(Originally written in September of this year. Edited to post today.)
As I get ready to embark on the next stage of my life and there being a 4,000-kilometer expedition in front of me before getting there, I am inspired to expound on other stages in my life where I have already begun to piece out a story. It's therapeutic. Fun. And insofar that I am far less emotionally invested than I used to be, retrospection can be spun more positively. Old-fashioned conventions of writing, of time lines, of perfectly positioned punctuation WILL be tossed out the window.
On a side note, I have also thought about selling a large majority of my life story as fiction. I'm already sick of the one-question-begets-another cluster of assbackwardsness that is my life. And I mean, what's the point of putting a title on that story, extracting and sucking more (and hypothetical) sympathy when I have already had the experience of it being ignored, minimized, and slammed with antipathy? At least I won't have to rely on my imagination in order to come up with a good book. But I relent. I'm sure I couldn't even find a publisher. Not that I want to seriously go looking for one anyway, but I still have this retarded, deep-seeded wish in the far back dust traps of my mind that someone would pick it up.
But then I would probably just have one excuse or another for not wanting to work so hard on actually putting something together in the first place. Guess that's why I stick to my blog. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, in whatever order I deem to be in the mood for.
So then, where were we? Oh yes, I hadn't even started. And I was supposed to continue my post from yesterday, which I'm not doing after all. But like a good blogger person, I'll probably make a link from the continuation of yesterday's post to yesterday's post when I get around to it.
For today, though...
Rent.
And no, not the totally awesome musical with Adam Pascal and Idina Menzel (who played Elphaba, the witch, in "Wicked",) but the foreshadowing I referred to here (12th paragraph down, just before the asteriks and again 2nd to last paragraph.)
At the top of the switch-over, when I moved into the city after my living with friends flopped, I offered the aunt a small amount for rent. It wasn't much but at least it was something. I had done the same with my friends. By then my in-patient husband was getting his long-term disability paychecks and even though they didn't stretch far with an infant and a two-year old, at least we had something. My girls had what they needed and I was taking up space in their house, eating their food, and getting rides from them to the hospital. It seemed... fair.
But then...
End of January comes, beginning of February, something like that (yeah, not too long after the Christmas I was displaced--another entry coming soon to computer near you,) and the aunt pulls me aside and says, "well, hey, look, it's not quite enough. What you're giving me isn't covering enough." Vague like that. No details. In her squeaky, passive-aggressive smile, she doesn't explain. I don't ask. I just come to understand how maybe the near-four-hundred dollars for bigger-city living isn't a realistic number. And I trust her. I feel like she's family and I'm cheating her. And what do I know about the cost of living there? Nothing.
So I oblige. I don't think to check the newspaper to compare prices. I don't think to go on the Internet. And this is before the days of Kijiji. I don't think to do much of anything because my husband is sick with cancer in the hospital. I don't think about much else, at all, really, because it's already so much to be in this weird universe where I've lost control of my life, I'm trying to keep it together for my daughters, and security is a long-lost, foreign, far-away dream concept; and I am only 21 years old. My head is too full, I am perpetually in a state of alarm, and I just keep waiting for someone to have pity on me and be able to afford my leeching, or maybe even just know what to do.
But no. Next month, same thing. I don't even remember where the month went in terms of time, and here this woman is pulling me aside with a paper in her hand with figures on it. Somehow the rent goes up another chunk. Now I'm getting a little curious. We're talking over five hundred dollars now. In 2001.
I start to stew over it. My in-laws do nothing about it. What could they, do, right? They warned me not to move in with her in the first place. Husband comes out of the hospital for a short stint to get a change of scenery and in between chemo doses. He stays with us at the aunt's, and guess what? Yep, that's right, she ups the rent again.
By this point, it is costing me $680 to rent a small corner of her house. An enormous house that she and her husband got for cheap because they bought out someone's foreclosure. It doesn't cover my baby's foods, diapers, or formula. It doesn't cover any extras. This is just to live in a hole in the basement of her house.
One day, she comes home with arms loaded with loot from Michael's Craft Store. Another day, it's new HUGE television (before the days of HD.) Yet another day, it was a complete bedroom set for her youngest daughter.
I am now starting to see where all my husband's disability checks were going.
I am livid by the time I point it out to anyone who would listen.
Which is pretty much no one.
During my husband's stay with us and before going back into the hospital, he was with just enough presence of mind to agree with me about the maddening nature of all of it. I wanted to confront her about why she was charging me so much for rent. I wanted to know what she was figuring into the price of rent. And since she couldn't, for the love of God, give our young family a break, I wanted speak up and out loud.
But I was so filled with anger that I could hardly make sense of what was going on, much less what I wanted to do about it. It was a daily thing. No one seemed to clue into any part of the pain I was going through and to make matters worse, here was this aunt contributing to the injustices we were already suffering. I didn't even care about paying rent to earn my stay there nor paying a certain number as compared to the housing market around me, it's just that one or the other of the two choices would have at least yielded something more akin to freedom and the money that was being sucked from my pocket was sick money.
And freedom I did not get much of. I got lectured for one thing or another pretty much every other day. I never knew when I was going to be pulled aside for something, cornered about, or "suggested to." If it wasn't my bedtime--my bedtime for crying out loud! After bearing 2 children? Was she serious?--it was about cleaning the house, or about the way I cleaned it, it was about the way I disciplined (or did not discipline enough) my children or the way I did or did not talk about my emotions with her or "seemed" to be not understanding my situation. Oh, I understood it perfectly well, thank you.
Not to mention, again, no car, no job, no immigration status, no money of my own, no way to make a few bucks here or there. Trapped.
It was maddening all on its own to have been reduced from being my own person with a family and the husband's promising career to some kind of know-nothing, grunt-level, entry-level, belittled kid thing whose loosely-tied "family" status somehow enabled the aunt (or maybe entitled her?) to treat me like crap AND try to fake like she wasn't. But then paying big city rent for a shithole bedroom in her basement and cleaning her house and watching her daughters live comfortably spread out while I crammed myself and my two babies in the shithole bedroom was less than exciting. After months of trying to take it all in--the cancer, the aunt, the inlaws, the young motherhood, and immigration limbo--and nothing coming out, and this short off the heels of a year-old marriage, college with a baby, single motherhood, and no family around anywhere, I didn't know what end was up. It was like jamming a gig of information in 750 megabyte computer and the RAM is fried.
So I practically jumped at the idea of my mom buying me a plane ticket to hang with her for a month in Nevada. Of course it meant leaving my husband to deal with his lung surgery by himself (with his mom) and my mom would have to work and carry on her life while I was visiting, but I would be OUT of that place.
And I had received my mother in law's blessing. Respite came slowly in those days, and emotionally unintelligent people were slow to respond, but my mother in law's understanding of the situation (in addition to her own severe contempt of her brother and sister-in-law) helped relieve the guilt I had about going. By that point, it was May, the prognosis for my husband was looking better, and all the procedures his oncologist had promised were actually starting to be followed through on. I had had all I could stand of the situation. Had I stayed one second more, I might have had a psychotic break.
With what little sanity I thought I had left, I packed up everything I could carry, including two little girls, and made my way through the scary maze of customs to see my mom waiting at the port.
Showing posts with label dumbass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dumbass. Show all posts
28 December 2011
17 August 2011
Old thoughts, a letter never sent, good reading
Why would I want to go see what you bashed me with? On a site that I'm not interested in seeing? You tend to keep thinking I NEED help, when in reality, I've carved out a pretty hard ass road ALONE and acquired some pretty damned solid morals within my faith in spite of myself, keeping an open mind to all forms of wisdom: great works of art, of music, quotes worth immortalizing, literature.
I don't claim to have more wisdom than anyone or any 90-day program, but I find a very solid sense of the same things you are learning with this program in the skill set I already have and it just grates me that you keep telling me you think you know what I need. I think you just need to stick to knowing what you need because you're not very good at knowing what I need. Most of these programs are carved out of the same principles found in every good-moral book: the Torah, the Koran, the Bible, even great philosophers and literature giants. I'm not trying to impress anyone, You. I'm done dancing to the tune of everyone else's fiddle, and...
...just what am I supposed to do about everybody's hate? I will eventually have to go back sooner or later, and when that transpires, everyone's just gonna have to get over it sooner or later because the people MOST immediately affected by my oh-so-demonic move are already moving on. Also, I'm just not worth the hassle. They are not the ones I screwed over! I'm not divorcing them, I'm not tearing up their relationships, I'm not ruining their lives. The people who still hate me have a responsibility, like it or not, to tell me directly, to approach me, to confront me about, or shut the hell up. I don't want to be mean, but I am physically exhausted and emotionally drained from all the ways other people have felt so entitled to be that angry that even in their ANGER they try to control what they cannot because they lack compassion and understanding in spades. Even in seeing just how and what I brought on myself, here, even now, all these thousands of miles away, this truth cannot be veiled.
I understand that their anger stems from being hurt, confused, misunderstanding, hell even cultural differences and I can't blame them. I can't begin to tell you the torment I've felt over this, the hot tears I've cried, the soul-wracking sobs that come from being 1 person who suffers the opinions of many, but what does you telling me about everyone hating me do for anyone? Does it make you feel better? Do you think you are telling me something I am not wholly and completely 100% aware of? Is it supposed to make me feel worse? Teach me a lesson? Bestow something else, anything else, any other morsel of fruitful bearing, wherein it would just be better to move on? What good does it produce? How does it help you or me or anyone move on, feel better about the things that have transpired or heal deep wounds?
Hurt? Hell yeah, I understand that one. Pissed, yeah, for sure. But telling me not to come back? I still have reasons to come back and if you don't want to be one of them, I can and will respect that, but taking suggestions that don't really come out for my well-being is exactly the suffocating thing that I defied by leaving. All the friends that were close to me/us were friends first and foremost because they had important traits/qualities we found in each other worth saving, worth investing, worth smiling and laughing about, telling jokes, celebrating with. I'll take anything they have to say. But no one is going to tell me how to be me.
As for the lingering gossipy few, there are plenty of lakes around for them to take a long walk off a short pier. Everyone in that area of the world has something to say and I, for one, am not going to walk around like Hester Prinn with the scarlet letter branded to my forehead on account that I'm some abhorrent troll. In fact, I'm not even going to walk around as the least or the most of anything. I will not give a shit. Any. More. The very same noses that have been needlessly, bit-grabbingly poking up into my business up 'till now are all the very same noses that were okay to love me as long as I was doing exactly.... what.... they wanted. And you know what? None of them were around when I needed to talk and none of them stood by me along the way. I didn't make the move I did to protect and gainfully keep any semblage of popularity. The question is: why do YOU care if people hate me?
And as a last-ditch effort, I defend myself. If what I did, by leaving, was so horrible, then what about the good things I left there? Why isn't anyone thinking, well, you know, she was a good woman in X, Y, Z regard or remember the good things, or---for crying out loud---my children! Even though there was probably some silent, collective cheer when my girls went back to live with their father, I can tell you he didn't raise those girls all by himself and they didn't get to be sweet, spunky people that all my friends and all the nose-pickers claim to have say over without their mother! In fact, far from it. And. I was a good waitress. I used to teach there. I made friends from every gammut and circle I crossed. I was reliable. I threw my all into anything musical. I was a fairly productive member of society there. Everyone USED to like me. I knew I would have a lot of explaining to do, that my motion was severe, that it would sever many ties, but only did I expect to answer to those closest to me. I already committed far more than my share of energy in treating everyone with acute equality and niceness (even if they didn't deserve it) in attempting to get along with anyone at all costs. I'm done with it.
If not the past, if the good things I did in the past are somehow now negated, then so be it. I won't point out that I sent my girls to live thousands of miles away with their father pending a whole year. I won't mention that it was me respecting their choice. I won't point out that I could have made any number of battles for keeping them with me, could have made one vague excuse after another and won. I won't point out that I have come to rearrange my whole life around his job so that the girls will have parents that aren't split by plane tickets and geography. I won't point what a superiorly royal bitch I could have really been and wasn't.
The fact is and still remains that no one knew what was going on behind closed doors and worse, no one cared when I tried to even approach the subject. Just toss, toss, toss it under the rug. Don't talk about it, it's not that bad, it's not what you think it is, you're not thinking about it right. Ad nauseum.
People didn't see and people didn't care, so people didn't have a right to judge. The timing of it was messed, the action severe, but I point out: you didn't really give all that much a whoop anyway. But as I sat here once, with all the steaming hot indignation I felt, I couldn't help but see the ironic injustice of it all. All those who yelled at me from their social thrones on high, from their bacteria-cultured cells, through Facebook, behind my back (thanks for telling me)---the ones so hellbent to pin me to the wall---weren't there for the least or the most of the previous 12 years. None of them, not one, dropped by to help out when I was a single mom, alone and scared. Didn't come in to say hello when I had a dearly beloved husband sick and dying in the hospital. No one uttered a word of sympathy or pity in the whole existence of an altered life with an incapacitated husband, nor appreciation. Barely a word or gesture or measure of greeting, understanding, compassion at any single moment or angle of grief in my worst moments and muted support at the best. I wish I were exaggerating.
So then who.... tell me..... was there? Who could have possibly taken my hand and been able to give me the kind of real help and support and/or shove in the right direction I needed? Who was going to be willing to to be loving to me before my adjusted way of living went so far off track that I really felt like there was no one? How could anyone not of dedicated stamina help me figure it all out without exacerbating the world I made for myself? Who was there to think of anymore when I had no one? And who was going to help me so long as I was not willing to help myself?
No matter how many "shouldas" and "wouldas" and "couldas" that are infinitesimally born of the one and same problem, the fact is that I couldn't believe how changed things had become and I just finally had enough. I was fed up with being the kind of woman I swore I'd never become.
I don't claim to have more wisdom than anyone or any 90-day program, but I find a very solid sense of the same things you are learning with this program in the skill set I already have and it just grates me that you keep telling me you think you know what I need. I think you just need to stick to knowing what you need because you're not very good at knowing what I need. Most of these programs are carved out of the same principles found in every good-moral book: the Torah, the Koran, the Bible, even great philosophers and literature giants. I'm not trying to impress anyone, You. I'm done dancing to the tune of everyone else's fiddle, and...
...just what am I supposed to do about everybody's hate? I will eventually have to go back sooner or later, and when that transpires, everyone's just gonna have to get over it sooner or later because the people MOST immediately affected by my oh-so-demonic move are already moving on. Also, I'm just not worth the hassle. They are not the ones I screwed over! I'm not divorcing them, I'm not tearing up their relationships, I'm not ruining their lives. The people who still hate me have a responsibility, like it or not, to tell me directly, to approach me, to confront me about, or shut the hell up. I don't want to be mean, but I am physically exhausted and emotionally drained from all the ways other people have felt so entitled to be that angry that even in their ANGER they try to control what they cannot because they lack compassion and understanding in spades. Even in seeing just how and what I brought on myself, here, even now, all these thousands of miles away, this truth cannot be veiled.
I understand that their anger stems from being hurt, confused, misunderstanding, hell even cultural differences and I can't blame them. I can't begin to tell you the torment I've felt over this, the hot tears I've cried, the soul-wracking sobs that come from being 1 person who suffers the opinions of many, but what does you telling me about everyone hating me do for anyone? Does it make you feel better? Do you think you are telling me something I am not wholly and completely 100% aware of? Is it supposed to make me feel worse? Teach me a lesson? Bestow something else, anything else, any other morsel of fruitful bearing, wherein it would just be better to move on? What good does it produce? How does it help you or me or anyone move on, feel better about the things that have transpired or heal deep wounds?
Hurt? Hell yeah, I understand that one. Pissed, yeah, for sure. But telling me not to come back? I still have reasons to come back and if you don't want to be one of them, I can and will respect that, but taking suggestions that don't really come out for my well-being is exactly the suffocating thing that I defied by leaving. All the friends that were close to me/us were friends first and foremost because they had important traits/qualities we found in each other worth saving, worth investing, worth smiling and laughing about, telling jokes, celebrating with. I'll take anything they have to say. But no one is going to tell me how to be me.
As for the lingering gossipy few, there are plenty of lakes around for them to take a long walk off a short pier. Everyone in that area of the world has something to say and I, for one, am not going to walk around like Hester Prinn with the scarlet letter branded to my forehead on account that I'm some abhorrent troll. In fact, I'm not even going to walk around as the least or the most of anything. I will not give a shit. Any. More. The very same noses that have been needlessly, bit-grabbingly poking up into my business up 'till now are all the very same noses that were okay to love me as long as I was doing exactly.... what.... they wanted. And you know what? None of them were around when I needed to talk and none of them stood by me along the way. I didn't make the move I did to protect and gainfully keep any semblage of popularity. The question is: why do YOU care if people hate me?
And as a last-ditch effort, I defend myself. If what I did, by leaving, was so horrible, then what about the good things I left there? Why isn't anyone thinking, well, you know, she was a good woman in X, Y, Z regard or remember the good things, or---for crying out loud---my children! Even though there was probably some silent, collective cheer when my girls went back to live with their father, I can tell you he didn't raise those girls all by himself and they didn't get to be sweet, spunky people that all my friends and all the nose-pickers claim to have say over without their mother! In fact, far from it. And. I was a good waitress. I used to teach there. I made friends from every gammut and circle I crossed. I was reliable. I threw my all into anything musical. I was a fairly productive member of society there. Everyone USED to like me. I knew I would have a lot of explaining to do, that my motion was severe, that it would sever many ties, but only did I expect to answer to those closest to me. I already committed far more than my share of energy in treating everyone with acute equality and niceness (even if they didn't deserve it) in attempting to get along with anyone at all costs. I'm done with it.
If not the past, if the good things I did in the past are somehow now negated, then so be it. I won't point out that I sent my girls to live thousands of miles away with their father pending a whole year. I won't mention that it was me respecting their choice. I won't point out that I could have made any number of battles for keeping them with me, could have made one vague excuse after another and won. I won't point out that I have come to rearrange my whole life around his job so that the girls will have parents that aren't split by plane tickets and geography. I won't point what a superiorly royal bitch I could have really been and wasn't.
The fact is and still remains that no one knew what was going on behind closed doors and worse, no one cared when I tried to even approach the subject. Just toss, toss, toss it under the rug. Don't talk about it, it's not that bad, it's not what you think it is, you're not thinking about it right. Ad nauseum.
People didn't see and people didn't care, so people didn't have a right to judge. The timing of it was messed, the action severe, but I point out: you didn't really give all that much a whoop anyway. But as I sat here once, with all the steaming hot indignation I felt, I couldn't help but see the ironic injustice of it all. All those who yelled at me from their social thrones on high, from their bacteria-cultured cells, through Facebook, behind my back (thanks for telling me)---the ones so hellbent to pin me to the wall---weren't there for the least or the most of the previous 12 years. None of them, not one, dropped by to help out when I was a single mom, alone and scared. Didn't come in to say hello when I had a dearly beloved husband sick and dying in the hospital. No one uttered a word of sympathy or pity in the whole existence of an altered life with an incapacitated husband, nor appreciation. Barely a word or gesture or measure of greeting, understanding, compassion at any single moment or angle of grief in my worst moments and muted support at the best. I wish I were exaggerating.
So then who.... tell me..... was there? Who could have possibly taken my hand and been able to give me the kind of real help and support and/or shove in the right direction I needed? Who was going to be willing to to be loving to me before my adjusted way of living went so far off track that I really felt like there was no one? How could anyone not of dedicated stamina help me figure it all out without exacerbating the world I made for myself? Who was there to think of anymore when I had no one? And who was going to help me so long as I was not willing to help myself?
No matter how many "shouldas" and "wouldas" and "couldas" that are infinitesimally born of the one and same problem, the fact is that I couldn't believe how changed things had become and I just finally had enough. I was fed up with being the kind of woman I swore I'd never become.
06 June 2011
Step, step, step
It's easier to squeeze a whole pig into a sausage casing than it is to get people to change, you know? I need to tap into some more sarcasm in order to deliver the material, of which I have by the stashes and butt loads, but stepping into comedy probably just isn't my thing. In fact, I'll say it's not my thing. That way, it exempts me from expectations.
But take this into account. (Along with everyone's self-entitled right to free speech.) I am a complicated, complex woman. But alas, I also admit to being controversial. I didn't mean to be, but it ended up that way because I was really a bitch in disguise.
See, I tried to hide my feisty temper because I was afraid of what people thought, too afraid to face the consequences, and in the early days, just was WAY too angry to balance a good dose of ranting with a dose of good humor--it always just ended up in some mean fashion. Or at least it seemed that way after the fact. Like, when I was getting called into the office at work for an entry that contained absolutely zero incriminating evidence toward individuals or businesses mentioned (printed, mailed, and not labeled by a jealous (I guess?) co-worker.)
But I when finally could say I got over my case of the whiny, backed-up jitters and reactionary emotional epilepsy, I breathed the fresh air and realized that because I could take responsibility for my actions, I could also air opinions. AND... that I'm willing to air my take on things whenever I so choose because that's just what adulthood and a grand lack of willful maturity affords me. Yay!
So when I hear stories that my former, self-righteous boss, who took it upon herself to lecture me for a decision I made some ten months ago or so to leave the life I was living, the same woman who was trying to "improve" me in merely my job and I resented that because of her snobbish, two-faced attitude, made a face in reaction to a decision my best friend made, I feel obliged to snark back from my blog, if only to do the dork thing and retort what I would have said, could have said, and will now not refrain from saying from afar. Yes, while she was right in only one tiniest regard in the diatribe I received from her all those months ago, she is still the same little fish in a little pond, who looks bigger because the pond is so small and still has learned nothing about love, compassion, or the way forgiveness works. That is the biggest grievance at all. And it basically boils down to the old addage: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all. And keep your eyeballs to yourself.
But take this into account. (Along with everyone's self-entitled right to free speech.) I am a complicated, complex woman. But alas, I also admit to being controversial. I didn't mean to be, but it ended up that way because I was really a bitch in disguise.
See, I tried to hide my feisty temper because I was afraid of what people thought, too afraid to face the consequences, and in the early days, just was WAY too angry to balance a good dose of ranting with a dose of good humor--it always just ended up in some mean fashion. Or at least it seemed that way after the fact. Like, when I was getting called into the office at work for an entry that contained absolutely zero incriminating evidence toward individuals or businesses mentioned (printed, mailed, and not labeled by a jealous (I guess?) co-worker.)
But I when finally could say I got over my case of the whiny, backed-up jitters and reactionary emotional epilepsy, I breathed the fresh air and realized that because I could take responsibility for my actions, I could also air opinions. AND... that I'm willing to air my take on things whenever I so choose because that's just what adulthood and a grand lack of willful maturity affords me. Yay!
So when I hear stories that my former, self-righteous boss, who took it upon herself to lecture me for a decision I made some ten months ago or so to leave the life I was living, the same woman who was trying to "improve" me in merely my job and I resented that because of her snobbish, two-faced attitude, made a face in reaction to a decision my best friend made, I feel obliged to snark back from my blog, if only to do the dork thing and retort what I would have said, could have said, and will now not refrain from saying from afar. Yes, while she was right in only one tiniest regard in the diatribe I received from her all those months ago, she is still the same little fish in a little pond, who looks bigger because the pond is so small and still has learned nothing about love, compassion, or the way forgiveness works. That is the biggest grievance at all. And it basically boils down to the old addage: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all. And keep your eyeballs to yourself.
07 April 2011
People Who Dialogue In Between The Lines
Yeah, you know who I'm talking about. Those people that can't say a straight line and mean exactly what they say. The ones who claim to say things at "face value" but communicate cryptically or put their terms in broad, analogical, sometimes poetic terms to hide that they can't actually articulate (admit) what they're really feeling. The ones who also undercut spoken dialogue with an entire undercurrent of loaded phrases or words, leaving some half-intelligent person to wonder if there was a subterranean attack launched or if their words meant nothing.
I am one of them.
Yeah, that's me. I have said or have written things that I know will hurt people in vague ways so that I don't have to take responsibility for the outcome of their effects.
Face value.
Why am I admitting this? Well I got on here to write something else, a quote actually, nothing original, found a friend's pragmatic entry on a site, and found it absurd that I could feel contempt for his efforts when I was nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in a place to be looking down on him. It made me remember that "coming clean" about truths that are actually easier than they seem is not that big a deal. Well, in terms of relative sanity anyway. (This would be an entirely different ball game if I had been, say, and ex-con.) It's always harder to be the one working so hard to keep certain truths at bay than it is to be the one judging them, and so if coming here and in doing all that I did by coming here last summer was for anything, it was for ripping through the barriers and screens of my own secret truths and freaking exercising new muscles of genuineness and authenticity.
And also, I'm just getting tired of it. Tired of the cycle of trying to be better than somebody else (the proverbial anybody else.) It's just old. Old news, old like a 1920 newspaper, and twice as mind-numbingly irrelevant. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing my voice on it. I'm tired of hearing the same words come out of the same vocal pipes, and I hate how I sound. I hate how I seem to be so damned insecure that I have to find some vastly-wide sweeping words to zero in on a point that doesn't even work. I'm tired of putting on a facade that I think will somehow make me better. I mean, really. Double-U. Tee. Eff.
With this increasingly inescapable theme of pointing fingers and blame ("for every finger pointing at you, there are three pointing back"; "take the plank of wood out of your own eye before helping someone else with the sliver in their eye"), it has become an irreplaceable, incredible, life-changing tool that, although once a childhood anecdote (or so the repetitiveness of those sayings would seem), is now re-encrusting itself into a sheer, undeniable and fundamental truth in the core of me. I've blamed just about everything and everyone I could get my proverbial hands on, and quite frankly, it doesn't work. I've known for some time that I've had a problem communicating as well as I could have, even in spite of trying to be the "fantastic-est communicator ever," and it boils down to lack of ability to truly articulate my thoughts and feelings. It has always been easier to give a picture of what I'm thinking instead of trying to sit down, think about it, and put them into nouns and verbs that express my feelings and don't actually implicate someone because I'm trying so desperately hard for the situation to NOT be my fault. I actually relied on this tactic too much, and that's the problem. I mean, it's part of my personality, but when it comes to balancing the two sides (there it is again!), the sweeping fru-fru of descriptive language far out-weighed the boring (or agonizing) truth.
And it doesn't even matter how genuine I am, I know I still f*** up and will most likely be f***ing up for a while. I'm trying not to think about that. I'm just trying to think of how to be more articulate, and that requires being honest with myself and being accountable.
That being said, I've been on the other end of loaded words. I think it's seeing this that has, in part, made me realize that I'd much rather struggle to define and articulate my thoughts than hand over one more loaded, double-edged slice of poetry. (The other part is seeing how much pain I've caused by doing that.) I've been the half-intelligent person, too--the one I referred to at the beginning of this entry. I'm fairly intelligent, I'd like to believe, but I don't always catch the intended double meaning, but because I've been afraid to miss it (for fear of looking like a simpleton), I learned how to take almost everything with double meaning in certain situations, with certain dynamics. Screwed up, ain't it? Well, don't laugh too heartily just yet. It was a default program I set up to avoid looking like an idiot.
My poor, poor pride, eh?
My world might have been a little happier a place if I'd chosen not to give those loaded words double meaning. It certainly would have helped alleviate the nasty little habit I got into of giving words double meaning that didn't exist. I chose to write this nasty little confession because I had originally intended to explore this very same trait in another friend, but just could not. For one, me being snarky just doesn't help anything or anyone. For two, let he (or she!) who is sinless cast the first stone. I haven't gotten nearly the start on being genuine as I had hoped when I came here, when I chose to make my life something else, because I just felt so bad about all the pain, uproar, and damnation it caused that I couldn't see past the guilt. But there is a whole other world past my narrow, 2-dimensional point of view, and I'd rather be the person who gets railed at in my blog than to continue even one teeny, tiny little step back in the old direction. Because for every and any bit I could throw out, it is a bit that makes me a self-righteous hypocrite, and, well, we really don't want too many more of those kinds of entries now, do we?
I am one of them.
Yeah, that's me. I have said or have written things that I know will hurt people in vague ways so that I don't have to take responsibility for the outcome of their effects.
Face value.
Why am I admitting this? Well I got on here to write something else, a quote actually, nothing original, found a friend's pragmatic entry on a site, and found it absurd that I could feel contempt for his efforts when I was nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in a place to be looking down on him. It made me remember that "coming clean" about truths that are actually easier than they seem is not that big a deal. Well, in terms of relative sanity anyway. (This would be an entirely different ball game if I had been, say, and ex-con.) It's always harder to be the one working so hard to keep certain truths at bay than it is to be the one judging them, and so if coming here and in doing all that I did by coming here last summer was for anything, it was for ripping through the barriers and screens of my own secret truths and freaking exercising new muscles of genuineness and authenticity.
And also, I'm just getting tired of it. Tired of the cycle of trying to be better than somebody else (the proverbial anybody else.) It's just old. Old news, old like a 1920 newspaper, and twice as mind-numbingly irrelevant. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of hearing my voice on it. I'm tired of hearing the same words come out of the same vocal pipes, and I hate how I sound. I hate how I seem to be so damned insecure that I have to find some vastly-wide sweeping words to zero in on a point that doesn't even work. I'm tired of putting on a facade that I think will somehow make me better. I mean, really. Double-U. Tee. Eff.
With this increasingly inescapable theme of pointing fingers and blame ("for every finger pointing at you, there are three pointing back"; "take the plank of wood out of your own eye before helping someone else with the sliver in their eye"), it has become an irreplaceable, incredible, life-changing tool that, although once a childhood anecdote (or so the repetitiveness of those sayings would seem), is now re-encrusting itself into a sheer, undeniable and fundamental truth in the core of me. I've blamed just about everything and everyone I could get my proverbial hands on, and quite frankly, it doesn't work. I've known for some time that I've had a problem communicating as well as I could have, even in spite of trying to be the "fantastic-est communicator ever," and it boils down to lack of ability to truly articulate my thoughts and feelings. It has always been easier to give a picture of what I'm thinking instead of trying to sit down, think about it, and put them into nouns and verbs that express my feelings and don't actually implicate someone because I'm trying so desperately hard for the situation to NOT be my fault. I actually relied on this tactic too much, and that's the problem. I mean, it's part of my personality, but when it comes to balancing the two sides (there it is again!), the sweeping fru-fru of descriptive language far out-weighed the boring (or agonizing) truth.
And it doesn't even matter how genuine I am, I know I still f*** up and will most likely be f***ing up for a while. I'm trying not to think about that. I'm just trying to think of how to be more articulate, and that requires being honest with myself and being accountable.
That being said, I've been on the other end of loaded words. I think it's seeing this that has, in part, made me realize that I'd much rather struggle to define and articulate my thoughts than hand over one more loaded, double-edged slice of poetry. (The other part is seeing how much pain I've caused by doing that.) I've been the half-intelligent person, too--the one I referred to at the beginning of this entry. I'm fairly intelligent, I'd like to believe, but I don't always catch the intended double meaning, but because I've been afraid to miss it (for fear of looking like a simpleton), I learned how to take almost everything with double meaning in certain situations, with certain dynamics. Screwed up, ain't it? Well, don't laugh too heartily just yet. It was a default program I set up to avoid looking like an idiot.
My poor, poor pride, eh?
My world might have been a little happier a place if I'd chosen not to give those loaded words double meaning. It certainly would have helped alleviate the nasty little habit I got into of giving words double meaning that didn't exist. I chose to write this nasty little confession because I had originally intended to explore this very same trait in another friend, but just could not. For one, me being snarky just doesn't help anything or anyone. For two, let he (or she!) who is sinless cast the first stone. I haven't gotten nearly the start on being genuine as I had hoped when I came here, when I chose to make my life something else, because I just felt so bad about all the pain, uproar, and damnation it caused that I couldn't see past the guilt. But there is a whole other world past my narrow, 2-dimensional point of view, and I'd rather be the person who gets railed at in my blog than to continue even one teeny, tiny little step back in the old direction. Because for every and any bit I could throw out, it is a bit that makes me a self-righteous hypocrite, and, well, we really don't want too many more of those kinds of entries now, do we?
25 March 2011
Irony that isn't irony
When I say something, nine times out of ten, I'm serious. As in, I meant what I said. For the other one percent, I'm usually kidding around, but if you know me you can tell. My humor is not that dry, and I usually fill those "gotcha" kind of one-percenters with funny expressions, eye brow shapes, and puckered mouths. I've even taken to doing this nod thing with my nose where my chin kind of stays elevated to signal that, yes, indeed, I'm joking around.
But ten times out of ten, and when it has to do with critical subject matter, I mean serious business.
What does it take to get people to LISTEN?
The fact that I have to declare that at all makes me crazy. I don't have time for this today. I have an exciting performance tonight with the youth symphony playing at the mall! To me, having to declare or question why I can't be taken seriously speaks to the way in which I may have been perceived, perhaps depending on the way I've carried myself, and finally what weight or worth my words have. It even speaks to the possible opinions/perceptions of those who regard my miseries as misfortune I have simply brought on myself, which I have been told, which have stung, and which in actually reflection is only about 2% true.
I thought I had the right balance of seriousness and sarcasm/humor. At least the kind of balance I wanted where when I was joking, people would know and when I was serious, they would take what I had to say and digest it or at least... shut. Up.
I know, right? Sounds totally deluded. Like, WHO do I think I AM, right? Or at least what makes me feel like my words should be regarded with such weight, right?
Well it seems I there is a recurring theme of not being taken seriously in my life. I could factor in where I was, where I've been, the people around me, where they've been, what's brought us all to that point, my various inabilities to gauge when to stop joking around (my dad was big on getting us kids to realize we constantly overdid the humor thing,) my astrological sign (Geminis are known to be "childlike",) my idealistic take on some things, but at the end of the day, each time I was fighting to be taken seriously was time which amounted to the summit of experience I had in my life at those times, thus deserving (I figured) the same damned respect I've given others, even those with far less life experience. And since I do have a buttload of life experience (I've thought about doing stand-up, wondering how I would organize my material,)--every year adding a little more--I figure that someone, at least one person or a few, would recognize when to laugh and when to shut. Up.
But maybe I'm not worth taking seriously. Who knows. Hard to say. I don't really care. Save for how it frustrates the ever-lovin' bagoomus out of me. I just got another message from a guy I knew a long time ago, who tried taking advantage of the vulnerable situation that was me back then, who I deflected, thwarted off multiple times, deleted, blocked off, chopped off just after stating my position of "NO!" clearly and bluntly, and eventually was able to forget. Leave it to Facebook to open new avenues of "connecting with friends" !@#$%! Besides angering, it's humiliating. Absolutely humiliating.
I don't have time for this crap. I don't have the time to keep looking back, nor the desire to keeping looking back, on a former line of living that involved serious, grievous, erred ways of thinking and relating to others, especially on account that I still have yet to grieve the loss of my marriage and am concentrating on this wonderful, relatively new relationship I'm in now. It feels amazing to be this loved! The things I have learned! The ways I have grown!
But even if it wasn't this to aggravate my running theme of people in and out of my life not respecting boundaries, it would be something else, somebody else, and I'm sick of it. Maybe I'm being foolish to think I am wise, but then if I am a fool, I should rejoice because there will come the day where the foolish shame the wise.
But ten times out of ten, and when it has to do with critical subject matter, I mean serious business.
What does it take to get people to LISTEN?
The fact that I have to declare that at all makes me crazy. I don't have time for this today. I have an exciting performance tonight with the youth symphony playing at the mall! To me, having to declare or question why I can't be taken seriously speaks to the way in which I may have been perceived, perhaps depending on the way I've carried myself, and finally what weight or worth my words have. It even speaks to the possible opinions/perceptions of those who regard my miseries as misfortune I have simply brought on myself, which I have been told, which have stung, and which in actually reflection is only about 2% true.
I thought I had the right balance of seriousness and sarcasm/humor. At least the kind of balance I wanted where when I was joking, people would know and when I was serious, they would take what I had to say and digest it or at least... shut. Up.
I know, right? Sounds totally deluded. Like, WHO do I think I AM, right? Or at least what makes me feel like my words should be regarded with such weight, right?
Well it seems I there is a recurring theme of not being taken seriously in my life. I could factor in where I was, where I've been, the people around me, where they've been, what's brought us all to that point, my various inabilities to gauge when to stop joking around (my dad was big on getting us kids to realize we constantly overdid the humor thing,) my astrological sign (Geminis are known to be "childlike",) my idealistic take on some things, but at the end of the day, each time I was fighting to be taken seriously was time which amounted to the summit of experience I had in my life at those times, thus deserving (I figured) the same damned respect I've given others, even those with far less life experience. And since I do have a buttload of life experience (I've thought about doing stand-up, wondering how I would organize my material,)--every year adding a little more--I figure that someone, at least one person or a few, would recognize when to laugh and when to shut. Up.
But maybe I'm not worth taking seriously. Who knows. Hard to say. I don't really care. Save for how it frustrates the ever-lovin' bagoomus out of me. I just got another message from a guy I knew a long time ago, who tried taking advantage of the vulnerable situation that was me back then, who I deflected, thwarted off multiple times, deleted, blocked off, chopped off just after stating my position of "NO!" clearly and bluntly, and eventually was able to forget. Leave it to Facebook to open new avenues of "connecting with friends" !@#$%! Besides angering, it's humiliating. Absolutely humiliating.
I don't have time for this crap. I don't have the time to keep looking back, nor the desire to keeping looking back, on a former line of living that involved serious, grievous, erred ways of thinking and relating to others, especially on account that I still have yet to grieve the loss of my marriage and am concentrating on this wonderful, relatively new relationship I'm in now. It feels amazing to be this loved! The things I have learned! The ways I have grown!
But even if it wasn't this to aggravate my running theme of people in and out of my life not respecting boundaries, it would be something else, somebody else, and I'm sick of it. Maybe I'm being foolish to think I am wise, but then if I am a fool, I should rejoice because there will come the day where the foolish shame the wise.
03 January 2009
Ngh
Ngh.
Who needs friends whose words undercut, doubt, and criticize? I mean, really. Perhaps the recessive strains of insecurity show in worrying about, even for a second, the status message of a friend whose actions of bumping a player from the table resulted in an angry comment (by me); but if the consequential conversation that followed is any indication of immaturity, then it lay just as much with him as with me.
I guess I just don't understand him. I guess I've just always wanted our friendship to be more of what I thought it was or what I thought I wanted rather than what is and just accepting that. Which is fine. But then, I don't really accept it. Even if I could accept what is incompatible , I don't accept the way all words seem to have any other meaning than the given meaning and how all of our conversations over the years have morphed into other-lateral versions of themselves. Two planes of conversation and meaning. Truly this is not healthy. And for a good man of good character and good value that I know he is, we simply are not communicating at face value any more and I think we chalk it up to the evolution of conversation that has come from snotty dig after snotty dig.
Who needs friends whose words undercut, doubt, and criticize? I mean, really. Perhaps the recessive strains of insecurity show in worrying about, even for a second, the status message of a friend whose actions of bumping a player from the table resulted in an angry comment (by me); but if the consequential conversation that followed is any indication of immaturity, then it lay just as much with him as with me.
I guess I just don't understand him. I guess I've just always wanted our friendship to be more of what I thought it was or what I thought I wanted rather than what is and just accepting that. Which is fine. But then, I don't really accept it. Even if I could accept what is incompatible , I don't accept the way all words seem to have any other meaning than the given meaning and how all of our conversations over the years have morphed into other-lateral versions of themselves. Two planes of conversation and meaning. Truly this is not healthy. And for a good man of good character and good value that I know he is, we simply are not communicating at face value any more and I think we chalk it up to the evolution of conversation that has come from snotty dig after snotty dig.
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