random

I've been watching too many movies lately - it fills the empty hours, helps block out the things I still can't deal with.

I've stopped my friend Jack, been two or three months now, wasn't even an effort, really - he just sort of stopped working, stopped doing the job I was paying him to do. So I let him go.

And my friend CoCola, well, it's been a few weeks now, that one's been a little tougher, been jonesin' fer summa that caffeine in a serious way. But have found a few substitutes that nearly fill the gap - the sugar cravings haven't given up at all. My theory? I eat so much sugar to counteract the bitterness, to bury it under a pile of sweetness so relentless that the anger doesn't stand a chance.

Most of the time it works. Until I look in the mirror and see how fat I'm getting, and think, ok, this sugar thing is seriously messing you up. So then I look for yet another alternative, and find myself trekking down the path of these weird-ass diet sweeteners that I basically consider to be just another form of poison. Lesser of the weevils, once again...

So, as always, I'm doing the best I can.

My aunt and uncle wrote me a letter a few weeks back, after getting a weird phone message from me when they were in town and wanted to get together. I decided my moratorium on family interaction has to be across the board - no exceptions. They're all the same kind of apples, after all, though how I got to be the one variant out of that huge box-full never ceases to mystify me. Maybe there really was a little moment with the postman, after all.

Anyway.

Just watched a movie that made my world feel temporarily surreal. I was feeling good after being out and about and being flirty and friendly with lots of folks (out running various errands). It doesn't escape me that people are generally friendly when you're giving them money...but this included a few other random folks as well. Maybe it was partly the weather? It was perfect today - clear blue sky, warm but not hot, one of these precious early fall days where everything is calm and serene, you could almost believe there might be a god somewhere out there.

Whatever it was, I was in a good mood.

Came home, went for a walk, still floating pretty good.

But then I'm back inside the house again, confronted with an impossible pile of bills, soot on the carpet, ceilings, blinds, everything slightly dingy and gray from that grease fire (just on the stove, but in that few minutes managed to gunk up everything pretty good).

And the ongoing saga with the fucking washing machine - I've tried everything I can to get that piece of crap to clean my clothes without destroying them - fading the shit out of them, stretching them out of shape, shredding them, wearing them out. It's just not happening - they're not only shredded and faded, but they're still not fucking clean. And in addition to that old mister smoker yay-hoo downstairs must've washed something greasy in his last load, because now all my whites, which I ran through 6 rinses, and hauled god knows how many buckets of hot water by hand down those stairs because the washer has no hot water hookup.... which I wouldn't mind if it actually worked. All I ask for is clean clothes that aren't destroyed in the process.

But no, all my whites are now a slightly grimy gray, slightly crispy (with grease?), the cotton knits are all stretched out and stiff instead of soft like I'm used to. I'm actually afraid to use that damn washing machine. The landlady said I can go ahead and return it to the place and hunt for another one on Craigslist, but for god's sake! What a fucking crapshoot! Which I, yet again, have to do single-handedly, with no help from anyone. I may be able to get some friends to help haul the thing, but there's no one but me to care whether I actually succeed in getting something decent or not. Mr. Pig downstairs crams everything he owns into one single gigantic load, dumps some kind of cheap-ass, perfume-y detergent that has the softener mixed in, whites mixed with every color in the rainbow, plus grease and whatnot. Between the crappy washer, the cold-only, hard water, and the buildup from his crap laundry soap, it's like dunking clean dishes into a pan of dirty, greasy water to get them clean. Yuck.

But at least I've had a few good hair days - it's astonishing how much difference it makes, both in how I feel about myself and how much attention I get from guys. I've had old, young, black, white, every kind of guy you can imagine flirting with me. Very good for my ego :-)

And the women have been friendly too, and helpful. Maybe it's partly because I'm friendlier when I feel more attractive and confident? Seems likely.

Having a period today for the first time in months, a real one, where I actually have to use tampons and everything! In fact, it's been so heavy that I've even had cramps. Never thought I'd be happy to see them back again, eh? Must be doing something right.

*****
I seem to have banished fear from my mind - the panic button had been pushed so many times that not only did the button itself stop working, but the wiring shorted out and fried the entire neural network connected with it. I don't know if this means I've totally fried my adrenal system, or if some kind of protective numbness has kicked in to keep me from doing any more damage to my system. It's like some kind of cosmic override - all of a sudden I was off the Jack Daniels, without any premeditation or particular effort on my part, and the Coke too, and most of the sugar. My body demanded organic, healthy food, none of this greasy fried crap (though I've still had pizza and fish'n'chips). It's still doing the balanced, gradual thing, but I've started making herbal teas like mad, making every shower a decadent spa experience where I try out new soothing herbs. My skin and hair have put a near-total moratorium on all chemicals, being dry to the point of pain. But as I've gradually shifted my diet out of the red zone (toxicity-wise), my overall toxicity level seems to be dropping enough so that I don't have to be quite so hard-core. But man, for a little while there I was afraid that I'd end up in one of those glass bubbles, the isolation chambers.

I guess that's what kicked in the survival commando team - knowing for a fact that there's nobody out there to help me with any of this, that I have to do it all myself. It's like all this data I've collected over all these years, all the experimenting, all the trial and error, has finally added up and paid off and I'm just marching along as if it hasn't been like being pulled through the eye of a needle backward (or something) to get to this point.

I feel kind of - disconnected, like I've shoved all the bad, difficult stuff far enough away from me so that I can just simply survive, just simply stay alive at all. It's as if I'm becoming this stripped-down, highly efficient machine that has no time or energy for anything whatsoever except taking care of myself. I have no energy to waste on anyone else, unless there's something in it for me.

It's like I don't even get angry any more (or not much), and when I do, it's a very tight, focused, efficient kind of anger, that expends exactly as much energy as necessary to do job in front of me and not a speck more. If I get tired, I stop and sleep, or eat, or take a break in front of the tube with a movie. If I need company, I turn on a video. I just do what I need to do, one foot in front of the other. Where it leads? I have no idea. Again, like grandfather said, I'm just trying to get through it.

***
Maybe I'm in some kind of emotional free fall? You know, where you've jumped out of the plane, and you've pulled the rip cord, and the only thing left is either you live or you get smashed to bits on a bunch of rocks? I mean, what choices are there at this point? You just fall, and hope to hell it's a good ride, and try to keep your wits about you and your eyes wide open on the way down. Because, if you live? It's going to be a great story. And if you don't? No worries. It'll be over. No more stress.

I guess that's what it feels like - I've got one more shot, and then I'm done. I've got just enough juice left in this baby to make one more try at 'success', whatever the hell that means. I mean, creating something 'sustainable', as they say. It feels like a slalom ride where I can't see further than the very next obstacle, there's so much spray and flurry from the current event that I have no energy for anything else except surviving what's directly in front of me. Only this, and nothing more. Quoth the maven.

Well. I seem to be devolving into silliness. I truly hope somebody, somewhere, someday reads this shit and thinks, what a cool person. I'm sorry she had to struggle so hard. I wish more people would have helped her when she needed it. Something like that. My ghost will thank you for it, and not even haunt you very much.

****
You know, just for the record? It's not that I think my problems are extra special and unique or anything. It's more just my consistent inability to get any kind of useful support or understanding to help me cope with any of it. I mean, obviously I'm perfectly capable of solving any and all of the problems that come my way. The point is, what's the point? I mean, why bother when there's nobody to care about any of it but me?

It's like with Piggy downstairs - I carefully rinse out all my recyclables, only put 'clean' stuff in the bin, bag up everything in paper bags so that we don't end up with trash scattered hither and yon on collection day.

I go out there, all proud of how tidy and responsible I'm being, how organized and capable and whatnot, and lift the lid to the recycling bin to - jesus fucking christ what is that smell???!!??? I mean, the asshole dumps half-full beer cans in there, slopping sticky, funky beer all over the place, half the time he forgets which bin is which and throws his disgusting, horrible butts in the recycling bin, for fuck's sake. Jesus, that thing reeks. I tried rinsing it out one day, I just couldn't even stand to touch the thing, but next morning it was yet again full of crap. Forget it. Why try? Why bother? Why make the effort? It truly is like living with a pig. Cigarette butts everywhere, can't be bothered to pick up his own trash - what, are we living in a trailer park here? When he first moved in I tried to inspire him a bit by planting a few flowers outside his window, but he's like a blight, like PigPen from the Charlie Brown comics. His massive indifference, his total 'fuck you' attitude to any kind of responsibility whatsoever is like this miasma, this psychic ectoplasm that just fucking slimes you any time you try actually fucking care about something anywhere near him. He has like this massive negativity field that cancels out any good intentions, any desire to make an effort to improve something. He's like anti-matter. (Good god, I think I'm channeling a Valley Girl.) I even found fucking cigarette butts in the fucking yard waste bin, in the middle of droughty summer when he could have had a lovely little bin-fire. Nice. I mean, is he just stupid? Or careless? Or too drunk/tired/whatever to notice? I don't get it. Even on my worst days I still pay attention. I fucking care. Why do I care so much? Why does he care so little? How the fucking hell did I end up sharing a duplex with this fucking asshole? Jesus. I hope he fucking chokes on one of those fucking cancer sticks. Hell, I may choke him myself.

And the dog shit! For fuck's sake, he absolutely refuses to even touch the stuff. I mean there's some right outside his fucking window, for fuck's sake, and rather than fucking pick it up and put it in the trash, he leaves it lying there, and pours, I swear to god, aftershave on it to kill the smell.

There is no god. No way, no how. Or if there is? He's a fucking psycho, with the weirdest-ass, most twisted fucking sense of humor you've ever seen in your life. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And I'm not even fucking Catholic.

***
Surviving life as an ultra-sensitive person seems to add a whole other course of hurdles (?) to the Sisyphean climb, as if there's a whole ladder you have to climb each day to deal with the sensitivity before you even get to the 'normal' ladder that everyone else seems to be climbing. It's like a handicap, where even the simplest tasks become unbearably complicated.

And it's not about perfectionism. I've tried letting absolutely everything else go to hell so that I have any energy left at all for something besides the basics. But the sink is full of dirty dishes that have been sitting there for months; the dust is a 1/4 inch thick on the carpet; I haven't worked in the garden since spring (since Piggy moved in, basically). It's amazing what an enthusiasm-killer he is. Wish I were oblivious.

what is it like

to have a family that is never there to catch you when you fall?

You can give them warning, and they'll come and watch,
sightsee,
as if you were some roadside spectacle
nothing to do with them
at all.

You smash to bits on the pavement,
shatter to smithereens.

They remain motionless, unmoved
by your pain,
your suffering,
your tears;
your terror,
your anguish,
your shame.

You are that moth beating itself senselessly to death against the shuttered flame of the lamp.

They make no move to stop your self-immolation.

How can they say "I love you," and yet watch you be destroyed? How can they stand there and do nothing? Are they stupid? Afraid? Both? What is the matter with them? Why do they just stand there and watch?

I do not understand.

You are a shattered being
who has fallen so many times
there's nothing left to put together. Not enough solid bits to hold the glue...

They don't understand caring.

They only understand a distant sort of vague sentimentality - their definition of 'love' is - what? I don't know. I've never understood it. I only know it has nothing to do with any of the things that love is to me.

They are the ones who, seeing the beetle stuck on his back for the thousandth time, crush it, instead of gently turning it over onto its feet again, helping it along its way, helping it to find a safe place.

They don't understand. They aren't even as good as the Pinball Wizard, who, though he was a deaf, dumb and blind kid, could at least play a mean pinball... They're just deaf, dumb and blind. See nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing, understand nothing. They might as well all be deaf mutes for all the fellow feeling they show.

***
It is empty, and alone, and frightening.

Terrifying in its vastness, that essential abandonment of a small child's spirit.

There is no mending it, ever, except by the hand and heart of another lost soul who seeks the same repair and understands what is needed. Who can be both giver and receiver.

Where are you? I need you, now. Not later - now.

***
I do not know that I can ever capture the echoing emptiness that is the feeling of 'belonging' to this family. It's like swallowing a vacuum, like having a giant sucking sound in the middle of your being where love ought to go.

Where there ought to be a warm fire burning there is instead: A hole. A space. Nothing. No one there.

This is the feeling of the child, the infant who emerges into the world, into being, after a long battle with darkness and terror. Emerges screaming and fighting and gasping for air and - terrified. She is born terrified. That there will be no one to care for her.

And she was right. No wonder she never wanted to be born in the first place.

***
They think I'm crazy. Because they're men, and they believe that women are supposed to do all the feeling for them.

But I'm a woman, and have had to make my way alone through most of this life, just as if I were a man, but without any of the myriad supports society provides for men.

I am not even spared the misery of being heterosexual - I have longed to be attracted to other women, so that I could escape the prison of heterosexual 'romance'. But I am, instead, simply a failed heterosexual - one who sees no point in the rubbing together of various bits for some fleeting moment of sexual gratification.

I feel caught in the middle, squarely and painfully astride the fence. People seem to think that I've chosen this place, but I didn't. I never felt that I had any choice.

I've been accused of being both 'too tough' and 'too sensitive', so many times I've lost count.

Of course I had to be tough - to survive my mother's neglect, my father's sarcasm and verbal abuse, the bullying from my brother, the endless misogyny from all the men in my entire family.

And a person gets sensitive from being stomped on so many times, oddly enough. Oddly enough, getting stomped tends not to 'toughen' one - one develops a tough outer shell to protect the fragile inner bits that have been so repeatedly and ruthlessly damaged, nearly beyond repair. One develops a rapier tongue and a lightning-fast left hook out of a mere need to survive those who claim to 'love' you. It's all about survival, man.

So don't blame me. I did, and continue to do, what I had to, what I have to, to survive.

****
Denial and repression only get you so far. I find that beyond a certain point, I have to resort to external escape mechanisms.

The only problem is, they're not working any more. My escape hatches are like some kind of nightmare maze that only lead me right back to the very thing from which I seek relief: The truth. Reality.

They don't care.

They never have.

They never will.

No matter how loud or how long I scream and rant and beg and plead.

They just turn their backs on me and walk away, indifferent. Uninterested. I simply don't matter to them.

It is truly like the wolf who must gnaw off her own hind leg to escape the trap: There is no other way out, except death.

And having made this choice, she chooses only another kind of death: The death of her soul, that fragile, precious, unique, irreplacable light that is the flame of her being.

They would extinguish her, through their mere indifference.

How can they not see how bright she is, how beautiful? How brilliant and shiny and special and unique, an opal, full of fire and ever-changing color. She is like a diamond - all facets, flashing every color in the rainbow. She is beauty, embodied.

***
I feel as if I am only holding myself together through sheer force of will, through pure and indomitable stubborness.

But even granite is eventually worn away. And that which is too brittle shatters...

She seeks only to be seen and loved for who she is - "like any bright blade of grass, any shining stalk of wheat."

And so they do, some - some see her in this pure, this simple way.

But it is not enough.

There must be one, at least one, who truly loves every bit of her being, exactly as she is.

Where is this person? I am waiting. I am ready.

Will you come and take care of me now, please?

***
It is as if, if I let down my guard for even a moment, if I relax for even a split second, it will all come tumbling down - it will fall apart, I will explode in in a shower of springs and sprockets and un-reassembleable bits that will never go back together again.

So I can never stop, can never rest, can never let down.

Because if I do, I will see that there is nobody here but me, and never has been...

And then I will fall to bits, and no one will see, or care, or know, until it is too late, and I am gone.

Even if the empty shell of me remained, the essential I, the me inside will be gone.

That beautiful and irreplaceable spark that no one ever saw but me.

That is why the narcissist must spend so much time looking in the mirror: Because no one else is paying any attention. She is afraid she will disappear the instant she looks away. The sense of 'self', oddly enough, is assembled from all those mirror fragments that a lifetime around other people who care about you enough to show you a piece of yourself that you can hold in your hand, your mind, your heart, your soul. A piece of yourself that you can carry away and cherish, and feel to the depths of your being to be true.

Right and proper parents know how to do this instinctively; but most parents are neither right, nor proper.

****
The pit of despair is not so bad. It's actually rather cozy here, though the decor is a bit tedious - black everywhere you look. We could do with a bit of color.

Who's 'we'? Well, it's the schizoid persona that we'll be forced to take on should the raw force of our willpower fail to withstand the relentless onslaught of cognitive dissonance. At some point the twain shall be parted, never to meet again. Or something like that. Couldn't put Humpty together again - he was a frickin' egg, after all - whaddya want, anyway - miracles? Shit. I'll be satisfied just to get through this damn thing - life, that is - which is how my grandfather put it.

***
I seek some kind of reconciliation, some kind of peace, some way to think about all this that makes sense to me, that allows me to walk out of the maze, to be free, to escape the family trap, for good and forever.

The madness that comes from being alone with such thoughts for too long - for most of one's life - lurks at the edges, in the corners of my eyes. Just out of sight, I catch a fleeting glimpse, but it is gone when I look squarely at it. I see just the very tip of its ratlike tail twitching out of view constantly, but can never see the whole beast.

Maybe that's a good thing - the day I can see the whole beast will be the day the world no longer parses at all for me, and they really will have to wrap me up and cart me away to be lumped in with the other vegetables.

it is not in the thing itself

that beauty is contained; it is in the eye of the viewer, the mind, the imagination behind the eyes that illuminates what it sees. The eyes cast the light with which the beloved object shines.

It is in the heart and soul of the being who finds beauty in that thing or person that the beauty resides, not in the thing itself.

Without ears to hear it, the falling tree makes no sound.

Without eyes to perceive it, beauty does not exist.

It is in being seen, truly, completely, fully, by someone who loves what they see, that we are born, and become and remain beautiful.

It is the reflections from the eyes of others that let us see who we are and teach us to love that being we call ourself.

In fact, I would say that babies are born loving themselves and all around them. It is only painful experience that teaches us otherwise, that breaks the bonds of love and loving admiration. It is the projected fears and hatreds of others that turn us into something unwanted, ugly, unloveable. We do not do this to ourselves.