#which you were afraid of because any emotional unhappiness from her meant getting abused

[thesickpanda]

See you on the other side

Note: I have never talked much about my family on this blog for fear they might see it. But I am no longer afraid of how they will react if they do see it. Bring it. I have some things to say about how psychological and emotional abuse is normalized in families, especially towards firstborn daughters, so here it bloody well is.

I come from an extremely dysfunctional family. It is dysfunctional on both sides and I feel truly alien to everybody in that family network. The only exceptions were my late father, late grandmother and one cousin. And even then, there were aspects of my dad and Gran that seemed totally bizarre to me, such as their inability to talk about difficult issues or face their inner demons. That is something I've had to do alone all my life.

 When my father died unexpectedly nine years ago, the dysfunction was really obvious. My severely mentally ill mother had a complete nervous breakdown and it fell to me to take care of her while single-handedly organising a funeral from another continent. My sister locked down and turned to her friends rather than me, her battle-weary sibling, as she typically does. I received no support there. My entire extended family found my father's death an inconvenience. My dad's girlfriend had to intervene before his brother had cremated him without a funeral and without even letting us know he had passed away. (My father died in his home country). It was only after my dad's friend alerted his girlfriend that she was able to put a stop to it and give me the opportunity to give my dad a proper funeral. It was no secret in the family that I was extremely close to my father and loved him very, very much. But I received absolutely no emotional support from anybody. Even my cousin couldn't understand why I wouldn't attend her wedding the day after my father's funeral. Because I was upset? Because I had just lost the person I loved most in the world? Hello?

 Apart from the enormous toll that took on chronically ill me to organise dad's funeral with a 15 hour time difference, the mental toll was truly unbearable. I didn't want to be alone in this loss but that's where I found myself. My mother was wracked with guilt and couldn't face herself and my sister shut down and didn't want to talk about any of it. Shortly after I returned from my father's funeral, my partner's family cut all ties with me because they found out we were dating and didn't approve of me, being a non-Catholic and not Italian. They didn't speak to me for eight months. So my own family were not speaking to me or reaching out to me (I didn’t get so much as a text message from any of my cousins or even a card from any of my aunts and uncles) and my partner's family had made it very clear that I wasn't what they wanted for their son. So I tried to reach out to some of my friends. What a shock to the system that turned out to be. The friends I thought would be there for me weren’t and the friends that I didn't expect that from offered some words of comfort. But those friends were scattered around the globe. I had only recently moved to Australia and didn't know anybody apart from my partner so he was the only person I could talk to. I appreciated that, but I really wanted to talk to somebody who knew my father (unfortunately, my partner and dad didn’t know each other well) so I reached out to my father's friends. They all shut me down saying it was too painful to talk about the man. So then I reached out to my partner's girlfriend, who was much hated by my family for making a play for his will. I cannot emphasize enough how little I cared about the money. Money could not buy me comfort or solace or a salve to my grief, only compassion and communication could do that. And she was more than willing to offer that. Because she was the only person I could talk to about my father I leaned very heavily on her up until 2 years later when she drew the line and said that she needed to move on with her life and could no longer speak about it. I respect that, it was never really her responsibility, but she was all I had.

 Just before that happened, I visited the UK to see my family. They were totally disinterested in my visit. There was no fanfare around my arrival, which is fine, but showing a little enthusiasm for my return after a few years away would have been nice. Instead I got utterly bullied by them for being a feminist. I had a horrible realization that my childlike perception of my relatives was very rose-tinted; in reality, they were cold, hard conservatives who took it upon themselves to put me straight on my pathetic beliefs.  At one point, they had me on the ground sobbing into the carpet and were standing over me telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that I was a wuss for crying after an hour of being gaslit, and that I wasn't really a feminist because I was reliant my partner (because, you know, I'm sick with 3 chronic illnesses and 2 mental illnesses, but hey they don't believe me about that, either). I was so roundly abused by everybody that I have not gone back since. My uncle even told me that my father had chosen to die rather than deal with his immediate family. I disagreed, stating that he had in fact been looking forward to my visit, tragically scheduled a few weeks after he died, and that his friend had told me it was all he could talk about. But my uncle said I was wrong: my father had chosen to die rather than see me. Picked his moment. Checked out deliberately. Shortly after that disgustingly callous remark, my aunt told me, in no uncertain terms, exactly what she thought about me and my family.  I won't repeat that here because it is too painful.

 Now, to paint a picture about the kind of person I am, every step of the way I have forgiven people. Even when they have hurt me and refused to acknowledge that hurt or apologize for it, I have forgiven them and come back to them. Why? Because I'm used to being a doormat. Because I'm used to being told that as the eldest daughter it is my responsibility to be there for the family; to be everybody's counsellor when they need it and to be their punching bag when they're feeling volatile. What gets me is that since I was a girl, I have been mocked and ridiculed for being “too sensitive” and “a crybaby”. I mean, I grew up with relentless domestic violence, a deeply unhappy home life in a country rife with crime and on the brink of civil war, and like a normal child, I expressed my fear and suffering through tears. But in response to that I was given so-called “tough love” (to quote my sister) and made to feel like it was a tremendous weakness on my part to acknowledge my difficult emotions. And yet that same softness and sensitivity is what they ALL turned to when they needed it from me. I was their sounding board, consoled them when they required it, reached out when I could tell they were down (especially my dad). But me? I'm not allowed to have feelings of my own, because they are an inconvenience that must be swiftly dealt with by dismissing them as an “overreaction”. Because  they won’t face their own inner turmoil, they have attacked me for not only feeling but expressing mine. After repeated episodes of this, I have learned NOT to show my hand to them. I am still the same sensitive, sweet person with my friends, and I still provide my family comfort when they need it, but I strive not to cry in front of them anymore or talk about my own pain or hardships. I have diagnosed PTSD from my childhood trauma that gets triggered whenever I make myself vulnerable to them, so I just don’t do it anymore, which has meant I have an absolute volcano-load of rage and resentment locked down underneath my smiling exterior.

Despite all of this, I have sent countless emails, letters, handmade cards and packages to relatives who never once asked me how I'm doing and don't bother to reply. I have done this because I have been so utterly brainwashed by society's expectation that the first born daughter is a secondary mother figure, including to her own mother, and must pour emotional labour into everybody without ever needing it to be reciprocated. It's a very pernicious form of sexism that I was completely oblivious to during my eight years of feminist activism.

 I kept up with my grandmother during the nine years after my dad's death until she passed away a week ago. The rest of my family couldn't be bothered to do the same for her. So when she died, knowing full well that I'd put a lot of emotional energy and time into that relationship, I thought at the very least they would reach out to me to say hey, how are you doing? What a fool I am. To think that they would do that when they didn't even do that when dad died! So I ended up angrily prompting them which has since opened a can of worms. They kinda sorta detected I am a bit pissed off with them? Even though they don't know why I'm so angry…???

 According to 5 different psychologists, I was viciously bullied and gaslit as a child and teenager. My gentle nature was seen as a weakness and a character flaw. I now know how wrong my family are about that. Ten years of therapy teaches you a thing or two about people’s maladaptive coping mechanisms.  I can see their dysfunction because I have spent 9 years reckoning with my own; looking into my past trauma and figuring out how to process it. I can see all their scars and wounds in a way that they just can't. And yet they continuously project that unacknowledged trauma onto me over and over again, triggering my PTSD and keeping me from being able to move on. The stress they cause me literally makes me ill. And even though I've had psychologist literally begging me to cut ties with my family because they are that poisonous to my mental well-being (and in turn my physical well-being), that brainwashing is so entrenched that I have just stuck it out.

 But you know what? Gran’s death broke something in me. It dredged up all the hurt and anger I have buried deep, known only to my counsellors and partner, and I have realised how utterly toxic it has been for me to swallow that down for so long.  In the past 2 years, I've put down boundaries with my mother and  even though she wrestled with them she's beginning to accept them and we are getting along a bit better now. I've accepted I will never have the sort of relationship with my mother that I'd hoped for,  because she cannot be the person I need her to be. Fine. But with the rest of my family I have absolutely had enough. I'm no longer going to be their emotional punching bag and I refuse to be taken for granted. I'm no longer going to be there for them when they need me only to get gaslit and dismissed when I need them. I'm dumping the role of the dutiful daughter/sister/niece.

  There’s a pernicious lie that is sold to us through media and mantras: that you often hurt the ones you love the most. That family need to be there for each other, no matter what.

 I call bullshit on that idea.

 I don’t hurt my friends, and if I accidentally do, I apologise for that, because I know that they can walk anytime and I need to work on making that relationship worthwhile for them. My bonds with other people are built on mutual respect, open communication and genuine appreciation for one another. It needs to be a two way street. I don’t take them for granted and they don’t take me for granted.

 I no longer subscribe to the view that just because you are blood related to someone you need to tolerate their abuse. I think respect is earned. I think respect should be mutual. I think that people should be kind and considerate to one another. Why should there be one formula for how my family treat their friends, and another for how they treat me? I think the belief that we should tolerate the cruelty of family has led to many suicides and broken human beings. My own father walked away from his family after they mistreated him and was subsequently able to live his own life. But his failing was that he never went to therapy to deal with his trauma and instead turned to addiction to cope which led to his death. I learned from his mistake. I have been getting lots of much needed professional support. But the rest of my family are headed on the same path as dad, despite my imploring them to seek help themselves. They all refuse to acknowledge their own pain and damage which they, in turn, inflict on me, the only person in their life who will take it.

 I am so done with being the only one to face the past, deal with my flaws and mend my broken parts. Because they refuse to acknowledge it and process it, it informs and affects their behaviour and actions, which are projected onto me and therefore leave me tethered to a time and a treatment I want to put behind me. In this way, maintaining ties with them has been the single most damaging thing I have done to my own process of healing. It’s a way of remaining tethered to the trauma.

 Right now, I am having a reckoning with my family. It is blisteringly painful but ultimately necessary. It will be interesting to see what's on the other side of all this grief and pain and rage. What’s so frustrating is that it took something like another death in the family to leave that pain raw and exposed for all to see.

 Better late than never, I guess.

  "The Other Side" by David Gray Meet me on the other side, meet me on the other side I'll see you on the other side, see you on the other side Honey now if I'm honest, I still don't know what love is Another mirage folds into the haze of time recalled And now the floodgates cannot hold All my sorrow all my rage A tear that falls on every page Meet me on the other side, meet me on the other side Maybe I oughta mention, was never my intention To harm you or your kin, are you so scared to look within The ghosts are crawling on our skin We may race and we may run We'll not undo what has been done Or change the moment when it's gone

Meet me on the other side, meet me on the other side I'll see you on the other side, see you on the other side

I know it would be outrageous To come on all courageous And offer you my hand To pull you up on to dry land When all I got is sinking sand That trick ain't worth the time it buys I'm sick of hearing my own lies And love's a raven when it flies Meet me on the other side, meet me on the other side I'll see you on the other side, see you on the other side Honey now if I'm honest, I still don't know what love is

#childhood trauma #abuse #neglect #gaslighting #psychological abuse #emotional abuse #ptsd #chronic illness #mental illness

[kaspmatic]

From a young age Eddie knew that his mother had complete control of the household and when things didn’t go her way, there would be hell to pay – an emotional torture rot with manipulation tactics at their finest. It was easiest for Eddie to play along, to appease the monster in which he lived with, if only to have some healthy semblance of a childhood. But he hated it, hated having to pretend and appease. Always having that nagging conscious in the back of his mind to go out and adventure, to explore, to be who he was truly… But Sonia Kaspbrak had wanted more than just total control of the home she wanted to have total control of each and every aspect of Eddie’s life; his health, his social life, and who Eddie was as a person. The manipulation tactics would dive so deep – fear driven at every chance she could get. Eddie would eventually succumb to the manipulation. Become so torn down that it was just easiest to be who his mother wanted him to be – instead of who he was meant to be.

Throughout the years Eddie had heard his mother rant about “the gays” more times than he could count – he’d completely lost track. Whether it was a rant about how “all the gays have AIDS”, “being gay is a sin”, or “all the gays go straight to hell” ­– he would remember them. Every single one of them echoing in his mind as he grew up. Every single time he even thought about looking at another man. Each and every verbal lashing, every fear driven tactic, would be remembered. A distant echo that Eddie couldn’t shake and anytime he even thought about coming out any time he wanted to make a move on the one person in his life he was falling for – he never could. Completely overtaken with fear of how his mother would react to the news. A fear driven so deep inside him that he often scolded himself for those thoughts. Hated himself for having impure thoughts about other men.

After lashing out at his mother at the age of 13 and putting forth the effort to call her on her bullshit – he made a choice, he made a choice to move on and live his life as he felt he should live it. For years, it was the first time that Eddie truly felt comfortable – Sonia hated having a rebellious son, but it gave Eddie the freedom to do more things for himself. To try new things and explore things he even hadn’t even truly been able to explore.

Richie had always had his attention and he hadn’t realized it until his later teen years but he was in love with him – the object of his secret affection for years – but during this rebellious time he felt more comfortable with it. But that didn’t stop the nagging voice of his mother from ringing through his mind anytime he saw the other or he thought about him in a certain light. Fear stricken, Eddie never made that move. Far too afraid to come out of the closet as it was much easier remaining inside. Hiding. On top of that he didn’t think he could handle the rejection – if Richie knew how he felt he was nearly sure he would lose him and Eddie couldn’t handle losing him in any aspect.

One night, Sonia Kaspbrak was giving one of her infamous homophobic hate speeches because of an episode of Geraldo that completely “triggered” her. Angry with his mother Eddie lashed out, standing up to Sonia and completely putting her back in her place – right where Eddie believed she belonged on the subject. Seeing red, Eddie ranted and raved about how one day he was going to be old enough and he was going to find a man he loved and marry that man – and if that day came his mother damn well better get her shit together or get the fuck out of his life.

As you would expect – this did not go down well with Sonia Kaspbrak.

An argument ensued. Insults were thrown back and forth between the pair before Eddie – furious with his mother – stormed out. With nowhere to go, Eddie decided he was going to wander through town. He didn’t have anything to fear anymore with Pennywise being dead and the majority of the Bower’s Gang being dead or locked up – so he travelled where his feet took him. He needed to cool off. To find a place he could just think for himself as far away from Sonia as he could.

Hearing the trickle of water below his feet he sighs, eyes slamming shut for a moment as he took a deep breath before brandishing his pocket knife. Feet carried him to the Kissing Bridge where he began carving an “R” with a heart around it. So, wrapped up in what he was doing on his second pass of his handiwork, Eddie was none the wiser when the newest gang of bullies’ in town surrounded him. Beating him to within an inch of his life and slashing him with his own pocket knife before tiring of the abuse and deciding to make it fun – they let him run.

That night, a bruised and battered Eddie went exactly where he wanted to go. Straight to Richie’s to ask for help. Despite knowing he was going to wake the other up – he didn’t know where else to go or who to trust.

But the beating, only beat Sonia’s fear tactics into him deeper.

Dealing with his homosexuality was never easy and it was a constant battle between what he wanted and what he thought he wanted – what he thought he needed. Dealing with his homosexuality would haunt him for years to come – a battle of the heart versus his mind, one that was always a constant battle waging war. Even when he found someone who he thought of as a great friend – but nothing more – he had doubts. Doubts that would keep him so distant and unhappy he could hardly bear it – but things would begin to spiral out of control and the woman’s grasp would start to take over his life.

This woman is Myra.

Eddie never shared a true connection to Myra and even at the proposal of marriage he all but cringed at the idea of marrying her – but there was something ever so familiar about the way she “cared” for him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on (at least until his return to Derry). Eddie held doubts about marrying Myra, still struggling with being homosexual but he knew that it was just easier – easier in society to be a straight man with a wife, a dog, a nice car, a good job. It would appease those around him and maybe – just maybe – he was straight after all. Who knows? He had never slept with anyone because he didn’t share that connection – that bond with anyone.

But Eddie wasn’t happy and part of him knew he would never be happy with Myra.

Never in all their marriage had Eddie attempted to sleep with his wife, there was something completely off putting about the act itself. He could never really or truly pinpoint why – but it was there. A distinct factor of disgust anytime she had tried so he made every effort to dodge it until she completely gave up trying.

Myra was controlling in every aspect of his life; with his heath, with his social life, and with who he was. She was nasty and emotionally abusive, manipulative even.

It wouldn’t be until Eddie received the call from Mike that he would make the connection – that he stood in his own way of happiness, by marrying his mother.

#⌊ my mom will have an aneurysm ok?! ⌉ - headcanon #hc. #tw: homophobia #tw: abuse #tw: violence #ok so i might have wrote nearly 3 pages for this headcanon... #but uhm #yeah #enjoy my novel #i tried to tag some of potential tw items in here

[our-enchanted-lovestory]

hi, I'm Ash[ley].

I want to share my Taylor Swift testimony, and I feel this is the most appropriate time more than ever for me to really put it out there, for many reasons.

A few days ago, I saw the Twitter stan account in the headlines for the 19 year old girl's refusal to serve in her country's military and how she was able to keep updates going while serving her time, and it touched my heart and made me even more eager to share my experience with the prison system and how Taylor Swift helped me get through it all. It took a lot of the shame and fear away from the risk of looking and sounding like a criminal who didn't have their life together and who was mentally screwed up and beneath other fans or something like that. There are extremely diverse fans of Taylor, and I encourage every single one to be able to share their experiences with no shame and how they've grown or even just made it through one day because of her.

I've been a fan of Taylor since "Tim McGraw" first came out. I'm generally not into country mainstream pop music at all, I usually stick with rock or alternative; I have piercings and tattoos, I'm rough around the edges. My love for Taylor always gets me snarky remarks or disbelief or jokes or all of the above, but I've always loved her and her music and constantly played it at any job I had and sang my heart out and it brought me comfort and happiness, always. I needed music to help me deal with inner turmoil that was always going on, we all need music to escape the things we can't handle, and Taylor is one of the ones who has never let me down in that aspect.

I've spent time in hospitals and institutions since about 2010, at least once a year, if I'm not mistaken, all for mental and legal reasons, usually stemming from some sort of substance abuse. Every time I have ended up in any of these places, something regarding Taylor Swift has come up on TV without me knowing about it beforehand. I've seen at least 3 awards shows that she's performed at while in the hospital or jail, and during the couple of weekend sanctions I had in 2017, she happened to be deleting everything on Instagram and uploading the content for Reputation. I have constantly found myself in places when I was at my worst, and she always showed up and gave me something to be truly happy and excited about and it all brought me so much comfort.

The history for my legal issues began in April of 2013 when I was grieving my cousin's suicide. I couldn't handle the emotions I saw at the funeral and it broke my heart and my mind; it brought on a lot of guilt and isolation, and I handled it all very badly by resorting to alcohol as an escape for 6 weeks non-stop. I committed 2 felonies under the influence in May and ended up spending 3 months in jail. I lost the job I had really enjoyed, I lost the chance to get my life together like a normal person, I ruined my relationship, to say the least, and I ended up on probation for 5 years.

During the last 5 years, I have received 2 extensions for probation, 1 year each. The first extension resulted in me moving back in with my family and securing a job I loved for almost 2 years, then some part time jobs I didn't enjoy so much after that. I was also still constantly drinking, which directly affected how I lost all of those jobs.

In November of 2017, not even a week after Reputation dropped, I was asked to move out of my parent's house. I didn't go about it logically or responsibly and I moved in with a friend for a month then was asked to leave there after losing yet another job I had barely been at for a month. I ended up in a very unsafe, dirty apartment with people I barely knew and a month later, I was using something I told myself I never wanted to use. I had slowly been giving up on life again, and that was what really broke me down, the fact that I willingly used something I hated so much. I stopped caring about everything except my best friend and music.

I had also been avoiding probation for those few months. I wasn't calling in to do my UAs, I didn't let them know I was basically homeless and on drugs, I disappeared from that part of my life. A few weeks into my using, I had a breakdown; something told me to get out of the apartment and that I would die there if I stayed. Even though I had stopped caring about my life, I became very afraid for my safety at that moment. I spent hours trying to find someone to get me and my things, and once my friend showed up, I had her take me to an outpatient facility I had been in and out of for a few years. I told my counselor everything that was going on, and she told me to go to the hospital and check into a crisis center when I was released.

I spent 2 weeks in the crisis center (The Lorax came on TV once, I got to hear Taylor's voice, and also when I'd call my best friend and she'd play some songs for me), and it just so happened that a program I was part of for probation had their main office in the same building.

The day I was released, March 6th, 2018, I was taken to my probation officer and told her what happened. She had me sign for a 9 month behavior modification program for felons with substance abuse issues in Gatesville, TX. Prison rehab, in short. Not quite prison, but on prison grounds, with TDCJ officers and rules, and a 7 digit prison ID number, and white clothes with black boots that say OFFENDER on the bottom of them, but not quite prison. I turned myself into county March 14th, and on April 18th, I was transferred to the facility.

In short, my time there was the biggest wake up call of my life. I managed to stay pretty positive through it all, compared to the few really bad days I'd have and the types of situations the other women were in. I met some amazing women who helped me realize how much of my life I had wanted and how much potential I had and how beautiful life could be if I just lived it with an open heart. The program itself meant well, but I couldn't fully appreciate the benefits in the environment we were in.

Taylor and her music were constantly there for me in one way or another. Soon after I arrived, I caught the Billboard music awards by chance and just knew she'd be there, even though she hadn't been at an awards show in a while, and I was right. I broke down crying realizing I wasn't going to make it to the Reputation tour like I had planned. I made it my resolve to get my life on track and see her perform one day, when I deserved it, when I was put back together.

The days that got too heavy for me, I'd sing and dance to her music in my head, both in the dorm and at work in the kitchen; a fellow Swiftie and I chose a Song Of The Day constantly [hashtagForeverandAlways, hashtagTaylorSwifthelpedmegetthroughprison]; on the rec yard one night, we played Radio and I jumped in with "Love Story" and the whole yard was singing along and lit up my soul; so many days, I got random songs stuck in my head only to get those lyrics in the mail the next day from my best friend; when I felt like breaking down, I'd go to my bunk and curl up and sing Taylor to myself; when I was finally released to the halfway house, I began to catch up with her posts and was so elated to see butterflies and Scrabble and 283 [March 5th Instagram post], all of which was so important to me in the program; last week, I was part of a community meeting, and they were taking song requests, so I asked for "Shake It Off" and got up in front of so many strangers and sang and danced like I never had before, and I had a BLAST.

A year ago, I was so unhappy and didn't want to live, I didn't see the point in anything and felt lost and hopeless. Taking a year away from everything I knew did me a lot of good, the program did me a lot of good, meeting new people did me a lot of good, but I don't know where I'd be in my recovery right now if I didn't have Taylor to look up to for inspiration and to teach me how to value and love myself in a healthy state of mind. I'm so excited for life and the experiences I'm going to have, and I owe SO much of it to her.

Taylor, thank you for what you do for the world, for your fans, for anyone who feels like they don't belong, like they have no purpose and that they'll always be miserable. You've pulled so many people out of that, and you've helped me find my way back to myself before I ever realized I was going to follow that road, back when I first heard you and didn't understand why I was so into your music, but loved and accepted it anyway. I never realized you were going to be someone who led me out of my darkness. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am so blessed to be here today to continue to see you rise higher and higher and break all barriers that other people placed on you, because you believed in yourself above all else. You're my hero, and I only wish the happiest life for you.

I love you. 💓

@taylorswift

P.S. I never intended to watch Cats in my life but that's definitely a priority now.

#taylor swift

[youdontknowaboutthis]

A brief history of me

[This series of posts is a cohesive narrative designed to help me understand my current mind based on my past experiences. Writing it down helps me organize my thoughts and make insights that I would have never discovered.]

[This series of posts is brief in that it leaves out a lot of exposition and background. Instead it focuses on the most pivotal events, details, and descriptions in my life. For example, I had many happy events with my parents, road trips, caring moments. Normal kid stuff. But there were of course negative events too. By their nature, they had a bigger impact on who I am, so they are over-represented.]

My family

When I was born, I had a brother who was a couple years older and a sister who was 7 years older. My brother was mentally retarded and physically handicapped. My sister helped take care of me and change my diapers.

My father was the son of an alcoholic who probably abused his wife. His stunted relationship with his father made him prone to anger and made him bad at expressing emotions like his father. While my mother was strict that he was to never hit me, I was frequently yelled at. My early memories of my father are mostly the fear I had of him losing his temper. To this day a grown man yelling at me will cause me to break down.

My brother died when I was 1.5 years old as a result of his condition. I was not old enough to go to the funeral and don’t remember him. My mother tells me that because of his death she was depressed for about 5 years and wasn’t emotionally available during that time. 

I’m told as a kid I would try and suffocate my brother with a pillow. I must have been barely a toddler. Maybe I was jealous of the attention given to him or maybe I was just playing rough.

I wasn’t a bad kid... wasn’t a good kid either

As a result of the emotional unavailability of my parents, I developed a strong avoidant attachment style. I wasn’t emotionally close to my parents. The parent-like relationship to my sister meant that I never felt very close to her either. I learned to be independent and rely only on myself.  I had no experience forming intimate relationships and sharing my feelings because of this.

I was a smart troublemaker who was willing to lie, but early on I was bad at lying. I wasn’t able to emphasize with other people. I couldn’t really understand what other people were feeling or why. I would disobey and the only thing I was concerned about was if my dad would yell at me or my mom would get angry.

I didn’t really have a conscience, and I explicitly realized that in fourth grade. My teacher was discussing something about morals and what a conscience was. I said nonchalantly, maybe prideful that I didn’t think I had a conscience. My teacher was a little shocked and said something like “Surely you must have something that tells you what’s right or wrong?” I didn’t really, but I sensed her tone and backpedaled. I said either I was joking or I guess I did then. I remember very well that I was afraid of getting “caught.”

In school I was a nerdy, weird, unsociable, unlikable kid. I went to a private, rich elementary and middle school. My parents were lower middle class but were also bad at managing money. I had few friends and was at the bottom of the short social totem pole. My class was only a hundred or so kids and I had few friends.

I was constantly getting in trouble for dumb reasons. I was mean and would mess with people for no reason. My dad really likes sports and so I would end up playing on a lot of different youth sports teams. I remember there was an incident in baseball where I would walk through the dugout and kick over other kids’ water bottles. There was no intimidation involved, I wasn’t bullying. I just enjoyed misbehaving. I saw it as mild disobedience, I couldn’t empathize with the other kids who had to deal with the consequences.

I never had any desire to harm anyone, I was not a sociopath. Maybe there was a moral compass sitting around in there somewhere. Or maybe I just knew what other people’s moral compasses were, and I knew that the penalties for “wrong” behavior was more severe. I could use logic and reason very well. I knew the golden rule from church and school, “do unto others.” Perhaps it was self-serving behavior, I didn’t want 

I’m ambiguous here about my motivations. I remember some of the logical reasons I did things, for example to avoid getting caught. For reasons that will be clear later, I don’t have many memories about “why” I did things. I can only guess at my motivations based on vague feelings and context.

Self-development and emotions

I read a lot of books. I would go to the public library, check out a stack of 15 books a foot and a half high, and read most of them within weeks. I always wanted to learn more about science, but hated any kind of work. The books would satisfy my insatiable curiosity about how things work or what happens next.

In books everything was clear, you could read exactly what every character was feeling. Reading them would let me escape and I would be always wondering what happens next. Books would make me feel more than I did at any other time in my early life. My parents thankfully indulged this by taking me to the library just about any time I wanted.

My parents had dial-up internet and had recent enough computers. I naturally loved the internet. In elementary school I found internet porn online. I was curious and it was something I knew my parents wouldn’t allow.  I got caught, eventually, and my internet access was stopped for a while. Deceiving or disobeying my parents definitely gave me a thrill. I would watch TV shows I wasn’t supposed to just because I wasn’t allowed to do it.

From my earliest memories my emotions were unclear. I don’t remember being unhappy, but at the same time I don’t remember being very happy or excited either. I think of this like the static on a TV screen. I think this is partly why I loved activities that could greatly heighten my emotions like books or misbehaving. Nothing really stands out emotionally like those things did.

When I look back at the memories, I don’t really have any knowledge of what the feelings were, there is more of a binary “feeling” or “not feeling” that was fuzzy. This static refers to both the feelings I had at the time as well as my memories of the feelings, because at this point in my life I’m unable to discern the difference.

In middle school, I had enough practice with lying and getting away with stuff that I stopped getting in trouble as much and my relationship with my parents improved. I was smart, and so I realized exactly the bare minimum I could do to get by in just about anything. I think around then I become socially aware enough to know angering people was bad for my social standing and I developed a couple of friends. My social life was something I was constantly self-conscious about as I was still very unpopular. Puberty also was starting though there weren’t any major symptoms yet.

My path to depression

At some point in middle school, the emotional static disappeared and I was left with a strange lack of emotions. Before this point I remember the emotions being there. The memory is just lacking the feeling of emotion, which is why I think of it like static. Now there was just... Nothing? All my emotions were blunted, and I guess the default was sadness. There wasn’t any event that I can remember causing this. I don’t even know when it started.  I was seriously depressed and I had no idea why.

My dad would come home late most nights from work. I strongly remember how sometimes he would be angry and throw his keys and other things down on the counters and floor. I would watch from upstairs then go to my room and cry into a pillow for 30 minutes. I didn’t know why I was crying but I cried. The best explanation I have is that I was reflecting his emotions, since mine were kind of empty.

I kept my emotional state hidden easily enough from my parents. I think they were expecting teenage angst at my age. Instead of the usual teenage “storm” of emotions, I was experiencing nothing and, paradoxically, sadness. One night I sat on my bed crying for most of the night. I didn’t know why I was crying. My mom came and sat with me for hours. The only feeling that was worse than the sad nothingness was the feeling when she left. This struck me hard at the time because I never really felt strong love to my parents.

I was miserable and wanted to stop existing. I started looking up ways to kill myself. I didn’t think about what I would be missing in life or how my parents would feel. My empathy was definitely not functioning at all. I just wanted the misery to be over.  I was smart enough to keep up fake emotions and be sociable. I thought of this like a facade, everything was fake and I was just trying to be happy on the outside to keep up appearances and prevent questions that would lead to conversations about feelings.

My memories are extremely fuzzy from around this time. If I try to picture what fourth grade looked like, I think of the classroom I was in, the teacher, what I looked like in the mirror and pictures. If I picture sixth and seventh grade, it’s just blackness. If I try to think of what I looked like, there’s nothing there. If I try to think of what school I was in, I can’t automatically recall it and have to consciously deduce what it must have been.

Trying to kill myself

[These paragraphs are tough to read, and tough to write.]

I remember reading internet forums and discussion boards about committing suicide. I wanted an easy, painless method. In keeping with my SOP, I wanted to do this without being caught. If I got caught, I would have to admit my feelings, an intimacy that I did not want to share.

At this point I was already very experienced at managing risk. I was too afraid, for example, to sneak something on my parent’s credit card. I knew I could get caught before I killed myself, or maybe my attempt would quietly fail and they would notice it later and start asking.

I was more afraid of getting yelled at than I was afraid of death. I have no doubt I would be dead today if I had not been so afraid of punishment.

I had basically no money for this so I had to be creative and research. I decided I would use an “exit bag.” You take a large amount of sleeping pills or barbituates and then cover your head with a bag with some kind of rubber band or elastic around your neck. You hold the bag open while you fall asleep. When you do, your hands relax and you asphyxiate. 

I was very clear to myself on my intentions: I was going to kill myself and stop the sadness because that was the logical thing to do. No hesitation or thoughts of “what if,” I simply realized that’s what I needed to do and I set about doing it in the most practical way possible.

So I tried to kill myself. I got back from school before either of my parents were home. I walked to a pharmacy and bought a bottle of Benadryl. I went back home, took an extra large but not sickness-inducing dose, and sat to sleep with the bag over my head and my hand holding it open. I don’t remember what the bag looked like or how I had it arranged. The memory of my room, my bed, and the contraption feels jumbled and unreal, like looking at an Escher painting.

I slept for close to 10 hours. I woke up and the bag was wrinkled up far over my head. I had pushed it off in my sleep. I was still heavily affected by the Benadryl. I walked downstairs and my mom was in the recliner. I laid down on the couch and went to sleep again, only waking up at 2 a.m. when my dad came home.

I can see snapshots of the suicide attempt so clearly, I can remember how nervous I felt when I bought the Benadryl. I can remember standing in front of the aisle, checking multiple pill bottles and calculating what I needed. I remember taking what must have been 15 minutes decide. I was very nervous approaching the checkout. Surely they know I’m just a kid and I’m obviously buying this to kill myself.

Some memories were not clear. I don’t remember what the bag look and felt like. I remember very clearly waking up, confused, and finding the bag above me. I don’t remember my emotions when I fell asleep or woke up. I don’t think I felt relief. I think it was mild disappointment that my subconscious brain had messed my plan up.

I had thought of making a suicide note. It was a standard discussion point on the forums I read, and I’ve always been a person of process. I vaguely recall starting something written on the computer, but at that point I did not even know why I was doing it myself. I just knew it was the only escape. I puzzled over it a bit, writing a sentence or two. People online often had some ultimatum, they were doing it because of some thing tangible. I was just sad? I carefully deleted the file, a lesson I learned from being caught with porn.

My memories from around this time don’t have any time frame or order in them.  I may have tried the exit bag one more time at some point, but I’m not sure. The fragments I remember exist like they were carved from those moments of my life and stored in a dusty book in the back of my mind. I don’t have any memory of my self from that time, what I looked like or what my introspective thoughts were. I can’t recall the classes, what I learned, or who my friends were. I feel like I should know these things and that I may have repressed them.

One time during some kind of PE class, I lingered outside while the rest of the group was inside in the gym. The campus had a large stadium with a high railing. I stood there, thinking about hanging myself from it. I fully knew hanging wasn’t a pleasant way to die. I was starting to realize now that since I’m going to be dead, it didn’t really matter if there was some suffering. I also changed my risk stance, and decided I could probably get away with stuff like climbing to the stadium as long as no one saw me. I remember consciously choosing to ignore the normal “what if” when planning, like what if I get caught, what if it hurts? I eventually went in to PE class and decided to think on it more. I would need to plan that better.

Getting helped

Some time after my first suicide attempt, I was brought to a therapist. I don’t know why. I don’t think I asked for one. My mom may have suggested it to me. My parents to this day do not know about the suicide attempts. They probably thought I had angst or raging hormones. I had occasional emotional outbursts of sadness and anger directed at my parents, but I remember nothing more than that.

I got an intake questionnaire for the psychologist. It had the question, have you ever had suicidal thoughts? For the first time, I realized someone might be able to help me and understand me. This is a standard thing they put on the form, so logically it’s something that can be treated. Before I did not think there was an alternative to suicide, but maybe this could change something. It would be safer as I knew a bit about patient-client confidentiality.

I remember the paper went in a manila envelope and I was so obsessed that it would close tight, that my parents wouldn’t read it, that one of the brads fell off making it less secure. I stopped thinking about committing suicide, although I still wanted to stop existing.

I had an intro appointment. The psychologist was a man and I remember nothing except the waiting room and the bookshelves of toys and books in his office. I didn’t open up in person. But he had the form with my response and my depression was pretty obvious. My parents went in after me and when they came out, they were very serious. I was surprisingly hopeful.

Months later, the therapy had done absolutely nothing for me. My avoidant attachment style meant I was too afraid of any kind of emotional intimacy, especially with men. I wasn’t introspective enough to identify what was wrong with myself. I had little experience understanding strong emotions, just noise. There was sadness, I don’t know where it came from, and I want it to stop.

I got referred to a psychiatrist. He gave me a short discussion to confirm that “yep, he’s sad all right” and sent me home with a Zoloft prescription. A month later, I was back to normal. 6 months later I was off the prescription. The blank emotions were replaced with something else that started as static and was overall “brighter” or “happier” than before. I could immediately tell that my brain was different, but it was hard to figure out how.

A self epoch

I had not been very introspective up to that point, so I had few memories of how “I” used to be. I had the strongest feeling that the Zoloft had changed how my mind worked but no proof. Perhaps the static actually started then, and I can’t remember clearly what I was like before. Perhaps I always felt like this, and I was so depressed that getting back to normal was so overwhelming as to seem brand new. Maybe I just can’t remember and I was introspective.

When I took the 30th Zoloft pill I remember thinking “huh, I feel happy now.” The feeling I get when I remember that day feels like my first real memory. It felt like I had been swimming underwater my whole life and my head had finally breached the surface to take its first breath. This moment, standing in the kitchen and looking at the prescription bottle, is the epoch of my self.

Usually at transitions in life and changes of personality, preferences, and beliefs I can identify myself as the same self from before, just different. In this case, my present day ego does not feel continuous with the person that grew up in my body, got depressed, and ended up going to that psychiatrist. I know, logically, I am the same entity now as I was before that time. I have memories of times before that. The feeling of discontinuity is just so strong.

Maybe it’s the 2-year gap of memories. All memories from before that time are uncertain, like I can’t trust that they actually happened. When I try to think, “when was that memory?” things don’t really make sense. The memories seem to contradict each other when I place them in order.

Maybe the depression had masked the changes in my mind during puberty, and the Zoloft worked so stupid fast that I was given a 30-day launch into adolescence. In truth I think it was the combination of these.

The various starts of my life

This epoch certainly marked the emotional start to my life. The physical start is well-defined of course, and I guess the start of my ego is still up for debate. At least, when I say “I” about events after this point, it feels like I’m talking about myself and not someone else. The static soon begins to fade and I was beginning to feel emotions. Mostly I was just happy. You know, cause of the Zoloft.

From that point on, my memories feel contiguous. I can firmly place memories on a timeline. I can recall feelings from memories too. My choices make sense in the context of my former self.

Some time in eighth grade I remember thinking that something was different in my mind, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. The lack of introspection from before my depression meant I had no reference point for what my mind should be. I just had the vague feeling that Zoloft changed me. I think this is my first memory of introspection. It’s also significant because this is one of the earliest memories that easily fits in a timeline.

[This post is titled “a brief history of me”. In truth, it’s because the history of me is different from the history of “I”. The next post will discuss the history of “I”.]

[roycebrakcet-blog]

I’m a deeply unhappy person but I don’t know how to show it to anyone

I’m the lowest common denominator in every broken relationship in my life, so it must always be me at fault. My relationship with my mum was so poor I ran away, and I know it was because she was emotionally unavailable, drank too much, and whenever I tried to tell her something was wrong she never even tried to do anything to help me, but it’s my fault. My relationship with my dad fell apart and he physically hurt me and violently took my belongings and goaded me to kill myself before kicking me out, and I know it happened because I was already damaged goods and he’s traumatised too, but it’s my fault. Friends and lovers I either abandoned, or they had to abandon me, because I mistreated them having never known a healthy relationship in my life, but it’s my fault. Nobody else shares any of the blame, because it’s all my fault.

I know it doesn’t even work like that, but I don’t know how to apply it and believe it. I know my mum was fucked up by her mum and my birth dad, and that she should have sought help before it got to the point she couldn’t keep a home and her kids were suffering. I know my dad is traumatised too and that he was frustrated because even though he tried to help me he didn’t know how to fix me, and that some of what he did to me is still downright wrong. I know some people have hurt me and I’m allowed to feel that way, and I know some people tried to help me and realised they couldn’t because they had their own lives to work through. None of the reasons anything happened to me dictate blame on anyone. Life is just an indiscriminate bitch and all the intertwining factors happened to come down on me by chance. It could have been anyone.

I’m angry because I couldn’t protect my mum all those times Chris hit her. I’m angry that social services never put me and my siblings into care when I was living in a home where I saw him hit her so hard her cheek split open. I can still see the blood and the police lady when I think about it. I’m angry that mum ever kicked me after going through abuse herself, and I’m angry she lied to the school and said she never did when I came into the head teacher’s office sobbing over it, and I’m angry that they believed her when they knew there were already problems at home. I’m angry my dad ever raised a hand against me knowing I was already terrified and the only way I knew to express that was to lash out. I’m angry at myself for somehow letting that and everything else turn me into a rabid animal instead of an average child, but how was I supposed to know what a healthy relationship looked like when all I’d seen and experienced was abuse and neglect? Still I blame myself for hurting so many innocent people the way I never want anyone to be hurt.

I want to cry over everything I had to go through and everything I’ve lost but I don’t know how. The only time I cry is during counselling with Adrian, because then it’s okay, it’s his job to help me learn how to let myself feel again - but then even when I do cry, I dissociate so hard I lose chunks of time and forget the last ten minutes, half an hour, the entire session. Sometimes he asks how something feels for me in a physical sense, like where in myself I’m experiencing grief, and I don’t know how to answer. It’s like I’ve become so worthless to myself that there’s a permanent disconnect between my feeling and thinking mind. There’s something about it being too much pain and grief to bear, too.

The only thing I do really feel any more - not all the time, but a lot of it - is anger in varying degrees, like a knot in my chest and throat. I’m hostile and snippy with everyone, but I don’t want to turn into my birth dad, so I isolate myself and hide away. In college I go under the stairs, or behind the vending machines, or lock myself in a disabled stall. In my flat I ignore my phone. I can’t go to some of my classes because the people in them trigger rage so bad I’m afraid I might shout at or physically harm somebody. I hate it and I never, ever want to do those things or instil the kind of fear I felt when I was shouted at and hurt, because no matter how annoying anyone is being they’re still a person.

I stopped seeing all my friends bar one, who’s been through some shit too, and gets it when I’m all wrong in my head. Even though a lot of them are also depressed I just don’t feel like I belong with them, and some of them have said things to me which make me think they don’t really want me around. One of them made it very clear she despises me after I’d spent a year thinking we were good friends. I don’t want to be around them any more, I guess, because it hurts too much to feel so alone surrounded by people. It’s easier to feel alone when you are actually alone. I was always on the edges of their groups - being around them just makes me more acutely aware of the feeling that I’m a robot or an alien trying desperately to mimic standard human behaviour and go unnoticed, but failing on both counts. I was invited to a party tonight by my closest friend and some other people I know were meant to be going, but I just don’t belong in those big howling groups of people I only half know and don’t even halfway trust. It’s horrible and I just feel even more isolated and by the end of the night I always feel so distanced from everyone else I contemplate suicide, and usually end up cutting.

I’m angry at people who get to have nice, average, relatively happy lives. I’m jealous even of people who are depressed without having a rough past, who can just take a pill every day or go to the state school limited course of six counselling sessions and carry on functioning just fine. What did I do that they got the perfectly normal life nobody bats an eyelid at and I got the fucked up one that makes people treat me like a zoo exhibit when I share it? It doesn’t even work like that, there’s no reason for me to have been given this lot and for them to have been given another, but it’s hard to understand that there just isn’t any explanation. The universe doesn’t know what “fair” is, it doesn’t even know what “chance” is, it just exists around a set of mathematical principles we can’t even fully explain. We can’t explain it and it can’t explain us.

I want to feel the full spectrum of emotions like your average person does. I want to let myself love and trust somebody so I can be who I actually am around another human being again, even though every time I’ve tried that I’ve been hurt and hurt the other person. My closest friend, the person who gets me most out of everyone I’ve met in life, has only seen me cry once when she was with me immediately after a counselling session, and now I’m pushing her away and I don’t understand why. I guess I don’t want her to get any closer to me in case she realises I’m a monster and not a man, because then she’ll run and take another little piece of my soul I can’t replace with me, like I give away to everyone who’s ever mattered to me. I want to protect her and myself.

Staff in college have been speaking to the support team saying they’re worried about me, and they’ve been mentioning how I look physically unwell a lot of the time. I’m tired and drained and people say I look pale and I wring my hands. Most of all I’m tired. I want to sleep.

#long post #negative #self harm ment #suicide ment #trauma ment

[fraudulence-paradox]

4/22/16

          A few days ago, I was sitting in the spot far away from my dorm, so no one can see my shame, smoking. Not weed or anything exciting. Not even cigarettes, which oddly are more socially acceptable, but vaping. I was out vaping in the woods as I usually did at that hour but there was something different. I had just dumped my girlfriend of almost 3 months. Normally this is an activity that doesn’t even phase me, but for whatever reason, this particular breakup was hitting me much harder than any one before it. In the past, I’ve gotten myself into some pretty long term relationships and broken it off in much the same pattern and felt nothing but relief, but this time was different for some reason. I took a drag on my vape and watched the cloud disappear into the air. As it did, I thought about every relationship I’d been in prior.

          In elementary school, I had had two girlfriends. One in fourth grade, and another in fifth and sixth. I think that I----, the latter one, was the longest relationship I’ve been in to date. That breakup was easier than any other one, as it was because we were going to separate middle schools the next school year, so it was mutual, and more out of convenience than anything. It wasn’t until ninth grade that I became involved with any other girl, but when I finally did, I was crushed hard.

          When I was in 9th grade, M--- called me the "King of the Nerds". He affectionately gave me this title, in his own words, "because, like, you're popular in terms of number of friends, but like, you're not friends with any of the popular people". He was right. I didn't really strive to be cool, in fact I remember doing quite the opposite. It was the peak of my "Hot Topic" faze, one which most people look back on in shame, but honestly, I was kind of okay with it. At least I knew who I was, or at least, who I was pretending to be. Around this time, I was excellent friends with a girl named Kr----. She was a complex individual. Physically, she was exactly what you would picture a 9th grade emo girl to look like. Skinny, raccoon-eyed, short, colored bangs covering gigantic dark eyes. We were friends. Just friends.

          So obviously, I fall into infatuation with her. We text every day, talk about life, the universe, everything. Remembering it now, I still have oxytocin clouding my thoughts. Even now, sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if we ever got together. More frequently I wonder how I would have turned out if we never even met.

          The first consequential memory I have of her was on a class trip. We all went for a weekend on a school related outing. While there, nothing of note really occurred, we talked a lot, and hung out together all weekend, but other than just conversation and one piggy-back ride, nothing happened between us all weekend. In fact, I distinctly remember she got another guys number while there, which infuriated me. I was in that delightful, puerile construct known as "The Friend Zone". What that really meant was she didn't like me, and I should have just moved on, but as I have deduced from reading through emails with other people I used to like, I was very, very bad at taking a hint. So the weekend came and went, and honestly, some of my happiest memories were in those school trips we took every year. The way the sun shone on the convention center, the chilly, but not freezing air as the calendar approached winter. These are the things I remember as we walked from the convention center back to the bus that particular year. As luck, or coercion would have it, Kr---- and I got to sit next to each other on the ride back. This was significant because it presented an excellent opportunity for shoulders to rub against each other, and (the best possible case scenario) her head on my shoulder as she fell asleep. That's what I wanted out of the experience. Kr---- wasn't as naive as I, however. I'm not really sure why, because I'm pretty sure she never really was into me in any substantial way, but under her fleece blanket, after the sun had set, and it was too dark to see, we played childish games as an excuse to explore each other's bodies. She let me touch her breasts, (a first for me) and she touched my penis (completely flaccid on account of how new this all was to me). It was my first sexual experience. Why this occurred though, I have no concrete ideas. I do have guesses.

          On her 14th birthday, Kr----’s father left her family. He literally told her it was her fault. From this lack of a father figure, and sense of doing something wrong that she could never again right, she went on a downward, self destructive spiral. She went from a very happy, self-assured girl, to a depressed, empty teenager. She had poor self esteem, which manifested in self destructive behavior. Anorexia, self-mutilation, substance abuse later on. None of them filling the hole in her for long. This poor self esteem, and likely lack of a father, resulted in a long quest for male approval. Preferably worship, which I was happy to give. I saw past all of her glaring red flags, so I told myself. In reality I had tunnel vision, and even worse, I saw what wasn't even there. I saw in her the same thing she saw in me, self esteem. If I could be with her, it meant maybe I wasn't unattractive. If she could continue getting my approval, maybe she could perceive her actions and emotions as normal. Maybe she would no longer be depressed. We both wanted different relationships with each other, for goals that were completely self serving.

          This is what the ninth grade me believed anyway. After a lot of thought, however, i think this is a more accurate description of the events that took place. Four years ago (jesus was it really that long ago?) I had a huge crush on this girl in my high school. She was exactly who you're imagining when I say she was a standard emo girl. Colored hair with long bangs, huge eyes, skinny, overall really attractive. She was also incredibly outgoing, and whether she would agree with me saying so or not, at the very least she was good at pretending to be an extravert. This resulted in a lot of male attention on her, so I went to great lengths to solidify my position as best male friend and even hopefully boyfriend some day. As I remember it, when I was around her I was pretty happy, but when I wasn't I was just depressed until I was again. She brought out the absolute worst in me because I was so obsessed with her. And she knew this. She also didn't feel anything towards me aside from friendship, which I refused to accept. Because I asked her how she felt a lot. I once "officially" asked her out, and her response was at first to dodge it by saying "out where? Mars??", which annoyed me. I should have known that that meant no, but I pushed her to answer for real. She eventually said "maybe", which I remember really pissed me off. To me that was worse than no, because i felt like she was just using me, keeping me in her back pocket in case she ever got desperate enough. Shortly after this whole debacle, my parents discovered that I had been cutting, a habit I admittedly did learn from Kr----, and as a result they made me cut off all contact with her.

          At the time, all I could feel was this contempt for her. I blamed her for not dating me, for making me cut, for making me depressed. I felt like she was the one force behind all that was bad in my life. Eventually, i got over the depression and the cutting and even got a real girlfriend. Things were looking up, and i thought to myself that Kr---- was just some demon. Sent to tempt me into the blackest parts of the human soul. She manipulated me and forced me to be unhappy. This thought makes sense in the mind of a ninth grader, so I just accepted that that was what had happened, and moved on with my life. For years after, if I was ever reminded of earlier that year of high school, or I saw my scars, I would just think "I'm not talking to Kr---- anymore, so everything is fine". Eventually thats all there was. A dark chapter of my life with an obvious antagonist who I had vanquished.

          With maturity and trying to make sense of what happened its becoming more and more clear that Kr---- wasn't evil. No one is, but especially Kr---- isn't. She was just afraid of losing her friend, and I was not a very good friend to begin with. I'd sit up on the phone with her late at night, telling her not to be upset, not to cut that night, that everything would be okay. But why? Certainly not because I truly believed that she would be okay, or that everything would miraculously be okay. If she was okay, why would she bother talking to me? I was some geeky kid. No, I was doing these sorts of things because I believed it would help my odds of going out with her. That if I stayed up with her all night while she cried because her life was genuinely stressful, she would begin to see that I was a good guy, and that she should date me. Furthermore, when I did ask her out and she dodged the question, it wasn't because she was fucking with me, or using me in any way. Since a few years have passed and I can think about her motives more, I think she never directly said she didn't like me because she was afraid if she said she didn't I would just move on to some other girl, and she would lose a friend. And quite honestly, she was probably correct in that assumption. I hung out with her for the sole reason that I believed she would spontaneously fall in love with me some day. She hung out with me because she just genuinely liked me as a person. I never felt that way for her, which even as I'm typing this is such a shitty thing to say about a person who was one of my closest friends for a year of my life, and probably knew the real me better than any other human in the world, just makes me feel awful. To make things worse, when things went to shit with my parents finding out about the cutting, it was easier for them to believe that some outside influence coerced me to do it, rather than the truth which was I did it because it made me feel something instead of nothing. Even I didn't want to believe that I was that far gone, and buried that thought, and covered it with the same one my parents had. And just like that, Kr---- was out of my life for good. Battered and abused by every boyfriend she'd ever had, and now cast out by one of her best friends.  

          I take another drag and think about what I learned from this whole experience. Obviously not much. I wrote that about Kr---- right before I began dating T----. The girl I most recently ruined. Dating T----, I even admitted to myself at the beginning was an experiment. A cruel one, where I sent myself back in time to see what it would have been like to have dated Kr----. T---- is not Kr----. The differences are obvious. While Kr---- is outgoing enough to at least cover the fact that she had low self esteem, T---- didn’t have that urge. T---- is the kind of person to fully embrace her insecurities for better or worse.

          In that relationship, I did what I always do. Get overly attached at the beginning, before I even know the girl, then slowly get less and less interested, until at last I outright hate the person. I told T---- lies that I knew would make her happy. I told her we would be together forever. That we would never in a million years break up, because she was perfect. When I first told her these things, it was because I believed them. Not because they were true, but because the person I ascribed to T---- was perfect, and I never would leave in a million years. Unfortunately, that was not who T---- was. T---- was flawed, as everyone is. She had trouble seeing her short-comings, and as a result blamed others, and she used other people, and didn’t even realize it.

          The best example of this is how she chose to go about doing her 3d modeling final project. She had great difficulty using the program, and her friend, S-- had a computer that couldn’t run the program. She made a deal that S-- could use her computer when he needed to (if it was convenient for her) and she could use S-- to do pieces of her project. What ended up happening was a convoluted web of cheating, where S-- borrowed files from his friend, and in turn, gave those same files to T----. T---- for whatever reason, was brought in by her teacher for questioning about the similarities between her final product and the original students. She claimed innocence and ignorance. She had no idea how the similarities had arose, and said maybe, because her friend was borrowing her computer, she had uploaded his file instead of her own. She knew full well this wasn’t the case, and likely the teacher did as well, but he decided to believe her anyway. When she submitted what she called, “the correct file”, the same file she had previously submitted with some minor edits, and the aid a program she downloaded that allowed her to change the write date, the teacher didn’t buy it a second time. When she was stressed that she would fail the class, as a result of cheating on her final, she refused to take the blame. She didn’t admit, like she had a week before, that she had used a file from another student. She instead virulently held to the story she told the professor, even when I asked about it. The teacher, not wanting to fail her outright, gave her a zero on that particular part of the project grade, and moved on. She learned nothing from the experience, so far as I could tell. Instead of thinking, “what a stupid thing I did, I’ll never cheat again” or even a less mature, but still good conclusion “I should have cheated in a less obvious way”, she opted for the easiest excuse. “The professor really fucked me over. He’s an asshole”.

          It’s not so much the fact that T---- didn’t do the project herself that bothered me, but the fact that she so casually shifted the blame off of herself, and onto someone else. This was extremely telling of her personality. Forced to guess, I would imagine Kr---- would have said something to the effect of, “I really fucked myself”. Not, “The teacher really fucked me”. I think this lack of personal responsibility is really what made me stop liking T----.

          She also casually asked me to do various chores for her. Discounting this document, the majority of words I have typed in this program this semester, have been submitted to one of T----’s professors for grading. It should have been a red flag, when one week in, the night before I had to wake up at seven AM, she became extremely frustrated with me until I came over to write the majority of her five page essay for COMM 101. Foolishly, I went over at midnight anyway, and did, setting an unfortunate precedent for the rest of our relationship. I remember noting, that after I had completed writing, proof reading, and editing almost all of her paper, I never received so much as a “thank you”. I did these things for her so early on, because I was afraid if I didn’t, she would see what an uninteresting person I really am. If I don’t make myself useful, I learned from Kr----, what use would someone have to love me? And so that’s how it started. The incessant labor I did for T---- had no bounds. It started slowly of course. Aside from doing her homework, she would ask me to clean silverware and plates if I had used them that evening. That quickly progressed into cleaning all the silverware and plates each night, because of course that’s when I was there. Each night. If I told her I had to wake up early, or didn’t want to come over, she would be extremely upset. “I can’t sleep without you here”, she said, “I always have nightmares when I sleep alone”. I didn’t want to upset her. And I certainly didn’t want her to have nightmares about her “douche bag ex-boyfriend”, so I stayed. So that’s how it happened. That’s how I went from her boyfriend to her live-in maid.

          As the relationship progressed, I used to look forward to her showering. Of course, that’s when my chores for the evening were assigned, but it meant I’d have the room alone for about an hour.

          “Make sure you clean the forks, and put my laundry in the hamper”, she’d say, grabbing her towel, and walking out the door.

          “Good”, I’d think. “That’s less than usual”. As soon as she walked out, I would speed clean her clothes off the floor, and jet into the bathroom to clean her silverware. In the hight of our relationship, I could do this before I even got 3 minutes into a youtube video. I’d set up my computer, let something play in the background while I cleaned her room, pause it, run to the bathroom and wash her dishes. So it went. When I finally finished these tasks for her I’d sit at her former room-mate’s vacant desk (red flag) and watch youtube. Or I’d surf the internet, or sometimes just masturbate, because there was no other time I would be alone. That was the thing about dating T----. I was never alone anymore. To her, this was fantastic. A bored, lonely girl, broken from past relationships (or so she claimed), craves to have someone to distract them from real life most of the time. I on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. I preferred the company of myself most of the time. Of course, I loved my friends, and I loved being with T----, in moderation, but not having any time to myself was slowly driving me insane, so I grew to really cherish the hour she would leave me alone. I didn’t do much I wouldn’t do with her in the room, just surf the internet and vape. So why was it that as our relationship progressed, I looked forward to her leaving more and more? It’s obvious now that it was because I didn’t really love her, but in my mind, it was just because I valued my alone time.

          To make things worse, she found a way to be intrusive even when I managed to negotiate some nights away. She’d insist that I call her on Skype. This shouldn’t have frustrated me as much as it did, but it did anyway. I couldn’t just be with my friends as late as I wanted. I felt that if I wasn’t in her room, I shouldn’t stay up as late as I normally would when I was with her. If I was still awake past one, I’d feel this dread. That I was somehow letting her down. Of course it’s not healthy to stay up until three AM when I needed to wake up in four hours, but somehow it was different when I was with my friends. At least with them if we’re up that late it’s because were doing something fun, while in T----’s room, I was consistently up that late doing her homework, or, worse, watching her do her work. She said I shouldn’t complain about getting little sleep. For one, because she too was getting little sleep.

          “[fraudulence-paradox], I get just as little sleep as you do”, she said, shortly after waking up at two PM, “I can’t stay asleep, really, I always toss and turn, you know that”. It didn’t seem likely. I wanted to tell her that was false, and I knew because I was there, but it didn’t seem worth it. It’s kind of surprising that I managed to keep my grades up as high as I do really, what with averaging three hours of sleep a night. She would get mad when I complained of little sleep. Because I could apparently go to bed whenever I wanted. That didn’t really seem true though. Despite the simple fact that she would keep the light on until she went to sleep, I also always had to finish just one more thing for her before I was allowed to go to bed. Even when I escaped to my room, the problem persisted. It seemed like no matter when I went to bed, I always ended up waiting until two AM for her to be “ready” to Skype.

#tw self harm #relationships #personal #journal #i swear this is the longest one I'll post #i'm trying to ctrl+f all the names

[dj5263-blog1]

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” By Dj Though the days in month's , this is not a post about romance. It’s about any relationship—with your brother, your mother, your coworker, or your friend or your husband or wife or boyfriend and girlfriend . And I admit I am not an expert. I’ve made a million and one mistakes in relationships. I’ve expected too much. Or not asked for what I needed in fear of rocking the boat. I’ve been competitive. I’ve been suspicious. I’ve been dependent. I’d like to think what redeems me from all these mistakes is that I’ve also been honest. Being self aware, in my opinion, is far more valuable than being perfect—mostly because the former is attainable and helpful, while the latter is neither. Relationships are not easy. They mirror everything we feel about ourselves. When you’ve had a bad day, the people around you seem difficult. When you’re not happy with yourself, your relationships seem to be lacking. If you’ve ever gotten in a fight only to find yourself wondering what you were really upset about, this post may help you. If you’ve ever been disappointed because someone didn’t meet your expectations, this post may help you, too. Feel walked on and unheard? You guessed it—there’s likely something in here that will help you change that. We don’t live in a vacuum. We have thoughts and feelings that can be confusing. Other people do too. And just like in the movie Crash, they don’t always collide smoothly. When I apply these ideas, I feel confident, strong, compassionate, and peaceful in my interactions. I hope they can do the same for you. Do what you need to do for you. Everyone has personal needs, whether it’s going to the gym after work or taking some alone time on Saturday morning. If someone asks you to do something and your instinct is to honor you own need, do that. I’m not saying you can’t make sacrifices sometimes, but it’s important to make a habit of taking care of yourself. Someone once told me people are like glasses of water. If we don’t do what we have to do to keep our glass full, we’ll need to take it from someone else—which leaves them half full. Fill your own glass so you can feel whole and complete in your relationships. Give people the benefit of the doubt. It’s tempting to doubt people—to assume your boyfriend meant to hurt you by not inviting you out with his friends, or your friend meant to make you feel inadequate by flaunting her money. People who care about you want you to feel happy, even if sometimes they get too wrapped up in their own problems to show it well. Sometimes they may be hurtful and mean it—let’s not pretend we’re all angels. But that won’t be the norm. It will likely be when they’re hurting and don’t know what to do with it. Odds are they’ll feel bad and apologize later. If you want to get good will, share it by seeing the best in the people you love. When we assume the best, we often inspire it. Look at yourself for the problem first. When you feel unhappy with yourself, it’s easy to find something wrong in a relationship. If you blame another person for what you’re feeling, the solution is on them. But this is actually faulty logic. For starters, it gives them all the control. And secondly, it usually doesn’t solve the problem, since you didn’t actually address the root cause. Next time you feel the need to blame someone for your feelings—something they did or should have done—ask yourself if there’s something else going on. You may find there’s something underlying: something you did or should have done for you. Take responsibility for the problem and you have power to create a solution. Be mindful of projecting. In psychology, projecting refers to denying your own traits and then ascribing them to the outside world or other people. For example, if you’re not a loyal and trusting friend, you may assume your friends are all out to get you. It’s a defense mechanism that allows you to avoid the discomfort of acknowledging your weaknesses. There’s no faster way to put a rift in your relationships. This comes back to down to self awareness, and it’s hard work. Acknowledging your flaws isn’t fun, but if you don’t, you’ll continue seeing them in everyone around you. And you’ll continue to hurt. Next time you see something negative in someone else, ask yourself if it’s true for you. It might not be, but if it is, identifying it can help create peace in that relationship. Choose your battles. Everyone knows someone who makes everything a fight. If you question them about something, you can expect an argument. If you comment on something they did, you’ll probably get yelled at. Even a compliment could create a confrontation. Some people just like to fight—maybe to channel negativity they’re carrying around about the world or themselves. On the one hand, you have to tell people when there’s something bothering you. That’s the only way to address problems. On the other hand, you don’t have to let everything bother you. When I’m not sure if I need to bring something up, I ask myself these few questions: Does this happen often and leave me feeling bad? Does this really matter in the grand scheme of things? Can I empathize with their feelings instead of dwelling on my insecurity? Confront compassionately and clearly. When you attack someone, their natural instinct is to get defensive, which gets you nowhere. You end up having a loud conversation where two people do their best to prove they’re right and the other one is wrong. It’s rarely that black and white. It’s more likely you both have points, but you’re both too stubborn to meet in the middle. If you approach someone with compassion, you will open their heart and mind. Show them you understand where they’re coming from, and they’ll be willing to see your side. That gives you a chance to express yourself and your expectations clearly. And when you let people know what you need at the right time in the right way, they’re more likely to give that to you. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. There are all kinds of ways you can feel vulnerable in relationships: When you express your feelings for someone else. When you’re honest about yourself or your past. When you admit you made a mistake. We don’t always do these things because we want to maintain a sense of power. Power allows us a superficial sense of control, whereas true, vulnerable being allows us a sense of authenticity. That’s love: being your true self and allowing someone else to do the same without letting fear and judgment tear it down. It’s like Jimi Hendrix said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.” Think before acting on emotion. This one is the hardest for me. As soon as I feel hurt, frustrated, or angry, I want to do something with it—which is always a bad idea. I’ve realized my initial emotional reaction does not always reflect how I really feel about something. Initially, I might feel scared or angry, but once I calm down and think things through, I often realize I overreacted. When you feel a strong emotion, try to sit it for a while. Don’t use it or run from it—just feel it. When you learn to observe your feelings before acting on them, you minimize the negativity you create in two ways: you process, analyze, and deal with feelings before putting them on someone else; and you communicate in a way that inspires them to stay open instead of shutting down. Maintain boundaries. When people get close, boundaries can get fuzzy. In a relationship without boundaries, you let the other person manipulate you into doing things you don’t want to do. You act out of guilt instead of honoring your needs. You let someone offend you without telling them how you feel about it. The best way to ensure people treat you how you want to be treated is to teach them. That means you have to love and respect yourself enough to do that: to acknowledge what you need, and speak up. The only way to truly have loving, peaceful relationships is to start with a loving, peaceful relationship with yourself. Enjoy their company more than their approval. When you desperately need someone’s approval, your relationship becomes all about what they do for you—how often they stroke your ego, how well they bring you up when you feel down, how well they mitigate your negative feelings. This is draining for another person, and it creates an unbalanced relationship. If you notice yourself dwelling on pleasing someone else or getting their approval, realize you’re creating that need. (Unless you’re in an abusive relationship, in which case I highly recommend getting help.) Instead of focusing on what you can get from that person, focus on enjoying yourselves together. Oftentimes the best thing you can do for yourself and someone else is let go and give yourself permission to smile. ☺ What do you do to create peaceful, loving relationships?

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #125: Cold Coffee.

Written: 8/1/2017                                                                    Surrealism Week

In front of me is some sort of chocolate French pastry, it’s tall, cylindrical, and tiered, which makes me somewhat confused as to where I’m supposed to start eating it, but its also colorful and well presented, which causes me to only stare at it, fork in hand, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with it while getting lost in the beauty of it. Do I even need a fork to eat this? Am I supposed to pick it up with my hands, am I supposed to eat every individual tier? No, probably not, that would probably cause my hands to be covered in chocolate, and whatever is on the inside of this thing. Am I supposed to cut into it like a cake? Confused, I look over to my sister, to see how she decided to eat her pastry, but her plate is only covered in crumbs, and her eyes are hungrily focused on my own plate. This is the coffee all over again. I can see words beginning to form on her lips, I look away, I look at the birds only several feet away from our table, maybe they would figure out how to eat anything like this. “Are you actually going to eat that, or did I just pay for your lunch so that you would stare at it the whole time?” “Its just, I don’t know. How do they expect anyone to eat this? I can’t figure out how to eat this without ruining it.” “Ruining it?” “The presentation of it, its just so appealing to-”, and there she goes, she’s already pulling my plate towards her, already rolling her eyes at me. Carefully picking up the petite for with two fingers, thumb and index, in order to minimize the mess, “Girl, you have to get over the look of it all. This is food, this was meant to be ruined and eaten. The presentation isn’t supposed to last forever, its just something to lure you into destroying it, into putting it inside of yourself and turning it into something disgusting.” Taking a bite, lips drawn back to protect her lipstick, then, “This is what food is for, its like an art form.” “Yeah, exactly, that’s why I’m not sure how to eat any of it. Why would I want to destroy something so appealing looking? Its easier to deal with cheap food because of this, because its all so-” “No, you’re not listening to me. This is just like when you kept staring at that flower in your coffee, the one made with milk or whatever they use. You need to get over the appeal of it all anyways, because you’ve already made me eat two lunches in one sitting, and I’m supposed to be on a diet.” “I didn’t know you were on a diet.” “I’m not on one, I said I’m supposed to be on one. Anyways, you keep getting confused about the purpose of all this. Sure, it may all be aesthetically pleasing, but its meant to be temporary. This shit doesn’t last forever, and you have to get your teeth in there and tear it to pieces before it stops being appealing on its own. Its like that cup of coffee that you were so impressed by. By the time that the flower finally went away on its own, the cup was cold and gross and you did not enjoy drinking it. You took too long to destroy it, so it was destroyed on its own and you were left unsatisfied, because you weren’t the one who did it.” “I don’t think that’s the-” “Okay, let me try to put it in terms that you understand. Think about this like dating, maybe. Its like when you see a really cute guy, and you’re able to start talking with him, and you know that if you don’t do something, some other girl is going to come in and enjoy him, so you gotta make sure that it never happens. So you know that you have to ruin him so that other girls wont want him, you have to take away whatever makes him appealing. So you start berating him or whatever, you know, really tearing into his insecurities, abusing everything he confided to you when you cuddle after sex, until he becomes an emotional wreck. Then, of course, you start to get disgusted yourself, because who even wants somebody who can’t get their shit together, who still cries about their dead grandmother’s disapproval from, like, forever ago, and then you move on to the next beautiful thing.” “That’s not what datings like, I think you’re just abusing those guys.” “You’re just not mature enough to understand what adult relationships are. Things get messy, things get real.” “But, you’re intentionally making them-” “Yeah, but that’s what adult relationships are: poisoning the other person until they’re ruined for everyone else. Its like, you that discomfort you feel when you run into an ex, and they’re with somebody else and seem genuinely happy? So you have to look at this happy hunk that you could’ve had? Well, that only exists in the world of teenagers and twenty year olds. When you get older, you’ll realize that its easier to avoid that feeling by making sure that your exes will never date, will never be happy again, so that you know that you were the last to enjoy what made them beautiful. Just like eating these pastries.” “I’ve literally never heard of that until now. I think this is just you.” “No, its not, you just don’t recognize it when you see it. Everyone does it, they just never try to make it obvious. Like, look at mom and dad. Before they got divorced, she kept encouraging him to get into all of that geology nonsense, so after the divorce nobody wanted to touch him because he keeps talking about minerals or whatever.” “Oh god, I can hardly even pay attention to him when he gets excited about that stuff. I just have to tune him out.” “Exactly, and because of that he’s going to be alone while mom takes her new boyfriend to Europe, and has a wonderful time.” “Ugh, I went to high school with that guy.” “And, anyways, there’s a lot of other examples of this out in the wild. Look at those guys who always claim that their girlfriends were crazy, no matter how nice and rational the girl was. Those are just people who are angry at themselves, because they were dumb enough to convince themselves that the relationship would last, so they never put in an actual plan to ruin their girlfriends. Then there are the guys who just beat their girlfriends so that they naturally become afraid of men in general, which also keeps them out of the dating pool. There’s also marriage-” “How is marriage-” “Marriage is the true way of ruining another person for others. Its basically a contract that says that the couple will never have sex with each other, but will also have to go through a lot of trouble to get out of it, its like a trap. And the whole time is spent making the other person boring, turning them into somebody who spends most of their time working, then comes home to watch some mind numbingly terrible television show for hours until they fall asleep, only to do it again the next day. It is a way of creating a routine to trap another person in, so even if they did consider doing something else, something good, like getting a divorce or pursuing one of their passions, they just keep putting it off without realizing where the time is going, so, next thing they know, they’ve become out of touch and hardly even know how to live life outside of the trap that they were dumb enough to walk into, thinking that knowing it was a trap would make them prepared for it all. They have everything that was interesting about themselves get sucked out of them, especially if they have kids. Kids are fucked up. With kids, you lose 18 years of your life, just for one of them. So, some couples fall into the trap of staying together for their children, then by the time they are free to divorce, they’re also old and boring and have little idea of how to function outside of their styrofoam lives.” “Styrofoam?” “Its about as interesting as they become. Who gives a shit about styrofoam? So, anyways, life is about destroying things that are beautiful, and you need to get over whatever reservations you had in the first place. To get ahead in this world you need to ruin everything that you love, everything that’s beautiful, because love and beauty only exist in the moment, and when you don’t take advantage of that moment, then there’s only pain and unhappiness down the road. All you get is cold coffee. You-” Before she could continue, a man ran out of the cafe and collided with our table, causing the plates and glasses to fall to the floor, shattering, while the man disappeared around the corner. Looking down the street, I ask, “What do you think that was about?” “Who cares? He’s probably just some asshole. What really matters is that we can tell the people inside that he knocked over our deserts, and we could probably get some free ones for the road. Oh, maybe if we cut ourselves with some of the glass, we-” “Okay, I’ll go in and try to get free food or whatever. Just, don’t-” “Fine, whatever, just make sure that you eat this time. You have to accept that the appeal of art and beauty is destroying it, and-”, I didn’t catch the rest because I had gone inside of the cafe while she was talking. Inside some chanson was playing from speakers on the walls, but there was an unmistakable silence to the room, as if the music was only existing on top of this sonic emptiness. Looking around, there is nobody in the cafe except for the man at the counter, and when I lock eyes with him I can see panic inside of him, I can see his fear, as if he’s shouting at me with his eyes, his emotions become infectious, they The silence is broken. I can hear the roaring for only a second, it only gets replaced by a faint ringing, that’s all I can hear. My other senses are equally unreliable, especially my sense of sight, because I can only see white. I try to close my eyes but the only thing that I can see is white. Eventually my sense of smell comes to, and I can smell smoke, lots of it. Nothing but smoke. Slow fade from white and I can see the sky, the beautiful, clear sky. Its all I can see, so I figure that I must be on my back. I try to move my body, I try to get up, but I start to feel an intense amount of pain, so I give up on that. I try to move my neck, and its not as bad, so the sky slowly gets replaced by the tops of buildings, then their windows, moving down down down, until I can see the street, the side walk, the rubble, the man rolling around on the ground frantically. Is he on fire? Is that what happened? No, he is holding his left leg, or, the place where his left leg should be. His mouth seems to be screaming, but he can’t scream louder than the ringing. Maybe if my ears weren’t so wet I could hear him. Maybe if my throat and face didn’t feel like hell I could scream too. Should I be screaming? Do I still have all of my limbs? I can’t feel my body, I can only feel pain. All that I’m confident in is my head and my neck. Everything becomes faint, it starts to get blurry, maybe this is what dying is like. I thought that it would feel more special than this. ——————————————————————————————————— I come to, I see friends and family members standing around my casket. They seem sad, they’re crying, but they don’t seem like they’re grieving over me. I suddenly become afraid, I start to worry that my funeral has just become an opportunity for people to pretend to be sad, just to benefit themselves socially. Nobody's there for me, they’re only attending to make a show for everyone else, and probably to get laid. My corpse is nothing more than a tool for people to use for their own benefit, something that they’ll bury and forget about when it stops being useful to them. Dying wasn’t enough, they had to ruin my memory too. Then, my father says, “Wait, I think she’s conscious. Can you hear me, dear?” And I realize that I’m not dead, so I drift off again. Maybe I’ll actually die this time, maybe I’ll actually get a good funeral. But I wake up again later, with my sister sitting by the bed, her neck is bandaged up and I can’t help myself, I have to stare at it, then she notices that I’m awake, that I’m looking at her, and where I’m looking, “Oh, yeah, this. After the bomb went off I was cut by, like, a billion shards of glass. It was as if the window itself attacked me, and who knew that windows could be so deadly? I got this big shard in my neck, about this big,” she holds her hands up to show the size of it, a gesture that she frequently used when talking about her battered boyfriends, “and I thought that it was going to be the end for me, but the doctors said that it actually prevented me from bleeding to death, so I got lucky in the end. Other than that I also have a lot of smaller cuts all over my body, I couldn’t even use my hands for a week because it just hurt to pick anything up, but I’m a lot better now.” I try to ask, ‘A week?’, but when I try to talk the words don’t seem like they’re my own, they don’t even sound like words, I just sound the same way my cat sounded when it had its jaw ripped off by a stray dog, and tried to yowl for help. “Oh, god, you sound like Sunday when he was dying. I can’t even guess what you’re trying to say to me right now. The doctors said that it would probably be difficult for you to talk, but in a couple weeks you’ll probably be fine, like, it didn’t take to long for my throat to heal well enough for me to start talking again, even if my voice is a little rough now.” I try to use my eyebrows to communicate, “Oh, girl, I have no idea what you’re doing right now. I’m going to have to talk to you the way we used to talk to grandpa, to see if he had to use the bathroom. So, are you asking if I’m okay?” One blink. “Oh, do you want to know how long you’ve been in here?” Two blinks. “Oh, its been a little while. You were unresponsive for a couple days, and mom wanted to pull the plug after day one, but it didn’t make sense because you weren’t on life support. I think its been, a month? Yeah, about a month. You’ve regained consciousness plenty of times, but the doctors said that you didn’t understand what was happening around you, you were only able to process the pain, so whenever you would wake up they would have to fill you with pain killers and you’d just knock out again. It was really messed up for the first two weeks, because you’re eyes were still damaged and you had to have this bandage around them, so you were blind and moving around and trying to scream, it was all nightmare inducing. Literally. Four nights in a row I had nightmares that I was in your position, it was horrible, you don’t even know. “But, hey, if you want good news I can give you some. I finally quit smoking! I mean, I really had no choice since the smoke would only further damage my throat so,” I begin to rapidly start blinking to shut her up, but then I realize that she’s looking through me, not looking at me, so I have to listen to this speech of hers. I try to keep my eyebrows at an angry angle, just so that she’ll see my frustration when she snaps out of her self absorption, but she only asks me, “What are you even trying to do with your face? Whatever you’re trying to convey with,” holding up her hand in the direction of my face, then moving it in a circular motion, “all that, but its not working.” I relax my face, but I still stare at her. “Okay, if you don’t believe me, then I’ll show you.” She pulls out her makeup mirror, looks into it for a couple seconds to make sure that she still looks ruinable, not ruined, then she gets up and holds it in front of my face. I’m ruined. My face is covered in bandages and some tubes, and whatever isn’t is just burnt and hideous. Apparently my eyebrows were burnt off and never grew back, so that probably explains why she couldn’t understand me. I blink twice, wait three seconds, then I blink again, and I repeat this several times until she realizes what I’m trying to say, and she moves the mirror away. I feel like crying, but I’m not sure if I’m physically capable. “Yeah, I know, it must be horrible to realize that you look like that, but I have just the think to cheer you up!” She turns towards her purse and pulls something out of it, and at first I think that its a puppy or a kitten, something that would love me unconditionally and show me that my looks aren’t everything, but instead I realize that, “Its a wig!” And before I can blink in response, she places it on my head. “I know what you’re thinking, ‘I don’t look good as a blond’, but you’re face is so unique because it doesn’t matter what you do with it, because anything will look better than your bare face. And, if you’re still not convinced, its just like Marilyn's hair! She could be a role model for you, you know. She was really bland, but then she became so beautiful that she ruined herself! And, don’t worry, I made sure to tell the nurses to take it off at night.” ———————————————————————————————————\ It wasn’t long until I was able to leave the hospital, only four days had passed until my insurance no longer covered my stay there, they put a bottle of pain killers in my hand, and sent me out into the real world, confused, mute, and bandaged. My sister drove me home, where there was an eviction notice waiting for me on the door, apparently the place was still mine for a week. When I was inside, alone, and just sat in the living room, in the dark, staring at the black mirror of the television, wearing that surprisingly comfortable wig, I realized that I was probably out of a job too, since there was no way for me to do PR when I can’t talk. However, there was something calming about all of this, even though my life had been completely ruined. I realized that it probably wouldn’t have gotten better than it already had been, I was mostly just coasting by, and now that it was awful I was at least aware of the fact that it was awful. It was at least something. I thought about cold coffee for a little while, and then I drifted off to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to pain, nothing but pain and darkness. It felt like how wood must feel when a swarm of termites start chewing and burrowing into it. I took some painkillers, then I fell back asleep. I dreamed that I was in a store and that nobody was going to buy me. I would wait and wait for somebody to come in and free me, while a woman would constantly threaten to turn me into hair extensions if nobody bought me. A lot of the dream was just spent waiting, terrified that nobody would come. When I wake up something is off. I blink and look around the room, but it doesn’t feel as if I’m the one who is doing it, its as if I’m just an observer, not a participant, but I tell myself that its probably just the pain killers. I’m probably just high. A couple memories flash in front of my face, all taking place in this apartment. I get up, unsteadily, even though I never told myself to do so. I walk to the wall and try to turn on a light switch, but the room remains dark, my electric bill had gone unpaid while I was in the hospital. I look around the room for something, I’m not sure what, then I finally find my cell phone, which I use for the flashlight. I make my way down the hall, to the bathroom, apparently, then I see myself in the mirror. The first thing I notice is the dried blood that was running down my leathery forehead, apparently I had been bleeding in the night, from the top of my head. The wig is still on, so I can’t see where the bleeding started, and its not my decision to take it off. I begin to make faces in the mirror, some of them seeming to be for basic emotions, smiling for happiness, frowning for sadness, and one that may have been for indigestion or anger. I tell myself again that its probably just the drugs that are causing this disconnect. I awkwardly sit down on the ground, and I start looking through my phone. At first I don’t know what the pass code is, several tries still keep me locked out, but then a memory of me putting in the code flashes in front of my face, and I’m able to get access to the phone. I go straight to my pictures, and the first one there is a picture that my sister and I took at the cafe, before the incident, and the memory of that lunch flashes in front of my face. I stare at the wall for a while, flashes of that lunch keep coming back. What the fuck did they give me? I look back at my phone, I go to the next picture, its one of my celebrity crush. My first instinct is to touch the picture, apparently, and then memories of the actor appear, briefly, and when they dissipate I realize that I am smashing my phone into the tile floor of my bathroom. Now there is nothing but darkness. I can feel myself feeling my way out of there, and it takes a long while since I keep going in circles. One corner in particular confuses me, and I get frustrated because I can’t stop myself from feeling that corner in confusion. A memory flashes in front of my face, but its unfamiliar to me, its one of being stuck inside of some container, in the dark, it feels like my current situation. Eventually I crawled out of that bathroom, and was able to go outside. It was a bright, beautiful day, which made me angry, for some reason. Although, it was as if I was angry, but the anger wasn’t my own. I looked around the apartment complex and saw a bush of flowers nearby, they were bright, colorful, beautiful, and I walked over to them. For a second I thought that I was going to smell them, but instead I start ripping them out, and crushing them under my heel, one by one, patiently destroying this flower bed. I can hear somebody ask what the hell I’m doing, but when I turn to look at them and make some god awful warning noise, they just walk away, talking about how its not their problem anyways. Halfway through the bush, I start to eat the flowers, but only a couple, since its seems that I’ve forgotten how to eat, but that makes sense because wigs aren’t used to eating. Why did I think that? When I’m almost finished destroying the bush, I start to hear some dog yapping at me nearby. I look over at it, and its the adorable little dog that keeps my elderly neighbor company, its the dog that I’ve always been curious to see what it would look like when it gets old and lazy, like its owner, since I have trouble seeing it as anything other than the young and adorable thing that it is now. I thought that I was going to pet it, but then I notice that I’m grabbing it and picking it up. Its held up at my face so that I can get a good look at it, and it begins licking me in the nose, which is one of my weaknesses. I open my mouth, I put the dog’s head inside of that space, I clamp my teeth down, hard and sudden, and I pull its body back, while moving my neck back, until the poor little thing’s head and body are two separate items. The taste, the sight, the texture of its blood and severed spine between my teeth, the whole act on its own makes me want to vomit, but I can’t, I’m not in control. I accept this for the first time: I am not in control. I can’t scream but the dog’s owner is able to do that for me, and better than I could have done in the first place. My eyes move towards her, but I don’t seem to be interested in that old, frail woman. A commotion is being made, something wet and thick and warm is sliding down my chin, my throat, and is starting to soak into my shirt. I start moving, but I don’t know where I’m. I try to resist but there is no way to resist it. My legs begin to hurt, I’m still not well, I’m not supposed to running, but I keep going, I can’t stop. The apartment complex fades behind me and general houses start to race by, I’m in some neighborhoods that I don’t recognize at all, but I keep going. The pain I feel from my legs are too much, and the pain in my scalp returns. I begin to think but they don’t feel like my own thoughts. I think, why is any of this worth resisting, isn’t this being human? I think, how is this not better than the rest of your life, which was spent dealing with other people’s problems, which was spent being passive? I try to tell myself that it was a better life than whatever this is, but I think, no, no it wasn’t. The difference between now, and your previous life, is that you were never living, you were never alive. This is living, this is existing. You are leaving your mark on the world, you are finally enjoying the beauty that life has to offer, you are enjoying the moment. Eventually I stopped running, and I was hoping that I had become tired, that my legs had hurt too much, and that's why I had begun to rest against the chain-link fence, but I soon realized that I was at the high school, that I wasn’t tired, that the people I was watching were only temporary, their happiness only temporary, and that I may as well take in that scene while it was still there.

#Free Write #Short Story #Writing #Cafe #Moment

[m3dta-blog]

3 Destiny Path

THE PATH OF EXPRESSION

By Christine DeLorey

COMMUNICATION is your main purpose in this lifetime. On the 3 Destiny Path, your experiences will teach you how to communicate effectively. Problems will arise from inappropriately expressed words. Find a balance between saying too much and too little.

Words and images are the key to your success and happiness, but until you learn what must be learned, the misuse of words and images can also be your downfall. Words are the basis of communication, but are often abused and misconstrued until their real meaning is lost. Since language is your primary ‘tool’, you really must say what you mean and mean what you say. You have a distinctive, unusual and memorable voice so that what you say can make an impression and be remembered.

“Like smudges on a pair of spectacles, words have the ability to blur everything you do not make crystal clear. Listen with great care to what is being said, and choose your own words as if they were diamonds.” --Sally Brompton

In a world in which so much attention is given to trivia, and important issues are often trivialized, it may take a long time, and great tenacity, to remember what it was you came here to express, and to find the most convincing way to express it. Until you take this side of your nature seriously, you may talk incessantly while giving no one else a chance to speak. Or, you may be too afraid to express yourself at all. If you fall into either of these extremes, it is because you are overly concerned about how you are perceived by others, and/or you have not learned how to listen. 3s must learn to listen – not for the sake of replying, but for the sake of understanding.

Communication is an ongoing exercise in output and feedback; receiving and delivering information, and sorting fact from fiction. If you don’t understand this, you could gain the reputation of being shallow. Your most constant problems are clues to the direction your communications should take. You have used words to talk your way out of many a sticky situation, but you may not realize that your own words may have caused the problem in the first place.

You must find a purposeful outlet for your verbal talent. 3’s tend to talk about what they “know”, rather than what they feel, making it difficult to get to know you on a deeper level. But when your feelings are expressed openly from the heart, without self-consciousness, gossip, hearsay or criticism, you can hold the rest of us in awe with your extraordinary vision and ability to move people with your words.

Although 3s really are able to recognize humor where others cannot, there is a tendency to criticize and, although you may try to disguise this with humor, an unceasingly critical voice can eventually be a drain on those with whom you share your life. If this causes loss of friendship, you may blame the other person instead of accepting that you yourself pushed him or her away. 3 is the number of creativity, but this form of expression is destructive, not creative. Yet, no one is more capable of inspiring others than a 3 who is not trying to prove how strong they are, but are comfortable with the fact that they are as strong, or weak, as anyone else.

Your tendency to play down how you really feel, and give the impression that everything is okay, even when your problems are obvious, can confuse you and those close to you. Some people may be impressed with the way you seem to bounce back from adversity as if nothing happened, but that is only until they really get to know you. Then, they realize you’ve been holding everything in and just putting on a ‘good show’. 3s want popularity and social acceptance and are notorious for keeping up appearances. Friendships are often lost because others feel you do not want to help yourself. But, they don’t understand your complex nature, or your horrible fear of losing their friendship by ‘burdening’ them with your true feelings.

3s find it hard to take themselves seriously because they are afraid of what others think of them. This is a form of shame and guilt. It exists because 3 contains pure joy, and many 3s do not believe they are ’worthy’ of such a precious emotion. Consequently, they mistakenly believe that they are not allowed to show any emotion other than happy exuberance – or outright cynicism, and self consciousness takes over. But when 3s dare to go beneath their own surface and accept that their problems and emotions are as real and valid as anyone else’s, their lives become deeper, and richly creative.

You are afraid of your own emotions because they are so intense. But your feelings are nothing to be afraid of. Why do you think you are so attracted to creative people? It is because you secretly admire and are drawn to the magnetism of their emotional energy – their ability to feel and express.

The 3 Destiny Path will teach you to take yourself seriously without becoming overly serious. Humor, lightheartedness and laughter are vital ingredients of your true self, but you will be unable to use them until you are able to feel true happiness. There is a huge difference between humor and happiness. Ask any professional comedian about that, or why the clown is often painted with an exaggerated smile to camouflage his or her tears. You will never be able to feel and experience genuine happiness until you recognize and let go of all that sadness that is buried deep inside; the grief you are refusing to express, and all that anger and fear you are burying under what you call your sense of humor.

3s need to be liked, and often gravitate to positions in which they can make others feel good. But that’s a difficult position to maintain if you yourself don’t feel good. So, have the courage to do what you truly want in life; not what you hope will please or impress others; not what you believe you are limited to because of lack of opportunity, funds, or education. Genuine self-approval, and not just its appearance, is what you must strive for. Then you can live free from the worry of who you should be trying to impress. Learn to impress, please, and be yourself. Worrying about what others think is a source of great unhappiness for you.

3 represents friendship. You must learn that people’s priorities change along with their experiences. So do the feelings people have for one another. It can be painful when 3s realize they no longer have anything in common with someone they believed was a friend; or frightening when they realize how much they do have in common with someone they don’t particularly like. It is not your role to keep everyone happy, or to sacrifice your freedom in the name of friendship or social acceptance. You are a natural performer, but there is no need for you to be “on-stage” all the time. You thrive in natural surroundings in which you can be calm and centered. Your greatest inspiration comes from nature itself.

3s know they are meant to communicate. Some assume that what they communicate must, therefore, always be ‘right’. But if you do not listen, you will miss the other side of the story. Without the input of others, you cannot learn anything new and your ‘act’ becomes stale. This is a difficult lesson for a 3. Notice how your need to be right – your fear of being wrong – stops communication in its tracks.

We are living in times of monumental change. What may have been true yesterday may not be true today. Be willing to learn new things and your communications will always be fresh, entertaining and inspiring. There is no need to be constantly talking, gesturing, making people laugh, gossiping, or repeating word for word what you have heard others say about people, situations, and trends. When you form opinions that are based on fact – and gut feelings – rather than mere hearsay, others will want to hear what you have to say.

3s are natural designers, which is why they are so often found in the beauty business or other creative fields. This is a good start. But, surface beauty is an illusion. Your true talents emerge when you look beneath the surface of things and people. Only when you see and accept the inner reality of what you are dealing with will you be able to express your spectacular originality. Never judge a book by its cover, or a person by their “look”. It is all veneer. Real beauty is a matter of what is going on inside.

When your imagination is free from the masochistic bonds of peer pressure, your creative abilities are astonishing. The only approval you need is your own. You must realize just how much creative energy exists inside you – under your surface appearance. No one has more potential for creative genius than a 3. Unfortunately, no one is more prone to wasting this potential than a 3. This does not have to be the case if you are willing to learn new things, and to adjust and fine-tune as you go.

Your urge to follow popular things and people and to establish a position for yourself in society is not without reason. Your desire to be popular is part of the 3 experience. You need to be liked. But you often spend so much time trying to please everyone else that you have no time to figure out what you would like to do for yourself. Many 3s give the appearance of being superficial when, in fact, their feelings and talents are extraordinarily complex.

It can be difficult for you to focus on one thing at a time. Your well-disguised self consciousness often outweighs your ability to concentrate. You tend to spread your energies in too many directions. Your ability to start things is impressive. Finishing things is another matter. Ironically, one of the reasons you cannot focus on one thing long enough to complete it is that you are seeking approval. This can be a vicious cycle until you learn to take responsibility for your own mistakes, your own happiness, your own success, and your own life.

When you worry about what others think of you, your imagination becomes stifled and cannot produce the creative wonders it is capable of producing. A free imagination is limitless. You may believe that you are already creative. Others may see your talents too. But it is probably only a pale reflection of your true potential. If your ideas are not original then your imagination is not free. Your ideas cannot be original if they are based on pleasing others instead of yourself.

Many 3s cannot tolerate silence. They are so self-conscious in quiet atmospheres that they will talk about anything in order to fill the silent void. Then they find themselves on a giant verbal roll and have difficulty ending the conversation. They feel they must talk, even when they have nothing to say.

Watching and listening to 3s telling a story is quite an experience in itself. The pitch of the voice changes according to the attention being received. Watch how the 3 reacts to and interacts with an audience, and how he physically moves into the audience to maintain its attention. He can repeat the same story over and over, along with the same mannerisms, the same sound bites, and the same enthusiasm as when the story was first told. If the listeners tire of the story, embellishments are added to keep it exciting. When a 3’s communication skills are not developed, we see and hear a person who constantly repeats the same old stories as if they are stuck in the past – which they are.

When 3s feel out of their depth, they can feign interest in what is being said, but are not really listening. They are waiting for the first opportunity to change the subject to one they feel more comfortable with. And, there you have it! Communication is destroyed.

But when 3s realize that intelligent, timely and purposeful communication is their function in life, we see and hear a person who has the power to learn new things and to influence and inspire the entire world. That is why you are here and, in this age of lies and misinformation, yours is a serious mission indeed.

When you do focus for a prolonged period on something you feel passionate about, you are a beauty to behold. You belong in a lifestyle that appreciates and contributes to creativity, and engages in social contact. If you are not involved in creative pursuits, then you should be around those who are. You are meant to be with creative, passionate, emotional people so that you can understand the creative process, learn to take your emotions seriously through their example, and find your own passion along the way. You came into this lifetime to learn how to create – how to turn ideas into reality!

Recognize your tendency to criticize, especially in your younger years, and especially in reference to the appearance of other people. These antisocial traits need to be turned into genuine friendliness and acceptance. You can hurt others with your careless use of words, but if others criticize you, you can be cut to the quick. Don’t dish out what you cannot take.

3 is the number of appearances. Your own appearance has manifested to make you memorable. The way you look is important to you, but there is likely to be an aspect of your physical appearance that causes you concern. 3 is the number of attraction. You are at your most attractive when you are being yourself. When your emotions are free, your physical appearance changes to meet your own approval. In other words, if you believe you are beautiful, so will everyone else. But remember we are talking about belief: not pretence, not the appearance of belief.

3s often get stuck in time-warps, causing them to cling to people, beliefs and styles that are out of date. Popularity can only be maintained in the present, otherwise the only people you will attract are those who are also stuck in times gone by. Release yourself from the anchors of the past by releasing the old unexpressed emotions that are holding you there. Your appearance – your physical presence – mirrors what you are feeling on the inside. Once you recognize your self consciousness and learn to relax with yourself, inside and out, you will attract the right people, instead of a string of superficial acquaintances who are going nowhere and have nothing to offer.

The 3 Destiny Path contains the gifts of words, attraction, sociability, creativity, optimism, memory, friendship, and humor. Use these talents to see beyond what others see. Break through the chains of popular opinion and dare to live spontaneously. Seek the JOYS of life, and not just the appearance of joy. Discover real happiness through communicating your own experiences, happy or sad, to others. Find your own happiness and others will realize that they can find theirs. Take yourself and your 3 energy seriously, because what the world needs more than anything right now is a serious dose of 3’s optimism, beauty, creativity, and laughter.

[flourishedandsunkissed]

In Addition...

Part of the Gatsby project was writing our own poem and explicating our work.

And so…

“The Pru-phobic Epidemic” by Gabriella Nicole

Why is it written the way that it’s written? 

I find that quite important.

Why am I me,

Why am I so observant?

I’ll tell you what I am,

Cowardly.

I’ve never met anyone more afraid of the truth

Than me.

I stay behind so I don’t bother anyone.

But maybe I’m just overthinking

And missing all the fun.

And if anyone cares for it, the explication paper:

I chose the epigraph from one of Juliet’s many monologues in Romeo and Juliet (Act 3, Scene 2) because Juliet is speaking to two characters: the black of the night and her love, Romeo. In my poem, Myrtle is also speaking to two characters: Tom and Wilson. The modern English translation of this epigraph is:

Hide the wild blood fluttering in my cheeks

With your black robe until unfamiliar love grows bold

And believes that enjoying true love is really a modest act.

Come, night! Come, Romeo! You’re my light in the night.

You will lie on the wings of night

Even whiter than freshly fallen snow on a raven’s back.

Wilson could be compared to the black of the night because black is a negatively associated color and Wilson does not make Myrtle happy. Tom could be compared to Romeo because he is the one Myrtle truly loves, and he is her “light in the night”; he brightens up her life even though she is stuck with Wilson. Myrtle similar to Juliet in the way her love is forbidden and she dies.

Myrtle, as Juliet, could be saying, “I must hide my blushing cheeks until my relationship with Tom grows stronger and since true love is modest and Tom is the one I truly love, my actions are modest.” The line saying “you will lie on the wings of night” would mean that all of Tom’s actions would done close to Wilson; it’s actually ironic because white represents purity and there is nothing pure about his actions.

In the first stanza, Myrtle is speaking to Tom. She is telling him to come to the Valley of Ashes and take her away. “Like an addict and his drug” pertains Tom’s addiction to cheating, and Myrtle, his mistress, is his drug. The leather seats of his coupe “tell” Myrtle that she’ll have a good night, meaning that as long as she’s with Tom she’ll have a good night. Myrtle doesn’t want to return to Valley of Ashes though she has no choice; she sees it as a “penniless hell.” Boisterous means loud, unscrupulous means showing no morals, and revile means to criticize in an angry manner. These are characteristics of an untamed child; also, alcohol can cause the drinker to display these characteristics. Alcohol can also bring someone to an unfaithful feeling, causing them to cheat on their spouse. Myrtle tells Tom not to ask, “Who do you think we’ll see?” because in chapter two of The Great Gatsby, Tom and Myrtle sit in different train cars due to the “East Eggers” who ride the train.

The refrain of this poem is meant to be sexist. Because cars were a relatively new invention in the 20’s and racism and sexism were prevalent, it is a stereotype that women shouldn’t know anything about cars and that they are a virile subject.

The black fog that slithers through the road represents a melanistic (all-black) Ratsnake, and vice versa. I chose the color black because that would be the color of the smog that floats through the Valley of Ashes. It “coils its body atop the black of the moon” meaning that it rests above the moon at its new stage. The black fog delights in the struggle of its prey, the poor people who work the Valley of Ashes. It “condones the destruction in the construction” meaning that it accepts and supports the destruction of not only the earth that new buildings causes, but of the humans that construct it. Due to lack of safety regulations, many men died during the construction of cities. It slides by Michaelis’ place and bares its teeth because though he meets no demise, he is still a victim; it only bares its teeth, it doesn’t bite. The fog is made aware of the warm July night and settles upon the post of a porch.

Two words might stick out the next stanza: “honey” and “space.” In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” does not address anyone, he simply says “there will be time”; however, I wanted Myrtle to use the term of endearment because she is still speaking to Tom. I initially planned on using the word place but changed it to space because space indicates a time and a place. She tells Tom there will be a time and a place for the smog of the Valley of Ashes, to hide all the whiskey he’s not supposed to have in this time of prohibition—though those bottles have probably touched the lips of his colleagues because the rich had alcohol, and to destruct morals and relationships and build new ones, just like city buildings. She tells him there will be space for “all the trophies and flowers of East Egg”; these trophies and flowers not only represent the numerous trophies Tom has won the flowers that decorate the interior and exterior of his mansion, but Daisy, too. Daisy is basically Tom’s trophy wife; he uses her for display because if he truly loved her he would be faithful and, Daisy is named after a flower. Daisy holds and drops Tom’s heart just as he does hers because she is cheating on him, too and his heart has been chilled because he is selfish. “A million pieces of dough” represents Tom’s money. I chose “million” and “dough” because he is a millionaire and dough is a euphemism for money. The “blows” represent Tom’s insults and his abuse of Myrtle. Bordeaux is a French wine and while they might not have drunk this specific type of alcohol, it represents everything they did drink. She tells Tom there will be space for all these things before they leave for the cheap apartment party in the city.

Myrtle tells Tom there will be a time and a place to figure out how to leave Daisy and to untangle the web of lies they’ve both weaved. On page 167 of The Great Gatsby, Wilson tells Myrtle she can fool him but she can’t fool God because God sees everything; at this point he knows about her affair. On page 30, Nick describes Myrtle as wearing a “spotted dress of dark blue crêpe-de-chine” when he first sees her. “How do I leave to caress the face of happiness?” replaces Prufrock’s “Do I dare disturb the universe?” Myrtle is questioning how she leaves Wilson so she can “caress the face of happiness”—Tom. In the end, she does leave, but not by choice. And she ends up leaving both Wilson and Tom for Death. Space will condense blows and Bordeauxs because eventually there will be so much of the two that there will not be enough time or space which means they’ll have to be crowded together to make space for more.

Since Myrtle is the wife of a mechanic, she has seen all the terrible conditions a car can be in. She has measured out her life with gifts from Tom since she gets nothing from Wilson. She knows the “withering” faces—the faces of the poor. And their call for help withers away under the roaring of the machines and tools in the Valley of Ashes. Myrtle feels desolate when she’s at home and wants to know how to feel alive inside.

When Myrtle says she has known “the hands that nail me to a bed,” she means Tom’s, sexually, and Wilson’s when he locks her in the room. “Straggling on a wrench” means that Myrtle is spread out in an untidy way not upon a literal wrench, but a wrench in her heart. She wants to know how to end the dreadful power of stress and how to end her imprisonment in Wilson’s garage, the Valley of Ashes, and unhappiness.

Myrtle says she has known the muscular, peach, and hairy arms—characteristics that describe both Tom and Wilson. She says in the darkness their arms are “relentless and scary” referring to Tom’s breaking her nose and Wilson’s shoving her up against a window. She asks, “Is it oil from an engine that causes all my tension?” meaning is it Wilson’s work that causes her emotional strain. Arms that work a tool are Wilson’s and arms that swing a polo mallet are Tom’s.

In this three line stanza, Myrtle is speaking to Wilson. On page 30, Tom says: “He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.” So Myrtle would have told the lie before that that is the reason for her ventures to the city. On page 166, after Myrtle’s death, Tom shows Michaelis the leather and braided silver dog leash she bought for the Airedale Tom let her have. She says Wilson “blindly trusts” Tom. Even after he figured out Myrtle was cheating on him, he never really found out with who, and still had a good relationship with Tom after Myrtle’s death (before he killed himself). She is also saying Wilson is dumb.

In the next stanza, Myrtle says that she wasn’t meant to be poor and that she should have been “a clad of gold and diamond jewelry” which represent wealth. So, instead of reducing herself like Prufrock does, she amplifies herself, saying she was meant to live in the Eggs and not in the Valley of Ashes.

The “violent dancing” of the moon parallels the drunken party that happened in Tom and Myrtle’s apartment and the saxophone music played by the Negroes makes it more beautiful. Myrtle asks if she should, after all the drinking, smoking, and gossiping, bring the energy down and tell Tom that he means the world to her even though their relationship might not truly express it. She says that even after she’s lied and cheated, she’s gotten to wear a chiffon afternoon dress (described on page 35) but even despite that, she’s no flower—which again is ambiguous for Daisy. She says, “I’m no flower—I’m the antithesis,” meaning that though she has gotten all these nice things she is still, in truth, the opposite of Daisy. Father Time represents reality because no matter where one’s mind is, time is passing. It cannot be turned back or forward.

Next, Myrtle asks if she had gone to great extents to make Tom love her more, enough to leave Daisy, if any of it would have meant anything if he just ended up saying she’s not what he wants at all. Semele was one of the many lovers of Zeus, she was tricked by Hera into telling Zeus to show her all his splendor after he said he would give her anything she wanted and she died.

Myrtle saying, “God, I feel so filthy!” is ironic because she never felt remorse before, cheating on her husband and helping someone else cheat on his wife; she doesn’t feel filthy until she feels Tom doesn’t love her anymore. “…as if a bar of soap had been my therapy” means physically cleansing herself might make her feel better on the inside.

On line 111, Myrtle finally directly addresses Daisy and uses a play on words—“I will never bloom to be,” nothing she ever does will make her like Daisy or better than Daisy. She says she is not Daisy, she is just an adulteress. Licentious means unprincipled in sexual matters. Myrtle describes herself as urban because she prefers the city. She ends giving herself the title “the Hedonist,” the lover of pleasure.

Myrtle says she grows tired; tired of Wilson, tired of her lifestyle, tired physically.

The angels Myrtle refers to are the rich. They grin because they have all they need, want and more; they show off their teeth because their teeth are worth showing off. She says they’ll never sincerely grin at her, meaning no matter how close she becomes to the wealthy, she will never be one of them. She has smelled their “green and white aroma,” green represents money and white represents purity and pearls, which wealthy women, and Daisy herself, own.

The “gates of heaven” represent the gates that often guard the rich’s homes and heaven is their mansions and all they hold. Destitute means poverty-stricken. The devastatingly poor awake people those who strive for riches.

“The Pru-phobic Epidemic” is a poem I wrote to convey my feelings and relate to the character of J. Alfred Prufrock. “Pru-phobic” to me means not being afraid of Prufrock but sharing his fears. It’s an epidemic because it is not only me who thinks this way. Prufrock himself might wonder why things are written the way they’re written, why he’s written the way that he’s written. I do. I think of all the things that have happened to me so far in this year of high school and wonder how they all affect my future and what they mean. Prufrock might wonder how the women talking of Michelangelo might affect his future or even his fear of eating a peach. We all wonder at some point why we are who we are and why we’re not someone else; we wonder why good things happen to people we know and not us, we wonder why they have the things we want. I’ve realized that I have some things my friends long for, maybe the one thing that’s keeping them from being truly happy. Prufrock might wonder why another man has the privilege of being with the woman he loves and he doesn’t—even if talking to her did make a difference. However Prufrock could see himself as cowardly for not talking to her and telling her how he feels; he’s afraid of being misunderstood and maybe even afraid of the truth. We’re all afraid of the truth sometimes. So instead of risking being misunderstood, he says and does nothing, to keep himself from getting hurt… just as I do.

“The Prohibition” by John Donne relates to Myrtle’s character in the way that Myrtle wants Tom to beware of loving her. She is already married and a bit high strung. “Then, lest thy love, by my death, frustrate be, if thou love me, take heed of loving me”; Myrtle’s death will frustrate Tom’s love for her, so he must beware of loving her. He must also beware of hating her or taking out his anger on her because she could perish by it. However, he must love and hate her, which isn’t necessarily her rule. He must love her enough to keep her as a mistress but hate her enough not to leave Daisy.

#writing #essays #the great gatsby