The last week of September and the first of October I was off my ADHD meds. If since May I feel like I’m on an endless day, these two weeks felt like a mist where “yesterday” and “tomorrow” didn’t exist. Half the time I enjoyed it, since I occupied my time watching movies and tv shows.
These two weeks were chaotic regarding university too: We had six days of strikes (the political climate in Argentina and the defence of public education is a long and complex matter that deserves its own entry) but work piled up anyway since I couldn’t bring myself to do virtually nothing related to my career. And that’s why the other half of the time was miserable. I hardly could get sleep. I really felt the auto-sabotage and the guilt, shame and despair. I isolated myself too, seldom interacting with my loved ones.
Feeling lonely wasn’t the problem, I enjoy solitude. It’s the possible damage that isolation can do to relationships. Even if my fiancee, my best friend and my girlfriends all know at different degrees how I am, still I worry.
Then, there’s all the piled up work and the final examinations right around the corner. This week, even with my meds, I’m struggling to catch up and manage better my time. So I have less time for my hobbies and more points in the misery bar. There’s no cure for the loser womanchild disorder.
I meant to publish this entry the wednesday 18th of september. But things happened: More assignments for uni, a strong cough that refuses to leave and for whatever reason my spirits are low. The inspiration for writing was finding this book.
Now, a little story of what my life is: I'm studying linguistics. Applied English linguistics. Profesorado en inglés . Along my formation in linguistics, I'm having a pedagogical/didactical formation going on as well. One of my many assignments with score are related to class planning. How to plan a class in a foreing language but with elements of our contexts was the assignment of this week. With my group we made a class around female historical figures of our hick town city.
That's how I found about Ana Teresa Fabani . She was a poetess and novelist who lived a short life due to tuberculosis, leaving a poemario (a compilation of poems) "Nada tiene nombre"/"nothing has a name", and an autobiographical novel about her times at a tuberculosis sanatorium. Naturally, it caught my attention, as I wanted to read specifically a novel about the life on those sanatoriums since a long time. So I left a tab open to not forget about the book. At that point I had had a conversation with my bf about how nice it would be to buy books again and have a collection of favs and pearls.
Last tuesday I was coming back from uni when I shifted my usual route in a whim. I passed by a bookshop which was having a sale. It was, too, these kind of days when you don't want to go home because there is the blues waiting for you. So... a place to distract myself poking around books was like a ring to a finger (como anillo al dedo, we say in spanish). And there was "Mi hogar de niebla"/"My home of mist" by Fabani. Like waiting for me. The original edition from 1950, a post-mortem edition. It came home with me.
I don't started it yet as I'm currently reading another book and uni is giving me a tought time, but I'm interested about Ana Fabani and her context. I'm even thinking in writing an entry about "Mi hogar de niebla" and her once I'm done reading the novel. So I found an article wrote by another fellow entrerriana and obscure female writer, Selva Almada (who deserves a serious entry here, with her book "chicas muertas"/"dead girls", about femicide cases):
Tenía tuberculosis, sus libros casi se pierden para siempre y ahora hay una calle con su nombre
Certainly, I'll translate it for my entry about Ana Teresa Fabani, as I find Selva Almada's appreciations of the book very interesting, she even compares it with The Suicide Virgins from Eugenides! and, shortly, explains the context of the life and death of Fabani and the post-mortem publication of her works.
Since a long time, internet was my place to meet new people: more than school, squares and streets, parties. Since I was a tween, great and not-so-great acquaintanceships and friendships were made on the web. It was and it still is my window to the world. I belonged to different communities, sometimes as a little more than a lurker, other times as a part of the cliqué. I even met people from my town and area through social media. My first love grew from a epistolary relationship. My best friend came into my life by an invitation to hang out by SM. The love of all my lives for a year was a dear e-friend.
But now... I find so hard to connect through e-means. And it's such a shame because I had quite a number of e-acquaintance that I find interesting, pleasent, possible friends. But we live far away. I mean, it's not so far away in terms of distance but in terms of money. There was a time in Argentina when travelling didn't cost that much. But today I barely could afford meet with my fiancee.
Coming back to the point, I don't want to chat, hear voice notes, share memes and that being all the interaction. I need to see the person, hear their voice and look at their eyes and bodylanguage while we talk, share a mate, a birra (beer), food, whatever and live an autentic connection, an analogic experience. I still mantain contact of course. But it doesn't fulfill me anymore like it used to.
I have a hoard of retro/vintage clothes. I can say proudly that my wardrobe (not my gosurori one kekek) is dynamic, flexible. A range of styles and elements can be found there: men's shirts sharp and a lil oversized to delicate frilly blouses evocating the 70s praire trend or the 90s/early 00s gosurori. I have three skirt suits in plaid. Orphan skirts in plaid too without a jacket to match. Pussybow blouses, bralettes, oversized t-shirts with bands and manga prints. More skirts, short, longer, in velveteen, in lace, in linen. Knits from the 80s from real wool, knits more modern made of plastic wool. Like 6 pairs of jeans in different silhouetes. And so on. Sometimes I even forget I have some items.
But... For what for?
I like to go to uni all dolled up, but this half-of the academic year (cuatrimestre, four months) I have less class hours. And I live in a city with a small town mentality so sometimes I'm not feeling OK using a headbow to general didactics class. I sound like a coward, but doesn't everybody have these days where they find more comfortable to blend in the background? I can't mantain my solipsistic delirium everyday y'know!
And you will ask me, what about the weekends?
Well, yeah, some weekends are permissive for a killing outfit! even if it's for drinking beer or vermouth in the streets with my best friend. But other weekends, when cash is not flowing, with my bestie we grab the mate and go to the nature: the Uruguay river and the woods beside it. Such ocassions call for a casual outfit. Or worse, I have to stay at home in my pajamas studying, sewing, tidying, or simply rotting on the computer or on the bed.
You see, here in cdelu there's nothing fun to do: few bars which are boring for my taste, not a single rave in sight, gigs? maybe a few that worth it, not goth clubs with 80s music. Streets that Im bored of walking. Only when my boyfriend comes I can enjoy the city and it's streets through his eyes.
Guess what? today is one of those days of staying at home. I was thinking earlier to write a blog entry about my life in this cursed city, with a few pictures. Lets see if my creative drive can win the ADHD.
Not only in laziness we found the cause of the absense of one of the first pages ppl make for their site: the about me.
For someone who is currently healing their 21 century disease of ¿self-importance? I sure get freeze when I have to define myself.
Yeah, my astrological big threes, my age, my nationality, some nice photo, a list of my hobbies, my career, photos of my cat...
But there is something so strange for me in the matter of identity...
I mean, all the about mes that I could write come from a material reality anchored on the present.
And sometimes I feel so alienated from everything. I blame spirituality (please don't mistake it with religion) for this
In the grand scheme of the things, this is just another life of mine. And I doubt that all my lifes on the samsara could account
for the true nature of the spirit, our real selves.
Anyway, I kinda forgot how much fun is to build your site and the little time it takes compared to doomscrolling.