticelli…

And, usually, they have no idea the effect they can have on other people.

Sure, some, unfortunately, are harassed by the worst of breeding, and therefore have a sense of something being askew… but, for the most part, they tend only to think of themselves as doing well, as being blessed with good genes and a good bodily development.

The fact that their minds are so far behind makes it hard on the adults around them, and the fact that their bodies are so far ahead makes it hard on the youth around them.

They also, somehow, serve as not so much a reminder, but as a calling out of the fact that so many men these days are not maintaining and hosting such healthy bodies as these man-boys (and the same with women and the woman-girls)… the prime of the physical body is arriving so soon, and lost before they are even fully developed in the brain, it sometimes feels… (for the average, anyway)…

In a way, it is a blessing.

And, in a way, it kind of totally sucks to have to be around…

Anyway…, just some thoughts for tonight.

Sweet dreams, World! 😉

Post-a-day 2019

Crazy Brain

Do you ever just go nuts in your mind, imagining the ideal desired future of some situation, even though you’ve only just begun?

I met a guy today (who is gorgeous, by the way).

The little girl in me is totally starstruck in love.

A short while after meeting him, my brain had already imagined and visualized a scenario in which this guy and I date and become super close and a wonderful couple, eventually semi living together, and, after months into it all, he meets my family, and my various family members have various reactions to him, as well as to the fact that I not only have been dating someone for so long but also that this guy is the guy I’ve been dating (because he’s not so typical of what others in my family have dated or married)… and, it was at about this point, I realized how nuts this situation was, and I just started laughing…

I met him about two hours ago, and I was just now contemplating – albeit passively – how my family would take the news of my dating him and, then, of our plans to marry… now, another few hours later, even though I chastened my brain a bit earlier, I have already considered the idea of how he and I might manage our wedding (wedding or not, and what style of what, and why), how we would live and where, and casual details of our physical relationship….

I know almost nothing about him, but clearly my brain does not care.

Is this a typical thing people do/have happen?

It is for me, anyway… I’ve come to see it as a double-benefit situation:

First, I get the fun and practice of dreaming up scenarios in life, as well as the chance to have everything go exactly as I would love for to to go – dreams come true.

Second, I get to test the idea of a future with someone, and have a general sense of whether I could see a future with that person.

I don’t expect my brain’s scenarios actually to play out in real life as they do in my head, and so I’m never angry whenever they don’t happen (though I am ever so slightly bummed, of course), and I take things as they come…, but it feels to me like my being able to envision a future with someone is a good sign – if I couldn’t imagine a future together, well, then maybe it’s a hard no for me, right?

That’s kind of how I see it, anyway… maybe my brain does it to help take care of me, to make sure I pursue the good paths and not the bad ones, giving me exciting possibilities in my mind, whenever I’ve found a good match for whatever the circumstances…

Either that or I’m just a little bit totally nuts… you know… 😛

P.S. A mere minutes after posting this, he and I now have a baby girl, and she is gorgeous, and he is absolutely adorable with her…

P.P.S. The funniest part to me is how I genuinely do think about other things, but they somehow all feed into another new thought about the future I could have with this guy… just now, I was thinking about the show we saw tonight, and then the summer camp where my brother loved working, and all the campers and kids there, and then the idea of how I would feel pregnant, if I ever one day would do it, and then I suddenly had an image of this guy holding what was clearly our baby girl… I mean, where did he even come from??… uninvited, he still shows up, and our future together progresses… 🤦🏼‍♂️😂

Post-a-day 2019

Cleaning out = unexpected exhaustion

I’m kind of exhausted. And kind of feel like crying and curling up in a ball.
There have been a LOT of memories going through this stuff. And, with that, has naturally come Loads of emotions. Lots of them quite strong, too.
I guess that’s a big part of why I kept the stuff.

And as of this morning, I find myself not wanting to take on cleaning out and going through anything else right now. Like I need a vacation from it.

Especially since so much of my stuff is disorganized amongst the various boxes, the task feels more exhausting. Because, rather then opening up a box and re-living fifth grade, I open up a single box and am going through parts of fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and possibly even a memory or three from before and after those years. And going through the memories of those years isn’t just ‘going through memories’. It’s also re-experiencing the emotions and thoughts and thought patterns of it all. So, in cleaning through one box, I am living several years – and from the very formative years – of my life in a matter of an hour or few. Talk about exhausting… that is exhausting.

And I want a break from it for a little while, so my mind and my nerve endings can relax again and not be so constantly overwhelmed.

Post-a-day 2018

Monotony on the brain

As I flossed my teeth tonight, the idea hit me at one of the monotonous, repetitive things in life that, in a certain sense, just don’t make sense. I occasionally have this happen with eating – actually, it’s rather often in recent months. It suddenly occurs to me that, even after eating to satisfaction, at most, it will be only a few hours before we have to eat again. It is this never-ending chain of requirement called food. If we didn’t have to do that, imagine the time and mental energy (and physical energy) we could put to other things. How much energy goes into managing eating in a single day? In life as a whole? How wasteful that is with our time… Plus, it all just comes right back out of us anyway, and we’re burning energy to digest it all. There’s got to be a better way to handle this need that we have for energy and nutrition…

And, of course, I simultaneously wonder if I’m just bat-sh** crazy and need brain shock therapy to rearrange the nonsense connections in my brain (and then wonder, yet again, if I’m crazy even more, since I just suggested shock therapy). Eventually, I find myself having a delightful meal, and cannot fully comprehend how I was genuinely considering a lifestyle without food – as if it were possible right now, anyway – only days or moments before the current meal.

I think the real link is how stressed I can get about figuring out what to eat. Because it really is that: figuring out. There is no easy, obvious answer to the average What’s for lunch? question. And, especially with my current setup, where I have almost zero fridge and kitchen usage, the question is even more difficult to answer. I can’t even plan ahead, really, because I can’t store almost any food of any kind, room temperature or cold. And I can’t really cook much either, because of the limited use situation. So, I hit this phase of meal distaste often these days. This is not to say that I didn’t hit it often in the past, because I totally did. But that was mostly because I would be exhausted by the time I got home at the end of the day (or late at night), and didn’t feel like cooking anything. Not because I had no options. I had loads of options there. But anyway…

So, tonight, flossing hit me the same way. Why bother flossing, when food will just be right back at the very next meal? And if we’re flossing now, why do we not floss after everything we eat? (And then I remember how I regularly floss throughout the day, whenever I become aware of anything stuck or sticking in my teeth.) And it’s not like monkeys floss, and they get along just fine with their teeth. (Yes, I know they don’t have the crap diets we have, but I wish we could be more like them in both of those senses – not having to floss and not having crap diets that require us to brush and floss constantly.) And so went the thoughts for a few seconds, before I required myself to get off the topic. I knew it could turn disastrous if I didn’t stop asap. (I’ve had some extreme bouts of stress and depression combined, when it comes to the whole food conversation I mentioned briefly here.)

So, yeah… that’s that topic.

Post-a-day 2018