Positively Scarred

I’ve been in a slump the past few days, and last night I was at my worst. I was incredibly lonely and frustrated with every single detail of my so-called life. I haven’t been to bed yet (going on 17 hours of awake time as I write this). I decided to help me out of my slump to post 15 things I’m currently happy about. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. But at least I can always look back and think about the things that made me happy right at this point in time. Who knows, maybe it will help someone else, too.

15 Things to be Happy About Right at This Moment

1. There is a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting sitting on the kitchen counter.
2. Coffee.
3. There are at least 5 people in the world who I know love me unconditionally.
4. My pets.
5. I can have nap time whenever I want it.
6. Someone, somewhere is thinking about me at this moment and wants me to be happy.
7. Netflix.
8. My birthday is in less than a month.
9. The existence of Jenna Marbles and My Drunk Kitchen.
10. Color crayons.
11. Fleece blankets.
12. Pain pills.
13. Knitted hats.
14. Snuggles with my teddy bears, Charlie and Chiyo.
15. I am alive.

Okay. There’s my fifteen. I do feel a little better.

What are fifteen things you are happy about right now?

“You aren’t going to find the ‘right’ person now, babe. You’ve still got way too much work to do on yourself. Your options are to date no one, or to keep dating with the purpose of learning, not falling.”

A very wise friend of mine said the above quote to me a few months ago relating to a bad dating experience I had. “Bad” as in it just ended on bad terms and I was launched into an episode of self-loathing that lasted a few weeks. More recently, I haven’t been in the mindset to put myself back out there and date. I’ve found myself having fun being single, doing things by myself, taking times to do things for myself.

I gave myself a mani/pedi last week just because I found my nail polishes and nail files. And it felt nice to just do that for myself. To not have to impress anybody. I didn’t wear makeup for a month because I chose not to and didn’t care. But hearing my friends’ stories about their dates and significant others, made me miss going out to dinner, movies, coffee, or to play pool. So when I got asked on a date, I was excited.

So tonight I will put on makeup, wear cute shoes, don a smile and enjoy an evening out with someone who I find to be an interesting and entertaining person. And I’ll keep in mind that I’m doing this for myself, for the experience, and for the company of a really cool person. And if, in the future, this turns out to be something more… then I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, it’s about the moment, not about the future.

I’m not starting off 2012 so well as far as this blog goes. My intention was to make a post right after New Years recapping last year. But since it’s almost the end of the month I’ll just skip that since a majority of last year has been written about it and there’s no sense repeating things I’ve said twenty times already. So, instead I’ll just make this a life update and fill in the dead space between my last update and now.

I had a surgery on January 10th. My tenth or eleventh (I’ve lost count) on my left hand. I had a nerve graft and a bone fusion done. I have two pins currently in my left thumb; they’re about two inches long. They don’t bother me much. The area where the nerves were placed (right side of my palm, near my ring finger) is a little sore. I was elated to find out this past Tuesday that it worked and I can actually FEEL. I have sensation on the right side of my palm for the first time in 9 months. Which, in itself, is worth the pain that I’m in. Also part of the pain parade is my right leg from my ankle to midway up my calf. This was the site where the nerves for my palm were taken. It hurt to walk on at first; if I put any pressure on my foot I was in an immeasurable amount of pain. I somehow was able to walk a bit the day after surgery, but spent most of the few days after in bed with my leg propped up on pillow and I only got up to go to the bathroom or to get food.

Now, two weeks later, the pain in my leg has lessened but I do have a great deal of pain in my heel when I do walk and it’s caused me to limp. I’m going to question my doctor about whether or not this is normal when I revisit him next Wednesday. I’m sure it’s fine since, obviously, I have less nerves in this area than before. But I find it strange that it’s my heel that’s in pain and not my calf or any of the area surrounding the incisions.

Moving forward, I went back to physical therapy this past Tuesday. It was just an initial consultation and my hand therapist made me a new splint. It protects my thumb and wraps around my wrist. Don’t tell my doctors, but I’m not wearing it right now, as it’s hard to type with it on. (Prior to this splint, I had another, flatter splint that prevented use of my left hand at all—which is also another reason for the lack of updates.)

That pretty much sums up the beginning of my 2012 thus far. In coming weeks, I’ll be posting about my bucket list, maybe some secrets, a continuation of the music meme I haven’t finished, and my love/hate relationship with the Hallmark holiday that is Valentine’s Day.

As usual, any questions/comments/whatever can be posted in the comments section or be sent directly to mah box where I keep such pieces of communication or at any of the other places I’ve listed.

Hope this first month has been kind to you.

I haven’t written anything major in a while, and with my 100th post coming up (this is number 99) I decided to write about my holiday before I hit you with something major that I’m concocting in my brain.

If you’re following me at all on Twitter, then you probably saw some tweets labeled #kittychristmas2011. But that was only about 1/4th of my Christmas celebration.

Saturday afternoon, I went to Christmas #1 at my step mom’s family’s house. Good food. I had a good time just hanging out. Not much to say other than that. It was a fairly normal gathering. My dad and I left early because he was on-call and needed to be at home in case he had to either go into work or do something remotely from his computer.

So later on in the evening we have a few beers. My step mom would NOT. QUIT. TALKING. Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but I swear she would not SHUT UP. We ended up watching A Christmas Carol (the one with Jim Carrey) and I’d hope that would make her stop. It didn’t. But whatever, it was a good movie.

Ended up heading to bed at around midnight. I maybe slept an hour and was up from roughly around 2AM until I finally crashed around 9:30PM last night. (Also note: I had only gotten about four hours of sleep Friday night.) So everyone was up and we ate breakfast right around 10AM. Gifts followed. I got some gift cards, some cute clothes, my first pair of TOMS, SF Giants earrings, a stand for my iPad 2, and… Apple TV. I have yet to set it up because it was so hectic yesterday and today I’ve been so lazy. But maybe tomorrow. Anyway, that was Christmas #2.

Christmas #3 was at my mom’s house. I arrived with my grandmother right around 1:15. We all got seated in the living room after I frantically wrapped two remaining gifts. As we got seated I learned my step brother was missing. He’d left his grandma’s house at around 12:30 the night before and had checked in on Facebook somewhere at 6AM but no one had heard from him. Local authorities were notified in 4 different counties, all the jails and hospitals were called to check if he was there, and a multitude of his friends were contacted.

Unable to do anything more, we opened gifts. Everything was wonderful and everyone enjoyed all their gifts. I received: two nose rings from my step sister’s boyfriend, a purse from my sister, loads of Tinkerbell stuff (including a collectible pin! and a sweater!), clothes, socks with spiders/spiderwebs on them and also a set with colored stripes and stars, laptop bag that’s chocolate brown with a teal design on the top, picture frames, a new shelf unit for my room, a Hoodie Buddie, baskets to put on the shelf unit, gift cards, and candy in the stocking!

After gifts were done, dinner was started and hors d’ouevres were set out. By this time it was just after 4 and my step sister got a call from her mom saying her brother had checked in somewhere on Facebook. Long story short, my step dad talked to him and he’d had a fucked up morning and had been stranded over an hour away. He had lost his phone, and then found it, and then it was dead, so he called the moment he had gotten his phone to turn on.

More family came over and we ate (well, I didn’t eat because I was so tired that I wasn’t hungry at all) and just sat around and visited. The football game was on TV. My step brother FINALLY showed up around 5:30. He gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek which he NEVER does, which shows how freaked out we all were.

I finally got to rest and lay on my bed just after 7PM after all the relatives left and my step siblings left to their mom’s house. By 9:30, I was out.

Merry Christmas.

I’m on the verge of being 24 and I have already been through so much. More than I let on and a lot of it still effects me to this day, whether it be predominant in my current life or not. I don’t know if I could sum it up in a blog post. Maybe a series.

I have mentioned before that I struggle with social situations and relationships, and that I have suffered from anxiety and depression for many years. I’ve also mentioned my battle with self mutilation and my coinciding downward spiral when I was in my early teens. And if you follow me at all on Twitter or have read previous posts, you know I beat myself up a lot and self-loathing is second nature to me.

I have been ridiculed, hurt, mentally and emotionally abused… I have had countless panic attacks and have been depressed for many years. I was picked on and teased and taunted growing up all through til my sophomore year (when I transferred schools).

I don’t show it but I still hurt inside. But that’s the thing about me… No matter how badly I’m hurting, I always rise above and overcome it. I have come a long way from the self-mutilating teen I once was. People still want to say things and assume things about me and my life, but I push it aside as best as I can because they don’t know. They never will. I’m a strong capable human being. No matter how many times I get knocked down, I always rise up and stand tall.

Like a skyscraper.

If you’ve been keeping up, then you know that many of my posts have been about my accident, my recovery, and my personal struggles. If you don’t know that, then take a moment to go read this first post and then come back.

Music has been a very big part of my life for as far back as I can remember. I’ve always related songs, lyrics, artists to a particular person, experience, or time in my life. When a song hits me in just the right way, I can’t help but ignore it. I admit, I do listen to a lot of artists more than some others, but I love all music equally. I don’t let genres be a barrier to what strikes me as appealing and beautiful.

One night, I was up late, per usual, and I was watching music videos on Fuse (or some such channel). They were playing the top hits (or weekly hits, whatever) and I heard a song and immediately fell in love. The chorus described exactly what I’ve been feeling since this entire process with surgeries, therapy, and starting over began.

The lyrics spoke to me as though the song were created with just me in mind. It’s a song about rising above adversity, about breaking free from the boxes you’re placed in, about conquering.

It’s a song that makes me want to fly.

You ever have a really coincidental moment with another person? Such as you first meet them and you find out you attended the same school, or you knew one of their relatives long ago, or you share something with them. I’m talking like a really uncanny moment where you just thought, “Wow, that’s such a major coincidence.”

I had one of those moments today.

I went to church with my grandmother for a tea and fashion show. We (obviously) drank tea, a few ladies modeled some clothes and accessories from a shop nearby, had a little lunch, and did a Christmas ornament exchange game.

I was seated with my grandmother and a few other ladies that she knew, and one we had both just met. Her name is Sheryl. She walked in and was looking for a place to sit, and since we were the first table inside the door my Granny piped up and said, “There’s one more seat here!” And she took it. We got to talking and I mentioned how going to Portland was an option for my birthday. Sheryl asked when my birthday is and I said March.

“March what?” with a happily curious grin on her face.

“March 5th.”

“I’m March 5th, too!”

We dwelled on this information for a moment and I grinned from ear to ear. It’s not common for me to meet people who have the same birthday as me, with the exception of my step sister who is also a March 5th baby.

We continued chatting and it turns out we both attended the same church in Merced, back when I was a sophomore/junior in high school and was regularly going. She said she went there up until about two years ago.

It was just too coincidental.

I know I’m going to see her again sometime; she and my grandmother really seemed to hit it off. I have a feeling this was all meant to happen, and that she was placed in my path for a reason.

Also: prior to the accident, I was regularly going to a yoga class at the hospital near my house. I loved the instructor, she was so nice and her English accent made the class soothing and enjoyable. I stopped going. After my accident, when I started therapy, she ended up being my hand therapist and remembered me from the class.

Serendipitous moments occur in everyday life. Pay attention to details and to the people you come across, because they may end up being a bigger part of your life that you could imagine.

I’ll be the first to admit that most of my friendships begin on the Internet. I do have friends in the ‘real world’ but I hold my internet friendships in high regards. Very rarely do these Internet friendships manifest themselves in person, but when they do, I cherish them because this person knows me on a different level than my ‘real world’ friends. So when Internet meets ‘real world,’ it excites me.

I’ve had the chance to meet people from the Internet in person and although at one point in time it was a scary thing, it’s perfectly natural these days, or so I’d like to believe.

I can’t tell you who I first met from the Internet. It may have been a boy who lived 45 minutes away and happened to be in Merced. He’d randomly found me on MySpace. I was 17 or 18 then. We don’t talk anymore.

Or it could have been any random local who added me on MySpace. Or it could have been one of three people from IRC who I had the chance to meet in person. I’m just simply not sure. But, I digress…

I’ve made long-lasting friendships. Most recently there have been two people from Twitter who I have met in person. I like them. They get me on a different level than most people. One is Snake, who I happened to be able to meet randomly in person last New Years Eve. (New Years Day, really, because it was already after midnight.)  It turns out her brother was friends with people in the same group of people I was, at the time, a part of. It was a very random, serendipitous meeting. I like to think that it was fate. We followed each other and would reply to each other on Twitter but I never thought that this would be someone who would come to mean so much to me. We often tweet or text each other, and sometimes you can find us on Twitter having full conversations in just Internet memes and GIFs.

We’re two peas in a pod, albeit different, damn near opposite peas, but we mesh well together and it’s hard to believe that we’ve only known each other just about a year because it just feels like so much longer. I enjoy her company, be it in person or through text. And her support throughout my life-changing journey and subsequent quarter life crisis has been amazing. I still have yet to thank her for the time she came to my hospital room at some ungodly hour in the morning. She let me sleep, and when I awoke she showered me with goodies and a [melted] green tea frap.

The other Twitter friendship that has manifested itself in real life is that with Saladbits. Snake and I both met her in the ‘real world’ together when the three of us met for a sushi date. Shortly after that, we met again for another sushi date, this time incorporating Snake’s brother who Saladbits developed a very cute fangirl crush on. After that, we didn’t hang out, but numbers were exchanged (or maybe that was before our meetup?) and then Halloween and I hung out with her and her two Gay BFFs. Then a couple weeks ago we had a slumber party that consisted of a lot of rambling, awesome conversation, a lot of beer and cigarettes, and music. This weekend we’re having another slumber party that will consist of movies, Jameson, cigarettes, and a lot more rambling conversations and music. I’ve really grown comfortable around her and we’ve talked about a lot of things: our dating history, music, life in general… We’ve got a good connection and I hope that she feels the same.

Another awesome Internet-to-reality friendship is with Nisha. We met over 7 years ago on IRC. She lived in Finland at the time, and it seemed like I would never get to meet her, but then she moved to the United States and on a vacation she popped into my little town and we finally got to meet. And there were no awkward moments and it was just like we’d known each other in person for years. I love her and appreciate her being in my life. She’s just as adorable and amazing in person as she is on the Internet. We WILL meet again in person and I have no doubt that it will be just as fun, amazing, and lovely as the first time.

I don’t want these Internet-to-reality friendships to take away from the people who I have yet to meet.

I met Mazzy on Tumblr during my first go-around (this is my third Tumblr account I’ve had in roughly 2 years). She has been such an amazing friend to me and I have no doubt that we will meet in person when our schedules and wallets allow it. She has become a staple in my life, a soulmate. Her wisdom, wit, humor, and simply being a gorgeous person, inside and out, draw me to her. We have video chatted (once) and texted and Facebooked and Tumblr’d and AIM’d and I believe we’ve built a friendship that will stand the test of time and technology.

There are also other awesome people out there, but there’s simply not enough words to explain what everyone means to me. I have developed lasting relationships thanks to the Internet and I’m forever grateful for the people that have come into my life because of it.

This blog became more of my personal story than I intended. I intended to write about what happens when these sort of relationships occur and how the transition to real life is sometimes very smooth and worthwhile, and how other times it’s not so much. But instead, I’ll leave it as it is.

If I didn’t mention you, don’t fret. You are all important to me, whoever you are. And if we ever meet in person I will greet you the same way I would greet an old friend: with a hug and a smile. My Internet relationships are very important to me because although I may retain some anonymity, I will share my innermost thoughts with you because regardless of our distance, you’re not just text on a computer screen. You’re a human being and you are real.

I’ve really kept my identity secret on this blog. Mainly because I didn’t want anyone to find it by Googling my name or anything. The other reason for my anonymity was because I wanted people to associate my life and struggles and stories and wit with any Jane/John Doe. I’m now comfortable in my blogging suit to tell you the story of how I got my name.

The year was 1987 and my parents, both in the military, were young. My dad was barely 21 and my mother was 22. They found out there was a bun in the oven and my mom gave my dad a choice: he didn’t have to stick around. She told me once that she believed if he had left for home on leave, he wouldn’t come back. My dad, being the responsible and caring man he is, reenlisted and stayed with my mom. This was, after all, his kid. And for reasons unknown to my mom then, he felt it was his duty to be in my life and not abandon either of us.

When the talk of names came, a million suggestions presented themselves. If I was a boy, I would have had my dad’s name. When they found out I was a girl, they picked out a name but that was later taken off the table as a suggestion because my cousin had been born five months before me and my uncle named her what would have been my name.

Back to the drawing board. There’s a movie called River’s Edge which stars a young Keanu Reeves. It’s about a group of high school friends; one of the guys murders his girlfriend and the rest of the group’s reaction is almost ambiguous as the crime itself. One of the female characters was named Clarissa (played by Ione Skye). They really liked that name. So it stuck. But my dad, wanting to be unique and different, changed the spelling. He replaced the C with a K and took out the S’s and replaced those with a Z. What he didn’t know then is I would live a lifetime of teachers, peers, doctors, etc mispronouncing my unique and beautiful name. For my middle name he just took out an L and called it good.

So thus I became to be Klariza Michele. It was easy for my very Mexican, Spanish speaking only grandmother to pronounce. The Z gave it that Spanish language flair and it suited me.

Then I got older… I disliked my name, it had too many syllables, teachers always got it wrong, I hated the way it was spelled… So when I was in middle school my mom and I (parents divorced when I was 6) had a roommate. This roommate was one of my mom’s good friend’s who just needed a boost up on to her own two feet. I loved her and love her still to this day. She called me Lissa. (Like Melissa without the Me.) I loved it. My dad, for years called me Liss. There was no rhyme or reason for why he did, but it stuck. So our roommate dubbed me Lissa and that, too, stuck through 8th grade and into freshman year. Freshman year, I swapped out the I for a Y and that, too, stuck. It’s still a name that most people know me by. Some people don’t even know that Lyssa isn’t my real name.

But now I’m at a point where I like my name. It’s unique and fitting to me again. I’ve never met another Klariza, spelled exactly like that.

A couple years ago I did some research and found a bunch of Klariza’s in the Philippines. Intrigued as to why all these Filipino-Spanish looking girls/women had my name, I Googled some information and found that Spain had invaded the Philippines back in the day and left behind traces of language, traditions, and culture. I was fascinated. All of a sudden I wanted to learn Tagalog. I researched the language. The fact that I was no longer a special snowflake did not even phase me, because out of all the millions of snowflakes in the world, they can’t possibly be ALL different, right?

I fell in love with my name for probably the first time in my life. That was roughly two years ago. People still know me by Lyssa, because that’s often how I introduce myself. But when I hear my real name, I’m elated and excited because of both the history behind it and because of the women who share my name. Although I may never meet any of them, I feel like we’re part of a secret society. And if I do ever meet another? I will hug her and we will develop a secret handshake and communicate in a way only we will understand.

Or at least I hope that’s what will happen. But realistically, they will probably be weirded out by my excited fan-girl-flail reaction.

The other thing about my name is other people’s ability to interpret it how they want. I have a dear friend, Mazzy, who spells my name Klaryzza. I think that makes it even more unique. Even though she can clearly see on Facebook that it’s not spelled that way, she says, “Fuck YOUR spelling, this is how *I* see it!” And that’s one of the many reasons why I love her.

I’ve come to have many names in my lifetime, and I own all of them. But my true name will always be most loved. It doesn’t matter what you call me, I will respond, and if you dare to ask me in person how I got my name you will get the same story as I just told you.

I may never find my birth name on any key chain, coffee mug, or any other souvenir, or ever find it in a Baby Name Dictionary, and I’m quite content with that. I like to think that my name means something more than what can be summed up in a definition. I’m many different things, and my definition changes often. I’d like to think that I’m living up to the definition of my name in whatever situation or whatever phase of life I’m currently in; so right now my name would mean something along the lines of “strong, independent women who drinks too much coffee, survivor and conqueror.” But you know, that may change tomorrow…

Hi, my name is Klariza. It’s nice to meet you.

(Note: I don’t “hate” any bands, but there are bands I refuse to listen to or rarely ever listen to… this is one of them.)

I was 17 when I had my first real relationship. I remember when we first met: It was a sunny April day and my friend and I decided to hit up the mall, as teenagers do. We entered in from the food court and the first stop we made was in the arcade. In this period of time, the game Dance Dance Revolution was insanely huge. My friend played it, and I’d play a game every once in a while, on easy, to the same songs every time.

Anyway, so we walked in to the arcade and were almost immediately approached by someone my friend knew. We got introduced and hung out a bit, then we went on our way. The guy who worked at the arcade (met him, too) later friend requested me on MySpace (that should tell you how long ago this was), and I accepted. We made plans to hang out, at the mall, that following weekend. He was nice, but I wasn’t attracted to him. I decided to just go anyway. He said he had to get a ride so he was bringing his friend… Cool, no problem.

So I showed up and lo and behold, the friend that the arcade guy brought with him was the same guy I was introduced to by my friend in the arcade. Later, he friend requested me on MySpace as well and we began chatting. We really got to know each other the first couple of weeks and then one day we went to Jamba Juice. We got our drinks and before we sat down he said, “I’ll be right back” and dashed off to the restroom… with his drink. I was baffled but let it go. When he came back, he sat across from me and we just chatted.

He kept motioning to the bottom of his cup, and after several moments I came out of my oblivious state and looked at the bottom of his cup to see he had written, “will you be my girlfriend” with red Sharpie.

It was the cutest way I’d ever been asked out.

The one thing I grew to love about him was his passion for a band that I absolutely couldn’t stand.

Metallica. Ugh.