I was reading my old posts on this blog from when I was about 18, and I'm just so shocked at how much I've changed since then. I used to be witty, charming, dry-- rather pretentious, too, but let's not dwell on that-- and the very picture of a young parlor sophisticate. And now? Well. Sometimes, I talk about things other than my debilitating depression, and that's the absolute best the world is going to get from me.
It's rather sad, really. I believe firmly that I'm in the late stages of mental deterioration due to my drinking problem, and of course, the remedy to that would be to stop drinking, but, well. Sometimes things aren't quite as easy as they might seem (except me-- I'm very easy). I really don't know what I'm going to do when I get to Georgia, because I can't exactly be a successful and promising grad student if my brain turns to mush every time I try to read an article. Oh-- I never mentioned it, but I got into the University of Georgia for grad school! I'm going to be a PhD in Linguistics, provided I don't flunk out (which, as stated above, might very well happen). I'm excited, but I'm also vastly disappointed because I didn't get into any of my other schools. Georgia was my safety school, you see. That is to say, I don't know about USC yet, because they won't tell me, but I'm just going to assume it's a big fat no on that one.
The sad thing is, this was all easily preventable. I had good references, a good research statement, and a good writing sample. My resume isn't awful, and I look pretty good, except my GPA sucked. As I said, I have debilitating depression, and my senior year of college, I would spend weeks at a time in bed, never going to any classes, and not doing much of anything, really, besides drinking. I remember once I walked into my French linguistics class to hear, "bonjour tout le monde! Aujourd'hui nous avons un MIDTERME !" and I died a little bit inside because I hadn't been to class for almost the entire module. And then there was the time I was forcibly hospitalized and missed a midterm entirely... but that's another story. Anyway, as expected, I got a lot of Bs. Which, all things considered, wasn't too bad, especially since I literally couldn't study (see the above brain-turning-to-mush phenomenon), but grad schools don't really care about that. So I was rejected from UCLA and NYU and Arizona (which now boasts the scholarship of Noam Chomsky), and now have no choice but to go to the Deep South and live on ham, peaches, peanuts, and religious fundamentalism until the Good Lord takes me away. That is, if I want to pursue my dream. People have been telling me to wait a year and reapply and see if I can get into that cognitive science/linguistics program at Stanford, but I don't know. It seems to me that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and if I waited another year, there's no guarantee that I would a) get in anywhere, and b) remember anything about linguistics even if I did. So I feel like my path leads me to Athens, and come what may, I'll be a southern belle til the day I graduate.
That's coming in August, and I'm petrified out of my mind, but trying not to show it, because I know everyone doubts that I can do this, and I want to prove them wrong. Secretly, though, I'm also doubting that I can do this, if my track record at UCLA is anything to draw conclusions from. I'm quite literally terrified, and every day brings me closer to the day of reckoning. It's hard to stay upbeat in circumstances like these, especially since I still don't have a job. Granted, I haven't been trying as hard as I can, which isn't good either, but it seems like there's a lot of rejection going on in my life right now. I'm living in LA, trying to find somewhere to work that isn't a garbage dump or a construction site (actually, I would quite like to work on a construction site, but I don't think I would be very useful), but my mom is helping me with rent, and I feel terrible about that. Especially because I can't seem to stop drinking. I just don't know how to face life sober anymore, and that's awful, and I should be ashamed of myself (and I am), but it's so much harder to stop than it seems. Addiction is one hell of a thing, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
Well, I don't think I have any enemies. But still.
One bright spot in my life is my relationship with my girlfriend. She lives in England, which is hard (and makes it difficult to explain to people, because oh, you met online, are you sure she exists and all that), but this is one of the most stable relationships I've been in. She's really wonderful, so smart and talented and warm and into social justice, and I really love her. Once I get a more steady job, I'm going to be saving up to go and visit her, and I just know it'll be worth every penny and more. I'm going to go to the post office soon, in fact, and send her a care package with lots of different types of snacks in it. I want to cook for her and show off my skills (because let's be real, I have a lot of cooking skills), but for now, I'll send her food, and it will be almost like the real thing. I'm so lucky! I feel like I've found the Grantaire to my Enjolras (made even better by the fact that she would understand and approve of that reference), and everything is so much better now that she's here. I can't wait until we can meet in person-- it'll be a dream come true.
My roommate and I made the most delicious soup yesterday. It was chicken ramen, but we didn't have any dashi stock or anything, so we used an oden soup base (and doctored it up a bit), and put in a chicken thigh and all the vegetables we had in the fridge. Then we used these delicious instant ramen noodles that we buy from Daiso and cooked them for about three minutes, and voila, le soup du jour était prêt! I'm very lucky to have a roommate who is also a good cook, and who doesn't mind doing all the cleaning with me. Our housemates are, shall we say, less than domestic, and it falls to me and Kitty to do mostly everything. But I don't mind. It's good practice for when I live alone. Right now, I'm waiting for them to come back, and we'll clean the house together, and then maybe exercise some, and then make dinner. They're on a hike right now, to which I was invited, but as we all know, hiking is really not my thing, so I decided to stay home. But I'm pretty glad I did. I feel like we spend a lot of time together, and I wouldn't want them to get tired of me.
Cece and I are writing a paper with my mom. It's very cool and professional, and hopefully, it will get published. I'm so excited, really. It's fun to work on a Real Adult Project, especially with a friend, and I think it's good for me to keep my writing skills sharp before I head off to Georgia. However, I'm having some problems actually working on it, because my concentration is terrible these days. I'm well aware that if I stopped drinking and started eating more than 600 calories per day, I would do better, but this is my lot in life, and I must accept it.
No, I must not. What the heck.
I really hope I can get better at concentrating when I get to grad school. This is my dream, and I don't want to heck it all up by falling down the neck of a whiskey bottle every time something mildly inconveniences me. I've wanted to be a PhD since I was a little sunbeam, and even if it means recovering, I'm going to do it. It's going to be hard, of course. And I don't think I'm in a very good place now, to be honest with you. But I'm trying, and I think that's really important. I'm going to be the person I want to be even if it makes me into a fully functional member of society.
What else?
Did I ever talk about my gender identity crisis? I don't think I did. I shall.
So, long story short, I don't think I'm a cis girl. I thought I had to be all my life, but I've never really felt connected to the idea of womanhood. It seems so foreign and strange to me. In the same way, though, I don't connect to the idea of manhood, either. I'm just sort of... there. That's one of the reasons I love angels so much. They don't need gender. They just are. If I had to choose, I would be a girl, but the beauty of it all is that I don't need to choose. I can just be Sunny without having to worry about any abstract social constructs that try to dictate my life. I love that I chose my own name, too. Of course, it's still a nickname, and I don't mind going by Maria, but I feel like Sunny really encapsulates my personality, and gets me outside of the gender binary. People call me that now, and I couldn't be happier about it. All this isn't to say that I feel dysphoria, or want to legally change my gender (even though California does recognize nonbinary genders now). I'm fine with people calling me she and her (even though I melt with joy when anyone says they and them), and I don't mind having the body I do (except for the anorexia part-- but that's a separate issue entirely). I subscribe to the gender euphoria theory, in which the thought of one's gender brings a source of joy. And it does. Every time I think that I'm allowed to be nonbinary, it brings a rush of happiness.
For a long time, this was really confusing to me. I would "pretend" to be nonbinary because it brought me joy, but I thought I couldn't be anything but a cis girl because I love presenting in a traditionally feminine way. But after some study, I realized that what I want is to be a femme, not to be a woman. I'm the highest of high femme, makeup and heels and dresses and long, glossy hair, but that doesn't mean I have to be a girl, and that fact makes me supremely happy. I don't mind being read as a girl because it means (in our society, anyway) that people are reading me as femme, but if things were different, and all genders were accepted equally, I would definitely want to be a they instead of a she.
I want to do something. I don't care what, just something. But I don't want to do it with anyone. I'm really feeling like having a me day today, not really hanging out with anyone, not really being social and readily available like I usually am. Maybe I could pop into Westwood and go to a cafe or something. Or maybe I could take the dog for a long walk. It would be good for me; I need to exercise more. I'm way too out of shape. At any rate, I want to treat myself, but I don't want to spend a lot of money doing it (well, I do, but I shouldn't). And I know it's not good to just sit here in bed all day. Unfortunately, it's a really low energy day, so even brushing my hair and changing my clothes felt horrible. So I don't know what I can really do with that, but darn it if I'm not going to try.
I wish my housemates weren't here. I would take a bath with that bath bomb that Lauren gave me (and take Vivian the Vibrator in with me and have a grand ole time). But they're here, and I don't think they would appreciate me taking up the bathroom for so long, so I won't do that. Still, I think it would be pretty fun to have a spa day.
All right, I'm going to figure out something to do (and maybe reply to all the messages that I have been ignoring while typing this). Au revoir, cherie!

February post! I do have a lot to say, but I'm reading fan fiction right now, and it's very absorbing. So I'll come back and post more later, but I wanted to make sure there was a February entry. It's very important to me. Okay, time to go see what those Les Mis cafe boys are up to!

Happy January! This is going to be the year when I write here often, because I think it’s really important for me to start journaling again, and my paper journal is lovely, but it’s more aesthetic, you know? So here, hopefully, will be a dumping ground for me to get my thoughts in order before I translate them to the handwritten page. 

I have a lot to say, but at the moment, I don’t have the mental capacity to say it. So I’ll let it cook for a bit in my head, and hopefully later I’ll he able to articulate it. 

That’s it for now; I just wanted to check in during this first month of the new year. Hopefully, more will be forthcoming in later days.