generic.

It's the peak of fall which means it's also the climax of my personal allergy Hell.
For some of you an allergy is a pesky sneeze from time to time and maybe a slight topical itch. We're talking dream affliction compared to my nightmare.

Me? I have no ordinary allergy.

I am completely and utterly useless during this time and remedying the problem has proved to be a fruitless endeavor. I've gone at this from every angle, taken extreme precautions, and fought the good fight against dust, leaves, and cats for as long as I can remember.
There's no stopping mother nature's untidiness.
She insists on sweeping her crap in my general direction - using a Herculean sized fan pointed at my face as her choice brooming method.

Dear Great Mother, please meet my favorite tactile member.

Therefore, since the universe has declared war on me - I am declaring war on IT! I am hereby advocating today - and every other day in this season of infamy - as a homo sapien hibernation. I will spend my time in bubble baths and knitting hypoallergenic wool.
There's no two ways about it. I've taken every drug out there recommended to numb the pain and NOTHING works.

Currently I pop the CVS rip-off of Benedryl. You can't possibly mistake it's intended purpose. It says ALLERGY MEDICINE in big pink block lettering. I've experienced several high and low points while on these pink demons. I've learned that when taken on an empty stomach they can alter your behavior to a point not unlike insobriety (this was the high point I mentioned earlier). I don't recommend doing this before morning meetings, ESPECIALLY if you work in the health-care industry emphasizing in geriatrics. I read that somewhere, it was a disclaimer or something...

But not to despair - your self medicating practice is not all in vain!

We'll forget that in your hopeless desperation for clear nasal passages and a throat not made of thistle, that you soon give up and give in to the power of the pink pill and fall into a bizarre sleep and when awakened you feel neither rested nor on the mend - just horribly, horribly confused about where you are, how you got there, why you're missing your pants and if that vivid memory about goat herding in the Swiss Alps was a dream or not (and this was the low point...).

We won't mention that you speak incoherent sentences that leave sales clerks morally obligated to ask you if "[you're] okay to drive". And let's not talk about the blogs you write at 2 in the morning paying homage to your allergy medication. And we certainly don't need to discuss the other elite residents in the bathroom cabinet, such as "Aspirin" from the 99cent store and "Pain Pills" from Wal-Mart.

Oh the (generic) lives we lead.
These labels clearly demonstrate the superiority of our reasoning skills; without them where would we be? Stuck between the Ben-Gay and the Zyban, that's where. Personally I am thankful that my medication doesn't pretend to be anything else. It doesn't need to be fancy like "Tylenol" or clever like "DayQuil". It is simply "I am allergy medication, and I am pink". And for that extra step it's saved me from reading it's .4 font label on the back indicating it's medicinal qualifications, I am grateful.

I really need to learn to knit.

1 & 0.

It's an age of computers.
Words aren't really words anymore, they're numbers...made up almost entirely of 1's and 0's.
Its a new century, people meet via social network and mutual interest groups, instead of local watering holes and malls.
And why shouldn't they? I reserve the right to screen my potential love interests based upon their favorite movies, bands and quotes.
There are few things worse then being on a first date and finding out that the person sitting opposite you is a die hard Poison, Marilyn Manson, Kiss, or GodSmack fan.
Still, I miss the days of old, when people actually went on first dates and had first date talks and were left feeling excited about all that was left to know.

I miss intellect. I miss intellectuals.
I miss when it was accepted as a state of being and not a numbers scale.
I'm tired of hearing post-published, coffee-break talk about taxonomy, proofs, quantum physics, periodic tables, foreign policy, religion and what goes where.
I'm bored of the smart people just being smart and not anything more.
Committing to memory everything written in books and neglecting to have a useful existence once the objective is complete. I call it the "Good Will Hunting" Syndrome, it's not officially documented in current medical journals, but oh, it will be.

It's become so important to have the most Snapple facts readily at hand and less important to actually understand how they pertain to people and the universe in general and still, even less important to do something constructive with the trigger happy, instant-oatmeal information.
In current events those who consider themselves "economically aware" are those sitting in front of the Fox news channel, watching stocks rise and fall, but not out in the working-class economy trying to make a buck. Those who think themselves politically savvy are those reading the latest CNN headlines and quoting news anchors but not taking into consideration all that they don't know. All that they couldn't know. All their good knowledge, via filtered U.S. media, serves solely as a back-up plan should Alex Trubec come-a-knockin'.

When did we become such a lazy people and make the bane of our existence: 'intellect' ÷ by what we know and 'righteousness' ÷ by what we don't do? Is it not more amiable to measure both intellect and righteousness by what we do with what we know?
If intellect is Webstered as a display of high mental capacity, there is nothing that requires equal paramount comprehension than grasping the complexity of human essence. Not even an encyclopedia.
I know it isn't scientific, but I would rather have a man courageous enough to be a man of pith, rather than have a book who can only give me the definition.

Jericho.

It's one of those days.
The days where nothing goes right,
everything falls apart, and you're left cursing the day you were born.
I don't think I need to get in to the gory details for you to understand where I'm coming from.

This blog isn't for your enjoyment, it's for my own sanity...and frankly that isn't pretty either so don't come here looking for inspiration. I'm fresh out.

Right now I'm so emotionally conflicted that I don't even know what format to write in. This is my biggest dilemma. Do I write in paragraph or open-rhyme? More conflict. That's all I need.

For as long as I can remember I have been a pretty guarded individual. Some of you that know me will agree whole heartedly while others of you don't think that describes me at all.
Confused?
Me too.
Bare with me.

Everyone is "guarded" for their own reasons and under their own conditions. Being so looks different for every person but it has some very distinctive characteristics. I don't need to dumb it down for you here. I'm sure all of us could name a few. Here's my problem. In all of the mess that has been my life I have been either too smart or too stupid to remain closed off for long.

I know just as well as any other talk show host that being guarded and not allowing others access to you only leads to a life of loneliness and unfulfillment.
So my intelligence tells me that I don't want that.
However, not being guarded allows people to perpetually destroy the things that matter, the things you worked hardest for, the things that define you.
So it's with my stupidity that I open back up.

Here's me in a nut shell...(men this is your warning)
I am indeed emotionally and mentally closed off.
I open up temporarily...almost just to get a breath of fresh air...and than in no time at all I close back up and resume my emotional hibernation.

The "why?" doesn't matter. It simply is how it is. I haven't decided to live with it forever yet, but I haven't decided to change it either.

We've all been hurt. My story isn't any more magnificent than anyone else's. We each of us take what we can handle. And what tears me apart may be more or less what tears you apart.

What gets me are the times when you thought you were safe behind your mile high walls. You hadn't cried in ages, your chest hadn't burned from hyper ventilation since high school, and your head didn't feel like it was going to explode from a "tear migraine" that inevitably ensues after a good breakdown. Just when you feel like nothing can get at you its the people who were allowed inside (family, best friends, your dog, etc.) that are able to do the most damage.

For me, allowing those "safe" people in was very low on the risk factor. These were, after all, the people that were supposed to love you no matter what. Not because of personality or merit but because of obligation, of course. You figure, your family, at least, is a guaranteed "free space".

I hate to be the one to tell you this but it's an urban myth. All of it.
People are people. Loyalty, ancestry, and faithfulness died along with Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
I apologize for this not being the ray of hope type of rubbish that you are all used to from me...think of it as me exercising my versatility as a writer, if that makes you feel better.

I haven't found that healthy balance yet. I want to be open without being transparent, without falling in love every 5 minutes, without being with the person every second of the day and without selling myself short to the first johnny-come-lately that appreciates my cooking. I want to be guarded without being cold, without being apathetic, and without being dissatisfied with everything and everyone.
I haven't really decided what kind of girl I am but I want to be somewhere in the middle instead of drowning in an undertow on one side only to be hurled up temporarily to get a glimpse of the other.

There is a balance. Maybe it's at the bottom of this margarita glass. It's certainly not in relationships. I've looked. And it's not in self-help books neither. I could tell you it's in God, because that would be the Christian thing of me to say...but that's another relationship that would also call for an even healthier "balance". So I don't think it's there either.

And now I feel guilty, I've written this long verbose thing and I don't have a solution for you.
I'm lost just like a good amount of people out there. I'm searching for the same answers, quite possible under the same rocks as a lot of you. I don't have it all figured out. Actually, I don't have much figured out. And there in lies the problem. When you find yourself on the right side of the wall you built only to find that it could be destroyed from within too, you tend to lose direction. If there was a mistake made, I could fix it, if feelings were hurt I could apologize for it...but in the instance when there's neither nothing to apologize for and no mistakes to undo..all you can do is wait.

...and I hate waiting.