Finally.

There is a topic that I've been meaning to talk about for a while, but getting into writing mode has been difficult lately. The topic is ... romance, again, although I'm going for a different angle than last time.

One day while I was thinking about names, I suddenly started to wonder what would have happened if Daniel and I had managed to actually get married instead of just planning to do so and then never getting around to it. To my own surprise, I got this strong feeling that I wouldn't have regretted it, and then I thought, "You're not making sense. Married or not, you're not together anymore. How could you not regret a marriage that failed?!" But the feeling wouldn't budge, and my thoughts kept returning to how special our relationship was, how he's my best friend now ... and how nobody even batted an eyelash when I announced that he would always be family, as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say about one's ex. Evidently the unique nature of our connection is visible to other people, too. I still kind of think we were made for each other, just not in the way that we initially assumed.

Now, in Homestuck there is this alien race called trolls (yeah ... IKR) who have a much more complex idea of romance than us humans. I won't go into detail, but the gist of it is that there are four different types of romantic relationships, some of which actually appear to be platonic at first glance. One is similar to human romantic love, one is a kind of romantic hate, or rivalry (come to think of it, the "rivalmances" in Dragon Age II are a lot like this, too), the third could perhaps be compared to a romantic relationship between asexual people, and the last one - which is simultaneously the most complicated and the least interesting - is like a sexless, toned down version of the rivalry one. I'm sure you'll be relieved to find out that I only want to talk about one of these. :P

( cut for length )

So all of these things put together kind of changed my internal definition of romance forever. I never would have expected that from a silly webcomic.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled rambling.

My thoughts and feelings have been all over the place lately; I wouldn't even know where to start if I wanted to describe what's been going on in my head. Most of the time I was too confused by my body's sudden unpredictability in regards to sleep to pay attention to what was happening, anyway. I now know that part of the mess was likely my own fault due to taking my pills only sporadically, leading to either headaches or extreme tiredness depending on whether I took them that day or not, but that can't have been the only problem.

I wish I could sort out which perceived symptom was caused by what. It's probably impossible because everything overlaps and there is rarely just one answer, but I'm so fucking sick of being unable to tell how I should react to feeling sluggish and low on energy, for example. Is it physical fatigue? Do I need to take it easy for a day? Or is it a mental thing? Should I bite the bullet and force myself to do more than I feel like? How am I supposed to know??

What I've recently discovered is that even my actual muscle strength can vary greatly from day to day. Sure, I always knew that exercise was harder after I had slept badly and easier during a high energy phase, but I didn't know that these fluctuations could also happen randomly. Then I had an extremely good day and yet my arms were super weak. :| Also, one time I had no energy whatsoever and only wanted to exercise a tiny bit to relax my shoulders, but to my own surprise I did way more than I had planned, just because it was so easy. It's like, do I get any control over my own freaking life?!

But what troubles me the most is that there are things that I almost always lack the motivation for, and I don't know what this means. I'm talking about enjoyable things here, so it's not a matter of laziness, exactly. However it's too specific to be anything as general as depression, and I can't quite see how my OCD would have such an effect. It's more like my brain's been incorrectly programmed to view these things as harder to do or less fun than they actually are - how do I get around that?!

Okay, this post is made of questions. Have I mentioned that I'm confused?

(Dude. That's way too many tags for one post. What am I doing.)

Addendum

Examples of things that my brain seems to find mysteriously difficult, as described in the previous post:

• watching videos of any kind (including movies) more than once
• deliberately* rereading fanfics that I bookmarked
• reading original fiction on the internet or downloaded ebooks
• watching downloaded YouTube videos immediately after the download has finished
• taking the time to check whether a video is worth watching instead of going "oh a video; ignore"
• seeking out, reading, comprehending and memorising new information about my interests
• cooking meals that are anything but improvised and minimalistic
• remembering on which days a comic updates and looking forward to those days**
• remembering when anything's going to happen, really, and looking forward to that time***
• oh you know what, just being aware of what day it is and what that means in general
• listening to music (although it has to be said that my current lack of equipment does make this harder)
• when I feel an urge to play the keyboard, actually do so

And all this is completely irrespective of my level of interest and (however fleeting) enthusiasm. :S

*as opposed to accidentally stumbling upon them again
**instead I just subscribe via RSS and check Google Reader sporadically
***IDEK, I basically assume that due to the nature of the internet, sooner or later the news will reach me anyway?