Idle Months

It has been idle months since I last wrote here. I have been restlessly resting, waiting. The time has finally come. Tomorrow I leave this house. The next day, I leave this country, and perhaps I will never return.

I have been often dejected. This trip to Ireland has felt like a great big mess. I studied well what was little challenge to me - I allowed myself to be reclusive and stick to the company of a couple closest friends for the most part. I have often felt depressed, and struggled to remember what good I am. I have often felt like a failure. I set a time, though, and decided I would let myself be still until it was time to move again. I have at times utterly hated the stillness... but sometimes I have been able to sit still with some serenity and an ephemeral scrap of patience.

I have set myself to rest so that once it was time to move, I would be ready and eager to, and would appreciate the energy and newness. I worry a little and wonder more whether this bid to control the ebbs and flows of my energy and my stillness will actually work. I have never been good at planning and deliberately choosing these things. But then... once upon a time, in the life I grew out of, I think not being good at it was a necessary excuse for resisting the clamour of oppression which would have insisted I do things their way, not a way I could choose for myself.

Those days... are over. I do not need to be helpless in order to excuse disobedience from an unjust authority the same way I needed to once with mother. I believe I have been learning to let it go.

In that, at least, in those ways, self-searching still, digging deeper in trauma and questions of identity and complexity; in those very particular ways I have not been idle, the time has not been wasted. And indeed my closest, dearest friends have been a great resource to me, in listening and tolerating and sometimes understanding.

And so, the silence is broken, for now.

Ireland is over.

Let the next segment now begin.

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.

Validate Me Please

Have I been born or at some point rendered unable to detect an important tell between incredulity expressed out of pure and simple confusion, and incredulity expressed out of anger; frustration; exasperation?

Is there not a valid associative tie between incredulity and annoyance, then? I've seen a correlation too often for that to seem right.
It may have been emphasized harmfully by Mother.

Could Mother really be innocent after all, my understanding of her passive aggression false? No, I doubt it. There is some burden of responsibility that a mother should bear the brunt of maturity for with her child. That a lover should not have to bear the brunt of maturity for with a lover.
What, exactly?

I have felt a desperate need for, and lack of, validation for my interpretations of social interactions all my life. Having thought about that for a moment, yes, I believe all my life within useful memory.

Where is the sense that the validity of interpretation is to be assumed supposed to come from? Certainly, with my upbringing, it was undermined if not entirely destroyed. If I were to be allowed to assume that my interpretations were valid, Mother would have allowed me to defend myself from her passive-aggressiveness with logic. Which of course I did anyway, but it was continually invalidated at the point of my observations so that no argument I made could stick to her.
Narcissist. What have you done to me.

So I crave explicit validation of my interpretations as at least reasonable or understandable, and I crave it constantly. I become anxious and aggravated if it is not present and I begin to feel doubt.
What has this to do with incredulity? Mother often spoke to me in incredulous tones. From her, it seemed to mean that I was an unbelievably bad child. That my inconsideration and selfishness were so great that it was almost inconceivable I even existed. And so when she was angry at me, she would shout at me incredulously. How dare I question the love she undeniably had, while she complained at every juncture of what I was costing her and how much trouble I was that she put up with, and no matter how hard I hurt and raged and explained, trying to make her understand that she was hurting me, she never stepped down. Not once. Because she loved me, clearly.

So incredulity became the badge of "you horrid thing", to not back down became the abuse I was most used to, and letting me have my way became the golden grail I sought that represented the love I never got at home?

Perhaps, but of course I left home horribly twisted, and did not get my way often.

Things to learn and clarify:

To let me get my way is not what loving me is.
One can love me and not let me get away with shit.
One can not love me and let me get my way.
I know this, but the assumed lie may still be deeply ingrained in my emotional responses, moreso than for most.

Confusion is not inherently condemnation.
Confusion is not inherently condemnation.
Confusion is not inherently condemnation.
There are things someone may not understand about me other than how horrible I am.
An unfortunate number of people have the bad habit, but not everyone thinks something is bad just because they don't understand it.

What else?
The validity of my interpretations is assumed to be present, not absent, where no remark of it is made.
Gods, it's going to be a nightmare to reverse engineer that one. Geesus.

Relief

Good news! I won't be homeless next month!

I called my landlord last night, who said he doesn't mind if I stay so long as he gets his rent as appropriate (it's $100 more per occupant not on the lease). I made the offer to my roommate to pay the same amount I had been paying while staying here and taking on half of the rent, $450, even though there is now another person to carry the rent, and he accepted that. "But just one more month".

At the same time, my roommate's girlfriend's mom is a realtor, and she has offered to help me look for places. She also started mothering and reassuring me immediately that my roommate would make sure I had a place to go before insisting I leave, that I would be able to find a place in the time I have, she knows I can do it. Things like that. It kind of makes me blush to get such maternal care. With such a source of help, "just one more month" should be fine.

So I told my friends about it, played some games and stayed up late last night. Part of my night also consisted of reading this page, which a friend of mine linked me to, and gaining some further insight into my relationship with my blood mother. Many of the points are very much applicable to her, to greater or lesser degrees. Not all. I suffered little physical abuse, for instance, and if my mom ever got pleasure from my pain directly, as opposed to from a sense of self-importance to which my abuse was merely a means, rather than an end in itself, then I didn't notice. I think I would have done.

I went to bed at about 4 AM, and woke up at half past noon, feeling happy and hopeful again. I have no regrets. Relief has come!

Anyway, I have some landlords to call. Good morning, bloggers!

To Share The Cup That Runneth Over

Someone on FetLife was asking for peoples' perspectives on the influence of our past parental abuse on those of us who have been abused and how it relates to our own desire to have, or to avoid having, children. Her voice was impassioned and full of a great deal of understandable internal conflict. It's clear she wants the good things that come with having children, and desperately wants to love and care for someone, but realizes that her scars may get in the way, and doesn't want to be a bad parent.

I would like to share my response with you all.

The best way I feel I can answer this is to tell my own stories related to it. 

I was inspired by the subtle, psychological abuses of my childhood to be vehemently vocal about bad parenting when I see it, especially when parents become frustrated with their childrens' natural curiosity and desire to learn, seeing virtually anything other than quiet obedience as disobedience, even when they only the actions of a young, inexperienced human engaged with the world and trying to gain the experience required to be a wise, functional adult.
And then later, I found VHEMT. 

I am not convinced that the human race has no chance of improving and willfully evolving socially and morally to progressively better states, and therefore don't think I actually want us to go extinct, but I definitely would prefer to see a smaller human race, with more quality, and less quantity, of life. The fewer people there are to share resources with, the bigger everyone's fair share can be. 

And this is why I've decided never to give birth, even though the thought is a fetish of mine.
However, it doesn't mean I don't want to be a mother.
I am still scarred and rendered dysfunctional by my own past abuses. In many ways the wisdom and sensitivity gained from my suffering has made me a generally very patient and level-headed person, but I am also prone to fits of anxiety and rage. Furthermore, I am young, and at the very beginning of my career. 

But someday, if I have greater financial stability, and if I have healed further and feel less controlled by my overpowering emotions, I will almost certainly want to participate in the growing and nurturing of children who were not born to me. I may foster-parent, or adopt. Or I may find my way into a nurturing role in my profession, or find my way into a household that accepts me in a role as a supportive carer and guardian to the children of someone else. 

Personally, I find it hard to believe that any child, even in the best and most well-adapted of families, could not benefit from one more loving, supportive adult in their life to encourage them to be the best that they could be; And equally hard to believe that any parent, even with the best luxuries and availability of resources and time, would not benefit from one more loving, supportive adult who could share the stresses of caring for a child when they become taxing, and thus prevent the build-up of frustration that can lead to that frustration being inappropriately taken out on the child. 

But to answer the question that stood out most to me in your post...
"If you feel, like you have love and tender loving care to give, who do you direct that energy to, if it is not kids?" 

Why... To everyone, of course. Neighbors going through hard times. Co-workers. Friends. And definitely lovers, whether they be short or long term. Absolutely everyone, not only children, and to be sure not only our own blood children, can use some Tender-Loving-Care. It is one of the greatest weaknesses of our Western society that we tend to forbid one another from taking responsibility for one another, and in turn, we forbid one another from asking for badly needed help. 

If you have love and Tender-Loving-Care to give, and you find no-one receiving it, if your cup runneth over with no-one to drink... Go to your best friends and congenial workmates, go to your lovers and partners and crushes, and if it is permissible within their circles, then go to theirs... go to those people with whom you can easily empathize, and encourage them to draw from your well of kindness whenever they are thirsty. 

All too frequently the only socially acceptable answer, to create a new life in to nurture and build up, because for some incredibly stupid reason we have been forbidden to nurture and build one another, is the only one that comes to mind. But especially for those of us who are damaged and who runneth over, but sometimes also run dry... We know in our doubts that creating a life for our love and care, and then becoming overwhelmed and filling it up also with our frustrations and tempers, becoming bad parents... Is all too real a possibility. 

Before you forge a new cup that you may not be able to fill all by yourself, then... I encourage you to seek out all of those cups near to your heart that are beginning to run low, and ask gently and patiently for permission to refill them. Break the stupid rules that forbid us from caring, mothering and looking out for one another. It is, of course, a delicate dance, and important not to be overbearing, but simply to be loving and available. But it's a well-known fact that parenting isn't easy. And this holds true whether the people you're parenting are children, or blood family, or not. 

I hope this helped.

To Be Happy

This may be the best night of my life.

The day... was beautiful. I went out and bought a birthday present for my Robby that was both expensive enough it made me reflect on how incredibly much more I can afford to do now that I'm working, and something I'm sure he'll love.

I stopped to play piano again at MSP for the first time in a long time, and got praise showered upon me again for it.

On the way home, there was a sudden, intense cloudburst shower, and I grinned and laughed and giggled at people I passed while walking home.

I cooked a fine meal.

This evening, my mother messaged me. After a string of passive aggressiveness and clumsy attempts to force me to take responsibility for her long abuse of me in my childhood, I told her with extraordinarily satisfying malice that if she kept sending me messages tonight, I would block her, just like I blocked Pup for a month, when he deserved it. I gave her the same three. She only used one more, and logged off. She made it such an awful one that I was tempted to block her anyway, but Robby talked me out of it. I must have finally remembered Dan Savage's words, in that one video... "Your leverage over your parents is your participation in their lives."

Later that night, Damon came for a visit, and I mothered the heck out of him. I made sure he was well fed, and gave him food to take with him, as he has not had enough in his pantry of late. At the bus stop before he left... He kissed me...

I had either forgotten how good his kisses were, or he's gotten better at it since it last happened.

...I guess we still have that old spark glowing strong.

And then I went to see Robby, who after all is now my primary, and after a dramatic romantic moment with someone else, deserves my reaffirmations and attention.

And I found a new and interesting way to completely blow his mind.

...

This may be the best night of my life.

I think I'm in subspace.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee.

Oh, yes. One more thing. Possibly the most important thing of all. Before I fought with my mom, I... While frustrated with my own moodiness because I was getting upset at Robby for something silly, and didn't want to be upset...

I thought to myself, and realized...

I want to be happy.

I actually. Want. To be happy.

Not just to not be feeling this, not just for the misery to go away.

To be happy.

...And here I am...

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.

Family Androgyne

So, I've been a bit idle for a while, my dear readers. Not too long, though, I think. Were you wondering how things turned out with the subby fur boy? He's still around, and swiftly became the love of my life. He's been one of the most important things in my mind for about six weeks now, for better or worse.

I've found myself feeling... an odd impulse. I really, really want to go out and get work, not just to fund my Secret Plan, but... to feed and support my family.

Now, I don't have blood children, obviously, and I don't plan on having any. But my subby boy has swiftly become close as kin to me. Damon already is, though he's been keeping more distant of late. And a quiet reunion with friends I haven't been able to talk to in far too long reminds me I have others as well... And I would love, so much, to be able to earn them shelter and food, at least in part. I really want to make them a home to live in. I fantasize about my loved ones supporting me to search for work, and being there to thank and congratulate me when I bring the spoils home to them.

And I find myself wondering... is this some weird, filtered version of the impulse I keep hearing hits the young once they reach the right age, to settle down and start a family? Maybe it is. I am very proud, personally, that my version doesn't involve unnecessary production of additional population. Why should it? Not only am I VHEMT, I already have a family, and I love them dearly and want to support them in all of the ways I can... as well as helping them to support each other.

It helps, of course, that I recently introduced the new subby boy to one of my older, more long-term, less obsessively full-time loves... and their first impressions seem to be that they agree abjectly, each of the other, that this person is just as awesome as I thought they were, and it is amazing and wonderful to have another such awesome person to know and like. They want to adopt each other. The thought got me thinking about the whole household issue, and sighing wistfully over it. Mind... if I call in help and support from all of my supports who are most likely to be able to give it... and turn over some responsibility for care of the intense, attention needing sub to another truly awesome person I trust not to let him down... it should help me immensely with mounting an effective search.

I guess I really am just a home maker. I feel like such a family-oriented androgyne. ^.^

In other news, said subby sweetheart just showed me a rap song I enjoy. It feels really weird for me to type that sentence. I usually hate rap with a passion - when it's not derogatory, it still doesn't stop being self-congratulatory posing. Except... except in this case, the congratulatory posing is not directed toward the self, at least not entirely. It's interesting hearing rap arraying out in street verse and rhythm the praises of someone else, besides the singer, for once. And it reminds me, in my heart of hearts and my mind of minds, that any language can speak truth and things worth hearing, even if they often don't. Yes, even rap.

Besides, it's an amazing track to get pumped up and prepared to do and be awesome to. Remember the Name. I have one word, and only one, to voice to the artists who made this: Respect.

Which brings me to a final thing. Sub boy has got me playing a Dragonball Z based roleplaying game with him online, and it rocks all our socks clean off, it's so much damn fun. Maybe because I didn't know all that much about the series, but already had some degree of respect for it. Maybe because it's a fresh new system that hasn't gotten stale in my head. He runs it fast and loose, which fits DBZ perfectly, and he's teaching me the lore with references and inside jokes, and the fact that we're effectively playing a slightly altered timeline of the show's plot, just as non-canon characters. He is an amazing DM. And I approve. Also, props to whoever made the above Anime Music Video, because the way it uses the song's lyrics to talk about the characters and make completely valid points about who they are and what they're about is fucking brilliant.

Nobody

(originally written a long time ago)

I woke up this morning and there was no power in half the house.
I woke up this morning and there was no power in half my body.
I woke up this lifetime and there was no life in half my heart.

And I screamed, and I cried, and I cried out...
for mercy.
And they laughed, and they pointed, and ran...
and they ran from me.
And I lay there bleeding from wounds no-one else could see.
And looked up to see Nobody,
because Nobody came to rescue me.
Noboby came to comfort me.

And Nobody helped me get back on my feet again.
And Nobody convinced me to start trying to eat again.

So don't come to try and take my heart.
I share my heart with Nobody.
Don't come and ask to be part of my world.
I gave my world to Nobody.

And if you want to have some of these things,
don't come around to talk to me.
You can go ask Nobody.

And you know what?
Nobody will answer you.

So don't you dare ask me who I am,
and don't ask what's become of me.
'Cause you didn't come when I was dying.
And now all I am...
is Nobody.

DKLOD

You may take away my accusing eyes.
You may steal my scolding tongue.
You may rip away my claws that I cannot with them deface you,
and surgically remove any part of me that offends you;
But short of killing me,
you won't be free of the mind that sees your treason for what it is
and judges you, Guilty.

Regarding my Arrogance and Insight

I'm starting to suspect I was one of those kids who was bright enough to make it through high school and mostly excel without having to do much work. I felt most inspired when my own thoughts took the subject matter and extrapolated it to other thoughts and ideas: When we touched on black holes among star types in grade 10 science, I got thinking about the Big Crush Theory before I remember hearing about it. After brief mention of the binary system, I ended up contemplating that there was a lot of philosophical truth in the system of unity, Base One, absolutely useless for measuring or comparing, but what seemed to be a mathematical basis for the ancient spiritual thought that all is one and all is none, or nothing, or nothing to count, at least, when you transcend differences.

If, then, I'm right, I never really learned much work ethic, and I find myself at once certain that I have much to contribute and afraid that I don't. I fluctuate between feeling ashamed of my laziness and fear, my paralysis of uncertainty about what to do now and how to do it, and proud, indeed arrogant, at my brightness. I show off reflexively, but have a very hard time weathering frustration long enough to accomplish things that are difficult. I'm not sure where to go from here. I want help learning how to learn the way other people, to whom school didn't come so easily, did... But deeper than that, I want to be a miracle child to whom everything comes easily. I'm guessing that's what I'll really have to let go of before I can join in the culture party, and really use the brightness I know I do have to do something useful, something wonderful. But then the question is... How?
Can I do it on my own?
...Do I have to?

I'm kind of alienated from my blood family at this point, with few resources to make use of, and even less experience struggling until I am victorious without giving up and coming back to nothing. How do I fight my own arrogant need to be perfect? Can I ever leave it behind?

Even now I suspect my difficulties with relationships follow many of the patterns of Rimm's too-Dominant child. There is no question over conforming or not. I don't see conformity as a virtue at all, and often struggle to see the good in the legacy of civilization (though sometimes I do wonder at it in admiring ways rather than appalled ones). I have never gone to college or university, largely because everyone seemed to expect me to, but also partly because I have had so many areas of fascination that it was hard to think of how I might choose something specific to study. At this point, the choice is somewhat more clear - psychology, especially the psychology of language and how we say things we don't know we're saying, different levels of self-awareness, have always fascinated me and been things I already think a lot about.

I find it hard to hear criticism. I sulk reflexively and sometimes even physically retreat from it, even... especially... when I know it's justified. I genuinely do value the honesty when people tell me things I get defensive about hearing, but I don't know how to change my behavior.

Someone I spoke with only briefly recently told me that my desperate reaching out for love was almost tangible, and I am consciously aware (although not always) that I want discipline, too. I want a do-over. I want someone to treat me just like what I am - a very bright, perhaps even talented, but not very disciplined, 22 year old child. I want to be parented, but I suspect no-one out there has the patience to deal with my passive-aggressive tantrums and panic attacks, my cravings for praise when I face my fears even in ways that may be hard to see; When I make an effort. I want to find the ability to persevere. I don't think I have it yet. I want help.
Who can help me?

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.