Diana's Diary

2001-04-03 - 11:41 p.m.

Purge (II): the stuff that's rolling around in my brain

So I'm pretty much convinved that it Los Angeles that makes me crazy.

Let me explain a little bit about the Diana Seaborne Stress Mode. Back in high school, when I was stressing, I would have this sensation where it felt like I had a metal rod being screwed into the base of my spine. By my freshman year of college, the metal rod had pretty much been replaced with something even more bizarre: I'd be walking somewhere, I'd think something, and then suddenly I would have a very clear mental picture of my head exploding. Pleasant, eh? I haven't had that for a while, either. The newest thing (and I mean, this is in the last three months or so) is that I will be thinking, and suddenly I will have this overwhelming urge to tear my own face off. Like, I mean, dig my fingernails into the skin below my hairline and just start peeling. Ew, right? This is the first of these little stress images where the damage being done to myself would actually be self-inflicted. (But since I haven't yet changed my nickname to Scarface, you can rest assured that I haven't acted on the urge.) This afternoon, I was just sitting on the couch, watching TV, when that urge came back. I have no idea why. But then I got to thinking, I was back in the Bay Area for almost two weeks, and not even one time did I feel like peeling off my face. So...well, I've got a little less than eleven weeks left here. I can make it. Really. If it's any consolation, I think Silver's going nuts, too, though. She hadn't been home for more than ten minutes on Sunday evening before she was ranting about not being able to take living in our apartment (that is, with Paris) for much longer.

I got back to L.A. on Sunday afternoon. Yesterday (Monday) I had classes, and then in the evening, I hung out over at Orange's apartment. Orange has some sort of bizarre sense of timing, because he always wants to go out and drink with me when I have my period and have really bad cramps, and so am doped up on ibuprofen. Thus, drinking would not be smart. (Not that I enjoy drinking with Orange, anyway, but I think I've covered that before.) So we didn't drink. (Which was nice, because Orange was actually able to drive me home.) Basically, I watched Orange play computer games and we watched the Duke-Arizona game. Pretty boring, except that last night my mind was in the gutter, so we had some interesting conversations about astronomy. With telescopes, size does matter. (Orange and Nasa are both astro buffs, and I've got a fairly decent understanding of it for someone who doesn't really care.) Oh yeah, and I finally got to meet Trump's little girlfriend. Last year, Trump couldn't stand this girl, saying that she was stalking him or something. Now they're "special friends." Ugh. Men are pigs. I wonder if she realizes she's probably only being used for sex.

Now I'm two days into the quarter, and I'm still caught up on my reading. Woohoo! (That means I've already read an entire play and six short stories.) I dunno. Classes are weird. Last quarter, I was having one of my most (if not the most) horrible, apathetic, quasi-suicidal quarters ever, and I ended up with a 3.8 GPA for the quarter. What the hell? An A and two A-minuses. That's my best quarter ever, grade-wise, but everything else about it sucked ass. So what gives? Hmm...I think my next-best grades came during winter quarter sophomore year, when I was having all of that drama with Orange. Does that mean that all I need to get good grades is a completely suck-ass personal life? I'm not sure that I'm cool with that.

On Saturday, JB and I went into San Francisco and did the whole Pier 39, Ghiradelli Square, Golden Gate Bridge tourist thing. We also drove down the windy part of Lombard Street, which is something that I haven't done since I was about six. When I was little, my opthamologist was in The City, and I hated going to see him, because it meant spending an hour in the car both ways, and like most little kids, I had no attention span. My dad worked in Palo Alto, and a lot of the time, he would take the day (or afternoon) off from work and take me to the doctor. Aftewards, he'd drive down the windy part of Lombard Street, and sometimes, we'd go to the zoo. I'm not sure about other zoos, but at the SF Zoo, they had these little mechanical box-things where you could buy a key, and if you put the key in the box, a speaker in the box would tell you all about they animal exhibit it was near. One time my dad bought me one of those keys. It was green, and end was shaped like an elephant. Anyway, as JB was driving down Lombard Street, it suddenly clicked in my mind that there was no reason at all for my dad to have to drive down the windy part, and so he was only doing that because he thought I'd like it. I didn't make that connection when I was six. I always understood the zoo thing, but I'd completely forgotten about Lombard Street. Considering how much my dad hated driving in San Francisco, that was really, really nice of him. I miss my dad.

Now I need a kleenex. Damn it.

-Diana, signing off

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2003-12-16 - Ow! My Nose!
2003-12-15 - 'Tis the Season...For Moving
2003-11-17 - Rush, Rush
2003-11-03 - Apartment Hunting Sucks
2003-10-22 - Apparently, "nauseated" is a good look for me.

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