Needing To Be Useful

This tale of my past is derived mostly from a long conversation I had with my friends yesterday. I recreate it here, slightly edited for better reading and accuracy. May it help anyone who wishes to know me, to understand some of my perspective. May it help anyone who is currently suffering similarly, to know that they are not alone.


I was an outsider, in my mind, for most of my life through elementary and high school. I did not expect anyone to want to be around me, even when I was at home. I grew to escape my fear of social rejection by getting caught on blades in my mind. I was considering dying for a long swath of it, because I thought it would remove me as a burden of unwelcome obligation on my parents, and on society at large. So I tried to imagine nonexistence... which is impossible. And I tried to imagine hell... which is vague enough that it can be endlessly iterated on as progressively worse forms of torture.

I do not recommend this strategy to anyone.

My parents did not deny me by rigidly insisting that I should be Christian, or Muslim, or a doctor, or any such thing; they were simply busy with their own affairs and generally seemed to want little more of me than to not to get in the way, and to not spend more hours than they felt was permissable in front of a television or computer screen. I felt that they neither noticed nor cared that I was suffering.

Although, when I came back from my year of travel to Australia at the age of nineteen, my father confessed to me that he had been concerned sometimes that he would lose me to my shadows.
I was kind of exasperated that he hadn't said that at the time, and I believe I told him so.

For the most part, I consider my parents to be a feature of my past. To a large degree, I consider them to have failed me, and myself not to owe them much of anything. Family is those who understand and support me, wherever I find them.

However, I am still open to visiting my father again to say hi and try to catch up before I leave the country. I like him, in some ways. He is very expressive, and good at explaining and describing things. ...Sometimes people have said I talk like him.

Anyway, I couldn't bring myself to die. Both the consequences and the means were too terrifying to accept. I saw the potential, but it made me horribly squeamish. I squirmed whenever I looked at a sharp knife, or even when someone close to me was holding something as innocuous (but potentially lethal) as a sewing needle. Sometimes, I still do.

And also, I have to admit, I was not actually convinced that it would be doing the world a favour if I died, since I recognized that a lot of heroes in stories came from outsider status, and hoped that I could be like them, although not with much confidence attached to the hope. Perhaps it seemed to me at the time that this could have been desperate denial of an unpleasant truth. I think while I was so young, it did not occur to me to believe in cynical denial of a hopeful truth. At least not in myself.

I became deeply obsessed with proving my own worth, establishing my own right-to-exist. A cognitive habit which is so ingrained, its shape is still reflected in many of the ways I think that were built and updated around it, even if the existential urgency that originally drove that obsession is weakening now as I heal my mental habits.

I tried to do what heroes in stories would do; hold to good, in whatever form I could see it, and to helping other people. I felt hopeful... desperately, pathetically hopeful... whenever I could do so much for my classmates as throw someone's ball back to them to save them the effort of walking to get it, even though I knew my status as a scapegoat would mean they would never invite me to play.

And I spent a lot of time walking on my own. I would walk the big track-and-field running track during recess, thinking to myself. Knowledge and wisdom derived from contemplation were useful, in theory, so if I could develop more of that... it must add to my value, my right-to-exist.

And I had a period of life when I communed with spirits. Although who can say, now, whether there was any reality in that outside my own perspective? I think even my former self at that time was in the habit of wondering whether there was any reality in it outside of her own perspective, and might have readily admitted this if anyone had ever asked her what she thought about it. Almost certainly, though, she would have been overwhelmed by that same desperate hope, because someone was actually expressing an interest in her perspective... paired with fatalistic near-certainty that the one who was asking would use anything she said as something to yell and catcall back at her later.

There was one time, she was walking the track as usual, having turned her heel and walked out on a social situation that was growing unworkable, but was followed by a whole tribe of children. My memory has likely inflated the numbers, but it seemed to me like most of my grade was following me at a short distance, booing and screaming.
And I kept walking. What else was there to do?
Someone had run up to me... it must have been winter, because they got their boot caught in the snow. When I didn't stop to help, but kept walking, I was declaimed as selfish and having "lured" them out here into the cold to die, or something like that. That may have been what set all the booing and screaming off, now that I think about it... but it is all very fuzzy.

And I came to hope, throughout this time, and through hope I came to believe, that in taking this kind of abuse on myself, someone else, somewhere, was spared it. The attention of the bullies was distracted from someone else who might otherwise have been a target, and may have had less resilience to bear it.

That, at least, would be something useful. So I thought I could live with it.

My social life drastically improved at sixteen years of age. My mother plotted with a family we knew to hold me a really nice sixteenth birthday party, away from all the kids at school I felt obligated to treat as friends whenever they would let me, even though they were not.

My mother, in a surprising display of respect and consideration, drove me far from our little village to a larger town, and drove me around the town to look for a present I would actually want, because she didn't want to waste money on something I didn't, an attitude with which I agreed wholeheartedly, and still do.
Gemstones of my birth-month? No, I wasn't really interested in gems. They were so girly and ostentatious. A bicycle? A good idea, but I already had one, my father's girlfriend had got it for me.

I didn't find anything else I particularly cared for at any of the other shops we went to either, and my mother was growing frustrated with the failure to find an appropriate gift, so I recommended we go to the used book store. There might be a book there by Terry Pratchett or Spider Robinson that I hadn't read yet, and although it would be a small thing, I knew I liked those.

In the used bookstore, I found two large, hardcover books that quickly drew my fascinated attention. They were two of the three core rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons, edition 3.5. And I knew I had found The Thing. They were expensive enough that my mother was very reluctant to buy them for me, especially given that there was one missing, and I would need to have all three. But maybe she just didn't understand why a set of three hardcover books should be worth so much.

Here, I feel I need to back up and explain the context of my desire. I had been trying to invent Dungeons & Dragons from scratch since I was six or something. I had made a habit, from a very early age, of drawing mazes, and putting dots in them with different colours of markers, to represent monsters and treasures, and trying to get my half-brother to play the adventure with me.

I knew to call the person who built the maze and filled it with monsters the "dungeon master", so I guess I must have picked a lot of that idea up from things I'd heard some older kids saying. Almost certainly Levi and Nathan, the two boys closest to our age (although still older) of a farming family we knew, and which my father would often visit, bringing my half-brother and me along. We would spend time with Levi and Nathan whenever our family was visiting theirs, often running off to play in the woods near their farm. We especially liked the game of trying to dam up tiny streams, and keep building and repairing the dam as the water that was pooled behind it grew wider and higher.

But anyway. Although I suspect I must have seen or heard the older boys playing or talking about it, I don't think I had ever actually realized that Dungeons & Dragons... really existed? I thought they were just talking about video games, maybe, or trying to recreate video games without a computer. I did not realize at the time that the video games had actually been recreations of D&D.

So finding these rulebooks, to me in my teenagerdom, was a little like discovering the tomb of King Tut. I managed to convince my mother that yes, these books were something I really wanted, and it would make me very happy to have them, as long as she could get me the third one too. She bought them, and I started reading voraciously as soon as I got back in the car. She actually had to prompt me to look up after we had pulled in and parked in the driveway of the other family's house, so that I would notice that they had put up a big paper banner across the front of the house, that said HAPPY SWEET SIXTEEN EMILY. It was, I have to admit, a really nice gesture.

My mother and the mother of this family were friends, and I got along pretty well with her two children. There was a boy named Victor who tended to be very loud, so much so that between us we named a measure of volume someone was shouting at, "the Victor scale". There was also a girl, whose name was not connected to such a mnemonic, and so I do not remember it. Possibly it was Tammy. I remember her being small, slender and creative in ways that reminded me of a pixie.

We spent a weekend there. We had KFC on my birthday (a rare luxury), and I spent most of that weekend reading and plotting, and convinced Victor and Tammy to play the game with me, even though we didn't have the Player's Handbook, which is the most important one. But we would need dice. They brought me to a hobby store in town that sold the right kind. My mother didn't want to spend any more money on me, but I couldn't play the game without any dice, so I presented the greatest compromise I felt I could. I would get just one die, and I would choose it out of the factory seconds box, which was cheapest.

I looked through the box for a 20-sided die that I liked. I think it was a black one with red numbers. We would have to make do, but we could, because you could simulate rolling any other die with fewer sides by rolling a d20, you just had to divide the numbers up evenly, and roll again if you got one of the leftovers. I drew a conversion table for this purpose. In retrospect, my sixteen year old self, in her excitement about this, registers to me as incredibly cute.

Later that summer, after a copy of the Player's Handbook had been provided to me and I had thoroughly studied all three core rulebooks, I started to prepare a real game, for more than just a weekend out of town. I pulled out a book and craft set I'd been given previously about proper forms of writing with quill-pens and practiced the art just so that I could write prop documents, and place-names on my maps, with the proper medieval flair.

I painted an overworld map on a big piece of newsprint that I had deliberately stained with coffee to look old, and tore all the edges so they'd be ragged. And I planned an adventure and where it would begin, with an opening scene like a cinematic from a video game, and a great big complicated wonderful dungeon to be the first adventure. I invited the other kids my age at the youth group I usually spent time at to come and make characters so they could play with me, and nagged at the ones who expressed an interest until I succeeded in dragging them away from playing Halo on the x-box to come and do it.

And I ran my game.
It became an established feature of the Thursday youth group, every week.
Sometimes, the players would even invite me over to their houses so I could run the game on the weekends.
And my heart was full of joy and validation, because for what seemed like the first time in my life, there was a reason people wanted to have me around.
Even if it wasn't because of who I was... just that I brought the game.
My morale and creativity improved tremendously. I would draw battle scenes and characters and maps in the margins of worksheets at school. I embraced that role as hard as I could over the next couple of years.

I told this story to a couple of my friends over voice chat on Discord not all that long ago, and I think I could hear one of them choke up a little when I got to the end, because in the end, it comes around again to how all this happiness was due to the relief of a loneliness and sense of worthlessness so unendurably desperate that even though I still didn't think my players necessarily liked me, it changed my whole life.

And it is sad. I get it. I agree, and in fact I'm really glad I have friends who can understand how sad it was. But when I look back, I can't help but remember the happiness too, and smile a bit.

The heart celebrates, when it finds a situation which is even marginally less bad.

Music From the NES Era

An interesting person responded to a personals ad I'd left on craigslist with an email including this:

Question. Favourite NES-era video game soundtrack?

And that... Led me down such a personally fascinating trail of consciousness that I want to share it here. So I quote here my answer, just as I wrote it to him:

I like the specificity of your question. When you ask specifically NES era... Oddly enough, my reflex answer is: Actraiser! Never actually played it, but watched someone play it, and the music was really good. ^^ However, as I suspected, and a Google search confirms, that was one gen later, on the SNES. Well, in that case, Mr. Mario is certainly good, but I have to give it up to the classic, the legendary, the original... Legend of Zelda. In my highschool music class, I played one variant of the iconic overworld theme on my trumpet for one of my tests. I think I earned some serious geek cred for that with some of my classmates. 

Of course I have, since you said NES era, been thinking exclusively about the NES as opposed to other games released in roughly the same era but on different platforms; there were a lot of DOS and Sega games with good soundtracks too, like the first three Sonic games, Wolfenstien, Commander Keen, just to name a few... 

And then, a memory so obvious, so huge, so personally important but so removed from general public consciousness that I didn't think of it at first, hits me in the side of the head. 

No. I do have a favorite soundtrack from that era. It was a DOS simulation game, released in 1994-95, simply called "Wolf". 

Playing that game encouraged and developed a lot of early formative attitudes in me about environmentalism and respect for animals - as they are more complex, more intelligent and wiser than most of us humans give them credit for, or did back in the 90s anyway. 

And it was under the influence of that game that I had an early sense that I was what I would later understand to be part of the human subculture called furries, more specifically the therian or otherkin sides thereof. 

It was under the influence of that game that I experienced what was possibly a visual hallucination one night in my childhood when I knew with utmost certainty that I had not been asleep... that was one of the reasons I pursued a belief in magic and mysticism with vigor and desperation into my preteen years, hoping that I might somehow see again what I had seen once... until doubt and self-loathing finally managed to half convince me that I had been wrong, and that my faith was not merely misguided, but childish. Only ever half convinced, though, I continued to attempt to test and practice magic as I understood it, and I have some pretty amazing stories about it. 

My insistence from the age of around five before I knew any better than to make such assertions that I had the soul of a wolf earned me the nickname of "wolfie" and contributed to earning me a place as the most bullied child in my tiny home village of 700 right up until I turned 18 and left. 

The music was very soulful, and took obvious inspiration from native american musical themes. I think I have the soundtrack saved somewhere, I can show it to you if you like. 

Wow. For such an innocent question, I sure managed to follow it into a deep, dark place.

Hey.

I thought since I've been thinking about trying to blow the cover way off of my unintended internet secrecy, maybe I should write a greeting to anyone who clicks in search of more information.

I grew up in poverty in rural Ontario to a narcissistic mother and a father who was, and remains, a resourceful practitioner of simple sciences (heating, plumbing, welding, building makeshift insulated chicken shelters for winter out of old freezers and other junk, you name it) and a natural hermit. They've been split up and lived in two different places since I was, I think, two years old.

For most of my childhood, I split my time between their two households: one an old house on a hill on the outskirts of a village of 700 people, at least according to the sign; and the other a farm of sorts in a swampy wood - or a wooded swamp, whichever you prefer to think of it as, 10 km outside of that town.

I was bullied horribly through elementary school and high school, and grew up longing to travel and tell stories, to inspire and to educate. As soon as I graduated high school, I left home on an airplane and went overseas in search of love.

Since then I've traveled around quite a lot. I've hitch-hiked, and I've also taken a week long bus trip that stretched a great big diagonal line across Canada including a two day layover in Winnipeg, where I spent the night on the roof of a multi-level car park with a drunken hobo sleeping on my clothes.

For the last few years, I've settled a little bit in London. I guess I'm trying to find some sanity and repair the broken parts of myself so that the next time I head out, I won't be running away so much as charging out into the fray. This time, I hope I'll be leaving behind a safe, happy home base that I'll feel comfortable coming back to.

I know what it means not to have an established place to go, and I can tell you that having no place is better than being trapped in a terrible place. I know how it is to scavenge and scrounge, to keep a supply of water bottled from public fountains and bathroom sinks, get food only where I can get it for free, and I can tell you that you might be surprised the good food and respect you can get for nothing more than a little humility and the willingness to ask for help.

I have never begged strangers for anything, except directions, change to use a payphone and a token to ride a bus or a train.

I have sat with an instrument on a sidewalk and played for tips, though.

As my day job, I work in a thrift store operated by Goodwill.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with my life yet. Hopefully, whatever it ends up being, it will involve a lot of poetry.

Left Forgotten

Wow. Yeah. I really did completely miss October of this year.

Well, there goes my streak of updating this thing at least once every calendar month, huh? Ah, well. I'll start again. Everyone makes mistakes.

You know, I had been meaning to come back and talk to you unseen eyes for a while now, but it always just seemed like I didn't have a good stopping point. Everything was up in the air, and reporting on my current status would give no closure, because I didn't have much. It's silly, in retrospect. I think some of my best writing on this blog has been from when I've been uncertain about the future.

So. October. I spent most of September desperately trying to find a place to move into for October. It didn't work. Me and Robby were turned down everywhere we applied, for various reasons. We suspected that the reasons were largely due to us being a couple, and therefore perceived as less financially stable than a single person with high earnings. So, he asked his current landlord for permission to stay where he was already, and continue to pay rent month by month for now, and I started looking for a place where I might be able to do the same thing. That way, once he was working again and had passed his three month probation, having been fired early September at the end of his last one (likely part of the reason for our rejections), we could look for a place to rent together with little to no time pressure, and wait to find a good place that would accept us, then move out of our flexible month to month situations only once we had found one.

I asked my roommate to let me stay at the apartment for the month of October even though my term on the lease was over, and offered to pay him the same amount in rent that I had been contributing when it was just us two... Despite the fact that his new girlfriend was now living there, too. He accepted, and I resumed the search for a place, but to move into for November. With the help of his girlfriend's mom, I found the place I am sitting in now. A bedroom in the fairly posh basement of a nice couple's house. I have my own bedroom across an open living room that the landlord sometimes walks through to use the laundry facilities down here. I share the upstairs kitchen. It's quite nice and very affordable, but I need to ask permission to have folks over. I've had Robby over to visit twice, under the restriction that he needs to leave by 11 PM.

My position at Goodwill continues to gradually accrue age and experience. I've been working there I think six months now, and I feel generally quite competent at almost every part of my job... The big exception being confrontation with difficult customers and thieves. While my social anxiety has not been crippling me nearly as badly now that I have the confidence of a job in which my work is appreciated and I've passed my probation, and a house that shows no sign, thank goodness, of being infested with blood-sucking bed bugs (I must have done a fairly good job of getting them out of all my things when I moved), but still, being faced with a particularly difficult or conflict-ridden social situation paralyzes me. Thankfully, my workmates are generally understanding, and can accept that it's not something I'm good at, so take the burden off me somewhat.

Though I am usually fairly happy at work, and my new place is safe, much more comfortable, and very convenient, I grow restless. I had feared, before finding employment, that if I was employed, I might become complacent with my passionate socialist ideals among other things... And to a degree, that's proven valid. My perspective is very different now that I'm making money and am not just on welfare. However, when I think about what I believe should be, much of it is still the same. I still think that welfare would work better, and people would be better off, if basic essentials were available without cost. Now, though, I look at a different set of advantages to the thought. It would be harder to defraud or take advantage of the welfare system, as well, if it offered you goods, shelter and services directly, rather than through money allowances. It's a lot harder and much more work to get simple food and goods and have to sell them somehow to get easily exchangeable money to spend on luxuries that the benefit wasn't intended for. Or, indeed, drugs or alcohol, for that matter. I imagine people who do have their own income stream would far less often bother to do that than to fraudulently claim money benefits they are not entitled to, as they might do now.

I've also been reading a little bit about becoming rich through real estate and stock market investments.

Yes, I know. Funny how much things can change, right? I'm seeing more of the picture now, because I'm seeing a lot more of a side I wasn't able to before. I'm trying not to lose sight of my old thoughts and the things that made them valid, too, though.

My half-brother emailed me yesterday asking how my life has been, and commented that he had been to check out this blog to find out, but there were no recent entries. So, if you've been missing my blog entries, you can thank him for reminding me to return and talk about how things have been.

I'm still getting used to working, and I'm trying to make up my mind whether or not it's okay for me to wait longer to become more secure and save up more money before I start doing interesting things. Probably not. It's just a matter of remembering that some of the interesting things I want to do don't take much money, and getting out and doing them.

We'll see how it goes.

Live on, bloggers.

Indomitable

My feet are still recovering from the intense soreness of wearing unaccustomed shoes for six hours, most of it spent walking at work and walking home from work. My boyfriend was laid off yesterday and I have no idea whether our rental application for the house we want to live in together will be approved in light of this. I'm not sure whether my own job with Goodwill will end with my end of probation assessment like Robby's did, or continue. And yet. I'm smiling today.

I was smiling even before I got online and discovered that the solo play-by-post D&D game I've been participating in for two years on and off has reached a head in the most awesome of ways. I was smiling while I was walking home noticing that the seam in the left side of my left shoe was starting to hurt my flesh and thinking to myself I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I took it off to see blood there.

Somehow, this time of trials is only waking me up and making me feel strong and ready for the adventure. I have faced worse than this, and I will face this too. I will be there for Robby and help him find work again. I will support us in the interim, whether we have to look for a different place from the one we were hoping for or not. Even if I lose my own job... I'll find another one. The stakes are high. The race is staggering. The stage is set...

And I am afraid...

And I will be victorious.

Happiness

You know...

Over the last month or more... I've been... noticing how happy I am. I've been appreciating the love and support of my friends. I've been trusting that things will turn out okay and I'll get where I need to be eventually without rushing. I've been enjoying my humble home with my freecycled furniture.

I finally have a computer now that functions well enough to be well worth having. No substantial lag unless it's actually trying to do something difficult like stream. It cost me $20 from a fellow at an organization apparently called VPCC. I haven't been to that link, as I'm not on Facebook, but the man who sold me the computer linked me there. This computer was an upgrade after he gave me an older one for free, but it was so laggy that I could feel my blood pressure rising every time it took more than a second to register I'd moused over or clicked something or tried to open a window.

This one works smoothly and is well worth the $20 I paid for it. After so long using the hacked-up laptop and two days with the archaic tower, it feels so liberating and gleeful just using my scroll wheel to go down webpages and having it respond in realtime. I giggled to myself like a maniac to Pup about how I could scroll now, and felt slightly unhinged, while I was running D&D on Maptools for him, using a random map from Myth-Weavers, and needed to find the relevant part of the map key for a new room.

Speaking of Pup... It's been half a year now.
It... seems like so long, and yet so short.
Lots of progress has been made, and we are being better at interacting in ways that are healthy and happy for both of us. He still occasionally falls into fits I find utterly unbearable and I still sometimes take his weird and unreliable tone as a signifier of emotion and end up offended and upset about something he didn't mean and argues I know better than to take to heart. But... it's less frequent and less serious, less shattering. We're both getting better at being easy on each other.

My birthday yielded happy support from my patron, who gave me a gift card for Shopper's Drugmart and a warm brown vest. My mother also sent me a scratchy archaic tunic and a pair of wrap-around pants. I've never worn wrap-around pants before, and the design seems rather bizarre to me... but clever and playful.

I was able to enthuse happily to my counsellor the last time we spoke, and had many good things to say. That I've been talking to my mother again, that I find moments where I'm ruminating or running away and I stop... That the Pup I nearly broke up with two months ago is with me still and while it's far from perfect, there is love and happiness and sweetness there.

My request for funding for steel-toed work boots and a hard hat went through and was fulfilled in full, but I haven't actually gone out to get them yet. For the moment, I'm being lazy. But I will get around to it in time.

Taking advantage of a sale at Shoppers, and the gift card I was given, I now have a small supply of chocolate ice cream, and it's a real treat to have available from time to time.

I've been asked to dinner on Friday and have a date in about an hour... When did I become so popular, I wonder? Heheh... Strange and wonderful things.

I got a phone call from my dad today. He had a habit of cutting me off while I was talking, but nevertheless, we had a good and amiable chat. It's nice to hear from him again. The Daddy Dude seems to be doing well. Hippy dippy philosopher of sorts, as always. "May your path always shine." You too, dad. You too.
So much love. So much happiness. Has the elusive dream been reached?

Find out on the next exciting episode...

Old Battles

Whoa. I just got through writing an email to my mom. It probably went on for about three pages of ancient hostility and ranting that I have badly needed to say directly to her for... far, far too long. I rather doubt it's the road to peace, but it may be a fog that needs to be cleared before I can travel that road. Despite the weight I've thrown her, I have high hopes, and it is a relief to finally voice some of my resentment after so long. Who knows? It may not be too late.

I'll try to brace myself for an equally hostile response and be forgiving toward it, even if it's shrouded in words of sweetness and steeped in the role of the victim. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Dare the conflict. Ride it out.

Maybe this is the start of something vital and important. We'll see.

My Personal Belief System

I am sometimes asked about my beliefs, in the context of the existence or nature of God. It's one of those questions that everyone's bound to face eventually. Someone recently asked me, "What is your personal belief system?" a question so dangerously broad and open ended that in my attempt to come up with a good answer, I ended up writing quite a lot. Since it is something I think about, and care about, and something that I will no doubt be asked about again in the future, I will leave my response here for anyone who is interested.

My personal belief system is... I'm not sure. There are lots of different things I could probably call it, and just don't want to. I might actually qualify as a Christian depending on how loose your definition is, but probably not. I certainly don't think of myself as one, and don't want to. I could call myself atheist, but that's not entirely true - I believe in spiritual entities and interaction between them, energy magic and things like that, and so I don't think my "belief system" quite counts as atheist.

Do I believe in God? ... Yes. Not as a person. When I think about it, when I am feeling spiritual and profess any belief, I believe in God in more or less this sense:

~~~

There is a force imbued in everything that exists, whether we believe in it or not - plants, animals, humans, dirt, stars, space, time, spirits, etc - with a certain element of unity, deeper than outward appearance, behavior and chemical differences, but that can and does affect these things in subtle ways, by its very nature. I don't know, and don't think it really matters, whether this force is actually what matter is MADE of, purely, or only part of it.

I as a human being, with an independent mind, act as a separate-entity most of the time, but I am always at least somewhat attuned to the part of me that is God, is spirit. Sometimes I am attuned to it more, sometimes less, depending on how much I am distracted by things like pain, desires, physical needs and other concerns that I have to address as a separate-entity in order to survive - I AM liable to suffer, for instance, were I unable to eat food for an extended period of time. The more I focus on things and react to things as a human being, a smart animal, a separate-entity, the less I am in communion with God. It can be very frustrating sometimes to attempt to let go of such things and return to a sense of unity, a state closer to God.

I personally think that I have at least in some parts of my life gotten quite good at keeping myself open to God. I have experienced times of enlightenment, when I felt guided - an inspired moment in which I suddenly felt or knew that I should do a particular thing, and so did, and it turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. Similarly, I have an uncanny knack for finding good, helpful things at extremely convenient times and noticing them enough to take advantage of them. Not that all of my needs are met, or anything like that. I will often suffer for a while for some reason or another, and face it and sometimes even get through it like a separate-entity human, a smart animal acting like a smart animal to get through a difficult situation. I find that I often cycle between periods of enlightenment/guidance and prolonged detachment from God.

I see God as... not exactly the source of magic, but something that makes it possible, the thing through which it works. A person, or, presumably, any other entity with Will, can project its needs and desires through that unified spirit, subconsciously. It generally works best, or, for large enough effects to be noticeable, only at all, when the person is inspired, in a mindset which is closer and more open to God. It requires action, a sort of determination, to come to fruition, probably because the spark of determination that occurs when a person acts to accomplish what they want or need to do is what turns idle desire into actual Will. Sometimes, that Will becomes manifest - subtle influences of entities acting on the amount of God's intuition they are attuned to, subconsciously or otherwise, will bring people who need to interact with each other together. If you've ever seen the first episode of the new show, Touch, it demonstrates some extreme examples of the way this might work quite well, but manifests the sign of people who need to interact in numbers coming up in their lives.

If God has a single grand 'Will', as many people seem to think, It is certainly not straightforward, and only hinges on single people and events inasmuch as the tiny parts of God within the people influenced by those events will them to happen or not. Even that much can be incredible and dramatic of course, but it is silly to think that all of reality is thinking about you, or your wedding, at any given moment.

If I were to guess what the "Will of God" really were, I would guess that it is more or less the deepest and most moving collective desires of the whole of existence, which must at once be extremely complex and subtle, and at the same time primal, deep, and surprisingly simple. For example, the thing many people say, that the Will of God (or God itself) is Love. It seems to me to fit - the experience of love is moving, primal, deep and although essentially simple, it is full of subtleties and confusion. And most importantly, although expressed in multitudes of ways, it is a drive that seems to be shared by almost everyone, more or less, depending on the person, and how much they are willing to step aboard and follow the right intuition to let life, or God, "bring them there".

~~~

Take or leave that as you wish. You asked about my belief system, and obviously, there is a lot more I could say about it, but hopefully this explains the base of it to you.

I wouldn't normally call the spirit force God. Too many people talk about God in (what seems to me to be) disgusting and stupid ways and I really just don't like the word. Never have. Sometimes I call it All, which seems, to me, appropriate, because it is, after all, everything. The Force, Goddess, Essence, or Aether would all work too, but as with God, each of those words also has, or at least has developed, other different meanings, with which is is important not to confuse the concept.

Back Up, Back On, Full Forward! ... And Suddenly...

Dear diary readers, I did well today. I woke up in the morning, took my supplements even though they were late, delivered two resumes, and most importantly, I returned to my workout early, fully, and fiercely. I did it better than ever before! And all this before having breakfast... (which isn't exactly a good thing, but I just don't have much appetite in the morning before doing anything, and didn't want to exercise on a full stomach or put it off)

This is important because the last time I did my workout, I didn't do the third and last part of it, my leg lifts, which are tough and require endurance: Lie on back, with legs straight, lifted just slightly off the ground, and hold them there, as still as possible, for ten seconds... Then, gradually (as possible) raise until they are upright, above the pelvis, and hold there for another ten seconds. Lower and repeat. I try to do this ten times each time I work out, though I so far always have to take a break at least once in between - usually this means I do it in two sets of five repetitions. Today, I did a set of three, a set of four, and another set of three.

Besides just picking up and getting back into doing a part of my workout that I failed at last time, I also beat my record time for the plank (part one of my workout) with 75 seconds to beat last time's 73, and my earlier number of crunches (part two) managing 21 today, at which point I actually noticed that I was feeling the effort in my thighs as well as abdomen. I wonder, is that supposed to happen? I collapsed after my first set of three leg lifts, and had to take a few minutes' break before doing another set of four. After that, another short breather, and while waiting for my abdomen to recover enough to complete my routine, I decided to do something else in the mean time - so far, my workout is all building the strength of parts of my body by using them to lift and hold the weight of other parts of me. Cardio workout is also important, though, and I remember hearing somewhere, though I have no idea about the credibility of the source, that while you'll build muscle with strength training alone, it won't help you lose fat much...

So I settled on something easy that I know how to do, and did some jumping jacks. Forty, to be precise. I was thinking I'd do twenty, but I made it past twenty without much difficulty, so why stop there? At thirty I was getting a bit worn out, and by forty, where I decided to stop, I was starting to feel like I couldn't do much more, so probably a good stopping point.

I paced for a while, and had a glass of water, taking deep breaths and getting ready. "Just three more legs," I kept promising myself. I know the last ones are always the hardest - your muscles already ache, and the seconds drag on impressively. But... I did it. Just, but I did it. And I feel... triumphant. Roooooaar! Snarl! I am victorious! **chuckles**

And then something else happened.

I got an email from my mother.

The last notable time I remember this happening, she was writing to tell me that her father, my grandfather had died. Had. Died. Just to put this in a little bit more perspective... I was living not that far away. I didn't know he had taken ill. I don't usually stay in contact all that much with my family, and no-one had told me. I might have, could have, had a chance to visit him one last time, if someone had, but... ... I didn't know a thing about it, until my mom sent me a short email to tell me she thought I should know he was dead.

I got along well with my grandfather. He was a friendly, jovial type, a poet, and a musician, who played clarinet and french horn. I hadn't seen him since a family gathering over a year before. Never would again.

Now let me explain. My mother and I are not on good terms, and as far as I'm concerned never have been, at least not since before I can remember. Growing up, it was perfectly clear to me that whatever I ate, the clothes I wore, and even the additions my use made to the electricity, internet and water bills, were all taxing costs to her. We grew up in poverty, so I can understand that, to a point... But getting a pointed look whenever I put cheese on a sandwich (because 'cheese is expensive - not to mention fattening!') was... well. Just another part in the larger picture, another reminder that she was only putting up with the costs I inflicted upon her because she was, or considered herself to be, a good mother.

That much might not have been enough for me to hate her, and wouldn't be a very good excuse. No...

Mom worked a lot of the time I was home in late elementary and high school - sometimes I was lonely all by myself in the house, but not all that often, and I could always go for walks around town if I got bored. For the most part, being alone suited me fine. When she was home, though... The most common question she ever asked me was whether I had any homework, or had done it yet. She didn't seem to care that I was bullied terribly, even when I told her about it. Whether she just didn't know what to do or say about it, and so simply did nothing, or whether she didn't take me seriously, or whether she figured it would be good for my character in the long run, I have no idea. She smoked, and out of a sense that it was bad to smoke in front of youth for the sake of their health, eventually ended up designating one room of the house a smoking room, so she could smoke without going outside all the time. The smoking room had its own door, which at first didn't work, and plenty of windows to let the smoke out, which was good...

And after a while, also had a television in it. At that point, she seemed to spend almost all the time that we were both home in the smoking room, often with her boyfriend, even if neither of them were smoking. I am, again, not sure whether this was a deliberate measure to avoid me, because the smoking room was somewhere I refused to go because of the smell, but it served as such, and made her difficult to get the attention of or approach. Being alone in a house, to me, has never seemed to be a bad thing, really. There is a sense of privacy and a certain thrill to having the place all to yourself, even if only for a short time. The same cannot be said of being alone, quite profoundly alone, when there is someone who supposedly loves you in the next room over... and you can't bring yourself to try to talk to them.

I know, because she told me once, that she found my tantrums, the times when I was upset and angry and needed attention, to be frightening, and that this is often why she avoided me when I most needed someone to talk to - or complain to - or scream at. Forgive me for thinking that this is not a very good excuse for avoiding, rather than resolving, conflict with one's own child, or for that matter, an example of good parenting.

The worst thing was, by far, that effectively speaking, I was not allowed to disagree, and I was not allowed to have social needs - like attention, or a hug, or forgiveness. Such things were given if I was in all ways co-operative, sometimes. If ever I objected to being shouted at because I didn't immediately come to help bring in groceries after my mom was having a hard day, or was frustrated because she had a habit of phrasing what were obviously meant to be commands as questions, along the line of "Would you like to help me with supper? ...What do you mean, 'No'!?" I would be subjected to a tirade of insults and labels, including "selfish," "insolent", "rotten", "bitchy", "spoiled brat", "inconsiderate", and several others.

And she never. Ever. EVER said she was sorry or apologized to me without some form of the following attached to it:
"but you treat me just as badly or worse than I treat you"
"but I don't have the patience..."
"but if you're being completely impossible, I don't see how you expect..."
"but I deserve respect too"
"but what goes around comes around, missy"...

et cetera. She seemed constantly, utterly convinced that every time I got angry, every time I needed or wanted more than she was already giving, it was a conspiracy to guilt-trip her.

She even hit me, once - just once, that I can ever remember. We were arguing, and I think I had shoved her. I don't remember the context, exactly, but she slapped me soundly across the face. I was shocked, and more surprised than anything. It stung, yes, but the pain wasn't really important. Just the shock of the fact that she had hit me made me go kind of still for a second.

And I would be willing to forgive that, in and of itself.
A minute later, and ever since then... She denied it ever happened.

Of course... like everyone, mother has her good sides. Her cooking was fantastic, and she had a good singing voice. She sometimes used to sing songs to me in the car, and I still remember and can repeat several of them, including "Waltzing Matilda", "Donna Donna", "Somos El Barco", and several others. She had a strong sense of humour which was sometimes cringe worthy, but we enjoyed joking back and forth at each other sometimes, and I could often amuse her with my silliness.

There were things I thank her for, like teaching me how to make a really good tuna salad sandwich, which remains one of my favorite meals, in some variation or another, to this day. But the good neither outweighs nor excuses the bad.

For the past several years, most of the time since I left home at 18, really, I have usually maintained a stance of diplomatic silence towards her. She occasionally attempts to contact me, but I rarely respond, mostly because her message is usually along the lines of "I'm ready to make reparations if you are, the ball's in your court", and mentioning how much she wants to patch things up. Again, as always, subtly making it seem as much dependent on my initiative, and everything as much my fault, as conceivably possible.

I have no response to that that I expect to be of any use, so I do not respond. There is nothing I can say that would be honest without inciting a fight. I am too angry, too bitter and cynical and too aware of the subtext of it, not willing to put up with it, especially not from her, not any more. No. I am not, ever, going to be caught nodding politely and saying "Yes, mother," while she lists my crimes against her. I have never been willing to do so, which is why we used to fight so often, and I sincerely doubt I ever will. Not even if I have no house to sleep in in dead winter. Death first.

At some point in the year after I left home, I don't remember precisely when, she informed me I was no longer welcome at her house, as a guest or otherwise. And since then, well. More or less this. Mostly silence. Very occasional breaks in it.

So... she sent me an email today, surprisingly completely blank, just with a document attached to it. I was tempted to just delete it, because I wasn't sure I had the patience to take this today... But I opened it anyway, just to see what it was.

It was a short letter, written in red and in the shape of a heart, for Valentine's Day.

It read:

"It's been several years since I took the steps I did toward (or rather away from) you. It was probably the hardest thing I have ever felt that I had to do, and has not become any easier, really, with the passage of time. I know I have not always been the best mom. I have my shortcomings and blind spots, as do we all. Though, for better or for worse... I am your mother... and I love you, have always loved you and will always love you more than you may ever know. I have so longed for a healing of the scars which we have inflicted upon each other over the years, and to be able to share a harmonious and supportive relationship. I realize that it would have to be a combined effort and also may not be easy. I had been waiting and hoping that you would be the one who would initiate a reconciliation with me, between us, though perhaps this is more than I should count upon. And the thought that we may never reconcile is more than I can bear. I just wanted you to know that I'm still here, still love and miss you and still wait, with hopes and prayers for you. Know that you are in my heart.

What more can I say ~ In my heart ~ on Valentine's Day"

I don't really know what to say to this. It shocks me almost like that slap, way back when... Surprisingly, this is a lot more mature than she usually is, and contains much less blame, if you can believe that. She's... certainly made progress.

And yet at the same time, it enrages me the way her messages usually do, with implications that most if not all of this is entirely my fault, or at least somehow my responsibility.

I imagine the way I feel right now might be akin to the way an openly and happily gay person might feel reading a similar letter from his or her deeply religious and traditional parents.

She's making progress. Which impresses me, and indicates that she really is trying to make some form of compromise with me... and just falling well short of the mark. She doesn't know how to do this. She may not even understand why her words are offensive to me, to her they're just the simple truth of her perspective...

I don't know. Either way, it hurts.

I don't plan to answer her. I still don't have anything to say to this, and it is essentially the same message she's been sending me over and over (kind of like the endless internet-regulating bills currently being pumped out by media interest groups in the U.S...).

However... it's... better, this time. And if she keeps getting better this way... Maybe someday, maybe even someday not too distant... Maybe I will.

FetLife: About Me

FetLife is a website for kinksters, fetishists, slaves and masters, virtually anyone who practices or would like to experience kink, BDSM, or any form of non-standard sexuality. It's a very, very social website, and if any of you are inclined to check it out, go right ahead. You only have your purported innocence to lose.

I am quite happy with the new write-up I put there today to reflect the changes in my attitude and intentions since  the last time I wrote my "About Me" bio. So, if you are brave enough, read on for a little more insight into my mind and the way I think.

It's time for change. 

I have just started a workout habit that hopefully will last. I am not yet in London, but that's where I'm headed next. 

I want to change my hair, add a new name to my standard collection, learn, develop, and keep going. 

I could probably be described as "vanilla with a hint of kink" - I'm not all that active, haven't really spent much time with anything traditionally BDSM. Some of the 'interests' I do have are taboo and strange. If you get to know me, you might learn of them. 

Generally speaking, I am not in a position in which I feel safe giving up control and I am not comfortable doing to other people this same thing which would feel terrifying and abusive to me. 

Sometimes pain (like hard fingernails raked hard down the back) can be relaxing in its discomfort, like a reminder of mortality, of the limits of the self, what I am and what I am not... and like a slap in the face that returns one to a larger perspective. Sometimes just embracing the physicality of the body and its experiences is reassuring in a way. 

Sometimes... we are animals born to fuck, born to fight, to gorge, to hurt, to be ashamed and vulnerable and get back up and keep living, at war and at peace with our animalism, and proud of the beauty of our individual identities. Anyone who misses this point, is, deluded. Period. 

We are complete with our scars... But it is better to slowly heal the scars than rip them open to scar again for pride's sake. 

I am gentle and ferocious, I change with the winds. I am tired and bitter, and always trying hard to find evidence of people and things that will somehow consistently fail to disappoint me. These things are few. 

I am angry and upset, often for no obvious reason beyond the background of the world and how fucking wrong it is about so many things... 

And yet... This world that we are living in now, may be the safest, the sanest, the most co-operative and peaceful, the best regulated and easiest to build on, that the world our Earth has ever been. 

Now... is that disappointing? Or is that inspiring? 

There is always music, even when it hurts to hear.
There is always beauty, even when there is also pain, misery, and death.
This is your life. You can ruin it or throw it away, or get it messy, if you want to.
And I can spend a few hours of mine from time to time encouraging you not to.
This is equally my right as your freedom is yours.
We are social creatures. We need each other.
We are not the machines that the Industrial Age tries to force us to be.
I sincerely look forward to a truly Post-Industrial Age.
It IS coming. Those who stand in the way of the future may stall it but cannot prevent it. They will move, or they will fall. 

This is who I am. Do you want some?

Fitocracy

Fitocracy is a website which endeavors to provide resources, community support, and motivation, for people who are trying to get, or stay, fit, by working out. It provides information on, and credit for, a very broad range of fitness activities, from dancing, swimming, biking and long walks, to barbell strength training and challenging courses like P90X. The community encourages and makes use of courses including Starting Strength, You Are Your Own Gym, and Convict Conditioning, among other things.

At present, the site is invitation-only, but I've heard that you can find invites on Google if you look.

Had enough gratuitous links yet?

I introduced myself to the community... technically, just earlier today. If you have an account on Fitocracy, you can see my introduction thread here, and feel free to follow me if you like.

Okay, I'm finished with the links now, I promise. ;)

For those of you who don't have a Fitocracy account, here is the self-introduction I posted there:

Hello, Fitocracy. Deep breath, blush, gulp, exhale, smile.

A friend of mine told me about this site because he's using it as part of his new lifestyle plan to save him from health problems, and offered to invite me when I told him I was interested in starting to work out, too.

I am 21, female, have a multitude of vague health problems mental, emotional and physical, especially anxiety, hypothyroidism, occasional symptoms of depression, etc... and am overweight.

I have never been athletic, or spent much time or energy working out - I loathed gym teachers and the popular fit kids in high school and stayed away from them as often as possible. I am a gamer (role-playing games like D&D, and video games, mostly on PC) and am proud to be labeled a geek, but I know my sedentary lifestyle is not doing me any favours, and I'm going to have to really make some changes in my lifestyle in order to get anywhere, since the cyclical situation of poverty, unemployment, laziness, helplessness, and unhealthiness is very much self-enforcing.

Yesterday evening, I sent above-mentioned friend this email (lightly modified):

~~~

Today was my second day of working out, not counting yesterday (which was a break to recover from the first workout the day before). Both times, I've done a minute (or slightly more) of planking, 15 crunches and 10 leg lifts, in two sets of five (ten seconds held just off the floor and ten seconds held up, each). My abdomen is weak and shaky, but I feel proud and relieved that I could do it again. My boyfriend had advised me not to do the second set of five for fear that I was pushing myself too hard, but I did it anyway. I think I can take it, even though it is hard. I look forward to the point at which this (or at least, just this much) stops making my body's core ache significantly for a whole day afterward. Actually doing something grants a much more optimistic perspective, even if it doesn't change many of the problems I was facing...

Would you be so kind as to send me a code to join Fitocracy?

I think I'm ready.

SS

~~~

I am not here to become a bodybuilder or pro athlete, or even necessarily to get to levels of health other people consider good - I just really need to improve my own health, reduce fatigue, develop a healthy sleeping schedule (this is going to be HARD - I sleep during the day by default and going to bed early causes me to wake up after four hours in the middle of the night... I cannot fall asleep without being very tired, and am not sure how to manipulate my tiredness to arrive at convenient times), and get my energy levels under control so that I can start doing other things effectively with the confidence it should give me.

I'm suspicious of my own start, because I'm familiar with the cycle of getting hyped about something and then quickly losing interest after a couple of days, and I really, really don't want to repeat it with this, it's too important.

I hope it's a good sign that yesterday I felt impatient and really wanted to work out more even though I knew my body needed a break. ^^ That anticipation of doing more and making progress, the anticipation of being able to do more in the future, is a really sweet feeling.

I've spent a few hours now looking at the site, reading some of the Beginners' sources here (This one looks like it could be very, very useful), etc. It's overwhelming and intimidating seeing so many of the work-out options, and how much some of the active members manage to do. I'm very anxious, but excited. So now I'm here - for advice and support, and possibly for your entertainment. I hope you don't mind the very long and expressive style of writing - I'm like this all the time, unless severely distracted. So, ah... If you'd like to comment on, or be privy to, my personal journey... Welcome! And thanks for the little bit of help that attention and affirmation bring.

SS out... For now.

Edit: Currently, the plan is to start with the above workout every other day, with a day of rest in between, and my first-steps goals are: 1) to be able to do all ten leg-lifts in one set without a break in the middle, and 2) to reach a point at which I can start working out every day rather than every other day, without hurting myself.

Once I've reached these goals, I will try to do more reps, hold them longer, plank for longer, and add more elements - perhaps some wall push ups.

If you can give me an appraisal of this plan, or would like to suggest an addition to it, feel free.

This is a project intended to help me to help myself by educating myself from home with the use of the internet. At the recommendation of a friend of mine, I will be studying rationality and other academic subjects, and expressing my understanding of them here, along with my personal comments on the project and its progress.

The intended effects of this project are:

• to allow me to understand, communicate, and solve, some of my own personal issues with greater confidence

• to gain respect and opportunities for my academic abilities

• to improve my own morale and overall confidence and assist in gradual recovery from my depression and anxiety

To anyone wishing to provide feedback on my posts, recommend new materials or methods, offer morale support, or remind me to study, your comments are appreciated and I thank you. To begin with, I will attempt to have material to post approximately once a week. This may change as time goes on. I thank you for your patience and interest. Please enjoy my blog.

SS